Attribute ranks are a flawed concept?

[scottishstorm]

What is the basis of attribute ranks, anyway?  The rank system certainly isn't absolute.  Elders can, and often will, have higher numbers in stats than player-characters, as is only natural.  So, are ranks generational? (ie: "Of the grandchildren of Oberon, Fred has the highest warfare.").

Hmm.   No, this can't be it; especially if the game mixes character types other than those strictly Amberites.  Like, how does a Chaosian fit into the generational roster to compare to the PCs (and presumably his own Chaos lineage as well)?  Short answer: he doesn't.

Also, if attribute ranks were somehow generational, then Oberon couldn't have a stat higher than Dworkin and none of Oberon's brats could have any stat higher than Obbie.  Obviously, this idea's no fun for anyone.

So, what then, do ranks mean (apart an artificial cockblock, that is)?

[Ivanhoe]

Ranks are a scale. Put all your Amberites (elder NPCs and PCs alike) on it and knowth where thy are. When your Random Chaosian Lord arrives, he will be between two ranks, like 7.5th. If your character is 10th, the difference is three ranks. If the Chaosian Lord comes with his cousin that has the same attribute, they still both are 7.5th rank and three ranks from you.

Anyway, I observed that two situation sumed up all possibilities pretty well : higher rank and lower rank. The price of a rank is so subjective anyway that it is usually enough. Will a clever trap offset a rank difference ? Usually yes, but no trap is perfect and an Amber player or NPC usually has a few tricks in his/her sleeve to prevent slippery situations. ("You never told me your sword could shapeshift !")

[jibbajibba]

Ranks are an interesting game concept. They ariase as a result of an Amber 'trope' which is to say Corwin is uber competative and so compares his warfare to his brothers quite vocally.
The result of this ands ranks are only refered to in reference to warfare, Corwin says Gerard's Strength is legendary but never ranks the others on that scale.

So you get ranks. Now part of the process behind ranks is great and that is the auction. The atrribute auction is genius but I don't think you need to tie it to ranks so explicitly. I can see the reasoning which is that if you use an auction then you either stop players from buying attributes outside the auction or you need a mechanic to prevent player a from spending 50 openly in the auction and player B spending 51 points secretly. The rank structure and ther rules about it fix that issue but in my opinion at he expense of other things mostly flexibility and emulation.

Reasons why ranks are broken include -
i) Player A is first to bid on warfare he bids 90 of his 100 points. This effectively locks out warfare and it does it not only for the aution but in effect for the rest of the game. To be not quite as good as player A you have to spend 90 points. You can do this in the auction but ... and you can do it through experience but ...
ii) Experience linking ranks to costed steps means that PCs can not gradually improve they can only improve in jumps relative to others. If the gap between you and the next rank is 12 points you need to earn 12 points of xp and spend it all to be not quite as good. You can't spend 3 points working on your footwork and then next time add another 3 so you have reduced the gap by slowly getting better you have to make the quantum leap.
iii) Surpassing Rank 1. As I noted elsewhere surpassing rank 1 is very hard even if the inital difference between the two of you is slight. This means a PC that adventures less and achives less can stay rank 1 provided they spend what little xp they earn on their rank 1 stat. A PC that does lots and learns many many things getting lots of XP and works on that attiribute can still not surpass the rank 1.
iv) Its hard to assess multiple opponents. Can Rank 1 beat rank 2 and 3 working together in a psychic battle. Most GMs decide this based on points. If rank 1 has 30 points and rank 2 28 and rank 3 25 then generally most GMS say Rank 1 can be defeated but what if Rank 1 had 80 points? In rules terms the situations are identical but ... If you look back to example i above the importance of ranks over points can ease that issue as Amber is just 1 rank below 1st (it still doesn't fix the fact that all other players have identical warfare of course ) .
v) its hard to assess the effects of powers against attributes. Can a magic bolt knock over the guy with Rank 1 strength. Does it depend on the Psyche of the caster? On their rank? What if Psyche rank 1 is 70 points and Strength rank 1 is 4? What about if the magic bolt is powered by Pattern? How many points of Shapeshift does it take to increase your power to the point where you can overcome rank 3 in Strength?

