How can I make Oracles valuable in real time environments?

[Erebus]

Precognesis is a school of magic in which an individual can access the time stream of reality. These individuals are called oracles, who use their mental training to read the future. This ability is open to anyone that is willing to learn, and takes many years of practice and dedication. However, This ability to know everything that is going to happen is a power breaker, and I have sought a way to limit its effectiveness in reasonable ways. One of which is to not make the future linear, and depend on multiple variables.

An oracle who accesses the time stream can only see potential futures, which can number in the thousands. Their goal is to pull on the string of the one that they feel is most likely to come to pass. After selecting this future, thousands more possibilities open up, presenting other futures that came about because of the future that the oracle selected. These potential realities are always changing depending on the decision making and selection process of the seer. This process can take many hours, and becomes harder to read the further one follows the string.

This method of reading the future sounds like a lot of guesswork at best, with hit or miss strategies. A person can spend hours following futures to its ultimate conclusion and be completely wrong, leading whoever has hired them down the wrong path. I need to make these individuals valuable to have in a fast paced environment, such as a warzone, where things are constantly changing and decisions need to be made quickly.

 

[Devor]

If it were me, I would try and have it so the large number of possible futures dwindles rapidly as the event gets closer. So before a battle happens there's a ton of guesswork about what to do or not do because there's so many possibilities about what might happen. But all the other futures rapidly die out thirty seconds before the fireball shoots towards your left flank, leaving you just enough time to signal for a counterspell.

 

[skip.knox]

That tugging on the string bit - does that mean they can actually affect the future?

Because I'm picturing several oracles, all forseeing the future. It's almost guaranteed that they'll see different things, but if they can *affect* the future then the obvious question is who wins.

The closer the event is, the fewer paths, okay. I think again of a group of oracles, but this time all working together. If they have consensus, does that mean their vision is a lock? Would there be a way for an enemy oracle or group to affect what another oracle sees?

Just all questions that occur to me. All answerable, I'm sure, but fun stories often lie in between the clear answers.

 

[Firefly]

Look into the version of the future where you DID spend hours analyzing the possibilities, and go with that.

You could always have them deal more in probabilities and likelihoods than in certain outcomes. That doesn't necessarily make them useless. And, even if it's hard to steer things in a specific direction, it could be very useful for realizing things are guaranteed failures before actually trying them. (E.g., knowing that if they try and dig a goal mine somewhere they will definitely fail, because there just isn't good there.)

Here are a couple of questions that might be useful to think about:

Can an oracle start with a certain future in mind, and go backwards from there, or do they have to follow the branching pathway from the beginning? If it's the latter, then it seems likely that major things could be missed simply because no one thought to look down that branch.

What can the oracles see the future of? Can they follow specific people? Do they see what might happen in a specific location? Only things that will affect them personally? We can't see everything that happens everywhere even in the present.

What things create branching points, and which things are going to happen a certain way unless they are interfered with? The strictest way of doing this, of course, is that there ARE no branching points, which you've already said you aren't doing, but if you do have them, there are a lot of options for variation within that. Is everyone for sure going to act a certain way, unless an oracle interferes, or do oracles have to account for different choices every single different person might make at every junction? What about nature?

 

[Futhark]

I have seers in my WIP. They can foresee the intentions of others. For example, a foreign power plans a raid. The seer feels this intention and sends reinforcements. But it doesn’t mean the raid is unsuccessful. And any action taken can alter the others intentions. Looking into the future is like looking into a mist, and they can only guess what the shapes mean. Plus, it’s a rare talent, the further you look the more stress on the seer (mind-snapping, burnout), and the more vague the premonitions. Some races have little to no magical talent (or footprint), so they don’t register to the seer and can’t be foreseen.
This is similar, I think, to how yours work.

On the battlefield they can be useful advisors. They have a premonition of foreboding, say the left flank is going to falter, and warn the commander. But these advisors only have situational awareness. They have to be directly involved in the outcome to be useful. They are not like those mentioned above, and are not quite so rare.
This is how I made them useful on the battlefield.

I also have a warrior born with this talent, but it is latent, and only useful when he is personally in combat. He senses the intention of the opponent and this, combined with his speed and skill, makes him one of the most powerful swordsman in the land. It’s like Spider-man’s spider-sense. He does get his a$$ whooped when he fights this guy that has been in solitary confinement for far too long. This guy’s mind is broken, he has no clear intentions, he’s barely aware of what he’s actually doing. The gift the warrior takes for granted is gone, and he can’t adapt in time.
I just like this idea.

Hope I was helpful.

 

[Night Gardener]

What you're describing makes me think of your seers as 'supercomputers' trying to calculate probable chess moves, 1,000,000 games at a time, without actually being either of the players.

If they could sense what the players are thinking, or how they are about to act, even staying mere moments ahead of a person's actions can be a game changer. Even being able to predict where and when winds may shift could save lives (ex. at 1:00, the enemy will be trying to shoot arrows directly into a headwind, missing their mark, so advance until about 1:03), or indicate other opportunities. However, How do you communicate this information quickly across a battlefield to be utilized advantageously?

I'm seeing a dualistic system: a commander and a seer, paired on the battlefield. Maybe even sharing the same warmount, trying to signal commands and shout out orders in real-time. If seers are sitting in some sacred circle, off-site, I don't see that working in real-time.

If they meditate on the eve of battle, and offer likely predictions and their recommendations, that is information that could be relayed before the battle to commanders to take under advisement.

 

[Futhark]

What you're describing makes me think of your seers as 'supercomputers' trying to calculate probable chess moves, 1,000,000 games at a time, without actually being either of the players.

Haha, welcome to my mind.

 

[Futhark]

I'm seeing a dualistic system: a commander and a seer, paired on the battlefield. Maybe even sharing the same warmount, trying to signal commands and shout out orders in real-time. If seers are sitting in some sacred circle, off-site, I don't see that working in real-time.

If they meditate on the eve of battle, and offer likely predictions and their recommendations, that is information that could be relayed before the battle to commanders to take under advisement.

That’s sums up how my seers work very accurately. However, it is a rare talent, and it exists in my story to add strategic value to certain characters, rather than as a national resource, if that makes sense.

To go off topic a little: I’m not a supercomputer. I don’t have an extensive online database that stores terabytes of details, nor do I have a very good search engine. I just have a particular processing unit that runs a little better than the average bear, especially when it comes to patterns and extrapolation. I am INTJ, if you subscribe to Myer Briggs personality types. I find that 16 personalities cannot describe all the complexities of every human personality, but it does provide a useful baseline to begin exploring your self.