Eidetic Sense Memory & 3D Memory, Differences and uses Options

[Buster]

I can't tell the difference between the Eidetic Sense Memory and Three-Dimensional Memory adept powers. ESM says you remember everything from all your senses exactly, if you can see it from your vantage point. 3DM says you remember everything from all your senses exactly, but only if you can see it from your vantage point. Aren't both of those powers exactly the same?

What are some creative uses for each (both) of these powers?

Here's the compiled list of uses (I'll update it after each post):

• If you're a mystic adept with the Flexible Signature metamagic power you can have endless fun framing your enemies.
• You can have the longest and most complicated password ever!
• Remember the exact air-speed velocity of an unladen European swallow.
• Annoy your friends with endless quotes from your favorite movies.
• Disguise yourself as someone with one look and mimic someone after hearing them once (with Con and appropriate technology or magic).
• Copy blueprints, schematics, and documents with just one look (and Artisan skill) without electronic recordings.

[bibliophile20]

Memorize wanted posters, and then start wandering around the city, looking at people's faces.

No modifiers for working from memory.

Combine with Artisan (drawing) and get them into a secured area where even cybereyes aren't allowed and get just one good look at the schematics...

[odinson]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Aaron]

[mfb]

[laughingowl]

To me the big difference.


EDS:
'The adept can recall
these sensory impressions at will, and will remember who or what they have memorized in future encounters."


EDS requires them to have noticed / memorized something. If you want to remember a password, and schematic, etc. Then EDS allows you to study a particular thing and you will never forget it. However, if you break into city hall, find and study the blue prints to Evil Villians Lair #1, and Evil Villans Lair #2 was right next to it, then with EDS you DONT know lair #2 unless you specifcally study it.


3d Memory:
'An adept with Three-Dimensional Memory can use a Complex Action to memorize an area he has viewed firsthand in ultra-clear detail. At a later time, the character may
make a Magic + Perception Test to call up the “stored� memory and walk through the “scene,� exploring it as if he was walking through the location for the first time. The adept may not interact or disturb anything in the recalled scene, he may only review things he actually saw or sensed, even if only incidentally at the time. For instance, the adept cannot review the contents of a drawer unless it was open when the adept memorized the scene.'

Here the adept memorize a 'scene' anything and everything his sense could pick up are included, including things he possibly didnt' study / memorize.

In the above example if you had pulled the plans out and then used 3d memory to study the scene.. you WOULD be able to recall the plans to Lair #2 (presuming there were visible at the time of the study).

EDS: Require you to not spefically I study X. (or otherwise notice something) and keeps you from forgetting. Basically think a Simsen recording of your brain.

3d Memory, teaches you to 'study' everything in an area.


EDS: You go and meet Maria Mecurial and make a passing comment about her perfume. You will never forget what her perfume was. Though unless you 'noted' the colonge her date was wearing you are SOL. (note no 'test' required. If you notice it you 'know' it).

3d Memory: By default in the above you get nothing (didnt take the complex action to record it). However if you say Dang this is going to be the highlight of my life and stop and focus on the scene. Now ANYTHING you coudl have detected at the moment of the complex action to record it you can go back and get.

Maria's perfume ... Maigc+Peception and you recall it.
Her Date's cologne ... Magic + Perception and you recall it.
Think there was a stalker. Picking out and isolating the face of every person in that crowd ... Magic + Perception (minus visiblity modifiers on some) and you can ID every single person at that seen. (where as with EDS: you would have had to study each persons face).

[Talia Invierno]

As a real-life thing, I very much don't have eidetic sense memory -- wish I did -- but I do have something close to 3D memory as the writers described it, if not in as great detail. If I'm trying to remember where something is, I "walk" mentally through the environment. Even if I'm remembering a conversation, I tend to remember it by where I was when a particular thing was said. For whatever reason, I'm not visually oriented at all -- but I'm extremely geographically grounded.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Talia Invierno]

You can't access a memory test if you didn't memory-process the stimulus to begin with: into short-term memory and then into long-term. Rules-wise, if the players didn't look to spot something in an environment initially, they won't have mentally processed what they'd seen to memorise it. Your senses filtre out far more than they retain, and thus the sensed thing cannot enter memory. (Call it the "hiding in plain sight" syndrome.)

But with 3D memory, you're mentally re-entering the environment, literally experiencing the sensory input for a second time -- and this time you'll be filtring differently.

Edit: hmm, not unlike the hypnotic trance which tries to retrieve memories by "placing" you into a previous part of your life.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

In fact, they do... it just a high threshold (3 or 4...). (Lowered by 1 for having eidetic memory quality)

[Talia Invierno]

Sorry -- they do what?

[laughingowl]

Rotbart:

Correct Memory (Logic+Will) provides a method to see if you can recall something, however, this has nothing to do with EDS. (well perhaps only slightly).

