Sorcery, the novels and the DRPG

[Klaus]

Power Word: Magic Negation. Or a Spellbreaker.

Sorcery has enough ways to counter it that I don't feel it's overpowered. The more deadly the spell, the longer it's going to take not just to cast, but to release the lynchpins. While the sorcerer is chanting and waving his arms, his opponent can attack or run away unmolested.

[jibbajibba]

Deadly spells do not take a long time to cast they just require the right circumstances. A spell with a single lynchpin can kill anyone if the circumstances are correct. In fact a spell with no lynchpins at all could do this as well.

Amber sorcerers do not need to wave their arms about to cast spells they simple need to trigger a hung spell and add the lynchpin.

I agree that Elders are aware of sorcery and some may take steps in some circumstances to safeguard themselves.

I don't, if the books are the standard, think that Amberites are a lot clever than me. I wouldn't have tried to take Eric out with a loaded crossbow or missed the half dozen things Ganelon does that just seem a wee bit exceptional for a sahdow dweller.

Like all things if the player and by extention the character can set things up correctly a dagger, a bomb or a spell can finish of any Amberite. This should not be easy and in my games , because I am incredibly biased, it better be fucking clever and not a gross application of a single power, but it can be done. I know because as a player I could do it.

[boulet]

I used to have a similar issues with sorcery as presented in ADRPG, especially before running any games. I thought I would have to nerf it or something. But in the end, how is it so different to get targeted by a blazing inferno spell in the Courts or by a rocket on shadow Earth? Not much except the latter didn't cost a thing on a character sheet.

The discussion about "sucker punch" immunity for the princes of Amber is kind of irrelevant. Like Jibbajibba said, if a player wows me with a clever trap, sure, kill this old bastard. I'd rather come back to the question of genre emulation (should earn me some pundit points!) Luke got away with murder because he was going for revenge. Caine got away with murder because the consensus was that Brand was a traitor. What will save the PC's ass when he's got royal blood on his/her hands? Now if instead of killing outright the magic sucker punch is about debilitating or paralyzing I'll be cheering up the PC!

[Klaus]

Deadly spells do not take a long time to cast they just require the right circumstances. A spell with a single lynchpin can kill anyone if the circumstances are correct. In fact a spell with no lynchpins at all could do this as well.

Amber sorcerers do not need to wave their arms about to cast spells they simple need to trigger a hung spell and add the lynchpin.

I should have checked the rules. Lynchpins only need to be spoken to take effect.

Still, if  you know enough to kill them in one shot with a spell that has no lynchpins, you could probably kill them with some other type of trap/ambush as well.

[jibbajibba]

I should have checked the rules. Lynchpins only need to be spoken to take effect.

Still, if  you know enough to kill them in one shot with a spell that has no lynchpins, you could probably kill them with some other type of trap/ambush as well.

Now that I totally agree with

[Trevelyan]

However, the stuff round the utility of sorcery is less convincing. I really get the fellignt hat Merlin woudl have thought that his cunisart offensive spell would be enough to finish off just about anyone who didn't have magic to defend themself and I think that the potential for magic as both a tool and an offensive force is massive.

I agree that the potential is massive, I just don't think that the potential is limited to sorcery. In other words, sorcery in ADRPG can be hugely useful and immensely deadly under the right circumstances, but the same thing can be sadi for anyone with the power to walk in shadow, and several particular uses of other powers besides.

Merlin's Concerto for Cuisinart and a Mircowave spell is a good example of this - it is potentially a lethal spell (although IIRC we never actually see him use it, only reference it while in Undershadow), but the ADRPG version at least suggests that the target needs to be relatively slow (or large) for the spell to be particularly effective. And even if it is effective, all you end up with is a dead (diced and cooked?) target, and a guy or girl with a hand grenade. Or a guy with just a decent rank in warfare can achieve much the sme result, without needing to worry about hanging spells and the potential for the target to evade or counter them.

Authors are notoriously prone in putting plot and character before maximum use of powers. RPG players have no such qualms. A simple look at what Superman would do in the hands of a powergamer is proof enough. A simple task like creating a bloody big rock to squash some one is almost always going to be lethal (unless you imagine Gerard energing Cartoonishly from beneath it only now 2 dimentional). Created items are now items and pattern defense will do you no good agaisnt a rock than they would against a sword.

