# Tim is not intended to take turns, but it's a cool idea # Time Stop is a 9th level spell, which means your players will be 17th level. Antimagic Field is an 8th level spell, so casting both is a pretty large resource expenditure. At this level, players are very powerful, and while allowing Tim to take his turn may have a big effect, in the big picture, this is not an outlandish ruling and is a pretty cool idea. On TV, it usually seems like some people are immune to Time Stop, such as on the show *Charmed*. I can imagine a conversation with an aged wizard who can tell you whether the king is really the king because he experienced a time stop during the critical window during which the king is supposed to have effortlessly removed the sword from the stone. The idea moves me, and I think it is interesting. For me, that is enough to create a new home rule. ## RAW ## Time Stop, a **Transmutation** spell, says, > **Range/Area:** Self > **Duration:** Instantaneous So the spell is intended to affect only one person, and to resolve immediately. Here is the gloss for ***Range:** Self*, which clearly indicates the spell should affect only you. This follows the general pattern of stacking in 5e, which is to say stacking and side effects are minimized. (Temporary hitpoints, concentration, the way powerful spells you would like to stack are often concentration spells, limits on every spell but wish; off the top of my head.) > Other spells, such as the shield spell, affect only you. These spells have a range of self. 5e was built with bounded accuracy, interclass balance, and general accessibility in mind. I don't think the creators of the game would create a contradiction between their simple rules about the intrepretation of *Self* and *Instantaneous*. Incidentally, *Instanenous* is defined such that > The spell harms, heals, creates, or alters a creature or an object in a way that can't be **dispelled**, because its magic exists only for an instant. In contrast to every other duration. The choice of verbiage for *Instantaneous* is often used to help resolve otherwise confusing issues about what spells occur when, and how spells interact with each other. Time isn't ticking really slowly, it is actually stopped with respect to the caster, so the person in the antimagic field doesn't have any time to experience the effect. Antimagic Field, an **Abjuration** spell, also talks about durations: > ... **While** an effect is suppressed, it doesn't function, but the **time it spends suppressed counts against its duration**. ... Any active spell or other magical effect on a creature or an object in the sphere is suppressed while the creature or object is in it. That indicates that time works the same inside and outside the Antimagic Field, including instaneousness. ### Antimagic is Lower Level ### Furthermore, Antimagic Field is a lower level spell than Time Stop. Following the pattern of the various Light and Darkness spells, higher level spell castings supercede lower level spell castings. Thus, Time Stop would take precedence. This could inspire a house rule that a 9th level spell slot expended on Antimagic Field allows the caster to enter stopped time as well. ### Antimagic doesn't negate all magic ### Antimagic Field doesn't negate all types of magical effects. > This area is divorced from the magical energy that suffuses the multiverse. ... Spells and other magical effects, **except those created by an artifact or a deity,** are suppressed in the sphere an can't protrude into it. ... Admittedly, Time Stop doesn't qualify under this explicit exclusion, which would resolve this question outright. But it does illustrate that sometimes an Antimagic Field doesn't work. ### Antimagic isn't like dispel magic ### > ... different antimagic field spells don't nullify each other. DMG, p 41, **Crossing the Streams**: > ... And the famous wizard Elminster of the Forgotten Realms has been said to make occasional appearances in the kitchen of Canadian writer Ed Greenwood -- If you think of D&D as being a mirror universe to our own, where you could walk into your own living room if you had the right spell, what would it mean for you if time were stopped? Antimagic takes us into a more real world, one more like our own. So if time were stopped here, how would that affect you? ## Rationalization ## I believe the intent is quite clear that Time Stop only applies to Annie. However the game rules don't make any sense (though they don't have to). Let us try further to make sense of them. In D&D, you traditionally have the Warp and the Weave. These are the magical fabric of the universe that thread through every location and physicality. Spells take effect by arcane magic users manipulating and moving the threads of reality in one place, such that they cause an effect on connected strands of reality. Divine magic works differently, as you channel the power of gods, but you could say that it works differently only because the gods manipulate reality for you, and are absolutely better at it than a wizard; gods exist outside of our time and space (or not!). An antimagic field occurs when the threads are frozen in place and can't be manipulated. The question of whether a Time Stop takes effect in an Antimagic Field should depend on what **time** is. If time is absolute and exists outside of and beyond the weave, then someone stepping outside of it should perhaps not have to deal with somebody's spell that is operating inside the container of time. Is time a physical force such that the removal of magic in an area of Space-Time does nothing to affect whether time is stopped or not? Would Stop Gravity affect the inside of an area of Antimagic Field? What about Suppress Gravity? Does the caster of Time Stop actually stop time, or do they simply do something magical that transcends understanding (magic; fantastic)? Another poster brought up how enlarging the sun with magic would still mean the sun burnt hotter and that someone in an Antimagic Field would still feel it. Compared to an artificial, magical hotness field, which would dissipate. The difference here is that the former is a transmutation type spell, and the latter is a conjuration type. Time Stop is in fact a transmutation spell, suggesting that it actually changes the nature of reality. I think we have solid justification for the simple interpretation of the rules. However there is also ample room to to allow time to continue for those in an Antimagic Field. Especially since this is just a game, and you should do what inspires you and your group. ## Counterpoint and Additional Thoughts ## However the PHB also says about ***Range:** Self*, > Spells that create cones or lines of effect that originate from you also have a range of self, indicating that the origin point of the spell's effect must be you .... Once a spell is cast, its effects aren't limited by its range, unless the spell's description says otherwise. *Edit: Time Stop doesn't create a cone or line, so the above doesn't apply.* So is Time Stop affecting the outside world, or is it affect the caster? Is the caster suddenly discovering a new, Cantorian, higher order infinity of non-discrete time between any two moments normally inaccessible? Or is the effect radiating outwards, towards the area of Antimagic Field? It's pretty cool either way, but which one do you and your players expect?