Items

[Doughdee222]

Here's an issue which is vaguely hinted at in past threads but never directly confronted. Is the artifact/item construction rules broken? Or is it just badly worded and incomplete?

Some seem to say that it is indeed broken. In a new thread, Amber Power Questions, noman says: "While I don't mind, and even encourage, some degree of optimization, it can get out of hand very quickly. The artifact and creation rules already tend to bring out the munchkins in my campaigns."

Artifacts of Amber replies: "Since I rewrote the Conjuration/Item rules for my Artifacts of Amber game at Ambercon (A million years ago) I have been happy with the functionality of that system and has stayed close to the Game books without making it a munchkin fun fest."

If I recall correctly, others have posted similar sentiments.

Just looking at the rules one can see potential for abuse. 2 points for a "Double Damage" weapon. Wow! I wish I could spend two points and double the output of all my characters in every game system! Who wouldn't take one? And another two points will, what? Double damage again? 4 points for an armor that makes one "Invulnerable to all conventional Weapons?" Again, Wow! Give me one! Now I can single-handedly take on Patton's Third Army and win. Reminds me of a quote from a film: "You take the thousand on the left and I'll take the thousand on the right!"
One can be an unstoppable killing machine like the Sunset Warrior. (Has anyone beside me read those?)

I wonder how often an "arms race" has occurred in an Amber campaign as players buy better weapons and armor.

As I mentioned in a past thread I would like to see (in the hypothetical Amber 2E) an expansion and fleshing out of the item creation rules. I wonder at the "appropriate" or "reasonable" cost of various items that provide small powers or advantages. Item of flying, item of water walking or breathing, true sight, invisibility, telekinesis, weather control, weapon of undead slaying, bag of holding, jumping (fight like John Carter of Mars!) etc. etc.

In a past thread someone mentioned wanting to run a campaign based on Saberhagen's Sword books. That's an interesting idea. I'd like to see the stats on those Swords as Amber artifacts.

Then there is the issue of what powers these items. If magic power is strictly localized to a few shadows what keeps an Amber Double Damage Flaming Sword flaming everywhere? Is it created with a small bit of Pattern or Logrus in it? Perhaps a shard of a broken Pattern? Maybe the royal blacksmiths and jewelry masters have some Trump training? Some other source?

Artifacts: perhaps you could post your rewritten item rules. I, at least, would be interested in seeing them and reading what others think.

[Artifacts of Amber]

I just posted all my rules in the other thread. If you want me to knock it down to just cover items/artifacts and therefore conjuration I could.

And yeah Like I said the item rules are fraught with potential for abuse as written not that most GM's can't deal with that. I just don't want to have to fix it meta game wise later rather than up front and sooner.


Thanks

[noman]

Hi Doughdee.

Is the artifact/item construction rules broken? Or is it just badly worded and incomplete?

I don't think any of the rules are broken.  I think they are near-perfect for doing what they were designed to do: create characters and adventures based on the Amber Chronicles.  In other words, running games bases on what Zelazny wrote.  We have good rules based on what we know about the Amber multi-verse.

Where the rules begin to break down (for me) is when I try to use them to cover material not clearly described by Zelazny.  Zelazny left a lot of unanswered questions.  Trying to use the rules to answer those questions has been a continued headache for me.  Abyss powers is my favorite example of this.  The Abyss power example in Amber is...terrible.  The power creation rules are just as bad.  I had to heavily mod the game to make an Abyss power that worked for me, and this led me to modding the rest of the rules, which in turn led me to practically rewriting the character creation rules.

If I've got a group of mature players who have never played Amber before, it's all sunshine and rainbows.  But if I've got a bunch of cynical, cunning, devious Amber vets.  They will come up with a dozen ideas, requests, powers, and items that are not covered in the rules in the first play session.  I've got to come up with crap not covered by the rulebooks.

Min-maxing, powergaming, and munckinism isn't so much as a problem with Amber as it is a problem with the player.  If I've got a man-child at my table who is there to kill orcs, he's going to take one look at the item creation rules and jump for joy.  Items give the players a lot of power.

And I don't mind power.  I like to drown my players with it.  It only becomes a problem when you give power to a rampaging idiot.

Wow! Give me one! Now I can single-handedly take on Patton's Third Army and win.

That was hilarious

As I mentioned in a past thread I would like to see (in the hypothetical Amber 2E) an expansion and fleshing out of the item creation rules. I wonder at the "appropriate" or "reasonable" cost of various items that provide small powers or advantages. Item of flying, item of water walking or breathing, true sight, invisibility, telekinesis, weather control, weapon of undead slaying, bag of holding, jumping (fight like John Carter of Mars!) etc. etc.

Like I said, Amber works well if you stick to swords, trumps, silver scaled gloves, and hellhounds.  It's when you work with ideas that don't show up in the books where things get nutty.

