How would you handle the ability to manipulate time in Marvel rules?

The Ultimate Powers book has Time Travel which lets you move forward or back in time and Alter Reality which allows you to change the past or future (as well as the present), and a couple of characters come to mind that can summon temporal duplicates of themselves. But what about if someone wants the ability to stop time? I recall a time-stopping character in Marvel's NYX. She could stay in time stop mode for lengthy periods, from her perspective, and trying to interact with time stopped individuals could be very damaging to them.

Seems incredibly overpowered because they can essentially win a fight or just escape by stopping time and doing a whole bunch of stuff while everyone else just stands around waiting for the next turn to occur. Maybe treat it like hyper-speed and allow the character to move really fast, allowing for tasks to be performed in much shorter time or maybe allow for lots of multiple actions? I could see gamers at the table becoming displeased with another player who dominates combats by effectively taking many turns in a row before they get past their first one.

It's more of a NPC power, or great for writing stories. Having a PC with that power would be a pain and a half, especially with other players.

How would you handle the ability to manipulate time in Marvel rules?

Tell the player you're in the 616 universes, you may tamper with time if you have that power, but your character is going to change things, and it's the judges decision to what changes and you might not like it.

This is a special power, and with special power comes special rules as this power alone can win / solve most problems without any role play.

I'd pretty much ban it. I agree with Art, this is an NPC type of power best used to create a campaign or what if type of scenario.

Taarna Wrote:
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> Tell the player you're in the 616 universes, you
> may tamper with time if you have that power, but
> your character is going to change things, and it's
> the judges decision to what changes and you might
> not like it.

I never use the 616 universe. Too confining. But in this case, it's not about changing the past and thus the present or future... the player wants the ability to stop time.


> This is a special power, and with special power
> comes special rules as this power alone can win /
> solve most problems without any role play.
>
> I'd pretty much ban it. I agree with Art, this
> is an NPC type of power best used to create a
> campaign or what if type of scenario.

I'd rather give a watered down option and let the player decide if it's worth it or not than to say no outright. I'm really leaning toward just using the Hyper-Speed power and saying that the character can't stop time, just slow it down a lot. Just speculating, but I'd guess that X-Men: DoFP's Quicksilver is what he wants anyhow. If that's not good enough, then I tried and he'll just need to come up with something else.

If i let them have it, then i would probably use somebody like kang as the bad guy.Being a time travler he might have tech or give tech to other people that makes them immune to time stopping.

Indeed... Kang, possibly Zarrko the Tomorrow Man, and I'm sure there are a few others who I could use as an occasional foil.

I once had a player with that power and he made my game miserable. I would avoid it at all costs cept as a NPC power or one time boost for story.

Well, even as an NPC power, I'd want to see it fairly well-defined. It's all been worked out fairly well, however. The character will have a limitation on his time-stopping in limited interaction with time-stopped stuff & people. To interact, such as engage in combat, automatically draws a target into the time stop... so no 40 attacks or whatever to the opponent's one because whoever he hits first then gets to hit back an equal amount of times, being effectively sped up to the rest of the time stopped world.

It will provide an intuition bonus and the player can use the power rank in place of dodge/evade attempts, move much farther in the span of a turn, and can complete lengthy tasks much faster.

Sure you can stop time and overcome foes easily. Now here are the manifest aspects of the universe that have something to say about you tampering with the natural flow of time.

Treat it like the Wish spell in D&D and if the player isn't ridiculously stupidly careful shit will spin wildly out of control in short order.

Warlock Wrote:
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> Sure you can stop time and overcome foes easily.
> Now here are the manifest aspects of the universe
> that have something to say about you tampering
> with the natural flow of time.
>
> Treat it like the Wish spell in D&D and if the
> player isn't ridiculously stupidly careful shit
> will spin wildly out of control in short order.


I get where you're going with that, but that seems overly-strict and punishing to a character that would have the ability to manipulate time innately. That would be like having a spider-god show up and smack Spider-Man around for daring to cling to the walls because he can. What do the aspects of the universe care if some guy stops time for everyone but himself to rescue or stop beings who should be as meaningless as ants to those universal entities?

