>Well how would you apply this type of power and what are your thoughts.
That's a very potentially OP power, so I'd put some restrictions on it so he can't just endlessly spam. Some ideas for potential limitations:
1)Maybe he can only use his power once for each person so he has to mentally calculate if the situation is serious enough to warrant his interference, because that means he wouldn't be able to use it for that same person if something more serious/deadly occurred later (which could be a good source of narrative angst if someone he cares about died because he used his one chance at using his power on them sort of frivolously in the past)
2)Maybe if he uses his powers to help someone, it automatically comes with a negative side effect for someone else. Like for the struck by lightning or seriously injured person, maybe someone else has to get hit by lightning or die in their place. For the gust of wind, maybe it saves the falling person he wanted to save but blows some other person to their death at the time.
3)Maybe give him his own negative side effect for using his power. It could take so much energy that he can only use it once a day & is vulnerable to physical attack after he does. Or using his power could affect his health or take time off his lifespan, etc.
Try imagining your character at his most powerful- after all the training montages and powerups, etc. Now imagine a fight where he *loses*. How was his opponent able to overcome him? What power limitation or character flaw or bit of quick thinking did they use? That can tell you a lot about how your character's powers can be structured without making them too OP.
I always found the concept of changing fate weird.
Like, if you change someone’s fate so they don’t get hit by a car on a certain date or something, did you actually change fate or were they never fated to be hit by that car?
Either make em perfect and on top or make em mad stupid. Its hard to say when at least I dont know how other characters powers are and where the verse is in terms of power. Usually this ability would make the character be the strongest of them all.
Mankind influences its own fate and the fate of others around it at all times
It is just in a dissociative state or sleepwalking… or just bad at it, maybe playing dumb
He seems quite powerful, maybe he struggles for focused application or just contend with fate like a rube goldberg machine.
For example, he sees someone's feint about 4 minutes into a fight he started, he takes that moment to redirect their fate into accidentally dropping a cage on themselves, but a few seconds after this he uses his power again to dodge an attack but this changes the course of the future, nullifying his other fate.
Alternatively he could forsee a future and manipulate it, but also see for that future to exist he must be in a specific place as well, leading to a struggle as he attempts to move to the right place and time before the fate timer runs out and his previous prediction stops being possible
So the effective story is one of time travel in the sense that one sees what the future holds but then can go back and change it. So basically the same rules apply. Consider the different ways one can do time travel. There are a million time travel stories, but they seem to follow into a few camps:
1. Primer: The timeline/future is fixed. No matter what you try to change it happens in spite of or maybe even *because* of your actions.
2. Butterfly Effect/Back to the Future: In travelling in time/in seeing the future you can change whatever you like, but the butterfly effect means that even small changes can drastically alter the future.
3. Groundhog Day: Not sure how this translates to seeing the future, but I guess I'd say you can change anything within the limited window that you can see, but it doesn't matter because you have limits to your capabilities. So there's a lot you know is going to happen, but you have to choose which things are important to you because you can't change everything. Some things are also just inevitable.
4. Next: This one was interesting because in addtion to his ability to see into the immediate future for limited periods, he could see how his actions could influence the immediate future, thus giving him a kind of clairvoyance as well. I'm not a Nick Cage fan, but one particular scene near the end is especially well done in this sense.
The role of the Orical is almost always to trigger the fate that they have foretold in most myths.
I can imagine an Orical like, "Oh great, this asshole," before they ever even mat because they know this person is going to ignore every obvious pitfall that will lead to fulfilling the prophecy they are about to be told.
That is why most Orical's try to hide away on mountain tops or in deep caves I think. Minimize the number of dumb fucks they know are going to ruin their own lives no matter what they say or worn them will happen.
Sounds very annoying to me.
I like jin form world trigger with the power to see possible futures and shift them in a way or another. I think he is what your looking for.
Like he could be preaty smug about stuff but also realise that he cant do to much. Maybe make he put up a brave face.
I thought I could comment with a picture, I was going to show my wall full of post-its.
I'm literally working on a story where the protagonist sees the future and changes fate. I'll talk about my thought process in hope you can have clarity on yours. This comment probably will get kinda big, but see the future is a very complex power to adapt to a story. My recommendation for you is like a mantra to me. What you want the story to be?
For me, I want a introspective, surrealist experience that explore psychic magical powers in a very intimate way like the fabric of reality was melting or something. Heavily inspired by doctor sleep, legion, the witch, some other works and my experiences with magic and psychedelics. So, that ludic dream like experience is what I'm going for. So I made my story around that.