Zelazny mentions dragons in the books.  How the @#&$! do I design a dragon using the Amber rules?

I wonder how often an "arms race" has occurred in an Amber campaign as players buy better weapons and armor.

This was a regular, behind the scenes, element of my last few campaings.  I assume the Elders and Lords of Chaos spend a lot of time on artifact, creature, and constuct R&D.

"Hey Cain!  You smelly fruit!  I've got a Destructive Damage Sword with Conferred Regeration!  What you gonna do now bitch?"

Cain would just laugh and shoot the character with a trump powered enegy pistol that somehow teleports the character into the ocean at crushing depth while leaving all of his clothing, weapons, armor, trumps, etc. behind.

As I mentioned in a past thread I would like to see (in the hypothetical Amber 2E) an expansion and fleshing out of the item creation rules. I wonder at the "appropriate" or "reasonable" cost of various items that provide small powers or advantages. Item of flying, item of water walking or breathing, true sight, invisibility, telekinesis, weather control, weapon of undead slaying, bag of holding, jumping (fight like John Carter of Mars!) etc. etc.

I actually think Pundits LoO did a good job of cleaning up some of the bugs in the original Amber system.  Likewise Lords of Gossamer and Shadow somewhat refines the rules for artifacts.  Neither comes close to the sort of expansion you and I would like to see.  But it's a start.

To be honest, my solution for artifacts (and shadows and allies) was to dump the whole system.  In my last campaign, I used a variant system that pretty much ignores the artifact, shadow, and ally rules.  Qualities and powers were used as reference and example only.  Players were invited to make up their own qualities and powers, describe in detail what they could and couldn't do, and buy them using my system's point cost.  It worked pretty well.  I had a few items that could have easily been made using the old system, but I also had a few that would have been tricky to make the same way.

These were wonderful questions and thoughts Doughde, thanks.

[jibbajibba]

the only problme I have had with the item creation rules is the base object.

So the guiy that says my base objecti s a dragon so I pay no points for that ... etc .. This I STOP

Mundane things are free eveerythign else costs.

the most expensive item a PC ever had cost 54 points The Loom
the most powerful was a deck of spells
Card  - Rack 1 spell  (1 point)
Horde Quatity x3


lots of people have 1 point signature items.

[Panjumanju]

Here's an issue which is vaguely hinted at in past threads but never directly confronted. Is the artifact/item construction rules broken? Or is it just badly worded and incomplete?

I don't think it's broken nor incomplete, but many people like to replace it with their own systems.

Just looking at the rules one can see potential for abuse.

I think you need to look at it from another angle.

One of the great things about Amber is that it presents to the player the bounty of all options of the universe. When they create a character every option is responded to with: "wow, this is amazing! I can do anything!" and everything that happens thereafter in play is showing that player how they can have ultimate power and it still does not ultimately help them as much as they assumed.

Double damage, gee! Yes, well...you have to hit, first. Resistance to conventional weapons, wow! Well, what was conventional in the shadows you know does not apply out here in the shadow beyond, etc.

Each of the artefact creation options present opportunities for the game. Every advantage you can add onto an artefact is just a different colour to the character, and has the potential to add nearly as many problems.

I wonder how often an "arms race" has occurred in an Amber campaign as players buy better weapons and armor.

Very often! That's the point for some players in Amber.

//Panjumanju

[finarvyn]

I dislike the term "broken" because it implies that it can't be played and clearly many of us have played with the item rules as written.

They aren't broken. That doesn't mean that every player likes the way they work, however. Sometimes I tweak the rules just to see what I can do with them, but I do this with pretty much every RPG that I've ever run and ADRP is no different.

Having said that, if anyone has some alternate rules to post for items this would be a great place to put them.

[daniel_ream]

Define what the item is first, then look up how you might want to represent it using the creation system.

Anything that isn't of the Pattern or the Logrus isn't guaranteed to work the way you want it to in every single shadow.  Sure, paying points means your Destructive Damage Conferred Regeneration sword works in any Shadow as long as nobody's trying to stop it from working.  But if you have a reputation for carrying around super-powerful Shadow artifacts, then Caine's just going to make you chase him through Shadows where your sword isn't going to work without you dedicating a lot of attention and focus to keeping it working.  And now it's a contest of Psyche.

The most important thing in ADRPG is the characters and the Ranks.  Everything else is just colour, and maybe an excuse to argue a slight advantage in a contest between Ranks.

[Artifacts of Amber]

Like I said before I felt I had to develop a new artifact system since I was running Artifacts of Amber games at Ambercon years ago and since it was a continuous campaign everyone got advancement points so I was challenged to re interpret the artifact rules without changing them too greatly and expanded on them as well into more tiers.

So here is my attempt at doing that.