Now if the player does something incredibly stupid that has overwhelmingly large consequences, like use his power in a way that actually causes harm to said universal entities or one of their agents or actually does somehow manage to "break time" or hurt the temporal flow in general, then yes, something big should occur as a result. But I wouldn't feel right approving a power for player use specifically with the intent to restrict their use by enforcement through cosmic beings.

Just seems like a jerk thing to do... kind of like every DM who abused the hell out of that D&D Wish nonsense. I mean, some twisting is good, especially if the players are trying to get too much out of a wish. But I've known DMs that would try to subvert any wish no matter how small or inconsequential. It's a 9th level spell and one of the most powerful magics there is; if someone used it to replicate a lower level spell... say Light... to scare away some undead (because the player is too afraid to try to just wish the undead away knowing the DM will find some way to hurt the party then the Light spell should function as a Light spell and not an uber-powerful version that glows as bright as the sun and blinds everyone until they receive magical healing to remove blindness.

Twisting wishes is for someone who tries to abuse the power. In a game where gods and mutants and other lowly beings --compared to the cosmic ones-- manipulate the fundamental forces (like gravity, electromagnetism, the boundary between life & death, etc) all the time, having and using a power in itself is not an abuse. Nor should every scenario be treated as such (unless some sort of agreed upon limitation to that effect was determined ahead of time) just because the player isn't being "ridiculously stupidly careful." Nope, that kind of DMing isn't my style. I prefer my games to be fun.

The power is dangerous. So is 95% of the powers, or at least they can be.

By effecting time, you go back and kill somebody you think needs killing. The act of killing should only effect the localized area (Earth.) I go back in time and kill Stalin and Hitler. I return to the 616 in 2016 and everyone is dead, because Russia and Germany were able to hammer out differences, there was no second Great War. The joint GermanRusso space program sent a rocket to the moon in 1949 and a mission to Mars in 1960, which drew the attention of the Dire Wraths before the appearance of Spiderman, Thor, Ironman, the Hulk, the FF, the X-men and the defrosting of Captain America. The aliens sweep the planet in a few days.
This obviously effects Earth. It may draw out the Wrath wars, since they have a new foot hold, so it may topple the galaxy, but only until Galactus arrives with the Silver Surfer and devours the planet in 1966.

So players should learn: Going back is kinda bad, good things seldom come from it. Interacting with a lot of people and leaving your wrist watch to be reverse engineered by cavemen is worse. Killing somebody.... hey, your supposed to be a super hero, that is 100% illegal, WTF? Killing someone WILL ALWAYS dramatically change things.

This makes you not want to go kill whomever... but you might consider stealing tech from the future. Enter Kang.
A "slow minute" is a huge advantage, as would be getting information from the future and past.
Using multiple little jumps, like momentary "do overs" should have much less impact and you get to save people.
Using it as an attack, to send people in to the distant, scorched Earth future or to Bikini Island just in time for the H-Bomb test, risky but effective.

The player using it needs to spend a lot of their game making sure they are using it correctly.
If the character is reckless and dangerous, then a lot of the game might become about a group of super people trying to save themselves and a guy with time powers, from his time powers. It might get a little out of everybody's control. It might be a lot of fun.

If you send the team off to stop Magneto and time powers are used, poorly, then everybody might have to deal with a city in which all the men have been turned to lizards and all the women are in a trance surrounding a Serpent Crown the size of a soccer stadium.

That might be a bit big.