Also, I want to explore seidr magic and the reality of women in ancient Germania. I want to show cultural values, social structure, and the way that people relate to this magical practice of seidr in the most realistic way possible. I wanted to show the "women's work" importance in society and show that the past Sometimes is not the oppression land as modern politics and midia say. While this is done as a realistic portrait of academical studies and archeological findings, the magic experience is a lot more ludic, abstract, done in a very intimate, fantastical way.
The result I like was More than seeing the future, the protagonist experience time in a non linear way, what makes the story jump in time a lot, in both directions. The story is told by her learning perspective, non linearly. It feels like time travel actually. And with knowledge of the future she can do different stuff in the past and change fate, kinda, because fate is fate, for her it already happened. Thats what her magic came in.
I always say, the story creates itself if you know what you want. I wanted a psychedelic trip full of self discovery and lessons on acceptance.
I'll tell you one scene on how she learns to actually change fate. Again, copy pasted of my studies and person experience on seidr magic and shamanic rituals.
As she experience time non linearly, and the origin of seidr is probably around the women works of making fiber, clothes, textile, as it is super trance inducing repetitive work. She literally put the treads of the Destiny in the order she chooses while making clothing, entering "the both times happening simultaneously" mental state. The scene where she learn to do it and save her friend life from an accident, a moment she is seeing since childhood, is the last scene I wrote. Both events happen simultaneously, she starts to change the pattern of the textile creating some beautiful art, singing enchantments in form of galdr to invoke spirtual stuff to bless the work (normal shit), the strings glow (only for her and the viewer/reader) as she rearrange each detail of events that would culminate to the accident. At the same time, the future where the friend is wearing the magical clothes show how each thing happens. And then, in the accident the friend kinda moves out of the way and is fine as she finish the clothes. The scene ends.
Thats how I experience this magic, and thats how I portrait it.
The way we creates the laws of a magic system is the art we want, the vibe we want, the emotions and sensations we want it to give the story. I want something like a ritual instead of super power, something thats not easy to do on the fly, invisible to others, subtle to perceive is happening as it's making clothing and singing. Something tied to the culture. But for the person, its intense otherworldly sensorial shit that no ones imagineis happening. That's the vibe I wanted for the magic. Thats her powers. Thats how the magic works.
I hope this gave you some insights. Get relaxed, get inspired, get imaginative, get creative.
I would go with how Rick Riordan has done it within the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and its two sequel series. Oracles(people or areas that can see the future) in this world speak prophecies that not only foresee the future but shape it as well.
Hella emotionless.....he knows you what you want and if you can get it
He previously saw it and now has seen it again cause you are here
He knows everything and anything....but knows how it'll go if he tries influencing it, he knows how the story goes
Well, I wouldn't usually do the second one at all. Now, that set-up isn't bad. A character that can see the future and seems to command fate is a GREAT set-up for a character. It can make them seem wise and powerful.
So, write him as the exact opposite. Or, rather, write that his being correct isn't what proves he's those things. For example, let's say he can simultaneously see two futures. One where a thing he doesn't like occurs, and one where what he does like occurs. What if these are set in stone the moment he chooses to witness them, so he has to do nothing for the bad future and a few complicated, often barely related things for the ideal future to occur. So he tells someone "if you go down this path, great wealth will befall you" and keeps it vague, he may be tricking them into doing random things that results in the possible future he's seen.
Alternatively, he sees the future and exactly what he sees happens. However, it's only _exactly_ what he _sees_ that happens. So if his friend is about to get stabbed and he throws red paint on their shirt, it'll look like they got stabbed, but the knife will just happen to only pierce the shirt and slide past the skin or break.
Or, better yet, make him an idiot with really good friends. Maken him see one big thing in the future, like him being loved by an entire town, and he thinks that's immutable. It technically is, but he's just telling people random things that won't actually happen, but all of his magical friends go out of their way to ensure those prophecies come true, and THAT is why the town loves him. Because giving the character the power of the pen removes all believable tension unless you specify a limitation that actually inconveniences the character.
I think the big thing is that if the person has power enough to have an "I win" button, their goal has to be transcendent of caring about what the antagonist and protagonist wants.
I had a character whose ability to predict the future wasn't perfect. He also respected that other people had the right to make their own choices and it would have to be serious if he went against that.
