Other Attributes?

[AshenHaze]

I'm wondering what other Attributes (If any) people have considered using in their games?  I feel like the four attributes do an excellent job modeling the princes of Amber, but I'm on my third Amber game and am curious as to if anyone has added additional things to add a bit more.. options.  I'm currently considering some sort of cunning stat, which would be a guile/politics stat to possibly give to allow characters to be different than combat or psyche.  I'm interested in hearing peoples thoughts on this sort of thing?

[Lorrraine]

I don't like stats based on Intelligence, Guile, or Charisma because I think that player ability handles these things much more effectively than any stat.

I have used a couple variant stats in my current Amber game set in the courts of Chaos.

I combined Strength and Endurance into a single stat: Physique.

I added Status as a stat. Status represents where the character fits in the highly stratified social structure of Chaos. A character can use it to requisition house resources, get access to important Chaosians, order lower Status NPCs around, figure out unfamiliar hierarchies, and generally take advantage of the privileges of Rank. It explicitly does not represent any kind of intelligence, charisma, or guile.

I renamed Psyche as Will, and Warfare as Combat, but I didn't change either very much.

[AshenHaze]

I know what you mean by avoiding socialish stats but several of my players are the sort who want warfare to power basically every action they take.  Tricky lock?  Well my warfare should handle that.  I'm also looking for some way to add variety to some of the non martial characters, (such as Floramelle and Llewella) rather than just making them psyche chars.

[Croaker]

If I'd use such a stat, I'd make it an intelligence stat, in the "spying" sense of intelligence.
Or an "organisation" stat.

That is, I'd make it the ability to organise efficiently structures, and make them immune to outer disruption.
This could thus be used to organise armies and put up battle plans (making your army more immune to disruption by outside armies), and also the ability to create efficient spies network, as well as to detect them.


Mostly, the "strategy" part of warfare, then.

This could also be used in a general sense to determine your ability in general politics, playing this like battles. Like "I'll offer that faction a fiscal advantage if they'll support my motion to blockade wine exportation". Depending on my opponent's strategies, I might have to settle for reduced wine quotas.

[Darin]

I think that a stealth or guile stat would work. I also dislike lock-picking and stealth running off of warfare. Predicting or setting up an ambush? Definitely. But stealing something? No.

That being said, I dislike a charisma-based stat. Perhaps status, instead, but I don't think that a stat should replace player input.

[AshenHaze]

If I'd use such a stat, I'd make it an intelligence stat, in the "spying" sense of intelligence.
Or an "organisation" stat.

An espionage type stat.  That is what I'm looking for =)  I think that would offer a satisfying alternative.

[Lorrraine]

I posted the following elsewhere, but it seems to relate to this conversation.

Guile without a Stat

Most characters in ADRPG have secrets. Apparently some GMs use Warfare or Psyche to determine the ability to keep or uncover those secrets. I think that the rules as written support a better way to handle this.

As a default, all secrets start out as secret and known only to their creator. The creator may of course choose to share their secret at any time including before the start of play. The GM makes this decision for NPCs. The creator of a secret determines the five W's and one H for the secret. Who knows the secret initially? What is the secret? Where did the secret happen? When did the secret happen? Why is this secret? How is the secret protected? If the secret belongs to a player they need to communicate this info to the GM.

The GM then considers who among the NPCs or PCs might discover the secret. This means paying attention to whether any NPCs privy to the secret will share it, whether any NPCs have agents or a personal presence at the appropriate place and time, and whether any NPCs have the ability to detect the effects of the secret? Only the last uses powers or stats.

If someone has the ability to discover a secret see if any precautions will deter them, distract them, or otherwise dissuade them. Poorly thought out precautions may very well attract attention that the secret itself will not.

If a PC has had the chance to discover a secret consider playing out the back-story particularly if it seems like a near thing either way especially if they might have discovered another PC's secret. Likewise if an NPC has an opportunity to have discovered a PC's secret playing out the back-story gives the PC a chance to intervene. If you don't choose to play out the potential discover err in favor of keeping the secret safe. Whether or not an NPC knows another NPC's secret can safely become an issue of GM fiat.

