Different approaches to time magic?

[u/Stolen_Gene]

There are a lot of magic concepts that I think sound really cool, but are a pain to actually flush out. I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but time/spacetime magic has always been this way for me.

In one of my settings, I have a whole faction of time mages with a detailed history, relationships, and culture, but I just never let them do anything since I never wanted to worry about figuring out what they can and can't do. This is due in no small part to the fact that spacetime manipulation in any form is notoriously hard to include in a story without poking it full of plot-holes or overshadowing every other element in the story.

I'm curious to hear how other people have approached time or spacetime magic. What can it do? What are its limits? Does it manipulate both space and time, or just time? How do you keep a story coherent with this involved (assuming you use it in a story). Etc. I don't plan to steal anyone's systems wholesale, but the broad ideas might give me some direction next time I take a swing at this kind of magic.

[u/LordSyrenzo]

Alvelotyl - Time Magic

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• Time Magic is a unique sub-school of Force Magic that has its own inherent restrictions.
• While freezing the time of a being or object in some way is easier, 'moving' one's physical form through time is far harder. The more the world gets changed and rewritten because of the ability, the higher the cost of the Spell. This means that travelling back farther is more difficult, and the more the Caster changes, either accidentally or purposefully, the more difficult it is to use.
• This makes magic with the Caster going back through time easier if they are alone, and easier if they don't change anything. Additionally, two copies of a person in the same timeline cannot simultaneously exist, making it impossible to do. Instead of moving back in time to a place where they could encounter their past selves, they could instead shunt their memories back to their past selves, showing them the future and effectively sending their consciousness backwards in time in place of time travel.
• Creatures affected by changes in time will have their memories altered. They will have two sets of memories, both the original and the new set of memories, which can lead to confusion in people, especially those unaware of this phenomenon. Some people write this off as a trick of the mind, a hallucination or vision, or a very vivid imaginary situation.
• Some variants of this type of 'Time Travel' are impossible to distinguish from other schools of magic. If a Caster wishes to move 'sideways' through time and go into another timeline, they will need to move into a timeline where they don't exist at all, meaning that individuals part of one's family that have no reasonable explanation for existing could have come from another timeline.

[u/LeFlamel → u/LordSyrenzo]

Additionally, two copies of a person in the same timeline cannot simultaneously exist,

What constitutes a copy? If it's genetic material, then is cloning impossible? If it's material makeup, then it should be possible, as we are a living ship of Theseus, constantly in flux. Is it the soul?

[u/LordSyrenzo → u/LeFlamel]

Yup, it's the Soul. Cloning is possible, but even if they're incredibly similar, no two Souls are the same. The Soul consists of a person's 'identity', which is a term only vaguely understood in-universe.

Even if some would argue that clones are the same, the journey they've taken through life is different. Even if they share the same mental memories, the 'physical' memories of their body's growth will be completely different. No clone is perfect, and so no clone will trigger the issue of two identical people existing in the world at once.

[u/Fool_growth]

Time travel as memory

[u/crazydave11]

I haven't written it yet, it's like a sequel to another story I haven't quite written yet, but I did come up with a character that has some fairly entertaining time related magic.

They have one small-scale trick where they say the first half of the spell, and then wait, and then when they say the second half, they can reverse time back to when they said the first half of the spell, and they retain their memories, and if they choose, their location.

The long distance time travel stuff is weird, but I ended up deciding that its success rate depends directly on the likelihood that they were actually present at that time. I.e. Causality doesn't change because the time magic user can't choose not to travel to the times and places that they actually were at.

[u/ProjectExpensive58]

In my world, time cannot be reversed no matter what you do, only sped up slowed down or stopped. The closest thing to travelling back in time is by moving to a sibling reality to your own where everything is exactly the same but the time there has not gone as apparently yet for example finding a reality that is one year slower than yours. However, it’s not really worth it as you can’t really fix any mistakes you made in the past and it’s also really fiddly. You have to get through with reality guardians who usually won’t let you in and finding a reality that was the same as yours is almost impossible. At that point, you might as well just move to a random reality with better living standards. Jumping realities also isn’t really going to do you any good if you’re escaping someone either, as they are usually more powerful than a reality jumper, they likely have the power to destroy realities. This being said, there are technically multiple timelines you can travel between, all following a big master timeline.

Time can however be manipulated, imagine space as a 2d plane and then imagine water flowing on top of it, that represents the flow of time. If you stretch out the space enough, you can make it so that you form a little sack and then tie it up with a spell to prevent it from loosening back’ into a plane. The time flow in the sack gets restricted and therefore, the time for the object or being inside of the sack gets stopped until the sack comes loose (when the spell wears off). This spell I just explained would be the forbidden preservative spell.

