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Wizard School of Chronomancy
🕑 Added 2024-08-27 14:00:11 +0000 UTCTime is a fundamental building block of the cosmos, yet even the gods seem reluctant to tamper with its mechanisms. Chronomancers seek to unravel time’s mysteries. Few wizards embrace this school, as its history is littered with stories of mages who met bizarre or terrifying fates. One story tells of a chronomancer who was torn to pieces by invisible creatures in the middle of a marketplace. Another tale details a young mage who aged and turned to dust in a matter of seconds after making a simple mistake with a spell.
The most infamous story concerns Dalt the Many. A renowned chronomancer and fiery advocate for mastering this magic, Dalt claimed that chronomancy was the key to unseating the gods. While delivering a fiery speech against a local theocrat, Dalt was engulfed in a mighty spell that reduced him to ash. As the crowd fled in panic, a younger version of Dalt emerged from the shadows, searched through the pile of ashes for something, and disappeared in a flash of arcane energy.
Since that event, stories abound of Dalt appearing in various places, each time looking dramatically younger or older. When two Dalts meet, only one survives the confrontation.
Echoes in Time
Tampering with the flow of time comes with many strange hazards. What have you experienced?
D6 Roll or Choose
Echoes in Time
1: You know the moment and events of your death. Are you desperate to avoid this fate, or have you accepted it?
2: You are a refugee from an alternate timeline where a tremendous disaster doomed the world. You are determined to prevent those events from unfolding here.
3: Time blurs together for you. You sometimes have trouble remembering the difference between the past, future, and present. Sometimes when you meet people and visit places, memories of your future flood into your mind.
4: You are the younger instance of a powerful chronomancer brought into this time stream for unknown reasons. You have no idea how the older version of you accomplished this and worry what might happen should you meet your future self.
5: You were two days into studying chronomancy when a strange accident aged you several years. Somehow, you have gained an intuitive understanding of this magic, but you have no conscious knowledge of how it works or why you continue to improve with it.
6: Your teacher had just completed your basic training when they handed you a scroll that will open at some time in the future. You have not seen them since and believe they have traveled into the future to avoid some great disaster.
Tradition Features
Chronomancy
At 2nd level, you master the basics of chronomancy, magic that manipulates the flow of time. You can learn, prepare, and cast chronomancy spells. Casters that lack this feature cannot do so.
Time Step
At 2nd level, you gain the ability to influence the flow of time around you. You gain the following effects that you can use. You can use this feature up to three times and regain spent uses when you finish a long rest.
Speed of Time. When you roll initiative, choose yourself or a willing creature that you can see. The chosen creature treats its initiative result as a 30.
Time Sink. When you roll initiative, choose a creature you can see within 120 feet of you. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw using your spell save DC. On a failed save, the creature uses 1d6 rather than 1d20 for its initiative roll. On a successful save, it uses 1d12 rather than 1d20 for its initiative roll.
Unspooled Steps. As a bonus action while moving or immediately after finishing movement on your turn, you can rewind time to return to the space you occupied when your movement began. You may then take your move again. Treat the attack or effect that triggered this feature, along with any other effects or events that occurred during that move, as having not taken place. Creatures do not remember them, but you retain knowledge of what could have happened.
Fourth Dimensional Casting
Beginning at 6th level, when you cast a spell using a bonus action you can cast spells other than cantrips using your action that turn. You can use this feature three times and regain expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.
Cast Between Time’s Beats
Starting at 10th level, you can understand a spell’s outcome before fully casting it. When you cast a spell as an action or bonus action, you can decide to rewind and cancel it at any point during the process of resolving its effects, including after seeing the results of any die rolls made as part of the spell or reactions or effects that trigger in response to it. The spell’s effects and any reactions made in response to the spell never happened, you retain any spell slots expended to cast the spell, and you regain the action or bonus action used to cast it. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.
Arcana Beyond Time
Starting at 14th level, as a bonus action you can cast up to three spells with a range of self and a casting time of an action or bonus action. Spells that list a range of self and an area of effect, such as a cone or radius, cannot be used with this feature. Once you use this feature, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.
Arcane Reversal
Chronomancy cantrip
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Self
Components: None
Duration: Instantaneous
The next time you cast a cantrip this turn, you can choose to roll back time and repeat the cantrip against a different target. Treat the initial casting as if it did not happen.
Spoken Possibilities
2nd-level chronomancy
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Self
Components: None
Duration: Instantaneous
You peer into the firmament of time and perceive a reality where a conversation of your choice took place. Pick a creature that can see and hear you and that shares a language with you. You and the creature take part in a conversation within a bubble of theoretical time that lasts for up to one minute. The entire conversation takes place in the time it takes you to cast this spell. During that time, the creature reacts to your words as normal based on its knowledge, attitude, and emotional state when you cast this spell. You cannot cast spells, take actions, or do anything other than talk to the creature. After a minute, the flow of time resumes, and the creature has no knowledge of what you or it said though you recall the conversation as normal.
Island in Time
3rd-level chronomancy
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: 120 feet
Components: None
Duration: Instantaneous
You create a discrete island of time occupied by you and several other creatures. Pick two creatures within range that you can see. Those creatures may use their reactions to take actions or bonus actions with the following restrictions. The actions they take can involve only themselves and objects they wear or carry. They cannot target other creatures with spells or other effects, and they cannot attack. This restriction does not apply to you or the targets of the spell. They are allowed to target you and each other.
Temporal Lance
1st-level chronomancy
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Self
Components: None
Duration: Instantaneous
Time twists and turns around you, giving you a glimpse into its firmament. You scan the possibilities, twisting your use of magic in response to the tides of fate you observe.
Roll two d20s. As an action this turn, you can make two ranged spell attacks against targets within 30 feet. Use the results of the d20s you rolled to make those attacks. A creature you hit with this attack takes 2d10 force damage.
Alternatively, you can use your action this turn to cast a different spell using the spell slot expended to cast this spell.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of a higher level, the damage increases by 1d10 for each slot level about 1st.
Time Skip
4th-level chronomancy
Casting Time: 1 bonus action
Range: Self
Components: None
Duration: 1 round
You step between the moments of time, allowing you to shift in and out of its flow as you wish. Until the start of your next turn, you can phase in and out of time. At the start of each turn except your own, you can choose to skip ahead a moment. If you do so, until the end of that turn you cannot be targeted by anything and ignore all effects. You disappear from your space and reappear at the end of the turn in the nearest, unoccupied space of your choice.
Comments
Mike Mearls
Good point! It should be. As soon as I read your comment and went back to look, it definitely read like a feature.
Mike Mearls
It's a tricky thing to get right. I would assume that the spell lasts three rounds. Using that assumption, I'd add up all the potential damage and aim for it to equal about the spell's base damage with a 33% kicker. I'd aim higher under the assumption that the spell allows for a save to end it. Do not use heat metal as a guide. That's spell is strictly broken.
mAc Chaos
Hi Mike. A question about spells, wizard or otherwise. When you're assessing the damage output of a spell, do you count spells that deal damage over time? Or rather, does that get factored in? Like fireball does 8d6 fire damage right away, easy to handle that. But if there's a spell like Ice Storm which deals damage repeatedly over a span... does that make it count for more? And how much more?
Michael Sixel
I'd think arcane reversal would be a feature? I'm not sure I get why it's a spell. Also, and while I love most everything here, this really highlights the issues you raised in wizard subclass design....
