Exactly the title. I'm toying with having a story npc being taken away and hidden on another plane as a child but having her come back at a future time older than she should be, like an adult after only a few years from the players perspectives.
Is time a solid concept or is it mutable? Is it within reason for an entire plane like Elysium to run at a different speed than the Material plane?
"The planes of existence are different realities with interwoven connections. Except for rare linking points, each plane is effectively its own universe, with its own natural laws."
Pretty expressly not.
It's a common tactic by magical item crafter PC to go to a plane where time moves more slowly than the prime material, this they can spend weeks creating expensive great only to lose hours or days in the "real world".
So play your Avalon plot.
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She could go to a Timeless Demiplane for a while, I think. Not sure if those work the way I think they do.
The rate at which time passes can vary on different planes, though it remains constant within any particular plane. Time is always subjective for the viewer. The same subjectivity applies to various planes. Travelers may discover that they gain or lose time while moving between planes, but from their point of view, time always passes naturally.
She could go to a Timeless Demiplane for a while, I think. Not sure if those work the way I think they do.
Secret training from Bahamut for the win (against Zeromus).
I'm considering it only as a plotline involving the npcs my group interacts with. This story is a more mental and emotional one than action.
The story involves a Paladin who has been assigned to a particularly overzealous sect in a secluded area. She was assigned a mission to vanquish a demon but failed. Her team was killed and she was tortured and abused by an Incubus. She was broken; mentally, physically and spiritually. She finally escaped and returned to town only to be ostracized.
Following the event her fragile state of mind has lead to her losing her Paladin abilities. The players helped her go back and successfully kill the Incubus, and the story is slowly leading into a "church conspiracy" style of quest.
The kicker is, the players are soon to discover she's pregnant. Coupled with her fragile state of mind, she's going to go thru a very dark period. Her redemption will come when she is rescued at the brink of a possible suicide by the players, and I'm going to introduce the players to their first God: Shelyn. What better God to save a wayward Paladin than the Goddess of love and protection? She won't be saving one life, she'll be saving two, and her disciples will take the Tiefling baby away with them.
While in another plane the child ages faster and returns to the Prime Material Plane old enough to be an actual character, but to the players a much much shorter time has passed.
Nope!
It may be 3.5 era, but Nex has created a demiplane where time moves expressly at "the speed of plot."
I'm almost certain that this is not the only reference to such things in Golarion lore.
Anything's possible. But, as with all time effects in storytelling, this is best used sparingly.
Definitely not. Several planes have expressedly different flow of time from the material plane and you can create demiplanes that are timeless.
Thanks guys, I appreciate the advice. I'll definitely watch my players, but I'm confident that they won't have an interest in abusing the idea.
For what it's worth, much fluff and novelization concerning the Plane of Shadow, especially as relates to the Forgotten Realms, back in the 2nd Ed and 3.x days, involved both time and distance passing differently in places that seemed otherwise similar on that and the Prime Material Plane.
I have never had trouble GMing similar phenomena. My players always seem to dig that stuff. Even if there isn't a hard and fast rule on this in any book, you should feel free to use it. After all, Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun trump all other rules.
Timeless means merely that the time you are there doesn't age you. No growing older, no hunger, no sleep, and so on. However, once you leave that plane, your body ages to your current actual age. This can trap people who have lived too long on the plane. At least this was earlier versions of it.
Seriously, be EXTREMELY careful about introducing time differential. Suddenly, everything CAN happen faster to those with plane shift or another reliable way to get there. It always falls into the realm of "we won't normally use it, but if the world's at stake, we HAVE TO". Even if they say they wouldn't abuse it. Think through your plot carefully. Is such a plot device really necessary, especially if the focus is elsewhere? The tiefling character could be touched by this backstory in another way, possibly?
Think through your plot carefully. Is such a plot device really necessary, especially if the focus is elsewhere? The tiefling character could be touched by this backstory in another way, possibly?
No, it's not necessary. Up to the point of the baby being taken is pretty well penciled in, but nothing after yet. I'm going for a much more emotional connection to this npc with my players, and it contains a lot more material I wouldn't ever bring into the fun and lighthearted game that we always play.
This storyline tackles a lot of today's societal issues; religious conviction, rape, abortion, suicide, homosexuality and abandonment. It's a very mature story that I'm walking an extremely tight line on. Luckily my group consists of my wife and 3 of my closest friends who I have been gaming with for more than a decade. I don't have to worry about rattling any cages.
I had simply pondered the idea of the child developing abandonment issues and tracking her mother down for answers, (possibly even as a villian) but the timeline of my sandbox campaign doesn't allow us to just jump 20 years ahead. Her being raised in another plane simply brought to mind the idea of time variance.
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Timeless means merely that the time you are there doesn't age you. No growing older, no hunger, no sleep, and so on. However, once you leave that plane, your body ages to your current actual age. This can trap people who have lived too long on the plane. At least this was earlier versions of it.
Seriously, be EXTREMELY careful about introducing time differential. Suddenly, everything CAN happen faster to those with plane shift or another reliable way to get there. It always falls into the realm of "we won't normally use it, but if the world's at stake, we HAVE TO". Even if they say they wouldn't abuse it. Think through your plot carefully. Is such a plot device really necessary, especially if the focus is elsewhere? The tiefling character could be touched by this backstory in another way, possibly?
Really I thought it was timelesss (no healing, spell recovery, sleeping etc) but when you return time merely resumes at its normal rate no accelerated aging or the like. Just a natural resumption of things from where they were when you entered.
Timeless
On planes with this trait, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. How the timeless trait affects certain activities or conditions such as hunger, thirst, aging, the effects of poison, and healing varies from plane to plane. The danger of a timeless plane is that once an individual leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging occur retroactively. If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled.
It doesn't actually state the relative time flow between a timeless plane and the material plane. I was thinking basically no time passed on the PMT, but knew you aged up to the time you spent on the timeless plane once you left. Though it seems that is not actually the case.
99% of my time in all adventures is spent on the PMT.
I would say the above rules cover the shenanigans of using a timeless plane to avoid the IG cost in time of doing things.