This is a problem, but again it applies to every power. A difficult player might well come up with a spell to summon a huge rock, too large to avoid, and drop it on a target. But a difficult player could likewise use Pattern or Logrus to find an appropriately large weapon and ensure that it works in the shadow in question. Magically dropping the rock is not significantly disimilar frmo having your pet version of ghostwheel do the same, or just opening a Trump gate to a raginf inferno and letting the fire wash over the target.

The way to curb such behavior is both to rely on mature players to adher to genre conventions and, where necessary, to enforce those conventions in your own game. Chief among these might be that idea that no significant death goes unavenged, and that word of a PCs actions (and therefore his capabilities) spreads fast. Drop a rock on a significant NPC and not only will you have someone gunning for you, buit everyone else will be aware of the tactic, will have developed a counter, and will be considering very carefully whether they want to be associated with someone like you.

Also it is not advisable to assume that a sorcerer can't be a warrior as well that is a RGG trope that you need to put aside in Amber. Sure 'power' collectors generally have less stats that 'stat' collectors but never bet that a sorcerer doesn't also have 60 points in warfare

It's a safe bet that, sooner or later you'll meet a sorcer with decent warefare. But if you have to fear a guy with magic and reasonable warfare, why should you be any less scared of someone who put all those extra points into warfare and skipped the sorcery? No one finds Benedict laughable just because he doesn't use magic as often as Fiona or Brand.

But ... Luke, a newbie PC, kills Caine with a fucking hand-grenade so these guys are not immortal.

I don't use the Elders but if I did and a player actually outsmarted one of them and put him in a position where a spell could kill him well... good for them.

My view, essentially, is that you could substitute "sorcery" for "hand grenade" in the above and the point still stands. Ultimately, killing an NPC should be the result of careful work, whatever method is used to deal the final blow, and many methods are equally valid once that work has been done.

Sorcery is one of a great number of tools available in Amber, and it's not so much that sorcery isn't potent, but that the other powers available are also pretty scary if used carefully by a skilled player, and gross use of sorcery, like gross use of any other power is easily circumvented.

[jibbajibba]

My view, essentially, is that you could substitute "sorcery" for "hand grenade" in the above and the point still stands. Ultimately, killing an NPC should be the result of careful work, whatever method is used to deal the final blow, and many methods are equally valid once that work has been done.

Sorcery is one of a great number of tools available in Amber, and it's not so much that sorcery isn't potent, but that the other powers available are also pretty scary if used carefully by a skilled player, and gross use of sorcery, like gross use of any other power is easily circumvented.

Yes and no.
I believe in a fight between guy a and guy b where guy a has 15 points (and 1 rank) advantage in Warfare and guy b has sorcery + 15 and 15 points less warfare (being 1 rank) the guy with sorcery will win in a fight.
In fact a cunning bit of socery can probably do more than that but without describing a scene in detail ....
But I never ascribe to gross uses of a power. My only Amber PC (once a Gm...) used an intelligent blade with racked spells and amber ranked warfare
I would fight a defensive battle allowing the sword to cast spells to give him the appropriate momentary advantage or to remove him from harms way if things looks tough.

[Ivanhoe]

This is a problem, but again it applies to every power. A difficult player might well come up with a spell to summon a huge rock, too large to avoid, and drop it on a target. But a difficult player could likewise use Pattern or Logrus to find an appropriately large weapon and ensure that it works in the shadow in question.

Hmmm no ? When the shadow in question is Amber, a primal plane, an owned shadow with its set of rules, it is not possible to just find a nuke and detonate it. Even when it is possible, casting a spell is incredibly quicker than going into shadow to find what you need and bring it back.

It is not that much of powergaming to consider what sorcery is useful for. Picture a Corwin or Bleys with sorcery, safely making parts of the Kolvir fall on the troops they attack, jedi-throwing them to the beach. Picture a Julian who has problems with a task as simple as stopping a car or a whole band of Amberites who are afraid to go to Tir Na Nogh to stop Brand because they can't do a thing as simple as flying.