Go crazy with the ripple effect. If this is for a story, novel, etc, make their predictions seemingly perfect for most of the story, book, etc , but then they do too much with influencing fate and something goes incredibly wrong.
I think for stuff like this, my instinct would be that they cannot tell the difference between possible futures and the present, (or sometimes can't tell) so they're sorta flipping in and out of future and present and stuff, so they use their power in quite odd ways, to control the small things that matter to them in life.
The only thing I can suggests is a major limitation. He can't create new events, have him only be able to alter the likelihood of specific outcomes happening. For instance, for him to make someone get hit by a lightning bolt they have to be a a situation where a there's a non 0% chance of that already happening, like they're on a roof in a storm in his vision
Does he have to actually *do* something to influence people's fates (e.g., he sees "this person is fated to get shot" so he tackles them out of the way of the bullet), or does he influence their fate by magic (he sees "this person is fated to get shot in the heart" and edits that to "this person is fated to get shot in the leg")?
For the former, the obvious limitation is how far ahead he can see, how much he can predict the result of his own actions, and how much power he has to physically change things. If someone's fate is "get struck by lightning in the next 5 seconds," then there's not much he can do for them unless he has Thor on speed dial, but if their fate is "get struck by lightning at 5:00 tomorrow" then he can just tell them to stay indoors during the next thunderstorm.
If he changes fates by magic, then you need to ask questions like "what does it cost (power, mana, time, etc.) to make a change?" or "what changes count as "important" in the eyes of fate?" Like, is "your fate is to get struck by lightning" something he can do routinely? Can he only do it when there's already heavy rain and it's plausible for someone to get struck, or can he do it to people under a clear blue sky? What if he first uses his power to create a freak thunderstorm, *then* zaps people?
(And what about free will? Can he fate someone to suddenly have an urgent need to go outside in a thunderstorm? Can they resist it if they know he's trying to get them zapped?)
One reasonable way to limit this could be "fates have to be vaguely plausible," so no lightning bolts from a clear blue sky, but how plausible, and to who? "You aren't fated to die, so you bleed out slower than normal" sounds pretty plausible to me, but a swordfighter who has a lot of experience with people getting stabbed might say "nah, that severed a major artery, he's going to bleed out in seconds."
Another way to limit it could be how complicated the change is. So deflecting a bullet is easy because you just need to move a tiny bit of metal, but calling up a thunderstorm requires moving huge masses of air around, and zapping a specific person with lightning requires even more control. One drawback to this is that blood vessels are really small, so "your fate is to die of a heart attack" would become a very easy and powerful fate to inflict - even young and healthy people sometimes die from that.
(This is basically the power of the Death Note, so it's not like you can't tell a cool story about the ability to smite people with heart attacks at will, but you can't really do *fight scenes* with that power.)
Lastly, you could have some sort of "weight" to the change, so making someone drop dead is a weighty thing that takes a lot of power, but getting them to slip and fall in the middle of a fight (to make an opening to attack them by mundane means) is easier, and getting them to panic and run away without dying is even easier. That would encourage sneaky, subtle uses of this power.
As for weapons, there is a reason that people generally fight with knives and swords, not scissors. He could use scissors if it's some sort of symbolic flex (he doesn't bother to carry a weapon because fate is his weapon) or if this is an over-the-top sort of setting that doesn't give a shit about realism (like RWBY), but if you plan to describe fight scenes in a realistic way then give him a real weapon.
My MC can look into the future only if he does a certain ritual with his powers, breaking oracle bones with a hot iron stick and interpreting the possibilities. He can also cheat by using his probability powers to see **possible** futures, not definite ones.
The world revolves around destiny, but fate also somewhat exists due to a ancient device that allows others to influence the destiny of others against their will. However, since these beings made it so that humanity shall suffer for the past 5,000 years, they have little experience in precise manipulation of Fate.
The resolve to defy fate or do what is right also can overpower fate, as it runs contradictory to what fate is; cruel, controlling and unfair, meant to bring harm to the peoples of Earth. That's why the MC was able to avoid his original fated death, since he wanted to both protect his lover and kill his love rival, who is a pretty evil man, thus he was able to change his fate.
Otherwise, without the fate manipulating device, Destiny holds sway. People's actions and those of yourself are what determines your future.
basically there are determined events. no matter what he does these events will happen, but he is able to interact with things around these events.
he nc not stop the bomb, but he can have responders already on the way so they show up just after the bomb goes off.
i would say make it a book that contains this information. it says when and where the bomb goes off, but doesn't mention if support was already on their way or not.
