D&D 5E In Your Opinion: Should Amnesia Impair Class Abilities?

[pemerton]

Knowledge-based skills would certainly be impaired, or lost completely. The rest is up to you, I guess.

I think it would be more interesting to allow the abducted character to retain knowledge of their home world and explore how they would react to differences in the worlds. For example a character abducted from Dark Sun might have a fear of FR halflings because they're used to Athas' cannibalistic halflings. Or a dwarf abducted from Dragonlance might be surprised to be welcomed as one of Bruenor's kin when they're a lowly gully dwarf.

Speaking purely from my own experience, and not any wider medical knowledge of the different forms amnesia can take, I would tend to agree with Wednesday Boy but not to fully agree with LightningArrow.

As I posted upthread, even when, due to prospective amnesia, I was "resetting" every 5 minutes or so, and due to retrospective amnesia had lost about 3 years worth of personal memories, I still had my professional knowledge. So I think an amnesiac's knowledge skills should still probably work OK. That said, there may be issues if you're wanting to run a FR game and don't want the PC to be making knowledge checks about GH, Eberron or whatever. Maybe discourage the player from taking training in History and perhaps even Religion (but Arcana, Planer Knowledge etc might still be OK as that stuff is a bit more generic and remains valid across worlds).

On Wednesday Boy's comment: I think the amnesiac is still going to have a general sense of the social world. For instance, when I had amnesia I still knew about paramedics, doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc. So if the social world the amnesiac character finds him-/herself in differs from the one s/he is used to (eg dwarves are honoured rather than downtrodden), that should come as a surprise.

Again, you'll have the issue of balancing that sort of thing which might be fun against a wholesale importation of knowledge of another campaign world, which you might want to block if you're trying to focus the game mostly on FR.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

In my case, I lost1 memories of the previous three years or so, and also lost the ability to lay down new memories.

Wow This is more than I could have hoped for. Thank you for lending your personal experience with amnesia to the thread.

But I mightn't know what my PC's goals are, or how I got to where I am. I would add - this is quite unnerving, and the character might be expected to easily take comfort in someone who seemed able to help him/her understand what is going on, and to find his/her way around an unfamiliar environment.

This is very good to know. I have an idea of how characters taking the Background Enhancement were brought up to speed, so to speak, in the world they find themselves in, and what you have to say about being guided through the experience of memory loss tells me how I can make my idea sound authentic.

Temporary or permanent amnesia? And does it happen during an ongoing campaign or before the start of the campaign?

Definitely permanent. The loss of memory takes place before a campaign gets under way.

(And, for the most part, I'd handle such a character using an "Amnesiac" background. I've no idea what the traits for that should be. )

You hit the nail on the head here.

Background Enhancements are meant to be "just a little more" in terms of a character's background, and so provide only one extra trait, ideal, bond or flaw to choose from. Even so, I'm not sure what those should be when the BE turns a character into a blank slate with skills.

Is amnesia included so the player doesn't reference the abducted character's home world and the GM can focus only on Forgotten Realms?

That's the core of the idea, yes.

I think it would be more interesting to allow the abducted character...(snip)

I'm starting to think I should include a write-up for ideas on how DMs can use Background Enhancements to spice up their campaign.

Your idea could be used for Traits, now that I think about it. It makes sense if a character from Dark Sun has a fear of flesh-eating halflings, and it'd be an interesting bit of roleplaying the first time the character runs across a portly halfling that only presents a danger to cheese, mead, and game that's already been cooked.

Unfortunately I don't think I can use the phrase "Dark Sun" in a DMs Guild product yet. The sourcebook isn't slated for release until the end of May, so things might change.

 

[pemerton]

Your idea could be used for Traits, now that I think about it.

That sounds like a good approach.