EDS does not require a test.

[mfb]

the problem is that while there are differences, they are very subtle, and poorly represented in the game mechanics. in any situation where memory is involved, both powers could conceivably invoked.

[Talia Invierno]

But the differences aren't subtle at all -- until they're rules-abstracted. You might as well say that the difference between a knife and an extendable baton is subtle, because there is no game mechanic difference between them.

[mfb]

there are huge differences. they use different specializations, they deal different types of damage, they do different amounts of damage, one has reach, they interact with armor differently, and so on. and while overlap is okay in of gear, it's less okay in magic and especially in adept powers, because adepts get so few powers.

[laughingowl]

To me they arent subtely different. They are different, even rules wise.

EDS: If you memorized something you recall it at will. No roll, no test, you remember it.

The only question would be 'did you memorize it.' No test not necessarily even a action (probaly count it is a free action). If there is any in game indication you would have memorized it. (retold the password, used it once, etc), then you know it dont ever have to worrry about forgetting it.

The point is it has to have made the process of sensory perceptor, into brain's short term memory, and then flagged for long term archival.


Know it COULD work with the rules for a memory test. If you didnt note something, but semi-noted it. Hey somebody pushed us out of the way going into that stuffer shack and now my comlink is gone. What did that guy look like. Well you certainly hadnt 'memorized' at the scene. however, the memory rules allow you a chance to recall it. IF you do recall it then it clearly is in long term and from there on out EDS allows you to recall it at will (no test needed). (the 'memory test' is to see if you actually noted the details... NOT if you remember the details since with EDS you DO remember).


Now 3d Memory is different.

In the case with the pickpocket above it wouldnt help one iota. Since you didnt use a complex action to 'record the scene'.

However if we re-write it slightly to:

As you are standing in the crowds to see Maria Mecurial, just as Maria Steps out of the car. (I uses 3d memory and each turn record her walk to where she goes out of sight).

Later as you and your team are back home, you hear Bob bitching that somebody nipped his comlink while you were all gawking Maria.

Here the EDS Adept could TRY to recall anybody near Bob Though this is likely going to be a threshold 3 or 4, and likely a die pool penalty for visibilty modifers. IF he manges to recall a glimpse he will know it for ever though.

However the advantage goes to the 3d Memory adept here. Here a simple Magic+Perception allows him to recall the scene. Even things he didnt conciously note (as long as he could have actually noted them). Here the Adept can study and re-study the scene until he gets the best he could on identifying who was near Bob. While he couldnt 'push' the hat out of the way, he could study the scene (make a perception roll) to see who pick pocketed bob, as many times as he wants until he gets the most details. (to me an extended perception test, with a cap eual to what the meximum he would have had during the 'recording') (I.E. he couldnt 'see' anything he couldnt have possibly percieved at the time of the recording, but exactly everything he COULD have percieved would be there. It might take him a while to walk through the scene and get all the detail, but it is there).


Now the 'game' problem with both of these powers is technically you would need to record note: everything ever memorized! (for EDS) and slightly less troublesome but also for 3d Memory (and when since time is important on 3d Memory).

Now it really gets problematic if you combine the two... Especially since logic (imo) if not game rules directly would then make the 'time' penalty on 3d Memory be irrelevant, since EDS would allow a perfect recall of the recorded scene.

3d Memory and EDS combined equal the perfect 'witness', if they bother to 'record' a scene, any detail at all in that scene is recorded for ever in their mind.

[mfb]

all that basically means is that ESM is more useful that 3dM. with ESM, you remember stuff. with 3dM, you remember stuff if you spent a complex action to remember it.

[Buster]

With that explanation doesn't 3DM give you everything that ESM gives you but in faster time? If ESM is "I memorize this page I'm looking at" and 3DM is "I memorize everything in the room all at once", you would never take ESM and would always take 3DM.

If ESM is "I memorize what I'm looking at, at will", then ESM would always be better than 3DM because ESM let's you memorize everything you can see in a scene but takes a free action instead of a complex action.

[Talia Invierno]

[mfb]

at the time, no. now, with the rulebook in front of me: different reach, different conceal ratings, different skills. even if there were no differences at all, my point would still stand. overlaps in gear are fine--gear is a dime a dozen, largely a matter of personal preference. adept powers are big, character-defining things. overlap there is a) space that could be spent on other adept powers, and b) cheapening the choices of adepts who take one or the other--or, worst of all, both.

[Talia Invierno]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

In both cases, the adept is limited to what he could possibly have seen.

The only difference is what you roll to find out... and perhaps the ability of an adept to navigate a room in full darkness if he has seen it before.

[Talia Invierno]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

That was concerning the 'detail' angle you were so fond of.
Eidetic Memory has no drawback concerning details, so they are on part on that account.

Of course TDM is utterly useless and superseeded be EM, as TDM really only offers visual memory and has more limitations.