Thrudjelmer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Warlock Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Sure you can stop time and overcome foes
> easily.
> > Now here are the manifest aspects of the
> universe
> > that have something to say about you tampering
> > with the natural flow of time.
> >
> > Treat it like the Wish spell in D&D and if the
> > player isn't ridiculously stupidly careful shit
> > will spin wildly out of control in short order.
>
>
> I get where you're going with that, but that seems
> overly-strict and punishing to a character that
> would have the ability to manipulate time
> innately. That would be like having a spider-god
> show up and smack Spider-Man around for daring to
> cling to the walls because he can. What do the
> aspects of the universe care if some guy stops
> time for everyone but himself to rescue or stop
> beings who should be as meaningless as ants to
> those universal entities?
>
> Now if the player does something incredibly stupid
> that has overwhelmingly large consequences, like
> use his power in a way that actually causes harm
> to said universal entities or one of their agents
> or actually does somehow manage to "break time" or
> hurt the temporal flow in general, then yes,
> something big should occur as a result. But I
> wouldn't feel right approving a power for player
> use specifically with the intent to restrict their
> use by enforcement through cosmic beings.
>
> Just seems like a jerk thing to do... kind of like
> every DM who abused the hell out of that D&D Wish
> nonsense. I mean, some twisting is good,
> especially if the players are trying to get too
> much out of a wish. But I've known DMs that would
> try to subvert any wish no matter how small or
> inconsequential. It's a 9th level spell and one
> of the most powerful magics there is; if someone
> used it to replicate a lower level spell... say
> Light... to scare away some undead (because the
> player is too afraid to try to just wish the
> undead away knowing the DM will find some way to
> hurt the party then the Light spell should
> function as a Light spell and not an uber-powerful
> version that glows as bright as the sun and blinds
> everyone until they receive magical healing to
> remove blindness.
>
> Twisting wishes is for someone who tries to abuse
> the power. In a game where gods and mutants and
> other lowly beings --compared to the cosmic ones--
> manipulate the fundamental forces (like
> gravity, electromagnetism, the boundary between
> life & death, etc) all the time, having and
> using a power in itself is not an abuse. Nor
> should every scenario be treated as such
> (unless some sort of agreed upon limitation to
> that effect was determined ahead of time) just
> because the player isn't being "ridiculously
> stupidly careful." Nope, that kind of DMing isn't
> my style. I prefer my games to be fun.



It shows how little trust the GM has in their players and why the players can't trust him if he's making things that adversarial that he's actively treating things as excuses to punish them (a mistake I'd made in my very first game many years ago having one player's character end up killing a combatant because I'd misunderstood things and it did not make for good clean fun).

Yes, all too often there seems to be an adversarial mentality in roleplaying games with players vs DM. But the DM has all the advantages in such a scheme, making me wonder why anyone would want to be a player in such a set up. You abuse your players and they'll go somewhere else, perhaps choose a new DM from among them and leave out the old DM altogether.

Thrudjelmer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, all too often there seems to be an
> adversarial mentality in roleplaying games with
> players vs DM. But the DM has all the advantages
> in such a scheme, making me wonder why anyone
> would want to be a player in such a set up. You
> abuse your players and they'll go somewhere else,
> perhaps choose a new DM from among them and leave
> out the old DM altogether.

Oftentimes they don't have options to get a replacement DM or as made quite clear by a dick GM over on the Palladium forums (damien magecraft) the GM all through his area if not state are in a networked group and punish anyone that gets on the bad side of a member by blackballing them so they can't find a game to play in. For which if they're like him they basically have the players held hostage to their bad GMing.

Instead of multiple posts with multiple quotes I am just going to say this:

When it comes to players and their actions DMs shouldn't be out to "get them", but neither should a good GM stop their actions from having consequences. Its just as bad for a DM to go out of their way to save players as it is to try to kill them. If a player is weaponless and wishes for a sword only a dick DM would say ok it appears embedded in your skull and you die cause HA HA I GOT YOU! On the other hand its just as a bad DM that simply just grants a wish for 10,000 +5 swords to equip an army and there is never any consequences, immediate or otherwise.

Simply put the more powerful an ability is the more it has to cost, one way or the other, to the player. The difference between say flight and teleportion is fairly minor in the grand scheme of power levels, in both you start at one place and end up at another, but because you don't have to actually move thru the intervening space to get there teleportation costs more than flight. Something as powerful as time control is magnitudes greater than even that difference.

Which is why if I was a running a game and a player said to me not that they wanted some minor aspect of time control, like say Super Speed that is based on manipulating time rather than increased velocity, but rather they wanted to have the full on ability to control the flow of time I would tell them flat out that if they choose this they are going to have to be crazy careful to make sure it doesn't come back to bite them in the ass. I would tell them its not because I am "out to get them" but because they are essentially telling me they want to be an ape in control of a nuclear reactor. The human mind could no more understand the infinite possible outcomes of manipulating time than an ape could understand the science and engineering behind a nuclear reactor.