Sorcery is overpowered and worse : it is redundant. Amberites are called sorcerers by shadow-dwellers because their possibilities look surnatural thanks to the Pattern and the trumps. Corwin's series is great in that it allows us to see how the magic works, to understand its limits and its consequences. Sorcery is more akin to a big black box that will do what you want for free and that just works. That is, in my opinion, far less interesting.

[jibbajibba]

Hmmm no ? When the shadow in question is Amber, a primal plane, an owned shadow with its set of rules, it is not possible to just find a nuke and detonate it. Even when it is possible, casting a spell is incredibly quicker than going into shadow to find what you need and bring it back.

It is not that much of powergaming to consider what sorcery is useful for. Picture a Corwin or Bleys with sorcery, safely making parts of the Kolvir fall on the troops they attack, jedi-throwing them to the beach. Picture a Julian who has problems with a task as simple as stopping a car or a whole band of Amberites who are afraid to go to Tir Na Nogh to stop Brand because they can't do a thing as simple as flying.

Sorcery is overpowered and worse : it is redundant. Amberites are called sorcerers by shadow-dwellers because their possibilities look surnatural thanks to the Pattern and the trumps. Corwin's series is great in that it allows us to see how the magic works, to understand its limits and its consequences. Sorcery is more akin to a big black box that will do what you want for free and that just works. That is, in my opinion, far less interesting.

Yeah I like that. But I find sorcery interesting For me the second series are less good as novels by might well be better as a gameworld. there are plenty of examples of books that are crap but the world they set up is perfect for gaming. So The Gor books are fatally flawed by John Norman's obsession with S&M. However as a realised game world with well defined cultures environmetns etc its a great setting for games. LotR great book but the nature of the thing is that ther eis less room to role play. The lack of grey means that roleplay choices beyond defending x against the armies of mordor are pretty limited. In teh same way I think Merlin's chronicles open up the Amberverse with hosts of roleplaying choices even if they dilute the calrity of the corwin novels.

[Ivanhoe]

Zelazny was a novice RPG player when he wrote the second series, and IMHO he made every mistake of a novice RPG GM, even if he stays a wonderful storyteller. He falls for the rule of Awesomeness without realizing how players would probably break the world with many of the items he describes. Luckily, in the novels he is both the player and the GM so the line is never crossed, but I must say that with all the revelations in the Merlin's series I do not understand how the Chaos could have possibly lost the war in their own territories against non-sorcerer Princes. At the very least I do not understand why torrents of lava, meteorite strikes, earthquakes, atmosphere suppression were not unleashed against Amber's forces. I also don't understand how the princes escaped the possibility evoked earlier of the dumping of a thousand tons rock on the top of their crunchy heads.

So yes, Merlin was not part of my campaigns' canon. Corwin describes the universe of ADRPG, but what Merlin describes is more akin to Chaos DRPG, where Chaosians rule and Amber is indeed a small rebellious and feeble country.

[jibbajibba]

Zelazny was a novice RPG player when he wrote the second series, and IMHO he made every mistake of a novice RPG GM, even if he stays a wonderful storyteller. He falls for the rule of Awesomeness without realizing how players would probably break the world with many of the items he describes. Luckily, in the novels he is both the player and the GM so the line is never crossed, but I must say that with all the revelations in the Merlin's series I do not understand how the Chaos could have possibly lost the war in their own territories against non-sorcerer Princes. At the very least I do not understand why torrents of lava, meteorite strikes, earthquakes, atmosphere suppression were not unleashed against Amber's forces. I also don't understand how the princes escaped the possibility evoked earlier of the dumping of a thousand tons rock on the top of their crunchy heads.

So yes, Merlin was not part of my campaigns' canon. Corwin describes the universe of ADRPG, but what Merlin describes is more akin to Chaos DRPG, where Chaosians rule and Amber is indeed a small rebellious and feeble country.

I always maintained tha the Patternfall war and all that was trivial in Chaos terms. A bit like an offshoot of the Shogunate thinking about invading Manchuria but back at home everyone being more concerned as to what the political ramifications of that would be for real power.
Now I agree the 2nd series is flawed but I think it does give us a better world for roleplaying in, as I tired to express above. I also agree that the lack of Sorcery at the final Patternfall battle is hard to explain in retrospect.