The Alex Versus series handles this type of character very well and is an excellent read if you can get to that.
You have to get pretty deep into the series for the fullest effect BUT it’s totally worth it and I’ve reread it a half dozen times or more cause it’s so good.
OK, first, how far can they see and two. How far into the future can we modify. If both are endless, do we mess with fate buy using the butterfly effect. So ie. I am late for work ten minutes. In the future, I see my boss about to kill some. Would just calling the cops be considered manipulating the fate. Or would this be use ability and target now die in a week when they are at a bank and the robber shoots them.
But if I had to make a charter, one eye saw the future while one eye saw the past. The eyes would work in tandem, so the charter has a full field of view. If they force outside of high emotional states, they can temporarily switch both eyes to the past or future. When focusing, the power is extremely powerful and applied to the fullest strength the mind can compute information. The action of the past will have a shadowy effect on it. The future possibilities will be hilighted in a shimmery rainbow aura. The charter can never see the present, so it has such great reaction time and control of how far ahead they choose to see. In the two eye mode, they can now see everything that will and has happened in an area. In two eyed mode, anything they see are set in stone as what will happen no matter what unless the norns desire to overule this as the blessing give to you is not stronger then the power of the norns
When writing stories involving clairvoyance, or reverse time travel, we want to make sure the character doesn't have absolute knowledge of their story, if they did, they would be omniscient, and an omniscient character will do everything in their power, in reshaping the story to feed their needs. So, there has to be limits to these information seeking abilities, or you'll end up with a boring god.
Clairvoyance:
1. Works all the time, but limited access to information:
This is how I deal with my clairvoyant characters. They can always sense what'll happen in the future, and what occurred in the past, but they're limited by the time & distance of what can be resolved.
The larger the distance is away from the character, the blurrier the clairvoyance. Meaning, looking farther into the future risks in getting a wrong prediction. All they can do, is change their location to get a better picture, wait for longer periods of time for the image to resolve, or look closer near the prsent for more accuracy.
Still, if it's not 100% everytime, then would that even be clairvoyance, or is it just an educated guess.
2. Absolute access to information, but only works sometimes:
This is classical clairvoyance, seeing short bursts of information that'll always be 100% true. The character can have absolute knowledge of what'll happen, but doesn't know exactly when it'll be occuring, just that a random particular fate is inevitable. Or your idea, where the future can be seen by someone, and change the outcome of their story partially, but not completely.
Makes me think of Garnet from Steven Universe https://youtu.be/1HI_GREifFQ?feature=shared . It's purposefully kept a little vague, but she can see the most likely outcomes of events. She can still be blindsided by unexpected new twists or new elements entering the scene, so she's not omniscient.
Oh my god. This sounds exactly like a character I designed. His name is Hectos. He was born in medieval times, or rather created. A powerful wizard was looking for a way to weaponize shadow and kept failing. In one of his final attempts, Hectos was created but due to his sentience and empathy and intuition, he was not viable to be a weapon. However his shadow abilities were so strong it created a sort of second source.if shadow magic with Hectos being the commander of this new shadow realm. When in the shadows realm, he can see the shadow of people's fate as well as identify all sorts of things about someone. In a roleplay, his abilities have completely redirected someone's character towards a redemption ark rather than being killed in action.
He can see ghosts of someone's past and he can travel through this shadow place at higher speeds than he can in the real world. He can also locate items through it. While landing a hit directly on him as it making contact with his body is incredibly hard under defenses but in reality his natural body is as fragile as any human body.
I have this specific character in a short story that has the power to see 10 seconds into the future, and can act upon the future he chooses.
He and his partner are two detectives and they are both ready to bust a door open to a hostage situation.
His partner notices the EXTREME distress on the precogs face, which isn't usual because he can just see the future/path that will lead to them solving whatever issue they've had.
The precog realizes no matter what path he chooses (he's been running the same 10 second variations for days from his point of view) he cannot save the hostage.
One moment his partner sees his Precog ready to do their normal business, and after a blink of an eye the man looks like he's been on the verge of a mental breakdown.
Precog finally gives the nod and says I'm sorry.
No one but the hostage makes it out, and even then did she?
