Just As Planned (3.5e Skill Trick)

Author: SecondDeath777 (talk) Co-Authors: Grog toad Date Created: 2 February 2018 Status: This might be a little ridiculous. Editing: See talk page.

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Just As Planned (Mental) They've got you. 20 crossbows, all aimed at your head, and the order to fire seconds away. This is it...or it would be, had you not buried those bombs under their feet a month ago. They never learn.Prerequisites: Int or Wis 20, Sense Motive 15 Ranks, Spot 15 Ranks, Knowledge(nature, history, and local) at 15 Ranks or Bard Level 12Benefit: WARNING: HAS A GOOD CHANCE OF DEVOLVING INTO INSANITY

Make an Int or Wis check, DC 20. The result of your Int/Wis check gives you a measurement of time. Under 20 gives nothing. 20 gives you 12 hours. 25 gives 24 hours, and 30 gives you a week. For every 5 you beat the DC, you increase the time allotted by one step. (a month, a year, 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years). This check is usefully, and quite flavorfully supplemented by Moment of Prescience and similar effects, as the check benefits from them as though it were an opposed ability check.

Prep Time: You measure how much free time you had available in said time period, in which you were not otherwise occupied. You also record the locations at which this free time began to accumulate. If either factor is unknown to you (it probably is), your DM estimates appropriately. I suggest writing down when and where you are for this free time.

Next, make a Sense Motive check (you may use your Intelligence in place of Wisdom for the check, if so desired) against someone you know about, opposed by their Bluff, which uses their Wis or Int in place of Cha. You get a +10 bonus to the Sense Motive check if you know the person well, and a -10 penalty if you hardly know them at all. You also receive a +10 if they are very into routine, and a -10 if they act erratically or at random. If you do this three times against an unwilling target, they start to get a grasp on your mental rhythm, offering them a cumulative +10 bonus to their Bluff against your uses of this skill trick each time you succeed in using it against them. How this might be overcome is something you'll have to figure out.

If you succeed the sense motive, choose a mode: In Advance or Yet To Unfold.

In Advance: You are made aware of anything they have done that is useful for you to know, up to the amount of time your check gave you in the past.

You may spend Prep Time to get from the recorded location to another relevant location, and meddle, craft tools, and do anything else relevant within your power, being free to act upon previous knowledge and new information alike. Said actions MUST go unnoticed by your target, or anyone who would tell them. If you are noticed, you must prevent the target from carrying any memory of the event to this moment, either by silencing the messenger, modifying their memory to what they believe happened now, or so on.

If the action would alter their experience up to this point in a meaningful way, it cannot be taken. You also cannot take the action if you could not reach the relevant location and return in time, so make things easier on everyone, and acquire teleportation.

Once you have used all time and resources available to you, or decide you're done reshaping the past, all the things you "did in preparation" become real, and you may utilize them to your whims. In canon, you remained one step ahead of them that whole time, hatching a plan revolving around their activities. This need not be harmful to them, even. This could all just be to ensure a friend has the right item at the right time.

In other words, In Advance allows one to perform actions retroactively as long as they had the time to do so and what they did is not apparent before they activated this skill trick.

Yet To Unfold: The time given by your check becomes a duration, effective immediately. For this duration, you are kept regularly abreast of the target's activities.

You are free to use Prep Time (see above) accumulated to interact with them thusly. Although you cannot tamper with past experiences in a way that they'd recognize, you can tamper with unfolding ones without sullying this effect. You could simply use Prep Time to arrive at their location with the means to hinder them. As this is not magical, nothing short of a Int/Wis check beating your own will get you off their activities (they may only try this once a week). If this is done successfully, they discover what you expect them to do, and act differently. You anticipated this too, however, so they cannot feed you false intel. The effect simply ends.

In other words, Yet To Unfold allows one to perform actions using Prep Time as they occur. Example: Gregory is a sleeper agent for Travis. As such, they cannot communicate, or risk arousing suspicion. Gregory, a meager Level 3 Ranger, isn't sure how to get such a communication network going, but Travis is an absolute mad genius, and not only knew this would happen, but where and when Gregory would think it, courtesy of this trick's Yet To Unfold mode. He left him an encrypted message to signal that all communication would be none of Gregory's concern. He was now free to focus on the task at hand.Normal: You're not this guy, unfortunately.Special: If another character possesses the trick, they may activate it to counter the other character's use.

If Yet To Unfold is selected, you oppose their Int/Wis check with your own. If you succeed, you may feed them false predictions unbeknownst to them, as well as benefit from either mode yourself. Once they discover you're onto them, typically via their own plan going horribly awry, they may dismiss the corrupted prediction at any time, and end your effect as well, as they are no longer enacting the plan you planned around.

If In Advance is selected, and both characters possess at least 24 hours of Prep Time, both automatically succeed their sense motive checks. They are then free to burn all the free time and resources available to them, sabotaging each other back and forth in a dick fighting contest of raw, unadulterated Xanatos. If only one or neither character accumulated the necessary Prep Time, both uses are simply spent.

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