Villainous Cookbook: The Prophecy Breaker

Time travel is fun. But, time travel can be frustrating. Doubly so in a tabletop RPG. Ten times more if players can do it as much as they want, unless the GM wants to have a game that revolves around time travel. But tell you what? I figured that maybe having the time travel be restricted only to the villain would be a good thing.

With that being said, here I’ll have to break one more rule in order to make the overall build just a tiny bit better: it’s going to gain one feature from warlock, and the reason for that is that it’s gonna significantly improve this build. While I could make it level 21, I feel like that would be cheating, and setting a terrible precedence for future builds. I’ll just say it’s “0 levels of warlock”, so try to not mind that.

Let’s see where this goes!

Update: The "0 levels of warlock" turned out to be unnecessary, since convergent future's exhaustion can only be removed with a long rest, so I'm removing all of the bits addressing that.

Preface

The purpose of the Villainous Cookbook is to offer cool villain ideas for DMs. It uses homebrew player options sometimes mixed with the official ones, but it bends the rules a little to work better. While sometimes restrictions breed creativity, other times it's nice to push the boundary a little to make the villain more interesting.

The stats are left completely up to the reader. You can make them anything you want, as long as it's within some boundaries, and you don't need to spend any ASIs or consider the stat bonuses provided by the feats unless you want to complicate things for yourself.

Each of the builds is split into 4 Tiers, to show how the villain grows in power over time. At any moment, the villain should be at least on the same tier as your players if not higher, since you want them to be challenging. Unless noteworthy, I won't mention the specific spells, ability scores, backgrounds, or skills. All that I leave up to you so that the villain is more customized.

One last word of caution—while these builds might seem overpowered, making the homebrews seem overpowered, bear in mind two things.

1. We're adjusting the rules a little to make the character builds work better. If this demands an in-world explanation, say that this is an exceptional person who figured out something others don't know, or has a special bloodline/destiny.
2. We're crossing the homebrew streams. And that can oftentimes go wrong. I'm doing my best to use homebrews that I consider balanced and that I would actually allow my players to use in the games.

Now that all of that is sorted out, the time is here. And our villain who can travel through it too!

Prophecy Breaker

"Here's the thing about time: If you can't make the most out of any given moment, then you don't deserve a single extra second."

— Ekko, “Seconds”

Let's go on a journey, a journey through time!
Time Traveler for IFX, by JessiBeans

Ingredients list

• Any race
• Wizard 17: Chronurgy (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount)
• Fighter 3: Echo Knight (Explorer's Guide to Wildemount)

Tier 1

The build begins with 2 levels of fighter, understandably because it provides the most proficiencies, and 2 levels of wizard. As usual, this is a phase when our baddie is in the background, just doing their stuff and improving slowly.

When it comes to the fighting styles, I would recommend Defense, Blind Fighting, or Superior Technique if you really like the maneuvers.

Tier 2

All six of our levels go into wizard, fairly straightforward. An upside is getting haste and slow on this level, but I’ll write about spells in detail later.

Tier 3

Six more levels into wizard. Yeah, this build is turning out to be pretty straightforward, but that's mostly because I removed the previously mentioned "0 levels of warlock" build, and that removed some extra complications that were listed here.

Tier 4

Our final tier is about putting 3 more levels into wizard, and 1 last level into a fighter. With this, our guy gets 9th level spell slots, and an ability to actually travel back in time, to the point where there’s two coexisting copies that can interact with each other. Just say that the future copy is the echo, so that if they die, you could say that it’s actually created an alternative future or something.

Time Travel

So, what are all of the means of time travel the breaker is capable of? Here’s a comprehensive list, first going by tiers and then listing a handful of recommended feats, as well as spells:

Class Features

Second Wind (Tier 1). You rewind a part of your body, reversing some of the injuries you’ve sustained.

Action Surge (Tier 1). Two of you appear when you choose to do it, both perform one action, and one is left behind.

Temporal Awareness (Tier 1). When you feel threat of a combat approaching, your body’s instincts kick in to return your mind back in time a few seconds, giving you edge when starting the unavoidable combat.

Chronal Shift (Tier 1). Short rewind to slightly alter the conditions and see if it changes the outcome.