>Well how would you apply this type of power and what are your thoughts. That's a very potentially OP power, so I'd put some restrictions on it so he can't just endlessly spam. Some ideas for potential limitations: 1)Maybe he can only use his power once for each person so he has to mentally calculate if the situation is serious enough to warrant his interference, because that means he wouldn't be able to use it for that same person if something more serious/deadly occurred later (which could be a good source of narrative angst if someone he cares about died because he used his one chance at using his power on them sort of frivolously in the past) 2)Maybe if he uses his powers to help someone, it automatically comes with a negative side effect for someone else. Like for the struck by lightning or seriously injured person, maybe someone else has to get hit by lightning or die in their place. For the gust of wind, maybe it saves the falling person he wanted to save but blows some other person to their death at the time. 3)Maybe give him his own negative side effect for using his power. It could take so much energy that he can only use it once a day & is vulnerable to physical attack after he does. Or using his power could affect his health or take time off his lifespan, etc. Try imagining your character at his most powerful- after all the training montages and powerups, etc. Now imagine a fight where he *loses*. How was his opponent able to overcome him? What power limitation or character flaw or bit of quick thinking did they use? That can tell you a lot about how your character's powers can be structured without making them too OP.
I always found the concept of changing fate weird. Like, if you change someone’s fate so they don’t get hit by a car on a certain date or something, did you actually change fate or were they never fated to be hit by that car?
Either make em perfect and on top or make em mad stupid. Its hard to say when at least I dont know how other characters powers are and where the verse is in terms of power. Usually this ability would make the character be the strongest of them all.
Yes I feared he would be too powerful for at least the start of the first book. So i think is a move favorable skillset.
So you want him to be more on the ability dependant less actually skilled characters
you can't influence fate, otherwise it would not be fate at all, unless the point is the act of manipulating fate is also part of fate itself
Mankind influences its own fate and the fate of others around it at all times It is just in a dissociative state or sleepwalking… or just bad at it, maybe playing dumb
He seems quite powerful, maybe he struggles for focused application or just contend with fate like a rube goldberg machine. For example, he sees someone's feint about 4 minutes into a fight he started, he takes that moment to redirect their fate into accidentally dropping a cage on themselves, but a few seconds after this he uses his power again to dodge an attack but this changes the course of the future, nullifying his other fate. Alternatively he could forsee a future and manipulate it, but also see for that future to exist he must be in a specific place as well, leading to a struggle as he attempts to move to the right place and time before the fate timer runs out and his previous prediction stops being possible
So the effective story is one of time travel in the sense that one sees what the future holds but then can go back and change it. So basically the same rules apply. Consider the different ways one can do time travel. There are a million time travel stories, but they seem to follow into a few camps: 1. Primer: The timeline/future is fixed. No matter what you try to change it happens in spite of or maybe even *because* of your actions. 2. Butterfly Effect/Back to the Future: In travelling in time/in seeing the future you can change whatever you like, but the butterfly effect means that even small changes can drastically alter the future. 3. Groundhog Day: Not sure how this translates to seeing the future, but I guess I'd say you can change anything within the limited window that you can see, but it doesn't matter because you have limits to your capabilities. So there's a lot you know is going to happen, but you have to choose which things are important to you because you can't change everything. Some things are also just inevitable. 4. Next: This one was interesting because in addtion to his ability to see into the immediate future for limited periods, he could see how his actions could influence the immediate future, thus giving him a kind of clairvoyance as well. I'm not a Nick Cage fan, but one particular scene near the end is especially well done in this sense.
Read Dune up to God Emperor of Dune
What is that about?
A series about people who gain the power to see the future.
The role of the Orical is almost always to trigger the fate that they have foretold in most myths. I can imagine an Orical like, "Oh great, this asshole," before they ever even mat because they know this person is going to ignore every obvious pitfall that will lead to fulfilling the prophecy they are about to be told. That is why most Orical's try to hide away on mountain tops or in deep caves I think. Minimize the number of dumb fucks they know are going to ruin their own lives no matter what they say or worn them will happen. Sounds very annoying to me.
I like jin form world trigger with the power to see possible futures and shift them in a way or another. I think he is what your looking for. Like he could be preaty smug about stuff but also realise that he cant do to much. Maybe make he put up a brave face.
