Here's the text of the first one, the second entry is almost identical but the caster goes back hours instead of rounds.
This happened twice in one session recently and it left me with a bit of a problem explaining what was happening, partially because I hadn't thought it through beforehand and partially because the players had fixed ideas of how it should work and didn't understand what I was saying properly.The King of Elfland grants the caster a chance to step back in time 1d6+CL rounds. This does not automatically change the flow of events that has already happened; the caster is a visible observer who can interact with those events, even watching his own “past self” perform activities in the recent past. The caster may be able to prevent some recent event from occurring, aid in an attack that would otherwise have missed, or shout a warning.
My initial impression was that the caster has looped for the duration given, so effectively there are two instances of them for a few hours. Having reread it just now perhaps that is not necessarily true, the caster may just appear back in time long enough to 'shout a warning' and then disappear again. My thoughts below are based on the first premise, I have to think about the second one a bit more and I'll post a reply with some ideas for how that might work differently.
When the user casts Invoke Patron and gets one of these results they go back in time, either a few minutes or a few hours. For the sake of clarity it might be best to refer to the person who cast Invoke Patron and went back in time as Future You and the other one as Past You.
Future You doesn't travel appreciably in space so they will appear at roughly the same location that they cast Invoke Patron. So if you travel back in time from inside a locked cell you will still be in the cell, although maybe it is empty and unlocked. Space may be relative, if you travel back from a ship at sea you may find yourself floating alone in the ocean at a point where the ship will pass in a few hours or you may find yourself in the same part of the ship (perhaps at port) hours previously. Future You will not automatically appear near the same location as Past You but they might if Past You hadn't moved much in the time travel period.
The King of Elfland perceives time in a way FAR beyond your comprehension. There is no question that you can cast your only Invoke Patron then go back and get your earlier self to cast it again creating an infinite loop. You get a certain number of casts dependant on the result of your Patron Bond across all instances of your character. If you are feeling particularly nice someone who tries this will find it doesn't work, if you are not then simply take their dice after they try to Invoke Patron more times than they should and set it on 1. From the perspective of the King of Elfland time is ordered the same as it is around the table, Future You has already cast Invoke Patron once, even though Past You isn't aware that Future You is going to use it up at some point later.
The person who cast Invoke Patron is the leading point of that characters life line, they have merely created a loop. When the point in time where Invoke Patron was cast is reached the 'past' version simply fades out of existence leaving Future You as the only one, even though in this timeline nobody ever cast Invoke Patron. If Future You somehow dies, then that's it for that character. If Past You somehow dies then it's a paradox and it's hard to say what might happen, probably something bad, paradox eliminating demons seem like a possibility. Best to try to keep both versions alive.
If the caster has no intention to modify the past in a major way you can simply agree that they help out with X, Y and Z and events went differently. Future you blocked that strike that inflicted 8 points of damage and prevented the thief from triggering the dead fall trap that killed the halfling. There is no need to redo everything, you can just adjust things by adding some hit points here and returning a lost item there. If they do wish to change things substantially then it may be best to reset everyone's characters back to the way they were and rerun events again, possibly in a very different way with very different results.
This is a bit risky. If you have been fighting your way through a dangerous area and you suddenly find yourself five hours back in time then you may be in the middle of a dangerous area which has not been cleared, with no backup to help.
