Time Distortion

This spell is a part of the Time Distortion spell chain and is found in the Time Distortion rune stone.

The posteramancer's first reach toward Doom is modest. Doom does not announce itself dramatically at the beginning - it starts small, a quiet introduction to what it can do, a demonstration that perception is less reliable than people generally assume. Time Distortion is that demonstration.

When this spell is cast the posteramancer reaches through Doom and warps the flow of time directly in front of the target just enough to mess with their perception. Time slows and speeds in unpredictable alternation across the target's field of vision, the world stuttering and lurching in ways that the eye cannot compensate for and the mind cannot fully reconcile. What is moving fast appears slow. What is still appears to shift. The reliable visual information the target depends on to make any decision becomes suddenly, persistently untrustworthy. For 1d4 rounds the target cannot rely on their own perception. Every attempt to attack or defend requires a Normal Insight check as the target tries to determine what is actually happening in front of them - where the threat is, where it is moving, what it is doing - through a visual field that keeps lying to them about all of those things. Doom finds this entirely satisfactory as a first impression.