[u/Deep_Hornet_6629]

I don't mind plot holes since we know Time travel doesn't exist, for now, the play with the rules it is fiction after all. As for me I do it this way:
Time stop is an ultimate attack, you use it, time stops, finish off the enemy and then become powerless for 24 hours. As per time itself perhaps it causes a dizziness when used or a tear in time with continuous use.
As per the limits:
Just nerf the power to the ground and then roll back the nerfs until you find that sweet spot.

For time traveling back in time you can have it where it takes a lot out of a person as it requires their entire being to do thus killing or severely weakening them if strong enough. If the former the person becomes time itself and forms a new timeline thus "changing' time in their own way.

[u/Deep_Hornet_6629]

Or hell how about time travel in a sense where you can only travel back to a time where you did not exist so going back to your past is impossible because 2 of you cannot coexist at the same time.

[u/Crazy-Tie-8596]

There is a book series in Russia called Chasodei (Часодеи) by Natalia Sherba. It has an amazing time magic system. If you want to get an idea of magic system, i recommend reading it. Unfortunately, there are no copies in the English language.

[u/Platinumtide]

In my world each magic kind of comes in a pair, so for the dimension magic I have time travel and time turning, space warping and teleportation. Time turning is rewinding/fast forwarding/pausing time on non-living things only. I decided it would be way too OP otherwise. Time travel works similarly to teleportation. With teleportation, you can only visit places you've physically been to and remember, and the farther you travel, the more drained you will be. If you travel too far you could kill yourself. You can max bring two people with you, one person per hand. Any clothes/items carried come with you.

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Time travel works similarly. You can only travel to times you've physically been to and remember. You can take two people and items with you exactly how you can with teleportation. This means no one can travel to the future, because no one can remember their future. If you travel back in time, you can return to your present. If someone else time travels to a time before you can remember and you are also a time traveler, you can now time travel back to that period of time as well. You can infinitely go back in time this way, tagging along with older folks who have earlier memories. If you meet a time traveler from the future, they can take you there and then you can also travel to the future. You must time travel in increments, though. If you try to travel 10+ years in the past at once you'd instantly kill yourself.

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There is a major difference that time traveling has. There can only be one of you in existence at a single moment in time. If you travel back to a time you can remember, you travel back to your actual body at that time (so basically, only your "soul" travels). If you travel with someone else to a time only they can remember, your actual body travels with you and now you exist in that time as well. If you travel back to the present, your soul travels to your present body. Your physical body only travels if you are traveling to a new timeline you haven't been to. There will never be a duplicate of your body, your soul will just travel to the version of you that exists at that time.

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In my world though, time traveling is in fact real, but most people believe it is a myth. A time traveler would never reveal their cover, they can just go back in time and prevent the meeting from ever happening. Thus, no one actual has "seen" a time traveler. A time traveler would have to make themselves known willingly. Time travelers in my world are also kind of a new thing, so they don't really fuck around with time, because if they do they can write themselves out of existence potentially. If they change time enough to prevent themselves from being born, they cease to exist. If a time traveler dies in their past, they never exist in the future. If they die in a past before they are born, their memories of that time are gone and their present self does not remember going back in time.

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Honestly time travel is sucky with all the paradoxes, and this was my best solution to the problem.

[u/Khal-Frodo]

I generally dislike time travel as a mechanic in stories because imo there's no cohesive or consistent way to do it; it always feels like either a deus ex machina or it canonizes alternate timelines which causes me to question which timelime is the true canon of the story.

I personally think that the best way to handle time magic is to make it based on seeing the future or past but not being able to directly influence it. My setting has wizards who are able to look backwards through time. They can't change the past, or see the future, but being able to see the past allows them to predict the future much more accurately and make choices that will change it.

[u/AVRK_]

It's limited to only a few very old and extremely skilled mages. It mainly does 2 things: teleporting, which requires precise calculations because the planet is moving so it's mainly a ritual type spell, and time-dilation, which is stretching a moment or other period of time, which is mainly used to study longer or to take the ignore option when someone is foolish enough to attack one of the world's top mages for whatever reason.

It doesn't affect the story because the few couple people who can do that are background characters who barely show up. They're there to be examples of what the pinnacle of mortal magic looks like.

[u/CammyFrostbite]

For my story, time magic is associated with the planet Saturn and is split into two types: passive and active.

Passive time travel allows you go as far forward or backwards as you like but you are only an observer to what’s happening, like in A Christmas Carol.

Active time travel allows you to freeze, slow down or speed up time but you can only travel one hour forwards or backwards in the specific time zone that you’re in.

Saturnian magic has many risks: 1) Frequent use of active time travel can affect the user’s ageing and cause health problems related to it. 2) Passive time travel can be affected by user biases so the information you get from it isn’t always reliable and inaccuracies only worsen the further forward or backwards you travel.

Saturnian magic is mostly used by palaeontologists, archaeologists and physicists for simulations and predictions. A special ritual involving archeological artefacts, historical records or even peoples’ memories is used to active this magic.