Also consider how much effort a particular character spends on learning secrets. Give Caine a hint of your secret and he will follow it to the ends of the Universe. Brand will seek out any possible source of Arcane Power relentlessly. Benedict will defend military secrets forcefully. Flora will seek out Court gossip like one of her wolfhounds on a trail. Corwin and Eric will both seek out anything that might give some advantage over the other.

Good stuff or bad stuff will not reveal a secret directly, but may tip the odds of discovery a bit. Warfare and Psyche may aid in actually following a trail or creating effective precautions. They don't provide a magical reveal or conceal all secrets ability.

Once in play only allow new attempts to discover a secret if it gets hinted at by someone who knows it, demonstrated in an insecure setting, or if someone with the ability to discover it enters the location of the secret. Barring those three possibilities a secret can remain secret for a long time.

Secrets with cross shadow effects, which happen in someone else's personal shadow or controlled demesne, or which get demonstrated in play will seldom last very long. Secrets which take place in one's own personal shadow, which involve only two trustworthy individuals, or which don't get demonstrated to any potential witnesses can last a long time.

As a final note, if I ever play in a game of ADRPG with any of you, please know that my character has no secrets worth mentioning, has no interest in your secrets unless you choose to share them, and you can definitely trust her like a sister.

[RPGPundit]

I could see Status as a stat for games that were in certain settings where social classes were very byzantine and complex and where that would matter a lot; but purely as a kind of "resource/access" stat.  Everything else mentioned here I would despise.

RPGPundit

[jibbajibba]

I use a simple  skill system to resolve the stuff like lockpicking or espionage etc

I added a skill system to Amber because the default model just didn't jibe with me. I didn't like the Amberites have all the time they need so can learn whatever they like approach. Yes it was easy but I just felt it lacked something. I first took the option of having players lay out the various careers they had been in. Pirate , 50 years, Texas ranger 30 years etc... then any skill that could reasonably come up in their history they could do. However, there is a deal of competition in Amber and I like to foster this I don't like to foster it by comparing attributes to me that seems gauche. In the books there are plenty examples of competition over seeming trifles that become major issues. The fact that Corwin beat Julian at his favourite game helps forge their relationship. Then there is Jopin. Jopin was what swung it for me. A gnarled old Lighthouse keeper, obviously more than he seemed and a  master at chess. In the core ADRPG this would be impossible. Chess as a game of strategy would be extrapolated directly from Warfare. Was Jopin secretly a great general? Could he best Caine in a duel? Very unlikely.  So I decided to introduce a skill system to cover these points that I felt left the game lacking.
The skill system in actual use is very very simple. You have a score in a skill if its higher than the difficulty of the task you succeed. There are no dice rolls no modifiers. It gets more interesting , like all thing Amberish, when you start to compare skills with other Amberites. So doing a portrait of Lady Vivien is simple enough if you have any painting skill you can do it. However doing a painting of Lady Vivien that can compare to the one done by Ignatius with the way he catches her hair and the way you can almost feel the scent of the honeysuckle at the window now that takes skill. Without skills this would be almost impossible to do. The highest Psyche? The guy that is a trump artist? Its very difficult to decide these sorts of things. Who writes the most elegant Hiku? Who dances the best who sings well all these things. Now initially I tried to keep the numbers small but the chess thing meant I wanted to end up with a score you could add to your warfare to get your overall skill so the system we have in which –
10 points = Competant – Could change the spark plugs on a Dodge pickup
20 points = Skilled – Could make a nice coffee table
30 points = Professional – wouldn't look out of place in ER on a busy Saturday night
40 points = Expert – Could play violin for the London Symphony Orchestra
50 points = Genius – nice ceiling Michelangelo but I did ask for something simple in Magnolia, it's a rental you see...