Sometimes being a good GM requires the wisdom of Solomon, but "can I have god-like powers with no consequences or restrictions?" seems like a pretty easy one to me.

Warlock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Instead of multiple posts with multiple quotes I
> am just going to say this:
>
> When it comes to players and their actions DMs
> shouldn't be out to "get them", but neither should
> a good GM stop their actions from having
> consequences. Its just as bad for a DM to go out
> of their way to save players as it is to try to
> kill them. If a player is weaponless and wishes
> for a sword only a dick DM would say ok it appears
> embedded in your skull and you die cause HA HA I
> GOT YOU! On the other hand its just as a bad DM
> that simply just grants a wish for 10,000 +5
> swords to equip an army and there is never any
> consequences, immediate or otherwise.
>
> Simply put the more powerful an ability is the
> more it has to cost, one way or the other, to the
> player. The difference between say flight and
> teleportion is fairly minor in the grand scheme of
> power levels, in both you start at one place and
> end up at another, but because you don't have to
> actually move thru the intervening space to get
> there teleportation costs more than flight.
> Something as powerful as time control is
> magnitudes greater than even that difference.
>
> Which is why if I was a running a game and a
> player said to me not that they wanted some minor
> aspect of time control, like say Super Speed that
> is based on manipulating time rather than
> increased velocity, but rather they wanted to have
> the full on ability to control the flow of time I
> would tell them flat out that if they choose this
> they are going to have to be crazy careful to make
> sure it doesn't come back to bite them in the ass.
> I would tell them its not because I am "out to get
> them" but because they are essentially telling me
> they want to be an ape in control of a nuclear
> reactor. The human mind could no more understand
> the infinite possible outcomes of manipulating
> time than an ape could understand the science and
> engineering behind a nuclear reactor.

Problem is you're wrong on a variety of levels with that, not the least of which it's super-hero science fiction so there ARE human minds that can understand those complexities for another it's not an 'ape in control of a nuclear reactor' it's a super-hero with a super-power that provides them with effectively super-speed by manipulating time in a limited fashion which means it's as built into the power to do that safely as it is for someone with the required secondary powers so that their super-strength doesn't reduce their skeleton to powder the first time that they use it or with flight to fly without having to micro-manage every aspect of it.

> Sometimes being a good GM requires the wisdom of
> Solomon, but "can I have god-like powers with no
> consequences or restrictions?" seems like a pretty
> easy one to me.

Except they aren't asking for god-like powers and in all honestly it is NOT actually a requirement that everything must have consequences or restrictions. If it were then only the most masochistic players would play the game because everything would have consequences and everything would have something wrong with it. The super-strong guy would require someone to feed him or have to eat like a dog from a bowl because he couldn't feed himself, the super-genius wouldn't be able to relate to normal intelligence people, and so on.

Yes there are minds that can comprehend the infinite outcomes of manipulating time but that is essentially another ability in and of itself. Then the player is not only saying I want god like power but I want god like understanding of how to use those powers to their fullest.

Also the post wasn't about slowing time, it was control over time, moving backwards and forwards at will. If all they ever did was slow it a little around themselves to mimic super speed I wouldn't impose any penalties or restrictions, but if they start mucking with time it WILL have consequences, the severity of which would depend on what they actually do.

I don't know how any game, no matter how well GM'd, could give out that level of power with no restrictions without it quickly devolving into what does Captain Time Travel want to do today.

What, Doctor Doom has taken over the White House? Nah, I went back and warned them yesterday so they were ready and Doom is now in jail awaiting trial. Where is my karma by the way?

Zemo placed a bomb somewhere in NYC and if we don't search the whole city and disarm it then it will explode in 24 hours? Big whoop. I will just hop ahead and see that the explosion starts at the Statue of Liberty so lets head there and then I will freeze time, handcuff zemo, grab the bomb and walk it to California and back seventeen times cause I can freeze time so why not, then I will just send it a billion years in the future so nobody gets hurt.

