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So, I have a player (my daughter actually) who is playing Evelyn, a human Oracle of Pharasma. She is 2nd level right now and we're running through Rise of the Runelords.
For her backstory, she came up with the idea of being near death and being rescued by Pharasma in exchange for her future service. She wrote it this way, "They say you have two deaths: The first is when your body dies. The second is when there is no one left who remembers your name."
It's a long story, but she was a young noble woman who had been through hell and was ready to die. She had given up on life, and when Pharasma came to take her, they had a conversation during which Pharasma said, "I have never seen a person so ready to die."
Pharasma wanted to preserve her, but when you die, you die, and that's the natural way of things. However, given the two deaths discussed above, Pharasma reasoned that there are no rules saying which of the two deaths must come first. So she made a deal with the character that she would give her the second death instead of the first in exchange for the character serving her to hunt the undead and others who had cheated death.
In story terms, this means that people have a tendency to forget her. If she hasn't seen someone for a day, they'll recognize her, and be like "Oh yeah, she's in my party. I kinda forgot about her." If she hasn't seen someone for a week, then it's more like, "I recognize her, but I don't know why." If she hasn't seen someone for a month, then they simply do not remember her at all. Even her parents do not recognize her. People who normally would hold grudges against her will forget her. It's hard for even the evil bad guys like Karzoug to remember her. So, it's kind of a curse of her existence.
Anyway, it's kind of a nifty idea, and we are running with it.
So, here's a question: What happens if someone writes her name in a journal? Does the writing become blurry and fade away over time? Or does the name remain in the journal, but nobody remembers who the name belongs to? Ideas?
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i'd go with reading the name having the same effect as meeting her. so if a day passed from ether meeting her or reading her name he'd go like 'oh yea, it's her' if more then the later effects etc.
also some might object for heaving her ability effect their character, i'd add it as a curse (cast by an epic caster) set on her. and others get to roll (int or maybe will) to be able to remember her (with -1 for each passing day).
side note, this feat may or may not be of some use to developing her story.
this is a very common trope in Japanese 'tragic love' stories where one side remember everything about their loved one while the other side can't remember them at all. known as the living death trope.
Parliamagne wrote: What happens if someone writes her name in a journal? Does the writing become blurry and fade away over time? Or does the name remain in the journal, but nobody remembers who the name belongs to? Ideas? The disappearing writing wouldn't add much since creatures forget her anyway. And if it doesn't fade away, you can get these interesting moments where creatures are irritated who this person is supposed to be.
A possible twist is that one creature can remember her perfectly - but it's not necessarily pleasant company...
Finally, the rest of the players should be on board with it to make it work - it's a perfect topic for session 0.
You could at some point go for the following things:
1: Her trait could be linked to her not knowing her true name, and would be removed if she ever becomes aware of it.
2: You could do interesting things if over powerful things in the story recognice that something weird is going on (detecting the forgetting effect on them originating from her) with her.
Her trait would be useful for f.e. an assasin to have, and a crafty assassin/evil organization could seek to abduct her to research this.
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Her name being written down shouldn't result in the name vanishing or becoming illegible. It should just cause the reader to draw a blank on trying to remember who she is or just register as a completely unremarkable common name as they continue past it without even thinking about it for a moment.
Mightypion wrote: Her trait would be useful for f.e. an assasin to have, and a crafty assassin/evil organization could seek to abduct her to research this. It certainly would be... but the logistics of such a scenario actually occurring seem highly unlikely... in order for such an organization to even know of her ability they would have to be aware of her existence and aware that people forget about her shortly after being made aware of her existence. Due to the nature of such an ability the only way to be aware of its existence is to always be aware of her existence and witness the effects first hand. If at any point you were to become affected by the ability, you would at that moment lose awareness of the ability as well. After all, how can you be aware that people forget who this person is if you yourself have forgotten who this person is. You might possibly be aware such an ability exists, and that you had once met someone with such an ability, but you wouldn't know who.
Now if an assassin were following the group for some other reason, and witnessed the effects... they might try something then... but it would most likely be a personal decision by the assassin since any attempt to inform their organization could take too long and result in either themselves or the messenger forgetting.
It is a creative idea. "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" is an anime that does almost this exact thing (people forgetting someone) in the 1st 4 or so episodes, if you are interested in seeing how it was handled.