There is no limit to how high up the stack you can go. You want 123 in sculpture then go ahead. As you can see most mundane tasks are going to have a required  skill level of 15 – 25 points. It's only in the comparisons that we start to worry about detail. So if Royce has captured a shadow being and wants to get some information out of them we might compare his interrogation against a number the GM has set for their religious fanaticism (say 45 as they are totally off their tree nuts) . To pick a standard lock might need 15 Lockpick but a lock designed by the great artificer Vincent himself would have a score equal to his locksmithing score say 40.
The next issue was a skill list. There are so many skills I avoided any list. With lists you also get that thing where people see skills they have never thought of and just add them in because its on the list. The problem with no skill list is that different players have different categories of skills so one player might have Drive whilst another has Dive Motorcycle , Drive Hovercar, Drive Wheeled vehicle, Drive Tracked vehicle etc so one guy has spend a lot more points than the other. Well I get round this by using 3 tiers of skills. Generic , Broad and narrow. If you have a generic skill then its narrow use will be 20 less than its generic score. A broad skill will be 10 less. So A guy with 40 pilot ( which I deem a broad skill) will have 30 when flying helicopters, jets, Colonial Vipers or a Jumbo. A guy with 50 Science (which I consider a generic skill) will have 30 in Biochemisty, Quantum Theory and Genetics. This has led to players buying a Generic skill then topping up certain narrow elements of it. So get 50 in Science but +20 in Forensics to give you 50 in the narrow Forensic skill.
There are limits. You can't buy skills that are specific to an Attribute (strategy games aside) so you can't buy Hypnosis or Potion making, or magic sword creating or Iajitsu, or Marksman. These are all explicitly covered in a skill or power. Anything else is fine. Oh you don't need to buy languages we will take them as a given or it gets too tedious.
This all sounds much more complex than it really is. At the end of the day you just prepare a list of skills and your scores in each one. When I go through it I will point out any issues and if a skill comes up in play that your character really should have and you have missed it we can always tweak , at least the first few times. It is a bit of a chore to do at the character generation phase, but you only do it once and in a Play by email game you usually have enough downtime to cover it.
So how many points do I get. Well the score that sounded the best was 200 skill points for every point spent. So if Vincent spends 5 points on Skills he will have 1000 skill points to distribute.

Example
Vincent elects to spend 5 points on skills. He works out a kind of potted life history and assigns appropriate skills to each era
Young in Amber
Military time in Ambers forces as an officer
Interest in weapons and armour starts making stuff
Wanders shadow honing craft skills leads into other areas of interest
Returns to Amber takes over an old tower and rebuilds it does work on Amber castle
Finds personal shadow where he works on extreme projects

As well as the specific skills Vincent chooses he will by default get Common Knowledge of Amber and the like.

Riding
 25
 Hunting
 20
 Forest Craft
 20
 Poetry
 25
 Sailing
 20
 
Mntaineering
 35
 Swimming
 20
 Maths
 30
 ScienceG
 40
 Etiquette
 20
 
Cyptography
 35
 Interrogation
 15
 Dancing
 15
 Gambling
 20
 Diplomacy
 15
 
Play Chess *
 +40
 Leather  wrkng
 45
 Sculpture
 45
 Carpentry
 55
 Gemology
 30
 
MetalurgyB
 50
 Armourer
 +20
 Swordsmith
 +20
 Blacksmith
 +10
 Jeweller
 +15
 
MechanicB
 50
 Clockwork
 +15
 Electrician
 +5
 Robotics
 +10
 Gravetic Propulsion technology
 +5
 
Polymer engineering
 30
 Force Shields
 30
 Biogenics
 45
 Architect
 55
 Computers
 30
 
Drive
 30
 Drive Jet Car
 +10
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(*) Since Chess is a strategic game you add it to warfare to get the final score
(G) Generic Skill – Vincent wants a general grounding in science
(B) Broad skill – Metalurgy and Mechanic are broad skills and the other linked skills are narrow categories of it. Therefore the narrow skills start at a base level as supplied by the broad skill.