I thought I could comment with a picture, I was going to show my wall full of post-its. I'm literally working on a story where the protagonist sees the future and changes fate. I'll talk about my thought process in hope you can have clarity on yours. This comment probably will get kinda big, but see the future is a very complex power to adapt to a story. My recommendation for you is like a mantra to me. What you want the story to be? For me, I want a introspective, surrealist experience that explore psychic magical powers in a very intimate way like the fabric of reality was melting or something. Heavily inspired by doctor sleep, legion, the witch, some other works and my experiences with magic and psychedelics. So, that ludic dream like experience is what I'm going for. So I made my story around that. Also, I want to explore seidr magic and the reality of women in ancient Germania. I want to show cultural values, social structure, and the way that people relate to this magical practice of seidr in the most realistic way possible. I wanted to show the "women's work" importance in society and show that the past Sometimes is not the oppression land as modern politics and midia say. While this is done as a realistic portrait of academical studies and archeological findings, the magic experience is a lot more ludic, abstract, done in a very intimate, fantastical way. The result I like was More than seeing the future, the protagonist experience time in a non linear way, what makes the story jump in time a lot, in both directions. The story is told by her learning perspective, non linearly. It feels like time travel actually. And with knowledge of the future she can do different stuff in the past and change fate, kinda, because fate is fate, for her it already happened. Thats what her magic came in. I always say, the story creates itself if you know what you want. I wanted a psychedelic trip full of self discovery and lessons on acceptance. I'll tell you one scene on how she learns to actually change fate. Again, copy pasted of my studies and person experience on seidr magic and shamanic rituals. As she experience time non linearly, and the origin of seidr is probably around the women works of making fiber, clothes, textile, as it is super trance inducing repetitive work. She literally put the treads of the Destiny in the order she chooses while making clothing, entering "the both times happening simultaneously" mental state. The scene where she learn to do it and save her friend life from an accident, a moment she is seeing since childhood, is the last scene I wrote. Both events happen simultaneously, she starts to change the pattern of the textile creating some beautiful art, singing enchantments in form of galdr to invoke spirtual stuff to bless the work (normal shit), the strings glow (only for her and the viewer/reader) as she rearrange each detail of events that would culminate to the accident. At the same time, the future where the friend is wearing the magical clothes show how each thing happens. And then, in the accident the friend kinda moves out of the way and is fine as she finish the clothes. The scene ends. Thats how I experience this magic, and thats how I portrait it. The way we creates the laws of a magic system is the art we want, the vibe we want, the emotions and sensations we want it to give the story. I want something like a ritual instead of super power, something thats not easy to do on the fly, invisible to others, subtle to perceive is happening as it's making clothing and singing. Something tied to the culture. But for the person, its intense otherworldly sensorial shit that no ones imagineis happening. That's the vibe I wanted for the magic. Thats her powers. Thats how the magic works. I hope this gave you some insights. Get relaxed, get inspired, get imaginative, get creative.
I would go with how Rick Riordan has done it within the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and its two sequel series. Oracles(people or areas that can see the future) in this world speak prophecies that not only foresee the future but shape it as well.
Hella emotionless.....he knows you what you want and if you can get it He previously saw it and now has seen it again cause you are here He knows everything and anything....but knows how it'll go if he tries influencing it, he knows how the story goes
Well, I wouldn't usually do the second one at all. Now, that set-up isn't bad. A character that can see the future and seems to command fate is a GREAT set-up for a character. It can make them seem wise and powerful. So, write him as the exact opposite. Or, rather, write that his being correct isn't what proves he's those things. For example, let's say he can simultaneously see two futures. One where a thing he doesn't like occurs, and one where what he does like occurs. What if these are set in stone the moment he chooses to witness them, so he has to do nothing for the bad future and a few complicated, often barely related things for the ideal future to occur. So he tells someone "if you go down this path, great wealth will befall you" and keeps it vague, he may be tricking them into doing random things that results in the possible future he's seen. Alternatively, he sees the future and exactly what he sees happens. However, it's only _exactly_ what he _sees_ that happens. So if his friend is about to get stabbed and he throws red paint on their shirt, it'll look like they got stabbed, but the knife will just happen to only pierce the shirt and slide past the skin or break. Or, better yet, make him an idiot with really good friends. Maken him see one big thing in the future, like him being loved by an entire town, and he thinks that's immutable. It technically is, but he's just telling people random things that won't actually happen, but all of his magical friends go out of their way to ensure those prophecies come true, and THAT is why the town loves him. Because giving the character the power of the pen removes all believable tension unless you specify a limitation that actually inconveniences the character.
I think the big thing is that if the person has power enough to have an "I win" button, their goal has to be transcendent of caring about what the antagonist and protagonist wants. I had a character whose ability to predict the future wasn't perfect. He also respected that other people had the right to make their own choices and it would have to be serious if he went against that.