Momentary Stasis (Tier 2). A time stop localized on one creature.

Arcane Abeyance (Tier 3). A minuscule time portal for magic to go through.

Convergent Future (Tier 3). Multiple rewinds of time, until you reach a satisfying outcome.

Manifest Echo (Tier 4). A copy of you arrives from the future, though its fate is tied to yours. If it dies, the timeline has been changed significantly enough to prevent the existence of the echo in the first place.

Feats

Alert - It's extra training to the Temporal Awareness.

Eldritch Adept - Overall not that important feat here. Thief of Five Fates could be flavored as slight precognition powers and you ruining it for the target, most other invocations without prerequisites isn't too fitting for time magic.

Lucky - The objectively most "time traveler" feat despite being a little bland, it's like 3 more time rewinds.

Mage Slayer - Some benefits for protection against magic users, could be flavored as time magic overpowering the regular magic at times.

Metamagic Adept - Just like Lucky, this is awesome for time traveler. I would personally go with Extended spell could be explained as you elongating the spell's duration. Subtle spell could be you fast-forwarding your spellcasting, and/or a time stop for spell cast. Quickened spell doesn't need to even be explained. Twinned is a blast from another timeline. This is a feat where you can go hog wild and customize the breaker for your own personal use.

Mobile - Permanent speed boost to you.

Mark of the Eternal Citadel (CoFS:A) - Lesser restoration is like second wind, but for anyone and for very specific things. The other part is sort of time-rewindy, like an instinct that kicks in and lets you quicken your step for a moment. It's a stretch, but lesser restoration is nice.

Mark of the Storm Lord (CoFS:A) - Feather fall is great for saving yourself by slowing your falling speed, but the other benefit is the more interesting one here for me. I feel like I recommend it with all of my builds, and it's for a good reason. That feat is just so universally applicable, because most spellcasters (especially those who want to keep their distance) want to keep their distance. Extra movement speed for free, now that's awesome for anyone. Time traveler or not.

Spells

Let’s start with the obvious. You’ll want to pick haste, slow, and depending on your opinions on this spell, time stop. Another huge group of spells to consider are chronurgy spells that are part of Wildemount’s dunamancy spell list.

Now that the glaring ones are resolved, here’s the deal—the rest is all about how you flavor it. Sure, you could choose spells as you wish and use them that way too, but if you want more time travel spells, look for spells that fall into these groups (these are examples, not necessarily wizard spells):

• speed manipulation (longstrider, expeditious retreat, ray of frost, …),
• luck manipulation (bless, hex, bane, …),
• divination magic for seeing into past, future, or present someplace else,
• necromancy magic, flavored as rapid but temporary aging of people,
• regenerative magic of any kind, if possible.

Style

I’ve seen mixed opinions on Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, so here I’ll include one thing from the book that I would definitely consider for the build, but it's completely optional. It won’t make the build more effective, it just looks neat.

Choose the Artificer Initiate feat if you can spare it. Think how could time travel relate to any of the tool sets offered. One obvious option is tinkers’ tools, which would mean this person has literally built a time machine. But what if it’s something else? Maybe the time is like a river, that you can manipulate only with potions. What if you need to shape it with pottery tools?

My two personal favorites are calligrapher’s supplies and cartographer’s tools, explaining it as accessing the source code of the multiverse and rewriting it, either with glyphs temporarily written in the air, or by creating blueprints and folding them right.

The following three parts are tips on how to go beyond what I described with this build. Bear in mind that it could become too wild if done without a caution. They're presented in the order of least to most world-threatening.

Actual Time Travel

Now, you might tell me that this is kind of lame, because they doesn’t actually get to travel back in time. And sure, you could say that. But what if I told you that… there is an actual way to achieve time travel? It’s possible even for players, but it requires a DM’s discretion. And for an interesting villain, I think it’d be fair to say that we can allow this.

Have the breaker learn simulacrum and true polymorph upon finishing Tier 4. After casting the simulacrum (much easier to do through wish, but I usually ban wish at my games), you cast true polymorph on your simulacrum, transforming them into a gynosphinx. Finally, you find them a lair. You could even make it through demiplane if you want it to be someplace safe.