Now if you handed someone that level of power with no restrictions beforehand and no consequences after then there is realistically nothing you can do stop either of those scenarios from happening without a) using the same kryptonite for time, i.e. "haha I negated your powers again" shtick or b) riding in roughshod with a "cause I'm the GM and I said so" moment that invalidates the players choices anyway. If you tell the player there is a being called Eternity, or a group called the Timelords, or Time Wraiths, or whatever that can and will interfere if you act too rashly or overtly, AND THEN you have to stop them from ruining your game it isn't an out of the blue BS move, its a consequence of their own actions for trying to do too much.

I mean it wasn't the suns fault Icarus died. He was warned and chose to ignore those warnings and suffered the consequences of his actions. If there hadn't of been any possible consequences for flying then there was no peril in the story, and it simply becomes two people were trapped so they created wings and flew away.

Warlock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes there are minds that can comprehend the
> infinite outcomes of manipulating time but that is
> essentially another ability in and of itself. Then
> the player is not only saying I want god like
> power but I want god like understanding of how to
> use those powers to their fullest.

I think you may be extending too much godlike power to the description of this power... case in point:

> Also the post wasn't about slowing time, it was
> control over time, moving backwards and forwards
> at will.

What I actually stated at the beginning was this:

Quote

How would you handle the ability to manipulate time in Marvel rules?

The Ultimate Powers book has Time Travel which lets you move forward or back in time and Alter Reality which allows you to change the past or future (as well as the present), and a couple of characters come to mind that can summon temporal duplicates of themselves. But what about if someone wants the ability to stop time? I recall a time-stopping character in Marvel's NYX. She could stay in time stop mode for lengthy periods, from her perspective, and trying to interact with time stopped individuals could be very damaging to them.

> If all they ever did was slow it a little around themselves
> to mimic super speed I wouldn't impose any penalties
> or restrictions, but if they start mucking with time it WILL
> have consequences, the severity of which would depend
> on what they actually do.

Well, there you have it, the player response was specifically about slowing time which would effectively mimic super speed. However, the player desire was essentially stopping time, so it seemed like some restriction were necessary, and we've both agreed on a limitation that when his character attempts to interact with someone or something else, he briefly unfreezes time for that individual on touch so that he no longer has the time stop advantage and get infinite hits against someone who can't move.


> I don't know how any game, no matter how well
> GM'd, could give out that level of power with no
> restrictions without it quickly devolving into
> what does Captain Time Travel want to do today.

Yeah, again, I was referring to the Ultimate Powers Book to provide examples for time manipulation powers. That does not mean the player was looking for the ability to freely and without restriction go backward and/or forward in time. In fact, when I was discussing some of my early suggestions with him, he was the one who came up with the limitation of his power ceasing to affect an individual that he touches as a built in power safeguard so that if he were to pick someone up and move them across the street in effectively zero time, they wouldn't suddenly have this momentum affecting them when normal time resumed for everyone that could cause the moved individual to careen uncontrollably into a wall or have a simple touch possibly break bones or whatever. The player was very much as interested in establishing limits as I am.

> What, Doctor Doom has taken over the White House?
> Nah, I went back and warned them yesterday so they
> were ready and Doom is now in jail awaiting trial.
> Where is my karma by the way?

Yeah, a game of Bill & Ted one-upping the time traveling bad guy with talking about going back in time later to do the things necessary to set up for today's win would be very boring from a gaming perspective. Funny to watch on screen, but not so much when you get into the player just having virtually infinite time to plan and set up for any and every fight.


> Now if you handed someone that level of power with
> no restrictions beforehand and no consequences
> after then there is realistically nothing you can
> do stop either of those scenarios from happening
> without a) using the same kryptonite for
> time, i.e. "haha I negated your powers again"
> shtick or b) riding in roughshod with a
> "cause I'm the GM and I said so" moment that
> invalidates the players choices anyway. If you
> tell the player there is a being called Eternity,
> or a group called the Timelords, or Time Wraiths,
> or whatever that can and will interfere if you act
> too rashly or overtly, AND THEN you have to stop
> them from ruining your game it isn't an out of the
> blue BS move, its a consequence of their own
> actions for trying to do too much.

