#time mage

Lalapril 2026 ~ #18: Gear

Glamuary Day 2: Time Mage

I'm not really sure why the words "time mage" make me think white and gold but here we are. I suppose the perfect staff for a time mage would be the one from the Ultimate with all the gears on but also I think it's a bit garish. I love this one though so cool but also simple in its lines.

Head: Ark Angel's Petasos of Casting (Pure White, Metallic Gold) Body: Ark Angel's Coat of Casting (Pure White, Metallic Gold) Hands: Estoqueur's Gloves (Pure White x2) Legs: Clouddark Brais of Healing Feet: Orastery Pigaches of Healing (Pure White, Metallic Gold)

I'm giving the Final Fantasy Tactics jobs some partner Pokemon!

Here are the second stage magical jobs: Mystic and Time Mage.

I feel I should explain the Time Mage choices.

Crobat is one of the fastest Pokémon, Clodsire is one of the slowest. And Klinklang is because it makes me think of a clock.

(art by JamesRyman on DeviantArt)

Of all the various forces in the universe, time is perhaps the hardest thing for mortals to wrap their heads around. All events, including thinking, occur within time, and while we in the modern day know that the exact flow of time can be distorted by gravity, the idea of truly manipulating time, let alone “travelling” through it, rest firmly in the realm of science fiction and fantasy.

And yet, the idea of someone who has mastered time, whether it be the classic visitor travelling back and forth through time, often in a vehicle, or strange magicians or scientists that manipulate time itself and how it affects themselves and others, is still something that persists in fiction to this day.

However, unless a game centers around it, true mastery of time is beyond most any mage, and for good reasons. On a Doylist level, introducing time travel into plots that are specifically not about time travel is a recipe for headaches no matter what model of causality your game runs on. On the Watsonian level, the Dimension of Time is typically beyond even the gods save for minor meddling on a small scale, either literally impossible for them or generally agreed on that the fallout is beyond even what gods of destruction would want.

Which is why with campaigns involving time travel, it is usually limited to special one of a kind artifacts or rituals, not something that any sufficiently high-level maniac can just whip out in a fight.

However, while true time travel is not something anyone can just do or learn, there are still chronomancers, who seek that level of understanding and learn all sorts of tricks for manipulating time in small ways.

This archetype is definitely a nod to the chronomancer wizard from First Edition, but no longer tied to that one class. Such mages might be arcane or occult casters learning the secrets of the cosmos, primal casters invoking time as a natural force, or even divine casters calling upon the favor of a deity of time, or some variation of all that and more.

Also, as a fun aside, a lot of the flavor of the time mage in Second Edition is that causality is warped for them, so a decent amount of the feats for the archetype are knowledge they learned in the future when they become fully fledged time wizards turning infant dragons into very very old dragons, but rather than learn that knowledge in the chronological order, they retroactively learn it from their future selves, grandfather paradox-ing their own knowledge base so very nicely.

As we’ll soon see, this archetype has a lot of fun time abilities, some inspired by the abilities of the old chronomancer, and others inspired by spells they might have used in the previous edition, so let’s get right to it!

So the base dedication of the archetype teaches them a few basic magical abilities, namely the ability to distort the causality of an injury, giving them a little delay before the wound actually opens up after they’ve been stabbed. Additionally, they learn a basic cantrip that gives them total awareness of linear time, able to tell the time as well as the exact time it will take for major predictable events to occur, such as when the sun will rise of the time till the next astrological conjunction. It even gives them minor benefits in combat by letting them time their attacks to better ensure success.

Most also become aware of the presence of temporal anomalies, such as when creatures are affected by hasting or slowing magic (beyond, you know, looking at them and seeing them move weird), but this also covers non-spell phenomena, letting them sense when time is getting messed with by something, but not necessarily by what or how. As a cool bonus, they’re able to maintain awareness whenever someone else uses a time stop, allowing them to see exactly what their foe is doing during those lost seconds to better react to it.

They also can learn other focus spells, namely how to trap a foe briefly in stasis, or glimpse into branches of time seeing where they move in the near future, and avoiding paths that lead to danger.

While the path of the time mage is open to all, not all spells that manipulate time are part of every tradition, so some learn to circumvent that, learning alternate versions of those spells that function within their tradition, letting them hasten and slow, as well as weaponize time against their foes directly or by locking them into a course of action that can be planned around.

Drawing upon the vast infinite sea of alternate possibilities, some of these chronomancers do not summon random other creatures, but rather themselves from alternate timelines where they were that sort of creature, having subtle physical and behavioral clues as to the connection between summoner and summon, as well as having similar skillsets to each other.

Timing is everything, and some of these mages learn to cast a spell into the future by a few seconds, causing it to manifest slightly later when it would be more beneficial.

Those of a more precognitive bent learn to read the future, seeing incoming disaster exclusively so that they may plan around them.

It should come as no shock that many also learn how to hasten their own spellcasting.

With a 10-minute ritual, they can also read the skeins of fate to try and predict the outcome of an endeavor and how to either prevent or enhance it, gaining a clue on how to proceed.

All things are temporary, and some time mages use that truth to their advantage to alleviate harmful effects by accelerating their own personal timestream, letting them run their course in moments.

Reflecting the Temporal Divergence spell from 1st edition but without spending a spell slot, these mystics can look into two diverging timestreams where they cast different spells, see which one would be more effective, and choose that path, though the energy of both spells is expended in the process.

They also learn how to echo their spells, casting them twice, though in their case this process is more akin to merging the timelines where they cast the spell once individually together.

This is a fun archetype, granting a few useful focus spells as well as adding potentially a lot of time spells to the character’s spell list choices depending on their base class. (occult casters won’t need that, but divine and primal might.) There’s also some fun utility abilities that could be good for strategic plays, but don’t feel obligated to take them if they don’t work with your build. The utility feats that grant guidance on how to proceed are a fun take on divination utility, so that’s fun as well.

Like I said before, the flavor for this archetype says that causality is fluid for time mages, which can mean they react to new things like they’ve already seen it happen, or might offhandedly comment on things that haven’t happened yet. Obviously that can cause problems if the players assume that their compatriot is always accurate with their eccentric aside, or at least accurate at a time when being inaccurate can derail the plot. So a GM and player should make sure everyone knows that sometimes the time mage recalls things from possible timelines, rather than the current one, though it can be fun if the GM decides to surreptitiously feed an occasional vague nugget for the mage’s player to sprinkle in, though obviously do this with someone who’s a good roleplayer and will use that info to enhance the story rather than metagame it.

A commotion occurs in the party’s hometown when a stranger arrives claiming that he is from uncountable years hence, where kings are replaced by merchant tyrants and people sail the stars in shining silver ships. He seems addled, but there’s no denying that his mastery of time magic is impressive. Could he have really mastered time travel, and what did he come here to do?

The Druid Circle of the Long River are perhaps some of the foremost experts on the nature of time outside of arcane academia, but most of their lore is kept orally. With that in mind, Kobben Longfellow, a young halfling chronomancer, has come to the order to offer to transcribe their knowledge, but reaching them is not without danger.