For all these reasons I use points. I use the auction (although in PBEM I am not entirely happy with how that works out and need to tweak it) and I keep ranks in mind but I try to say well 30 points of Strength is equivalent to 30 points of Endurance in game effect and I think a fight between a 34 point warrior and a 35 point warrior is far closer than one between 20 and A even if he rank steps are the same.
All the prep round Chaosites, elders, demons, denizens of shadow goes away no multiple lists of alternate ranks all inter leaved.

[scottishstorm]

I was playing devil's advocate there for a bit.  The auction is genius and one of my favourite parts of a well-run game.  But, I do think it's safe to say that ranks are artificial and something of an intentional "cock block" woven into the system.

IMO, the best and easiest way to deal with ranks is to only count rank 1, and treat it as a cap on that attribute for the campaign (with sneaky ways of overtaking it, as have been discussed before) rather than give the ranks themselves some semi-mystical 'better than you' quality beyond the points spent.  In effect, after the auction, only rank 1 matters as a rank.

[Corambis]

I've also been somewhat frustrated with the ranking system at times, for many of the reasons already given.  Part of it also ties into the lack of randomness in the game itself; the higher ranked player is always going to win, unless the other player cheats somehow, whereas in reality there's always going to be the chance the lower-ranked guy gets lucky.  It also seems that in the campaign, the two most important people become the people with the highest ranked Psyche and Warfare, and everyone else becomes second-class citizens.

[Gothic_Pepsi]

Hmm all the gms and games i have gmed myself have allways ignored the attribute action, so everyone has secret ranks, it makes it more realistic rather then saying, hang on player B has high Warfare, where as Player C has rank 1 psyche, i wont ever try and backstab these people etc and changes gameplay a little, where as in secret its, whats player B good at, hmm i have an above average rank in warfare, im going to try and fight him so i can get that magic weapon that he has been looking for or so he doesnt find out my plans to ruin amber etc. i have allways prefered it this way and it makes it more fair, as Corambis says it means rank 1 will allways win if its fair, meaning why even bother trying to be an amberite. i know this thinking is flawed but i prefer sneaking about like a real amberite

[Ivanhoe]

It also seems that in the campaign, the two most important people become the people with the highest ranked Psyche and Warfare, and everyone else becomes second-class citizens.

The two most important people in my campaign :
- Eric's son, considering himself as the rightful heir of the throne. A rather weak character with no real strong point beside his talkative attitude. Wielder of Eric's silver saber (which is a fairly unimpressive item) he managed to make other PCs make the assumption it was maybe a pattern sword.

- Bley's son. Decent warfare but not #1. Raised in a Dune-like setting, he was planted ther by his father in order to raise a big loyal and fanatic army, to be used against Chaos. At first. Despite having no first rank, his clever use of decoys (he despises honors and like to dress up as one of his officiers' aid), captured chaosian trumps and loyal closed-guard, he definitely acquired a nod from the elders and the other players.

I consider the #1 Warfare player would not dare attack the first one and she would not succeed at hurting the second one. The #1 Psyche player could probably get the first one but is still weird out by the "God" status that the second one titles himself with (which is little more than Pattern powers and little trump tricks cleverly used).

I would say that the main edge the #1 warfare player has in my campaign is her parentage, not her attribute. Daughter of Corwin and of a queen of a Golden Circle realm, that gives her two trustworthy haven : a powerful one and one close to Amber.

The main edge of my #1 psyche character is being the head of Amber's secret police. While of no use to spy on elders and PCs, nothing happens in Amber city without his knowledge.