Ruining the game? You know, when it comes to actual moving back and forward in time you could just deal with time travel the way Marvel Comics (for the most part) does and rule that time travel essentially shifts a character into alternate timelines where changes they make put them on a different path to the future. Getting back to their own timeline when the changes they make affects the future can be plenty of limitation on its own, especially when the unintended consequences of their mucking about in time might outweigh the good (or bad) they were hoping for. Also, one doesn't need to have have cosmic beings intervene with an errant time traveler causing too much trouble changing the timelines around. There's the Time Variance Authority, their enforcement agents (Justices), Kang the Conqueror, different incarnations of Kang (Rama-Tut, Immortus, and others), Zarko the Tomorrow Man, and others to see changes that the player is making and then try to do things that may undo any changes they made as an effort to preserve their own plans for the player's timeline.


> I mean it wasn't the suns fault Icarus died. He was
> warned and chose to ignore those warnings and
> suffered the consequences of his actions. If there
> hadn't of been any possible consequences for
> flying then there was no peril in the story, and it
> simply becomes two people were trapped so they
> created wings and flew away.

Yes, but the risk of their flying was in trying to achieve too much (going too high) which resulted in the crash. Just having the power of flight or time travel or anything else shouldn't be inherently dangerous to use at all, and one shouldn't have to be a super genius to be extra stupid careful not to draw the attention of cosmic entities who really shouldn't take note of a mere mortal's actions on the timeline unless it has cosmos-shattering repercussions.

Your original post says the exact same thing I said in the beginning, and then pivots to a possible way around it by slapping a major restriction on the power and saying its only for Super Speed. So basically we agree that unchecked Time Travel or Reality Alteration Power is a bad idea.

Then I made the Wish comparison and you and Nightmask said it was shitty DMing to treat it that way. I still stand by my post and say its a shitty GM that hands out that much power and doesn't regulate it heavily. If a player says I want Time Travel (not Super Speed via Time Travel) and you don't figure out how to keep it in check your @#$%& and its your own fault.

I used the Wish as an example because a player can literally to do anything, and not either limiting it beforehand or having consequences after is a shitty DM move. I don't know if you've played much D&D but by the time you can cast Wish you have such a wide variety of powerful spells that you can cover the vast majority of situations as is and will only pull the Wish spell out for the major shit anyway, Which is why a smart player with a good DM will be ridiculously stupidly careful when using Wish, because he knows he is trying to do something crazy out of the box and needs to make sure not to overreach. There is a reason Wish initially had a penalty of aging the character a year and suggestions right within the spell that you need to be careful when using it, and on top of that a section in the DMs Guide on how how to adjudicate it fairly. A fairly apt comparison IMO when it comes to a possibly game breaking power like Time Travel.

Grandfather paradox applies.

If you travel back in time to prevent some known event from occurring, the known event does not occur thus there is no reason to travel into the past to stop it.

And that's generous with the time traveler having perfect knowledge of the cause of the effect event he's seeking to prevent.

For example, say the traveler wants to "KILL HITLER BEFORE HE RISES TO POWER" out of some noble but misguided attempt to spare history from the Holocaust. Okay. Instead of some charismatic populist military vet with all the strategic awareness of a dipshit trench corporal ranting about the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles and stoking palingenetic ultranationalist urges against the Jews his culture has been defaming for centuries, it's the Strassers that maintain ties with the Russians and the military might of Germany AND Russian conquer the world for International Socialism. Or Hindenburg's successor reinstates the German monarchy and the world is threatened by a fascistic alliance of Germany and the British Empire. Or another version of time travelers put Hitler in.power because what "really happened" without Hitler would have been even worse than the Holocaust.

Because - the Holocaust was not Hitler's idea alone, nor was it carried out by Hitler alone. Considering Hitler had the military leadership capabilities of a retarded potato and most of the Nazi's battlefield victories came from generals defying his orders, worse than Hitler is quite possible by messing with time travel.