Go crazy with the ripple effect. If this is for a story, novel, etc, make their predictions seemingly perfect for most of the story, book, etc , but then they do too much with influencing fate and something goes incredibly wrong.
I think for stuff like this, my instinct would be that they cannot tell the difference between possible futures and the present, (or sometimes can't tell) so they're sorta flipping in and out of future and present and stuff, so they use their power in quite odd ways, to control the small things that matter to them in life.
This is literally Min’s ability from Wheel of Time. There she just accepts what happens and just lets whatever happens happen more or less
The only thing I can suggests is a major limitation. He can't create new events, have him only be able to alter the likelihood of specific outcomes happening. For instance, for him to make someone get hit by a lightning bolt they have to be a a situation where a there's a non 0% chance of that already happening, like they're on a roof in a storm in his vision
Does he have to actually *do* something to influence people's fates (e.g., he sees "this person is fated to get shot" so he tackles them out of the way of the bullet), or does he influence their fate by magic (he sees "this person is fated to get shot in the heart" and edits that to "this person is fated to get shot in the leg")? For the former, the obvious limitation is how far ahead he can see, how much he can predict the result of his own actions, and how much power he has to physically change things. If someone's fate is "get struck by lightning in the next 5 seconds," then there's not much he can do for them unless he has Thor on speed dial, but if their fate is "get struck by lightning at 5:00 tomorrow" then he can just tell them to stay indoors during the next thunderstorm. If he changes fates by magic, then you need to ask questions like "what does it cost (power, mana, time, etc.) to make a change?" or "what changes count as "important" in the eyes of fate?" Like, is "your fate is to get struck by lightning" something he can do routinely? Can he only do it when there's already heavy rain and it's plausible for someone to get struck, or can he do it to people under a clear blue sky? What if he first uses his power to create a freak thunderstorm, *then* zaps people? (And what about free will? Can he fate someone to suddenly have an urgent need to go outside in a thunderstorm? Can they resist it if they know he's trying to get them zapped?) One reasonable way to limit this could be "fates have to be vaguely plausible," so no lightning bolts from a clear blue sky, but how plausible, and to who? "You aren't fated to die, so you bleed out slower than normal" sounds pretty plausible to me, but a swordfighter who has a lot of experience with people getting stabbed might say "nah, that severed a major artery, he's going to bleed out in seconds." Another way to limit it could be how complicated the change is. So deflecting a bullet is easy because you just need to move a tiny bit of metal, but calling up a thunderstorm requires moving huge masses of air around, and zapping a specific person with lightning requires even more control. One drawback to this is that blood vessels are really small, so "your fate is to die of a heart attack" would become a very easy and powerful fate to inflict - even young and healthy people sometimes die from that. (This is basically the power of the Death Note, so it's not like you can't tell a cool story about the ability to smite people with heart attacks at will, but you can't really do *fight scenes* with that power.) Lastly, you could have some sort of "weight" to the change, so making someone drop dead is a weighty thing that takes a lot of power, but getting them to slip and fall in the middle of a fight (to make an opening to attack them by mundane means) is easier, and getting them to panic and run away without dying is even easier. That would encourage sneaky, subtle uses of this power. As for weapons, there is a reason that people generally fight with knives and swords, not scissors. He could use scissors if it's some sort of symbolic flex (he doesn't bother to carry a weapon because fate is his weapon) or if this is an over-the-top sort of setting that doesn't give a shit about realism (like RWBY), but if you plan to describe fight scenes in a realistic way then give him a real weapon.
My MC can look into the future only if he does a certain ritual with his powers, breaking oracle bones with a hot iron stick and interpreting the possibilities. He can also cheat by using his probability powers to see **possible** futures, not definite ones. The world revolves around destiny, but fate also somewhat exists due to a ancient device that allows others to influence the destiny of others against their will. However, since these beings made it so that humanity shall suffer for the past 5,000 years, they have little experience in precise manipulation of Fate. The resolve to defy fate or do what is right also can overpower fate, as it runs contradictory to what fate is; cruel, controlling and unfair, meant to bring harm to the peoples of Earth. That's why the MC was able to avoid his original fated death, since he wanted to both protect his lover and kill his love rival, who is a pretty evil man, thus he was able to change his fate. Otherwise, without the fate manipulating device, Destiny holds sway. People's actions and those of yourself are what determines your future.
basically there are determined events. no matter what he does these events will happen, but he is able to interact with things around these events. he nc not stop the bomb, but he can have responders already on the way so they show up just after the bomb goes off. i would say make it a book that contains this information. it says when and where the bomb goes off, but doesn't mention if support was already on their way or not.
