Class Feature Friday: Memory Weaver (Operative Specialization)
(art by AdrianMarkGillespie on DeviantArt)
Continuing our focus on sneaky characters in Starfinder, we end off this week with another specialization for the operative class!
By their very nature, operatives are skilled at passing without a trace. Some do so with stealth, others with disguise. Some are hackers that infiltrate computer systems and do their best to not be detected, and others are survivalists that pass through the wilds like a shadow.
Some, however, are invisible not because people fail to see them, but because they make sure that others pay them no heed, by magical means if necessary.
Indeed, today’s subject, the memory weaver, lives up to their name by investing in minor psychic magics, allowing them to twist how others perceive them and even alter their memories.
Depending on the mission and their disposition, these operatives might be living cryptids, slipping into people’s lives to do their thing and then leaving behind only things that don’t add up when you look to closely. Or they might target an individual and twist them with their memory-altering powers in a most sinister and insidious way. Definitely ranging the full moral spectrum here.
So let’s see what they add to the operative arsenal!
Firstly, these operatives can set up trick attacks with sense motive as they read their target’s movements, but they can also use bluff with greater skill to do the same, flavored as them subtly messing with their target’s perceptions with figments and revised recollections to create openings.
They also gain an exploit that reaches into the psyche of an attacker, causing them to briefly view the memory weaver as someone they care about, either flinching and missing entirely, and prone to hesitating afterwards, or at the very least shaken by the vision.
Those that master this path learn how to modify entire minutes of their target’s memory, giving them a false impression of recent events in whatever way the sneak desires, though it can be broken with enough evidence of the discrepancy.
A fairly simple option, this specialization has a lot of potential, especially at higher levels, to manipulate things in the party’s favor if used right. That being said, I would recommend taking feats that grant minor spellcasting so you can get some lovely enchantment spells early on so that you actually feel like you’re a perception-altering mastermind long before you get to level eleven.
Memories are the cornerstone of identity. Without them we are a blank slate. Removing or erasing them is more or less a soft form of murder or at least mutilation. With that in mind, how your character feels about their powers can inform a lot about who they are. Do they do so seemingly casually? Do they grimly recognize the consequence of what they sometimes have to do?
Hidden behind cover identities, hacked accounts and credentials, and a knack for memetic magic, Minix is a ghost, setting up shop in different locales with a comfortable, wealthy life, often with a job that mostly requires memorization and people skills to get by. However, the temptation to actually use their real skills always arises, causing them to post themselves for hire in clandestine work. More than once, they’ve had to flee an identity because of this, and the ysoki simply sets up shop elsewhere with a new name and job.
While investigating a bombing, the party finds footage of emergency workers helping an unknown figure out of the rubble and into the ambulance. However, interviews turn up nothing. No description of age, species, gender, or appearance, and their responses to questions are vague and eerily similar, almost robotic, as if read from a script.
Ever since the day that the chancellor was assassinated, his former head of security has been obsessed with finding the slayer, even quitting the bodyguard life to become a private investigator. For him, this is not just about getting closure for the one he couldn’t protect, but also to settle the score against the one that twisted his own thoughts to slip past and do the deed.
