So, I have just been faced with an interesting dilemma. I am currently running a game that allows the use of Chronomancy, for those of you unaware of what Chronomancy is, it is magic that manipulates time. One of the things in the game is the dilemma of Paradox and what it dose. This got me thinking, I know like maybe if you use minor time magic you could have a “butterfly of many colors” appear and call it minor paradox, but what would be the effects of say a character using the greater wish spell to make it so he “Always was” and another to make it so he was never born. I think maybe it would just make him an Outsider, maybe make a template for it, but on the other hand would it possibly remove him from the world altogether or maybe (Referencing the Tome of Magic from 3.5) make him a vestige and send him to the void.
If a player in my game used a Wish to wish he’d never been born, I’d hand him the dice and tell him to roll a new character. Depending on the willingness of the other players to ply the DM with intoxicants and the quality thereof, I might just remove the character’s body, and let the party divide his stuff.
I think he was going for using a Wish to get immunity from people coming up and killing him as an infant. This is a perfectly valid worry if time magic works, so I’d allow it, particularly since he’s burning 10,000 xp or so to do it (for some Wishes). That is, he’s wishing that he always was, but simply hadn’t been born.
The key, however, is to impress on him the consequences of doing so. The upside is that he remembers his family, but they don’t remember him. In fact, few people nobody his recent adventures and party should know him at all. His home may simply vanish, or he finds somebody else has moved in. This is not without its upsides: the people he cares about won’t be targets for villains, either.
I’m not really a GM, (I’ve done the gamemastering thing, though that’s not something I’m pre-disposed to as a rule), and though I like D&D generally, I’m not all that familiar with the magic systems extant in the various versions. (My exposure to D&D is generally limited to cheesy fantasy novels and computer games). That said, I’ve given this idea some thought and here’s what I would do in such a situation…
A player who gains the ability to declare his character as “always having existed” without even having been born is essentially recasting his character as an immortal/god-like being. He may not possess inherent magical abilities or invulnerability, but effective agelessness is a serious game changer, regardless.
Now here’s the thing…
If a player pitches this as a core component of a character’s background at creation I might be tempted to allow it on the condition that he and I go over the character’s history in detail. What’s his motivation and personality? Where was he, and what was he doing during the campaign setting’s pivotal historical moments? That character could, conceivably at least, have been a actor in a given setting’s history. These things would need to be considered at some length before the campaign began.
If I were dealing with a player who sprung this on me in the middle of a game I’d follow Oakminster’s suggestion and hand him the dice and tell him to roll up a new character. That’s not to say I wouldn’t allow it however. There has to be serious consequences to following such a course of action, and I, personally, would be tempted to strip a player of his PC and use that PC as an NPC, with the player’s input if he agrees to it. The PC would become a historical figure.
That may seem harsh, and I admit I might be persuaded out of it, but that would be my first instinct. I’ve never taken kindly to a player’s attempt to completely upset a campaign’s basic structure, which this would seem to be a primary example.
The traditional Greek mythological answer is to point out that he’s bought eternal life, not eternal youth.
This would dramatically change the character’s outlook on life, background, experiences, and equipment. He’d have changed himself into a mortal-powered Tom Bombadil, who’d been around since before time began, and would probably bear almost no resemblance to who he’d been before. I’d ask him if he was entirely sure he wanted to do that, then I’d demand his character sheet and begin crossing things off (in ink), writing in others, rewriting his historical background, changing his alignment and probably class, reassigning all of his equipment, and so on. He can do it, of course, but now he’s an LN Cleric/Monk instead of a CG wizard, with some weird old equipment.
Or if you want to be really obnoxious, note that he lost a hand thirty thousand years ago and can’t regenerate it. Or progressive nerve damage from an eternity of fights has left him unable to perform the complex somatic gestures necessary to cast spells.
Or tell him “Always was but never born? You’re a rock now.”
When players start getting paranoid, it’s best to ask the player what the thinking is. However, if the character just used that tactic and wants to protect himself, that’s another issue.
In any case, I would go with the drama of the situation. The point of this doesn’t sound like immortality, eternal youth or other issues, but being able to protect his younger self against a viable threat. I would ask if that’s the player wants. If that’s the case, then I would have it that if any other chronomancers do this, that the character is pulled back in time as his own protector.
And then, I would tailor this to the situation. What if he is X level and someone of X + Y level is the one that attacks? In that case, he might have to be creative. Further, I would leave it as a small window, say a game week or less, and then either the spell’s duration is up for the attacker or your younger self got to a point where it wouldn’t be possible to kill him without other consequences that the attacker isn’t willing to risk.
Having said that, don’t do this, or impose this, in a vacuum. Suggest a few ideas to let the player know what you were thinking. Like riddles, it’s tough to get into a certain mindset without some warning. Perhaps he hires mercenaries who can help. Perhaps he gets political contacts and it explains why, in his youth, some (politically) powerful people took notice of his young self.
Finally, this is going to be tough on both of you, so limit yourselves! Say that the bad guys can only try this so many times before the magic fails (perhaps they actually protected him by trying too much powerful magic around him) or that there were only so many windows of opportunity to do this. Of course, time travel is tricky, on many levels, but it could be that the bad guys can’t go back any earlier to when the character got time travel magic because before that point, he wasn’t a threat and they didn’t care about him! (The Time Machine movie with Guy Pearce.)
If I remember my Chronomancer supplement, and I believe I do, isn’t there a ‘Sever Lifeline’ spell that accomplishes this same end without worrying about the paradox of never being born?
The spell you are thinking of is called “Sever Thread” it is in the AEG Book of Magic, and it takes the creature out of existence (essentially killing them) for a small amount of time. Maybe that is what I’ll have it to, but I’m still mildly inclined to make him a vestige, like those from the Tome of Magic.
That is kinda what happened to the other vestige. I mean they got too strong and kinda took themselves beyond the reach of the gods.