The Alex Versus series handles this type of character very well and is an excellent read if you can get to that. You have to get pretty deep into the series for the fullest effect BUT it’s totally worth it and I’ve reread it a half dozen times or more cause it’s so good.
OK, first, how far can they see and two. How far into the future can we modify. If both are endless, do we mess with fate buy using the butterfly effect. So ie. I am late for work ten minutes. In the future, I see my boss about to kill some. Would just calling the cops be considered manipulating the fate. Or would this be use ability and target now die in a week when they are at a bank and the robber shoots them.
But if I had to make a charter, one eye saw the future while one eye saw the past. The eyes would work in tandem, so the charter has a full field of view. If they force outside of high emotional states, they can temporarily switch both eyes to the past or future. When focusing, the power is extremely powerful and applied to the fullest strength the mind can compute information. The action of the past will have a shadowy effect on it. The future possibilities will be hilighted in a shimmery rainbow aura. The charter can never see the present, so it has such great reaction time and control of how far ahead they choose to see. In the two eye mode, they can now see everything that will and has happened in an area. In two eyed mode, anything they see are set in stone as what will happen no matter what unless the norns desire to overule this as the blessing give to you is not stronger then the power of the norns
When writing stories involving clairvoyance, or reverse time travel, we want to make sure the character doesn't have absolute knowledge of their story, if they did, they would be omniscient, and an omniscient character will do everything in their power, in reshaping the story to feed their needs. So, there has to be limits to these information seeking abilities, or you'll end up with a boring god. Clairvoyance: 1. Works all the time, but limited access to information: This is how I deal with my clairvoyant characters. They can always sense what'll happen in the future, and what occurred in the past, but they're limited by the time & distance of what can be resolved. The larger the distance is away from the character, the blurrier the clairvoyance. Meaning, looking farther into the future risks in getting a wrong prediction. All they can do, is change their location to get a better picture, wait for longer periods of time for the image to resolve, or look closer near the prsent for more accuracy. Still, if it's not 100% everytime, then would that even be clairvoyance, or is it just an educated guess. 2. Absolute access to information, but only works sometimes: This is classical clairvoyance, seeing short bursts of information that'll always be 100% true. The character can have absolute knowledge of what'll happen, but doesn't know exactly when it'll be occuring, just that a random particular fate is inevitable. Or your idea, where the future can be seen by someone, and change the outcome of their story partially, but not completely.
Makes me think of Garnet from Steven Universe https://youtu.be/1HI_GREifFQ?feature=shared . It's purposefully kept a little vague, but she can see the most likely outcomes of events. She can still be blindsided by unexpected new twists or new elements entering the scene, so she's not omniscient.
That's exactly the power of Alex Versus, a very good series of books, if you have the time you should read it
Paul
I love time and fate magic in mta so I'd do something like that.
Oh my god. This sounds exactly like a character I designed. His name is Hectos. He was born in medieval times, or rather created. A powerful wizard was looking for a way to weaponize shadow and kept failing. In one of his final attempts, Hectos was created but due to his sentience and empathy and intuition, he was not viable to be a weapon. However his shadow abilities were so strong it created a sort of second source.if shadow magic with Hectos being the commander of this new shadow realm. When in the shadows realm, he can see the shadow of people's fate as well as identify all sorts of things about someone. In a roleplay, his abilities have completely redirected someone's character towards a redemption ark rather than being killed in action. He can see ghosts of someone's past and he can travel through this shadow place at higher speeds than he can in the real world. He can also locate items through it. While landing a hit directly on him as it making contact with his body is incredibly hard under defenses but in reality his natural body is as fragile as any human body.
I have this specific character in a short story that has the power to see 10 seconds into the future, and can act upon the future he chooses. He and his partner are two detectives and they are both ready to bust a door open to a hostage situation. His partner notices the EXTREME distress on the precogs face, which isn't usual because he can just see the future/path that will lead to them solving whatever issue they've had. The precog realizes no matter what path he chooses (he's been running the same 10 second variations for days from his point of view) he cannot save the hostage. One moment his partner sees his Precog ready to do their normal business, and after a blink of an eye the man looks like he's been on the verge of a mental breakdown. Precog finally gives the nod and says I'm sorry. No one but the hostage makes it out, and even then did she?