A Possible Advanced Pattern Power
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Cost : 20 points PRE-REQUISITES : Advanced Probability Manipulation In Amber, the part of Pattern power related to Probability Manipulation could easily be interpreted to imply that the power can manipulate the past. If it is assumed that shadow has existence independent of Amberites (if it does not then Probability Manipulation really is just wishing things of ones desire into place) then using Probability Manipulation to obtain something implies that at some point in the past of that shadow, the circumstances to place that thing where the Amberite wished it to be occurred. In many cases they would have occurred before the Amberite used Probability Manipulation to obtain it in the first place. [One could make it a limitation on Probability Manipulation that it cannot go back in time like this, so the changes to get the desired thing only begin when the power begins to be used. This would make small things quick and easy, but more major things progressively slower, which would have some in-game virtue.] So this implies that the Pattern can reach back into the past to manipulate objects and events to gain the result in the present that the Pattern user desires. This is not, in itself, very scary. After all, it is not time travel. And the Pattern Initiate cannot find things of their desire at any point before the time where they do desire them. But what if they could? What if, with a form of Advanced Pattern, above and beyond Advanced Probability Manipulation, the Pattern initiate could manipulate probability to give a desired result at some point in the past, that could then intersect with a Real being (such as themselves) at that point in the past. Which would then change (for example) what they themselves remember as having happened at that point in the past. They would thus have reached back into the past and changed it using their power. This then opens the whole can of worms as to precisely how changing the past would work. Would there be a paradox, with the change to the past wiping out the circumstances that caused the past to be changed in the first place? A split of the universe into multiple time-lines? Something else? That would be up to the individual GM, but it would probably be interesting! I used a version of this power with the 'paradox option' in the fourth campaign segment of my 'Now These Her Princes Are Come Home Again' game, with Corwin sending information in the form of a book back through the past to the player characters, and thus causing changes that eliminated the reasons for his sending it back in the first place. It seemed to work reasonably well. Depending on how the effects of changing the past are handled this may or may not be a power that is suitable for player characters... Or go to the Pattern, Logrus, Alternatives to Logrus, Shapeshifting, Trump, or Magic Pages. |