You attempt to reshape another creature's memories. One creature that you can see must make a Wisdom saving throw. If you are fighting the creature, it has advantage on the saving throw. On a failed save, the target becomes charmed by you for the duration. The charmed target is incapacitated and unaware of its surroundings, though it can still hear you. If it takes any damage or is targeted by another spell, this spell ends, and none of the target's memories are modified.
While this charm lasts, you can affect the target's memory of an event that it experienced within the last 24 hours and that lasted no more than 10 minutes. You can permanently eliminate all memory of the event, allow the target to recall the event with perfect clarity and exacting detail, change its memory of the details of the event, or create a memory of some other event.
You must speak to the target to describe how its memories are affected, and it must be able to understand your language for the modified memories to take root. Its mind fills in any gaps in the details of your description. If the spell ends before you have finished describing the modified memories, the creature's memory isn't altered. Otherwise, the modified memories take hold when the spell ends.
A modified memory doesn't necessarily affect how a creature behaves, particularly if the memory contradicts the creature's natural inclinations, alignment, or beliefs. An illogical modified memory, such as implanting a memory of how much the creature enjoyed dousing itself in acid, is dismissed, perhaps as a bad dream. The GM might deem a modified memory too nonsensical to affect a creature in a significant manner.
A remove curse or greater restoration spell cast on the target restores the creature's true memory.
At Higher Levels. If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, you can alter the target's memories of an event that took place up to 7 days ago (6th level), 30 days ago (7th level), 1 year ago (8th level), or any time in the creature's past (9th level).
What happens if one character casts Identify on another character that has had its memory altered by this spell?
From Identify: "If you instead touch a creature throughout the casting, you learn what spells, if any, are currently affecting it."
So... you'd learn Modify Memory is affecting the creature, but not what Modify Memory actually did.
Add Spell Tag: Charmed
This spell has a prominent impact in a game I run at the moment. When it says "A remove curse or greater restoration spell cast on the target restores the creature's true memory." would you think that means a single cast of greater restoration could restore ALL modified memories, or just one instance of this spell? It's been used on the same character dozens of times and I'm trying to figure out if greater restoration would take care of the entire thing or if they would have to restore each instance of this spell.
RAW, I would say that Remove Curse would undo them all, while greater restoration would undo one of them.. if we're treating modified memories as curses.
The affected memory changes are permanent and are not sustained by the spell. Therefore the spell isn't currently affecting the target. Dispel and detect magic would have no affect either.
Would making someone remember the experience of being charmed a pleasurable experience (not necessarily that they enjoyed being charmed, but that it when they were charmed they felt a sense of calm that felt like a drug), would that work? Or would it be like the acid case described in the spell?
If you used a level 9 spell slot for this, could you say "You got hit in the head extremely hard, and don't remember a single thing about your past thanks to it" to wipe someone's memories?
No. 9th level just means you can modify memory of an event at any point in the past, but an event is still defined, as earlier in the spell, as no more than ten minutes.
Edit: to clarify, you could give them a memory that they hit their head and lost memory of everything in their past. They'd remember that event AND everything in their past, though, so either they'd have to assume they made a miraculous recovery or just "[dismiss it] as a bad dream."
Oh ok that makes sense. I just assumed with 9th level you can make them remember their entire life in a different way
Laura Bailey
Beat me to it. Good on you
Epic play on her part. Best move in either CR campaign.
I came to look at the spell right after she said it. That was awesome
This spell made incredible by Mrs. Laura Bailey
You could theoretically rewrite someone's entire past. Doing so would take an incredibly long time, as you'd need to do it by rewriting 10 minute chunks, and possibly would need to work from their earliest memories forward in order to limit the number of conflicting memories. I'd imagine the best way to do this would be to take yourself and this person to the Astral Plane, where you're functionally immortal.
Thanks for the idea! And yeah that would take a while but I feel like that's worth it. I feel like it would be better to start with more recent memories to remove any aggression they might have towards you, and then work from their earliest memories
This spell only last 1 minute of concentration. What happens when the 1 minute is up or the concentration is ended? Does their memory go back to the way it was before the spell was cast and do they know it was altered? Or do they just go on, forgetting the altered memory as if it never happened?
In regards to Jester and the old witch- Does the witch think she still has the curse on Knot?
I also heard them say on Critical Role that it was permanent but the spell says 1 minute.
As the spell description says:
So, the 'duration' of the spell is the time in which you can ' affect the target's memory', i.e. you have 60 seconds to describe the new memory that you are changing in their mind. Then 'when the spell ends' the new memory 'takes hold', permanently.
Cast (1 action) --> alter memory (60 seconds) --> memory is changed (permanent)
Thank you. That makes sense now.