I think that most of the main gameplay in ADRPG happens before a fight occurs. Then a #1 rank helps, but there are more potent advantages.

[jibbajibba]

The two most important people in my campaign :
- Eric's son, considering himself as the rightful heir of the throne. A rather weak character with no real strong point beside his talkative attitude. Wielder of Eric's silver saber (which is a fairly unimpressive item) he managed to make other PCs make the assumption it was maybe a pattern sword.

- Bley's son. Decent warfare but not #1. Raised in a Dune-like setting, he was planted ther by his father in order to raise a big loyal and fanatic army, to be used against Chaos. At first. Despite having no first rank, his clever use of decoys (he despises honors and like to dress up as one of his officiers' aid), captured chaosian trumps and loyal closed-guard, he definitely acquired a nod from the elders and the other players.

I consider the #1 Warfare player would not dare attack the first one and she would not succeed at hurting the second one. The #1 Psyche player could probably get the first one but is still weird out by the "God" status that the second one titles himself with (which is little more than Pattern powers and little trump tricks cleverly used).

I would say that the main edge the #1 warfare player has in my campaign is her parentage, not her attribute. Daughter of Corwin and of a queen of a Golden Circle realm, that gives her two trustworthy haven : a powerful one and one close to Amber.

The main edge of my #1 psyche character is being the head of Amber's secret police. While of no use to spy on elders and PCs, nothing happens in Amber city without his knowledge.

I think that most of the main gameplay in ADRPG happens before a fight occurs. Then a #1 rank helps, but there are more potent advantages.

In my games fights between PCs are incredibly rare. Why fight someone when there are so many other options?
Why can't your secret police man spy on elders and other PCs? They need to work on that network !

[Ivanhoe]

In my games fights between PCs are incredibly rare. Why fight someone when there are so many other options?

Precisely. I just evoked an hypothetical situation. We were playing during the Patternfall war and I made it clear the end would not obey to canon but depend on players' actions. In such a situation, they know that infightings would not be tolerated. It is more a matter of getting into each other secrets and to understand what the balances of power are. Does his son really support Bley's plans ? Does her daughter really have contact with Merlin and Corwin ? Does Eric's son really take lessons from Dworkin ? Without answering these questions it would be a bit silly and risky to fight anyone.

Why can't your secret police man spy on elders and other PCs? They need to work on that network !

True that :-) But he got what he could have with the points he spent on them.

[Trevelyan]

Reasons why ranks are broken include -
i) Player A is first to bid on warfare he bids 90 of his 100 points. This effectively locks out warfare and it does it not only for the aution but in effect for the rest of the game. To be not quite as good as player A you have to spend 90 points. You can do this in the auction but ... and you can do it through experience but ...

I agree with your other issues, and to an extent with this one two, but I think part of the appeal of ranks is that they discourage the "90 point opening bid" appraoch to the auctions.

Imagine, as you suggest that one player jumps in with an opening bid in warfare of 90 points. Let's assume that the second best bid is a much more reasonable 15 points, and that the rational second place chap has no intention of bidding 91 points to kee the auction live. Under a strict point based approach, that 90 point bid is not only unassailable, it is also six times as good as the second place warfare score.

Under the ranking system, while the character will remain the best at warfare in his generation, aside from ensureing that he stays top, the player is no better off with 1st place at a cost of 90 points than he would be with 1st place at a cost of 16 points since rank takes no account of the points spent. The ranking system then makes large opening bids less beneficial than they might otherwise be under a point based approach.

Largely immutable ranks among a given generation are also in theme with the books. Everyone knows that Gerard is the strongest and Benedict the best with a sword. No one secretly plots to develop their strength or skill in the hope of overtaking them. Even lower down the scale, aside form the Corwin/Eric conflicts (clearly a case of one Corwin buying up to 0.5 below Eric and relying on his greater Endurance) there is no attempt Made by Amberites to shake up the status quo when it comes to recognised aptitudes. Whether that is ultimately a good thing for an RPG is another matter, but unassailable ranks are a part of the setting.

