MTH:Temporal Manipulation
Contents
Temporal Manipulation[edit]
AGE ALTERATION (****)[edit]
Perquisites: Temporal Manipulation, Power Level 3+
Effect: Each success on the activation roll increases or decreases the target’s physical age by one year; the Storyteller is the final arbiter of what effects, if any, this has on the target. Note that only the target’s physical body is changed, while his mental maturity, his knowledge level, and his superpowers remain intact; however, the immature brain of a child or the aged brain of a geriatric may not function as effectively as that of an adult, meaning the target may not be able to use that knowledge or those skills to full effect. Using Age Alteration is an extended action, and the character may roll and gain successes a number of times per scene up to her Stamina (including any bonus for Mega-Stamina). Each roll takes one turn and 2 verve.
Extensive use of this technique on the same target may cause the character or the target to take degeneration rolls, at the STs option. The pool is Intelligence + (Medicine) + Temporal Manipulation – target’s Stamina.
HOP (***)[edit]
Prerequisites: Temporal Manipulation, Power Level 2+
Effect: The character jumps through time, forward or backward, a few moments, or occasionally as much as an hour. For each success on the activation roll, the character can choose to move up to one turn into the future or past. On an exceptional success the character may jump up to an hour or scene in either direction.
Time travel, even small-scale time travel, comes with certain rules. One is that the character must attempt not to alter the already established events (so sometimes it's easier not to know). Another is that they must avoid paradoxes in general.
If a character violates one of these rules they begin to diverge from the 'trajectory' of time, and gain a 'Divergence' point. Mark this point by putting an X through the character's top-most Integrity circle. Each additional point marks another circle below that one. If the circle that would be marked is a filled in dot, the character checks for degeneration. That character cannot regain this point of Integrity while that level is still marked with Divergence. A time traveler particularly prone to paradox will simply vanish if their entire morality track is filled with Divergence.
The character may remove a point of Divergence by fixing any violation of the above rules. For instance, if the character gained the point by removing an object that they later picked up, they can fix the situation by replacing the object without being seen by their earlier self.
Situations may arise that a character cannot fix, so a time traveler must be careful, lest time travel break their mind and eventually eject them from reality all together.
Each hop costs 1 verve. The die pool is Resolve + (Drive) + Temporal Manipulation.
SLIPSHANK (**)[edit]
Prerequisites: Hop
Effect: The character can hop in a 'playing it forward' manor, by choosing to take a point of Divergence to assign a future use of time travel they plan on, and benefit from it at the moment. When they actually take the action, the point of Divergence is removed. For example, the player may declare that their character finds a tool they need in a drawer they have never looked in, because they will use time travel to put it there later. They will find the tool there when they look, and they will have the point of Divergence until they go back in time and put that same tool in that same drawer. When the activation roll fails, this simply indicates that the character's attempt to set up events failed for some reason. The verve is still spent and the Divergence is still gained though, as the character must still make the attempt later (The attempt will then remove the Divergence, once the character has failed).
If the Storyteller uses the "Matter of Resolve" optional rules for downtime actions, they may allow a 'played forward' action to take up a downtime action.
STOP TIME (**)[edit]
Prerequisites: Temporal Manipulation, Power Level 2
Effect: Stop Time does just that—stops the passage of time around a target. The character rolls their Intelligence + (Science) + Temporal Manipulation. After rolling, subtract the target's Power Level from the successes rolled. Each remaining success freezes the target for one turn. While frozen the target cannot act or be acted upon, except when moved by an outside force.
Each successive use of this power on the same target during the same scene has a cumulative -1 penalty applied. Each roll requires 1 willpower.
