Greetings all. In an Amber campaign I'm playing in my character is heavily influenced by Lugh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh), the Irish deity.
Now most of Lugh's famous magical possessions, his flying bloodthirsty spear or his loyal steed and hound for example, are easy to build with the item creation system in Amber should I decide I want them. But Fragarach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragarach), Lugh's magical sword and my favourite of his possessions, is proving harder to define. For me at least :p
Stuff like cutting through shields and bestowing wounds from which no man can recover are simple enough, put enough points in damage and that's sorted. Giving the bearer command over the winds could be an in-built spell perhaps, or maybe direct shadow manipulation via pattern? I'm not sure
And the one that's got me really stumped, the ability that gives Fragarach its name 'The Answerer', is its ability to force people to tell the truth when the blade is held at their throats. I was thinking perhaps some kind of mental domination effect? But I'm not really sure how to go about it. Is it perhaps too powerful an ability to be costed in the points system? I'm stumped!
Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance for any advice!
- Akatori
P.s. Don't worry, I'm not intending to sink all my points into items in order to 'Be Lugh', this is just for ideas and inspiration :)
Interesting idea. I was toying with the idea of a character who imitates Valkyrie (or the myths are based on her.) Mostly all that is needed for such is a flying mount and maybe a fancy spear and armor. I suppose if one is afraid of falling off the mount (or being shot down) taking Shape Shifting and growing your own wings would suffice.
Anyway, on to your question...
I'm only vaguely aware of the Celtic pantheon and haven't heard of Fragarach before. So this is at best a guess.
My first thought is to use Sensitivity to Danger - 2 Point quality; just call it Sensitivity to Lying, with a very limited range (a couple yards at best) and have Fragarach give some sort of small indication such as a vibration or zap of cold to the hand.
If you want it to force someone to tell the truth: Maybe up it to Extraordinary Psychic Sense - 4 points; same limited range but the wielder can perform a limited Psyche attack/domination with regard to truth telling.
Or you could go the route of having the sword contain a Power Word (Truth!) within it for 1 Point. Or it is capable of Racking a Spell: Force Truth for 1 point.
It would be up to the GM to decide which is preferred or if a third alternative is better.
Doughdee222 made some very good suggestions, and I don't think I can add to them, except to say that I think my favourite of them is the idea of putting a power word of Truth on the sword. The notion of holding your sword to someone's throat and, when you suspect they are lying, calling out "Truth!" is pretty brilliant.
It wouldn't be hard to figure out with your GM.
//Panjumanju
just give it a Psych raiting, after all mind games are a function of Psych, just dominate the Poop out of your target and force them to tell you the truth.
I created the Power of Glamorye to complement a PC who wandered in the Realm of the Fey when he was a child and became sort of Changling. In this campaign, Fey were the precursors to Chaosians who formed the Courts. Among other things, Glamorye includes manipulation of the elements, wind, earth, and water.
Sufficient Psychic force should cover the truth-telling component.
If you want to check out Glamorye, http://www.ravensrook.com/amber/. Next to last in the Powers list.
I've also been working out developing High Compelling into a full stand-alone power, which includes detecting lies/truth and compelling truth. In the context of the campaign, I am also treating High Compelling as a precursor Power, ultimately trying to capture Vialle's powers as depicted in...what was it, The Salesman's Tale?
Quote from: Malleus Aforethought;967605If you want to check out Glamorye, http://www.ravensrook.com/amber/. Next to last in the Powers list.
Just wanted to give you a big thumbs-up for this ... yours is a pretty nifty little Amber page! :)
1) Do you have a cleaned-up Word version of your page, or do I have to go through all of the hyperlinks to read the thing?
2) You have expanded the scales to uber-high levels. Do you actually make use of those? For PC's or just for NPC's?
Quote from: finarvyn;967621Just wanted to give you a big thumbs-up for this ... yours is a pretty nifty little Amber page! :)
1) Do you have a cleaned-up Word version of your page, or do I have to go through all of the hyperlinks to read the thing?
Alas, no. It originated from a set of non-cleaned up Word docs, but I've been editing the HTML pages directly for some time, leading to a high delta between where I started and where I ended up. I'll have to do that at some point, I suppose, but I'll put it off until I've reached a more complete stage of populating all the blank entries. Recently got motivated to start cleaning things up and filling in the blanks that were not needed when the campaign started. Plus finally got me an actual copy of LoGaS and the new supplement which kicked off some new ideas as well.
Quote from: finarvyn;9676212) You have expanded the scales to uber-high levels. Do you actually make use of those? For PC's or just for NPC's?
Not yet. Partly it's the OCD in me. Partly I saw a gap, particularly with Range. And then I need a Time scale for Sorcery that would need a fairly large spectrum. The rest was basically extrapolation where there weren't already some expanded numbers floating around in Shadow Knight and the like. I haven't run any uber-level games, but it should be more or less a sliding scale...with the ability to nuke a planet form orbit...