Concerning Stix water, and it's effects.

[Nebrok]

By the book, any character that falls into stix water must make a reflex save (DC 20) or lose all past memories. That's pretty simple, right? However, the loss of memory brings up a few questions in my mind. If a character loses all past memories, that would logically include any fighting abilities (base attack bonus), skills, spell knowledge (the ability to cast spells), feats, and most class features.

My personal opinion and ruling is that a character immediately gains a base attack bonus of 0 (and thus loosing any extra attacks), all base saves become 0, the character looses all skill ranks, looses any knowledge based class features (ranger's favored enemy, rouge's sneak attack, druid's wildshape, ect., but maybe not a barbarian's damage reduction, a monk's perfect self, druid's timeless body, ect.), looses any access to spells (virtually loosing the ability to cast spells), and looses access to any feats.
The character retains hit dice, hit points, ability scores (including the increases from hit dice), and all racial features (racial ability score bonuses, racial skill bonuses, special qualities, special attacks, and racial bonus feats)


Now I'm just curious what other people have to say, or have said in the past, about complete memory loss. If there are any suggestions to improve my ruling, just let me know.

 

[Umbran]

I'd argue that no, you don't lose most of those things. Because by the same logic the character should lose all language abilities, ability to feed themselves, and toilet training. If they'd wanted to say that the character was reduced to the mental stqte of an infant, they'd have said so.

Fighting ability is not "past memory". You don't fight by recalling your previous fights. You fight by knowing how to move a sword. You gained that knowledge through past events, but the ability is no longer based in those events. The same goes for just about all character abilities.

If we were to resort to real-world science analogs - language skills, mathematics, other knowledges, and athletic activity are not the same as those that handle personal memory.

Perhaps it'd be better said that the character loses all sense of personal history.

 

[Nebrok]

Perhaps it'd be better said that the character loses all sense of personal history.

Humm, very good point acutally, i'll have to rethink the matter. But I may alude to the pc game Torment where the main character is immortal and has no past memory. Through finding bits of past evidence you learn that this guy had to be some kind of bad ass, yet they start you at first level.

Now I CAN state a few argument to the above statment. #1 The guy was an immortal but hightly unusual means, this could have been just a isolated case. #2 For 'game' purposes it made sense, what fun is there when you don't truly level up?

Still, there were points where something he interacted with would still little memories of his past and he would regain skills and fighting abilities. This is mostly where I based my ruling off of.

But like I said, good point.

 

[Umbran]

#2 For 'game' purposes it made sense, what fun is there when you don't truly level up?

Well, this is a different game, yes. In this case - for game purposes, your original inerpretation makes the Styx pretty much a "save or die" scenario, which are generally not too fun. We're talking about someone buff enough normally to encounter the River Styx - removing most of their character abilities would pretty much ensure their demise in the near future. What fun is that?

 

[Slife]

Personally, I'd just have the character lose some amount of XP based on how much they failed the save by. Maybe make casters forget memorized spells for that day.

 

[Shemeska]

I have the Styx's effect vary depending on how you come into contact with it.

1) Drinking it - if you're not one of a select few types of fiends, you are invariably screwed if you drink straight, undiluted Styx water. You lose your memories as they relate to yourself, most of your surroundings as they apply to specifics, etc. You're also back to being a zero level character for the most part. It's harsh, it sucks, but the lower planes are not easy places to be in. This was how one of the PCs in my last 3e Planescape game started the campaign: they woke up in the gate town to the Gray Waste with only their clothes and a sword, devoid of most memories, after an unhappy run-in with the forced ingestion of Styx water (among other things. Yugoloths are not nice people...)

However, that said, I have a different effect for diluted Styx water. In this case you'll lose your memories for a range of time depending on the potency of the dilution. This happened to one of the PCs in that last campaign, and she ended up losing about two weeks worth of memories.

2) Contact - duration of exposure and amount of exposure apply here. A bit of spray off of the styx will make you light headed and possibly pass out, and bare skin exposed to the river infernal will start to leach your memories at a prolific rate, but it's nowhere near as bad as ingestion. And there's a save for all of these effects, unless you're immersed, and then it's time to apply the ingestion rules.

 

[Falkus]

) Drinking it - if you're not one of a select few types of fiends, you are invariably screwed if you drink straight, undiluted Styx water. You lose your memories as they relate to yourself, most of your surroundings as they apply to specifics, etc. You're also back to being a zero level character for the most part. It's harsh, it sucks, but the lower planes are not easy places to be in.

I disagree. As pointed out above, certain talents and abilities aren't simply a matter of memory. A martial artist or fencer isn't remembering how to fight when he performs a maneuver, he just does it. That's one of the key things we had to learn back when I was taking lessons in Karate, you had to learn moves to the point where you didn't have to think abou them to do them.

 

[Shemeska]

I disagree. As pointed out above, certain talents and abilities aren't simply a matter of memory. A martial artist or fencer isn't remembering how to fight when he performs a maneuver, he just does it. That's one of the key things we had to learn back when I was taking lessons in Karate, you had to learn moves to the point where you didn't have to think abou them to do them.

The above was what I do in my own games, and thematically it fits with the Styx as DnD has portrayed it, regardless of the game mechanics in X edition or another. And yes, it's still a matter of memory, just not conscious memory. The patterns of action you're going through in martial arts are just ingrained enough that you don't have to specifically remember the actions before you do them. It's still memory though, and I see little reason to make that distinction matter with regards to the Styx. It's not a scalpel that's cutting out memories, it's much more brutal and much less directed.

You might be able to do something by instinct without thinking about it, but the Styx is ripping away your memories and your sense of who you were at a basic, metaphyiscal level. It's more or less bleaching your soul, fouling it and stripping your 'self' away like acid on a corpse till nothing but the bones remain, metaphorically speaking, and it's not a pleasant process in the least. It's ignorance and loss in its worst ways: the theft of who you are and what you were, leaving you a hollow shell.

If you wanted to loss your memories, but as an expression of willing loss, merciful cleansing of your memories etc, drink from the Lethe.

 

[Falkus]

I guess it's just because I prefer the amnesia plots where the person suffering it is a highly skilled killer and assassin, yet can't remember any details about his past, except for thirteen different ways on how to kill a human being with his bare hands.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I've run this kind of plot before and rather than penalize the characters with mechanic changes to their character (which if the character is a part of an ongoing adventure, can create all sorts of issues with balance, survivability, and the player still having fun), I provided the PC a note that basically said "Here's a role-playing challenge: you have no specific memories of yourself, although your skills/spells/etc. remain in tact (and you can use them as you discover you have them)."

It worked well with my groups in the past that are very role-play oriented and got into the situation, although having mechanical effects could be a better solution for a group that has a different focus.