From this we know that Vincent can create a beautiful rosewood box that contains a clockwork dragon. We also know he could build a force field generator into the base even if it would only work on a narrow range of hi tech shadows.
It also says a lot about Vincent's mind set and personality. He is studious and meticulous. He would prefer to make an object than find it in shadow or just summon it. When he uses his conjuration power he is likely to have constructed the object himself and crafted it to the best of his abilities.


In addtion to this I have 2 attributes

Sucession - how close you are tot he throne
Political Influence - determines how much access you get to resources in Amber

Both are pretty specific to my current campaing however

[warp9]

I'm wondering what other Attributes (If any) people have considered using in their games?

I have considered using a Mayfair Games DC Hero 3X3 set up for stats:

Code Select Expand


Dexterity      Strength        Body

Intelligence   Will-Power      Mind

Influence      Aura            Spirit

And then I used skills for things like combat ability, strategy, etc.

[warp9]

I have considered using a Mayfair Games DC Hero 3X3 set up for stats:

Code Select Expand


Dexterity      Strength        Body

Intelligence   Will-Power      Mind

Influence      Aura            Spirit

And then I used skills for things like combat ability, strategy, etc.

It occurred to me that perhaps I should add a little bit of detail about the 3X3 stat system I mentioned above.

The attributes above represent 3 different spheres: Physical, Mental, and Spiritual.

And each sphere has 3 stats: Control, Power, and Resistance. The 3 spheres with 3 stats each, gives us the 3X3 stat array.

The physical stats are Dexterity (Control), Strength (Power), and Body (Resistance). If you were to attack somebody on the physical level, your Dexterity would represent how accurate you were (your chance to hit), and your chance to avoid being hit (block/dodge). Your Strength would represent your ability to do damage, and your Body would represent your ability to take damage (and ability to resist taking damage as well).

Likewise, if you were to make a mystical attack (like maybe with a Logrus tendril), your Influence would represent your accuracy, and your Aura would represent the power behind the attack. If you were hit by an attack which did damage on a spiritual level, then your Spirit attribute would let you resist the damage (and also act as spiritual hit points)

[Croaker]

I like this, although, in Amber, Power and Resistance could be subsumed so as to avoid too much increase in the number of characteristics (we'd still be at 6, though).
This also has the added interest of having all stats do 2 things, like hit/avoid and damage/resist.

[warp9]

I like this, although, in Amber, Power and Resistance could be subsumed so as to avoid too much increase in the number of characteristics (we'd still be at 6, though).
This also has the added interest of having all stats do 2 things, like hit/avoid and damage/resist.

Good point.

Although, you might still want something to represent endurance (Corwin wasn't as strong as Gerard, but he was pretty good at managing to keep on going, and it might be good to be able to simulate that in an Amber game). Body, Mind, and Spirit, could be good for representing endurance.

[Croaker]

Well, the endurance, à la corwin, could depend on the weaker of the 3 resistance attributes. After all, it's the weakest ling that breaks first, be it your body's ability to support you, or your will to just keep going.
So, no additionnal attribute, you just use the weakest of the 3: Corwin wouldn't be the best in endurance, he'd be the best in the lowest of 3 attributes, a more rounded character, without a real weakness character, whereas fiona and gerard are min-maxed

[warp9]

Well, the endurance, à la corwin, could depend on the weaker of the 3 resistance attributes. After all, it's the weakest ling that breaks first, be it your body's ability to support you, or your will to just keep going.
So, no additionnal attribute, you just use the weakest of the 3: Corwin wouldn't be the best in endurance, he'd be the best in the lowest of 3 attributes, a more rounded character, without a real weakness character, whereas fiona and gerard are min-maxed

Yeah, that could work. And that is an interesting way of looking at the matter. . . .

Although, I do think that there is a definite physical cardio-endurance factor which is very separate from raw physical strength. IMO your body's ability to lift a lot of weight over the short term is different from your body's ability to keep on going and going.

Still, as I said above, your suggestion is interesting.