Hello, everyone! Today’s post is primarily meant to augment the cleric and wizard subclasses I’ve introduced in the past few months – after all, what good are time travel-themed casters without some appropriate spells? That said, most spellcasters should be able to find some new magic to utilize in this post.
Table of Contents
A Treatise on Chronomancy
Chronomancy, the application of magical energies to affect other times, is not formally recognized as its own school of magic – documented uses of these spells are uncommon at best, and scholars are much more likely to attribute its effects to one of the other schools of magic, or at their most generous, a confluence of Transmutation and another school. Despite this academic rejection, the following spells reflect the principles and application of Chronomancy.
Excise From Time
Abjuration Cantrip
Casting time: 1 reaction
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You send yourself or a willing creature moments into the future to avoid further harm. When you or a willing creature within 30 feet of you takes damage, you may use your reaction to send them forward in time. They disappear until the start of their next turn, at which point they reappear in the same space (or in the nearest unoccupied space if their initial space is now occupied).
A creature affected by this spell cannot be targeted by any attacks. From their perspective, no time elapses during this spell.
Retrieval
1st-level Conjuration
Casting time: 1 action
Range: self
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
You pull a nonmagical item with which you are familiar from a point in time during which it was not perceived by any living creatures. The item must fit within a 5-foot cube. The item you describe appears in your possession from the last instant it was not perceived by any living creatures. The spell ends if you are no longer touching the item, at which point it returns to the instant from which you retrieved it.
Power Word Tire
2nd-level Enchantment
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V
Duration: Instantaneous
You utter a word of power which dilates the perception of time for a creature of your choice that you can see within range. The target must choose to take either 3d4 psychic damage or 1 level of exhaustion.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, the psychic damage a creature takes from this spell increases by 2d4 for each slot level above 2nd. If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the spell deals 1 extra level of exhaustion (2 levels). If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 8th level or higher, the spell deals 2 extra levels of exhaustion (3 levels).
Chronostatic Image
3rd-level Illusion (ritual)
Casting time: 1 hour
Range: self
Components: V, S, M(a piece of headgear lined with reflective metal)
Duration: 8 hours
You channel magical energies which project uncertainty into your actions, masking your true course from prying eyes. For the duration of the spell, you cannot be targeted by divination spells. Additionally, your location cannot be discovered through magical means, such as a paladin’s Divine Sense, you cannot be contacted via telepathy, and you gain resistance to Psychic damage.
Accelerate
4th-level Evocation
Casting time: 1 Action
Range: 60 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You speed the flow of time in a 20 foot radius sphere centered on a point within range. Each creature in the sphere must make a Wisdom saving throw. A creature takes 4d6 psychic damage on a failed save, and any spells the creature is concentrating on immediately end. On a successful saving throw, a creature takes half as much damage.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, the psychic damage increases by 2d6 for each slot level above 4th.
Age to Dust
5th-level Necromancy
Casting time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
You accelerate the ravages of time upon a creature of your choice that you can see within range. The target must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, the target takes 4d8 necrotic damage at the start of each of its turns.
A creature can repeat this saving throw to end the effect at the end of each of its turns. When the spell ends, it ages a number of years equal to 1d4 x the number of rounds it was under the effects of this spell.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the damage a creature takes from this spell increases by 1d8 for each slot level above 5th.
Message Beyond Time
6th-level Divination (ritual)
Casting time: 10 minutes
Range: Self
Components: V
Duration: 1 minute
You make contact with the mind of a creature with which you are familiar, displaced in time. The target creature must make a Wisdom saving throw, which is modified by how well you know the target and the sort of physical connection you have to it as though you had cast the scrying spell. On a successful save, the target isn’t affected, and you can’t use this spell against it again for 24 hours.
On a failed save, the spell creates a disembodied duplicate of that creature’s mind from a specific moment in time of your choice, with which you can communicate for the duration of the spell. You may ask the duplicate up to five questions. The duplicate only knows what it knew at the moment it was created, including the languages it knew. The duplicate is under no compulsion to offer truthful answers if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy. The spell enables creatures with Intelligence scores of at least 1 to understand the meaning of your communication, but you must share a language to understand their replies. The mind is not aware that it is a duplicate and believes that it is engaged in whatever the creature was doing at the time they were contacted. If you make any indication to the mind that it is not truly the creature you selected, the spell immediately ends.
If you select a time at which the creature does not exist (either it has not yet been born, is dead, or has been displaced in time through other magical means) or is on a different plane of existence from you, the spell fails. You still expend the spell slot used casting this spell.
Fey Voyage
7th-level Enchantment
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (a bouquet of sweet peas)
Duration: Instantaneous
Selecting a destination known to you on the same plane of existence, you create a passage through the Feywild which will lead to your selected destination. You and up to eight willing creatures of your choice may travel through this passage. As time passes at different rates between the Feywild and other planes, it will take a day’s travel to reach any destination designated by this spell, but no time will pass on the plane in which the spell was cast. In the Feywild, travelers can see a beacon in the distance, indicating their destination. When they reach the source of the beacon, it disappears, and they arrive at their destination.
If a creature spends more than 24 hours in the Feywild, they disappear, reappearing somewhere between where the spell was cast and the destination at the GM’s discretion. When a creature leaves the Feywild, any possessions it obtained while there disappear. Only the creatures you designated when you created the passage may use the beacon to reach your destination.
A journey through the Feywild is fraught with dangers, some of which may not be obvious, and this spell does not guarantee that the passage created is safe beyond being possible to make the journey. It is likely (though not guaranteed) that travelers on a Fey Voyage spell will encounter hostile creatures at the GM’s discretion.
Reversion
8th-level Transmutation
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
You regress the ground within a 50 foot radius sphere centered on a point you can see within range to your choice of either a roiling mass of molten rock or a churning body of seawater. For the duration of this spell, this zone possesses the following properties:
Molten Rock. This area becomes difficult terrain. A creature entering this area or ending its turn there takes 10d6 fire damage and falls prone.
Primal Sea. A creature entering this area or starting its turn there must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or take 10d6 bludgeoning damage and be pulled 15 feet towards the center of the maelstrom. On a successful saving throw, the creature is not pulled towards the center but takes half as much damage.