When I run Amber I have a somewhat convoluted set of house rules for chargen so neither ranks nor points are central, but some combination of the two works well (I also futxz with point costs for powers). However, if points are flexible and can be spent in any amount without needing to be tied to an auction rank amount, but the points themselves only serve to rank a character and not to indicate relative ability outside of that ranking scale (i.e. 90 vs 15 is no better than 20 vs 15 if 15 is 2nd rank and both 9 and 20 would be 1st rank) then it all holds together somewhat better.

[jibbajibba]

I agree with your other issues, and to an extent with this one two, but I think part of the appeal of ranks is that they discourage the "90 point opening bid" appraoch to the auctions.

Imagine, as you suggest that one player jumps in with an opening bid in warfare of 90 points. Let's assume that the second best bid is a much more reasonable 15 points, and that the rational second place chap has no intention of bidding 91 points to kee the auction live. Under a strict point based approach, that 90 point bid is not only unassailable, it is also six times as good as the second place warfare score.

Under the ranking system, while the character will remain the best at warfare in his generation, aside from ensureing that he stays top, the player is no better off with 1st place at a cost of 90 points than he would be with 1st place at a cost of 16 points since rank takes no account of the points spent. The ranking system then makes large opening bids less beneficial than they might otherwise be under a point based approach.

Largely immutable ranks among a given generation are also in theme with the books. Everyone knows that Gerard is the strongest and Benedict the best with a sword. No one secretly plots to develop their strength or skill in the hope of overtaking them. Even lower down the scale, aside form the Corwin/Eric conflicts (clearly a case of one Corwin buying up to 0.5 below Eric and relying on his greater Endurance) there is no attempt Made by Amberites to shake up the status quo when it comes to recognised aptitudes. Whether that is ultimately a good thing for an RPG is another matter, but unassailable ranks are a part of the setting.

When I run Amber I have a somewhat convoluted set of house rules for chargen so neither ranks nor points are central, but some combination of the two works well (I also futxz with point costs for powers). However, if points are flexible and can be spent in any amount without needing to be tied to an auction rank amount, but the points themselves only serve to rank a character and not to indicate relative ability outside of that ranking scale (i.e. 90 vs 15 is no better than 20 vs 15 if 15 is 2nd rank and both 9 and 20 would be 1st rank) then it all holds together somewhat better.

No there is no second bid. The first guy buids 90 points. that's it done. Everyone else is at Amber rank. You can change the rules and allow a set of ranks beneath 1st and assign points to them but as the rules stand there are now 4 possible scores in Warfare for PCs . Human, Chaos, Amber and 90 points (which is Rank 1.5 for everyone else and 1 for the first bidder). If no one sells warfare every fight between every other PC will come down to non core state resolution, ie can they switch to strength or endurance or pull a trick.
As noted in the Amber Tropes thread I think that the attribute rank system has been created to fit Benedict and Gerrard, but they are just 2 possible PCs in a plethora of possible characters. The test of a truely great system isn't just can it enulate the specifc example but can it cope with a vast range of examples. You can imagime Amber with Benedict replaced with a pair of twins one good one evil who constantly duel with each gaining the upper hand at a point in time (like the Duelists movie). But that option is very hard to emulate as written.
As for the the points versus ranks discussion I discussed that futher doen my post (there are some advantages to a 90 versus 10 point split beign the same as a 23 vrs 20 point split)

[Trevelyan]

No there is no second bid. The first guy buids 90 points. that's it done. Everyone else is at Amber rank.

The point still stands. If one player starts with a bid of 90 points and no one else even made an opening bid then we must assume that no one else was particularly interested in that attribute, in which case the 90 point bid players has just spent considerably more points that necessary to secure 1st rank. 90 points for 1st rank when everyone else is at Amber is no better than 5 points for first rank, in terms of ability, when everyone else is at Amber. Yes the other players are frozen out of the auction process with a 90 point bid, but that's an issue with the auction process, not with the ranking system itself.

