You ward a willing creature's memories. As the spell takes effect, 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 warded.
While this charm lasts, you can affect the target's memory of an event or subject that it experienced within the last 24 hours. These memories are not deleted, but the target does not recall them and feels uncomfortable if pressed about the topic. If they attempt to remember, the harder they try the more pain they experience until they stop. One minute of actively trying to recall the warded memories will cause a headache, after which the target will sustain 1d6 psychic damage each additional minute, increasing by 1d6 each minute until they stop or go unconscious.
You must speak to the target to describe the memories that will be warded. They know if you attempt to ward different memories than what they agreed to and can resist, ending the spell. You may set a trigger action, event, circumstance or word that will release the memories from the ward, otherwise the only way for the target to regain the memories is for the original caster to dispel it. The target's mind fills in any gaps in the details of your description of the affected memories. The ward takes hold when the spell ends, and the target experiences a period of mild confusion about what they were just doing that they soon forget completely.
Warded memories may affect how a creature behaves, particularly if the memories they no longer have access to would have influenced their choices. For example, if you ward the memory of being hunted and tortured by another character, they would have no sense of fear or hatred of that character and would not avoid or hide from them.
Since the creature must be willing, no spell including remove curse or greater restoration can restore the creature's true memory. It can only be dispelled by the original caster or released by a trigger, if one was set.
At Higher Levels. If you cast this spell using a spell slot of 5th level or higher, you can alter the target's memories of events or subjects that span the course of the past 7 days (5th level), the past 30 days (6th level), the past year (7th level), the past 5 years (8th level), or throughout the creatures lifetime (9th level).
Comments