In my last Amber campaign, I put together an innovation that at the time I thought was very risky.
In it, I decided that anyone who wanted to could gain a new power, without spending points, if they could either get access to it, or find someone to teach it to them.
In other words, the only thing they needed to do to gain Pattern was to walk the pattern and survive. Or, if they wanted trump, all they had to do was learn it from someone and spend the necessary time doing so.
Otherwise, they could still spend points to get any of the basic powers, and doing so meant they didn't need a tutor. Advanced powers could still only be learnt by point expenditure, and of course you already had to have the basic power first.
I thought this "risky" at the time because I was worried this could lead to massive power escalation. But it didn't.
My players learned very quickly that getting a power "for free" from someone else often had a much bigger in-game cost, that you usually had to pay for in the form of favours or alliance, or generally becoming your teacher's bitch.
In a standard (high-competition) game, this option ended up working great, as it added a new dimension to the game.
Has anyone else tried doing this? Was it as successful as it was in my campaign?
Has anyone else done anything else as a way to gain new powers besides the standard method?
RPGpundit