[jibbajibba]

The point still stands. If one player starts with a bid of 90 points and no one else even made an opening bid then we must assume that no one else was particularly interested in that attribute, in which case the 90 point bid players has just spent considerably more points that necessary to secure 1st rank. 90 points for 1st rank when everyone else is at Amber is no better than 5 points for first rank, in terms of ability, when everyone else is at Amber. Yes the other players are frozen out of the auction process with a 90 point bid, but that's an issue with the auction process, not with the ranking system itself.

I agree with that to an extent (see my complete post on the issues) but a rank of jump of 90 points in effect breaks the game.
No player can  (in effect) increase their warfare from its starting level because experience is tied to ranks. The question of multiple opponents becomes very problematic how many Amber ranked guys to beat a rank 1? In fact in the rules a ranked character has more than Amber level so the difference between Amber and rank 1 is far greaterthan Rank 1 to rank 2 - you could of course tweak this.

I am not saying the rank concept is totally flawed I am saying it can be fixed but the easiest way to fix it is just to use raw points.

[Drascus]

The problem with points is that it still doesn't stop someone from bidding 90 or 100 points.  I have a player who flat out told me he was going to bid 100 points if anyone contested him on a particular attribute.  It was going to go something like...

Auction Breaking Player:  20 points in Warfare
Some other Player:  21 points!

ABP: 100 points.  Auction over.


So we didn't have an attribute auction for that game.  

The auction is a very cool concept, but you have to have people who are trying to make it work to run one, because someone who is willing to ruin the auction in order to 'win' can very easily do so.



When we do go with an auction, I still go point-based.  And the scale of those points depends a lot on the initial bid.  Warfare is usually a pretty expensive attribute, Strength is usually pretty cheap.  Which gives Gerard a lot more points to spend on stuff than Benedict, and same for the players.  Anyone with a Strength character ironically has more points to spend on powers and items than the Warfare people, usually.

That's not a completely hard and fast rule.  If the only bid for strength is 1 point, I'm not making that measly point the top of the generation.  Martin or Merlin or some other child of another Amberite will have more points in strength than that.  But it becomes a general guideline.

[jibbajibba]

The problem with points is that it still doesn't stop someone from bidding 90 or 100 points.  I have a player who flat out told me he was going to bid 100 points if anyone contested him on a particular attribute.  It was going to go something like...

Auction Breaking Player:  20 points in Warfare
Some other Player:  21 points!

ABP: 100 points.  Auction over.


So we didn't have an attribute auction for that game.  

The auction is a very cool concept, but you have to have people who are trying to make it work to run one, because someone who is willing to ruin the auction in order to 'win' can very easily do so.



When we do go with an auction, I still go point-based.  And the scale of those points depends a lot on the initial bid.  Warfare is usually a pretty expensive attribute, Strength is usually pretty cheap.  Which gives Gerard a lot more points to spend on stuff than Benedict, and same for the players.  Anyone with a Strength character ironically has more points to spend on powers and items than the Warfare people, usually.

That's not a completely hard and fast rule.  If the only bid for strength is 1 point, I'm not making that measly point the top of the generation.  Martin or Merlin or some other child of another Amberite will have more points in strength than that.  But it becomes a general guideline.

I think i have 'fixed' the auction for face to face but its too slow for an Email game.
Basically you have a set ante and the most a player can bid at a point is the ante. So Say the ante for Warfare was 10 points. The most you can raise the bid by is 10 points. So .. player 1 bids 10 player 2, 20, player 3 , 27, player 4, 28, player 1 again 38 etc ... Prevents the big jump in.
Also I put the NPCs (of the same generation) in the auction as well. So I can control the auction to some extent.

So you can keep the aution which is great , although you can still move away from ranks.