Now, whenever you are in the lair, you can travel forwards and backwards through time. Wait a minute, time travel restrained to a location, where a time traveler and their assistant travel through time and space? Hang on, I accidentally killed my ancestor, so what is all this wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff all around us?

Well, my friend, popular fiction refers to these as time paradoxes. Now now, no need to worry about that. Time travel is a tricky subject, and we can figure some way to resolve the paradoxes that can happen with it. The easiest solution would be different timelines, but that… can be tricky if you’re playing in an RPG, and if your players aren’t the ones doing the time travel.

A simpler solution would be for the player characters to be "anchored in time", possibly through experiencing time travel or through a different excuse you comes up with. Now, even if the breaker would cause a time paradox by killing the players while they were young, the players would be unaffected, as well as anyone who has traveled through time. But the rest of the world would indeed change to accommodate for this. People would be convinced that “you have died years ago, this can’t be right…”, despite the fact player characters are unchanged.

Bootstrap paradox is easy enough to resolve—just don’t have stuff come from the future and disappear into the past.

Finally, some of you may recall my article on Broken Prophecies. Since it was inspired by my original discord nickname, and so is this, I wanted to bring the article up since it has some neat timey-wimey stuff that could inspire you when using this villain. I know I would personally try to do a Groundhog's Day plot for example. Maybe I'll write an article in the future on how I would do it.

The Prophecy Shatterer

There’s one more cool thing that I wanted to mention. I started to write this after finding a curious reddit thread about how chronurgist wizards would be capable of instantly decapitating their enemies, if their attack roll bonus is low enough. So, if you’d make a prophecy breaker and wanted to add a touch of brutality to the experience, give them a heavy vorpal blade of choice, dump their Strength, and replace proficiency with the vorpal blade you chose with some tool set. I mean, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything allows you to give up proficiencies from a race, maybe we could remove it from a class too if we really wanted to. Maybe instead of using greatswords, this fighter has learned how to make pottery. Finally, to round it all off, choose Great Weapon Master.

Whenever you make a weapon attack, you add your ability score modifier, proficiency bonus if you are proficient with the weapon, and now you subtract 5 from it thanks to the feat.

For example, with a Strength modifier of -3 and no proficiency with the weapon, your "bonus" to attack rolls with this weapon is -8, which means that if you use your Convergent Future on anyone with AC 12 or higher, you'll automatically decapitate them (20 is auto-hit, even if after adding the bonus it's still lower than the AC).

While this makes for a frightening foe, bear in mind that maybe players should have some chance of escaping them. And that if the wizard is smart, they wouldn't bring their vorpal sword absolutely everywhere.

Infinite Wizard

There is a way to create literally infinite clones of yourself, but I'll be honest with you all—I will inform you of this, but recommend against doing it.

The premise is simple, though it requires wish or a ton of patience. After casting simulacrum once through the regular way, make sure you're well rested, and have them cast wish to create a simulacrum of you. From that point on, have the newest simulacrum create a simulacrum of you with a wish. This goes on until you get absolutely bored of it.

"This is awesome! Why would you not want me to do it?" Well, think about it: if the wizard is good and cares about the world, they could literally solve every problem of the world (or timeline, if we also do the gynosphinx trick). If he's evil, nobody will ever stand a chance, because he's gonna be present in all points of time and space. To some it might sound like a nice challenge, but wizards are scary.

Why should a time mage capable of time travel and de-aging themselves be a bearded old man?
Elyin Goldpace, the Timeweaver, by Raphael Massarani

Personality-wise and with motives, you can do anything here. I mean, it's a time traveler. Go wild!

Thank you for reading, I hope you've enjoyed this installment of Villainous Cookbook, and I with you have a nice day!

Variant Classes and Mental Load

Howdy!

Today, I figured I could try to write an article here to go along with the homebrew I'm posting on reddit at the same time, in order to explain the design behind it. But first, I should start with some theory as to why I'm doing this.

Mental Load

I like to make my own worlds for D&D, as some of you might have guessed. Part of it is the fact that I like making stuff, and I don't really enjoy studying someone else's work. And while it does have huge advantages, like the freedom of doing anything and using or limiting any materials as I desire, it does have its downsides. Primarily, the fact that players have to learn about a new world from the ground up.

