Advantage: Amnesia as an advantage

It's apparently a game?

This is a weird thought I just had that is something of a special power: instead of defining everything ahead of time, you slowly realize who your character was over time as certain situations spark a reawakening to what occurred before you lost your memories. This is an advantageous form of the Amnesia disadvantage because the control is (partially) placed into the player's hands. Let's see how we might stat that out.

Mechanics

First off, the ability to acquire abilities in play for no especial rhyme or reason except because backstory says so is usually an Unusual Background, Wild Talent, Racial Memory, or Modular Abilities. I'm going to go with Racial Memory as a template, and here's why:

• Modular Abilities is the power to reconfigure your points at a later time, usually constrained in some way to make it cumbersome to reconfigure points, and/or only allowing a specific thematic set of abilities for reconfiguration.
• Unusual Background is justification for starting the campaign with unusual abilities or the potential to acquire them. This is a good second choice, I think, but this usually either represents:
• Exclusivity - Very few people have the powers locked behind this ability
• Potential - You can learn things that no one else can learn
• Wild Talent is the ability to use some skill at random without ever using it before and at a high level of competency, kind of as a fluke or divine guidance or some such.
• Finally, Racial Memory is the ability to tap into knowledge we didn't even know we had. The flavored justification is "because we recall what happened in our forebears lives." But it has been re-flavored to have the same mechanical effect approximately, but different flavorful meaning in Dungeon Fantasy 11 for a power-up for Wizards.

So starting with that, we need the active form of Racial Memory because the idea is that the player can actively discover if they were ever good at something. From a couple of our friends we want a few different enhancements.

• I'll borrow the concept of Retention from Wild Talent but make it a 75% version which is basically adding the no dice roll required cosmic effect.
• Similarly taking the idea of Wild Ability from Wild Talent but making it so that it can apply to any advantage, I modify this to a 75% enhancement as well.

Now that we have that, I'm going to bend the RAW slightly and say that I'm going to replace the IQ roll in place with an appearance roll. I think RAW it is a 50% improvement for another no dice roll required, and then probably about a -20% to add the 11 activation number version of Unreliable. Finally, I apply one last modifier, an accessibility modifier that says that this ability can only be used once per situation. I will price that at about 30%. Similar to some perk (I can't remember the name of it now.) You are only allowed to learn something the first time it comes up in play that you may or may not know it. If you don't know how to use a gun in the first session of a campaign, you will never spontaneously remember how later as convenient.

Altogether, this advantage in a RAW-ish form comes out to 100 points

Raw Form

Amnesia 100 points

You have the ability to remember abilities you didn't know you had. The first time a situation arises that would allow you to demonstrate your competence or lack thereof, roll 3d6 against a static target of 11. If you succeed, you may immediately spend as many points as you like on the Advantage, Skill, Technique, or what-have-you as if you always knew it. If you decline the chance or fail the roll, you may at a later time learn the ability in question but only through means available to anyone else.

• A GM may require you to invest points in pre-requisite abilities to learn something else (EG: to suddenly invoke the Blind Fighting skill, you may also be required to take one of Trained By a Master, Weapon Master, or a shortcut to power style perk before investing in Blind Fighting
• You must have enough points to buy the ability in question when the situation arises. If the time comes when you could demonstrate you already had the advantage Altered Time Rate for example, but you could not afford it at that time, you are still precluded from ever learning it.

House-Ruled Form

This version has magic numbers pulled out of my b*tt for enhancements and costs that just feel right, and changes the advantage to use the appearance rating mechanic. Mechanically speaking, this one is a little bit of a more cost effective option, but still expensive enough to make it a tactical decision when considering taking it or not taking it.

Amnesia 50 points

You have the ability to remember abilities you didn't know you had. The first time a situation arises that would allow you to demonstrate your competence or lack thereof, roll against an appearance rating as described on p.36 of the Basic Set. The default appearance rating is 9, but the cost can be adjusted up or down with a different appearance rating. If you succeed, you may immediately spend as many points as you like on the Advantage, Skill, Technique, or what-have-you as if you always knew it. If you decline the chance or fail the roll, you may at a later time learn the ability in question but only through means available to anyone else.

• A GM may require you to invest points in pre-requisite abilities to learn something else (EG: to suddenly invoke the Blind Fighting skill, you may also be required to take one of Trained By a Master, Weapon Master, or a shortcut to power style perk before investing in Blind Fighting
• You must have enough points to buy the ability in question when the situation arises. If the time comes when you could demonstrate you already had the advantage Altered Time Rate for example, but you could not afford it at that time, you are still precluded from ever learning it.

Special Enhancements

Retries: If for whatever reason in a previous session your chance to recall an ability was exhausted (elected not to try, failed, did not have enough points, etc.) , you may attempt to relearn the ability in a future session. +50%

Other Thoughts and Conclusion

This might well be paired up with the disadvantageous form of Amnesia in the -10 point form as well. Social Stigma for being incompetent at basic things might also be appropriate. Mostly the power of this advantage is a mix of the flexibility of modular abilities with something a little more permanent like unusual background with benefits and drawbacks cherry picked from both. I think I feel satisfied with this price for a cinematic or fantastic style game, but if you can find a way cheaper way to pull off something similar, let me know.