Chell Raighn wrote: Her name being written down shouldn't result in the name vanishing or becoming illegible. It should just cause the reader to draw a blank on trying to remember who she is or just register as a completely unremarkable common name as they continue past it without even thinking about it for a moment.
Mightypion wrote: Her trait would be useful for f.e. an assasin to have, and a crafty assassin/evil organization could seek to abduct her to research this. It certainly would be... but the logistics of such a scenario actually occurring seem highly unlikely... in order for such an organization to even know of her ability they would have to be aware of her existence and aware that people forget about her shortly after being made aware of her existence. Due to the nature of such an ability the only way to be aware of its existence is to always be aware of her existence and witness the effects first hand. If at any point you were to become affected by the ability, you would at that moment lose awareness of the ability as well. After all, how can you be aware that people forget who this person is if you yourself have forgotten who this person is. You might possibly be aware such an ability exists, and that you had once met someone with such an ability, but you wouldn't know who.
Now if an assassin were following the group for some other reason, and witnessed the effects... they might try something then... but it would most likely be a personal decision by the assassin since any attempt to inform their organization could take too long and result in either themselves or the messenger forgetting.
We had hombrewed magic items equivalent to seducers bane (https://www.aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Seducer%27s%20B ane), but vs memory altering effects in some more intrigue based campaigns.
There is also the question if there ever is a will save against this ability, I would argue that at some point there should be.
Intelligent things with CR 10 + (like, Glarbezus or Lilitus) could well notice that something fishy is going on, but these should definitly not be thrown at level 2 characters, unless they are like, very long term plot twist half a year later "patrons". Which is kind of iffy because yeah, sometimes you plan to have a patron of the players be a Lilitu, but the players figure it out when they are level 3-4 and congratulate themselfs because they should have good chances taking out the Succubus they think she is.
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First it wanna say it's an awesome idea, i love it!
Parliamagne wrote: So, here's a question: What happens if someone writes her name in a journal? Does the writing become blurry and fade away over time? Or does the name remain in the journal, but nobody remembers who the name... Depending on how you wanna go about the curse, it could also be impossible for her to write her name correctly. If no one can truly remember her, all any attempt to write her name could result in gibberish. That could be justified by the idea Mightypion had to tie it to her true name.
And if you want to add a bit of personal horror, what if she can't be certain of who she really was? What if some of her memories turn out to be fake? Don't quote me on that, but i've read somewhere that our brains are pretty good at filling blanks in our memory with false one.
When I had a character (in a different setting) whose power was 'People forget they're there after a few minutes' they came dangerously close to becoming a villain because they were unable to form any meaningful attachments to people.
When no one remembers who you are or what you do, you lose all responsibility for your actions. Who cares if you take that apple from the merchant stall? The merchant won't remember. Who cares if you murder that child's family in front them? They'll forget it was you in a week.
They're out on a date and the the date goes to the bathroom and forgets who they're with and why they're together and suddenly its not a nice evening anymore.
Its a terrible, lonely existence that can make you bitter to the rest of the world because everyone else gets to enjoy the company of others and the afflicted person has to suffer through it.
I would have writing and transmitted images last. If party members keep a journal of their interactions, then at least the actions of the character are memorialized.
A few variations on this idea I've seen:
Grieving Mother from Pillars of Eternity. People remember someone, but they don't remember Grieving Mother as the same person each time. One party member comes close and recalls that there is always a random peasant lady with you, but that's about it. The name is also just what the main character calls her. Writing her name down wouldn't get you a name, just whatever you wanted to call the random peasant.
Forget-Me-Not from a few Marvel comics. He's forgotten by almost everyone as soon as he's out of sight. But he's detectable by his absence, people figure out that there is a forgotten person based on actions that are difficult to attribute. He disappears from all media as well.
Just on a pseudo mechanical note, since you've described this as the Oracle's curse, I assume you're using that term as the class feature. With that being said, curses grow and change with advancement in levels. The effects suggested by others here are all good, but the hardships and penalties of the curse should come into play first. The benefits, protections, or mitigations should be accessed at higher levels, similar to how other curses progress.
I also think this is a very cool backstory. Either way I'm impressed, but I'm curious if your daughter found that quote, or did she come up with it on her own?
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