Hi guys, I was trying to think of some ideas around Memory and Magic and I came up with this idea. It is a more improved version of the minor virtue Magical Memory
Major Magical Memory
(Major, Hermetic)
Your memory has been magically altered to store and retrieve memories. You automatically remember everything you see, hear and do. You do not need to write lab-texts or make written notes. You can easily memorize an entire text by looking at each page for a few seconds. This is not the same as reading each word and understanding it, but you can recreate the text or read it from your memories.
Your memory has been altered for retrieval as well as storage. You do not need to roll to remember something, you need to make a concentration roll to determine how long it takes to remember that specific detail. This can be avoided by creating a memory locus. This memory locus can be made at any time by concentrating on a topic and searching your memories for every detail about it. An Int + Conc + die against an ease factor determines how long it takes. If the magus is not under stress it can be assumed to take around half an hour.
When using a catalog the memories are readily available - no rolls are needed to remember any detail about the topic.
If not using a catalog an Int + stress die is needed to remember the information quickly. The EF is set by the SG but it determines how long it takes to find the memories (instantly or in a period of combat rounds). Success is always guaranteed. Each botch means an additional hour before the specific memory becomes available.
Spells to retrieve your memories are one magnitude easier than normal.
Spells to destroy your memories are one magnitude higher than normal.
If memories are destroyed you can notice the "gap" in your memories.
As you can review your own episodic memories when you re-examine them you have the ability to gain extra details you didn't notice at the time. Seeing specific faces in a crowd, reading words off a text on a table, the locations and movements of different people.
Spells don’t switch magnitudes depending on their target. And shouldn’t, if you want to avoid endless pitfalls. Spells reading your mind would be extra successful, which is odd (because if you have such a memory I’m guessing those getting the benefit would be other magi casting mind reading spells on you) but okay. But spells designed to destroy a memory of yours would just fail, because nobody goes around inventing spells with extra magnitudes just in case.
Hi Ouroboros,
I was trying to add something to make the virtue stronger and more thematic. I was thinking along the guidelines that the other forms use. +1 magnitude for this, +2 magnitudes for that. I wanted it to be harder for memories to be destroyed, but there aren't any opposition rolls for perdo magics. If they penetrate MR they work as intended.
Just being able to memorize texts and things isn't that much use for a Major Hermetic Virtue - this is something that should determine ones entire approach to magic.
So, lets try a completely different idea.
Traversing Memory Lane
A magus with Major Magical Memory can turn their vision inwards and travel back through their episodic memories as if physically walking backwards in the real world. They can attempt to target anything they can sense in their memory using R:Sight spells, but if the object has been moved from that physical location the spell will fail.
If the object has not been moved the spell will target the original in the physical world as if the magus could really "see" it.
Thematically it should be easier to toy with the character's memories.
If I am casting a spell to destroy or retrieve a memory, normally, the spell has to find the memory through the crazy mess that is human memory storage. For this character, I go to the index, boom, job done.
To achieve what you wrote regarding mind affecting spells being easier or harder, a possible mechanism would be to say the parma is 1 level higher or lower depending on what is being done, and if the character is not a wizard, they are considered to have a level 0 parma regarding those spells.
Hi Fishy, thanks for the thoughts.
Hmm, that is a good idea. Instead of Parma we can just add +3 (or 5) to the basic Mental magic resistance against perdo and -3 to intellego resistance.
I never thought of it that way, but magi get form resistance for their MR, so this can count too.
Most of Ars works around 3 for Ease Factors, but as this is directly related to actual magic then I would go with the +/- 5 to basic MR (before Parma).
That way it can't be removed by dropping the parma.
Yes, they do. It is called size modifiers.
This magically memory enhanced character clearly has a mind the size of a planet, so it should take more than one magnitude extra for size.
By that argument, it might be plus magnitudes for retrieval too.