We are all human on the inside, who tend to forget stuff every now and then. My games usually happen once a week (though right now they're all on hold), so during those 6 other days of a week, we tend to either forget about stuff that was going on at the table or misremember it. Mainly because we have other stuff to care about in our daily lives: this is just a hobby.

At the same time, there's the worldbuilding aspect of it all. How far do you want to go when building your world up? Because the less similar to our world it is in its names, patterns, and structures, the more realistic it can feel (as long as it remains internally consistent).

So the big question is... where should one draw the line? Let's take for example time-measuring. What are the names of days in a week? How many days does a week have? Should you even use weeks? How many hours in a day? How many days in a month? Months in a year? What are their names? How does the Moon's cycle fit into all this? Is there just one Moon, or multiple? How about the Sun, and its cycle? Or Suns, maybe it's a binary system?

You see what I mean? With each of these questions, it takes more effort to remember it. Sure, you can have your world use 13-day weeks, with 40 to 43 days a month, and a 7 month year, with unique names for days in a week, as well as weeks and months in a year, or even years. It's a wonderfully creative piece of worldbuilding, but don't be surprised if your players forget which month has how many days, or that it's still the same week and not a new one.

(Note: D&D 5th edition does use some of these terms, and assumes it's the same as our world's.)

That being said, I've experimented with time measuring too. In my last campaign I ran, I've used a 13-month calendar, each of the months 28 days long, and there were 1 or 2 days that belonged to no month. Besides that, no changes. Years had 365 or 366 days (heck, for the game's purposes just 365, we didn't even do a leap year), names of the months were the same and in the same order, with the exception of Mercidinus added between July and August, and one Moon was in the sky that aligned perfectly with the months of a year.

I'm pretty sure you've spotted the difference there. My system is going for simplicity and minimal mental load. One could argue that it's even less of a hassle than the real world's system! If I asked you "What day of the week is 17th August of 1960?", it would take you a while to figure it out. Within the calendar I used for my world, I can firmly say that it's a Wednesday, because the 17th of every month was a Wednesday.

I suppose this is an opinion of mine, so take it with a dash of salt, but making minimal changes and saying that everything else either happens to be the same or is translated (which is the excuse I used for the month names being the same)... it all pays off. With that being said, let's move on to the homebrew and the meat of this issue.

Homebrew and Mental Load

I like to add homebrew stuff into my games, either self-made or made by other creators I like. Races I like a lot because they allow for the greatest degree of passive expression. Subclasses are great too. When it comes to backgrounds, I don't necessarily search for those since PHB already contains rules on adjusting them, so at best I pay attention to the features homebrew backgrounds provide. Monsters are single-use very often, and magic items are something that the DM can control the presence of in their games.

The two missing things there that I see often in the form of homebrew are spells, and classes. Spells are the less surprising part, so I'll address it first. Truth is, I don't always know how much would addition of a spell change the world. One could argue that it doesn't have to be a publicly known secret, but even then I always believe that players aren't the only beings in the multiverse to know that spell unless they make it up themselves.

Classes are easier to understand, or at least I assume so. Usually, they take up multiple pages, so they take a while to read through, they add new mechanics, new subclasses, possibly new spell lists, ... Which at the end causes more mental load. Not just for the players at the table, for the DM running the game for those players too.

That all being said, it's not like I've never added new spells or even full classes to my games. I did, but when I do, I make sure I'm familiar enough with them.

So! What's the solution then if you want to spruce up your games? Well, may I introduce you to...

Variant Classes

With Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, class feature variants became official. And once I saw those, I figured that I may as well try to use them for something tangible. The first experiment of mine, the variant cleric that's a Monarch, was fairly successful despite not being perfect, so I'm going to continue with my works.

This time around, I'm presenting you with my own take on an idea I've seen numerous times in the homebrew community: a magical master of games. Gambit is a variant bard, that replaces the Song of Rest with various ribbons, and uses a gaming set as a spellcasting focus instead of a musical instrument.

I feel like this whole article could have been a lot shorter, but I needed to say all those things some day. I hope you've enjoyed reading this, and wish you tons of fun at your tables, regardless of whether you use my homebrews or not. Most of all though, have a nice day!