[boulet]

I always maintained tha the Patternfall war and all that was trivial in Chaos terms. A bit like an offshoot of the Shogunate thinking about invading Manchuria but back at home everyone being more concerned as to what the political ramifications of that would be for real power.

I agree with you. The door was opened by Brand, a homey. The Courts surely encouraged that if only for the spectacle. They do enjoy a good old war every once in a while. Plenty of opportunities to shine an piss off their cousins.  
There seem to be very little political unity in the Courts. My interpretation is: the Chaosian who want the Pattern removed might be a minority.

I also agree that the lack of Sorcery at the final Patternfall battle is hard to explain in retrospect.

Just like Corwin couldn't explain why Borel wanted to fight by the rules of chivalry... There are very different cultural values involved.

[Klaus]

At the very least I do not understand why torrents of lava, meteorite strikes, earthquakes, atmosphere suppression were not unleashed against Amber's forces. I also don't understand how the princes escaped the possibility evoked earlier of the dumping of a thousand tons rock on the top of their crunchy heads.

So yes, Merlin was not part of my campaigns' canon. Corwin describes the universe of ADRPG, but what Merlin describes is more akin to Chaos DRPG, where Chaosians rule and Amber is indeed a small rebellious and feeble country.

Given that we have no idea how many chaosians, let alone Logrus masters there actually are, it's also possible that Fiona, perhaps with some backup, was simply able to keep screwing with the local rules of magic to keep anyone from casting spells. If she gives the local laws of magic a kick every so often, no one will be able to complete a spell.

I always maintained tha the Patternfall war and all that was trivial in Chaos terms. A bit like an offshoot of the Shogunate thinking about invading Manchuria but back at home everyone being more concerned as to what the political ramifications of that would be for real power.
Now I agree the 2nd series is flawed but I think it does give us a better world for roleplaying in, as I tired to express above. I also agree that the lack of Sorcery at the final Patternfall battle is hard to explain in retrospect.

Even if it was trivial, that wouldn't explain why the portion of Chaos that was fighting didn't use sorcery, unless they were being blocked somehow.

Indifference on Chaos's part isn't needed to explain Amber's victory. For one thing, Pattern is clearly superior to Logrus when it comes to fighting battles. A Logrus user can pull himself and maybe a few others into an adjacent shadow, making a small strike team appear at the enemy's rear. Pattern can lead unlimited numbers into an adjacent shadow, causing whole armies to appear on previously undefended flanks.

Thinking about it more, it's actually possible that Amber did face rivers of lava, etc. and won anyway. We don't actually see the battle until it's all but over. If the Amberites had placed priority on taking out enemy spell casters, which Benedict almost certainly would, it's quite possible that the enemy sorcerers are simply all dead or neutralized (or out of spells) by the time Corwin catches a view of the battle.

[jibbajibba]

Indifference on Chaos's part isn't needed to explain Amber's victory. For one thing, Pattern is clearly superior to Logrus when it comes to fighting battles. A Logrus user can pull himself and maybe a few others into an adjacent shadow, making a small strike team appear at the enemy's rear. Pattern can lead unlimited numbers into an adjacent shadow, causing whole armies to appear on previously undefended flanks.

Thinking about it more, it's actually possible that Amber did face rivers of lava, etc. and won anyway. We don't actually see the battle until it's all but over. If the Amberites had placed priority on taking out enemy spell casters, which Benedict almost certainly would, it's quite possible that the enemy sorcerers are simply all dead or neutralized (or out of spells) by the time Corwin catches a view of the battle.

Some fair points there but I have a couple of issues I think Pattern is great to get you to a battle but once you are there Logrus is probably a more useful power. This is especially true if we accept that use of Pattern at this end of things is much harder (pointed to by the comments that you have gone to where the shadows go mad..) Following up on that I don't think pattern tricks alone woudl have defeated the logrus guys on their home turf.
Secondly I think you over estimate Benedict in regard to sorcery and tactics with dealing with it. In the books Benedict is far from infalible on arcane issues. He gets tricked by the black grass, he gets tricked by Brand,  he even gets tricked by Dara's perfectly mundane frame job on Corwin and he looses an arm in combat with the Chaosites. To be honest Benedict Fucks up more often than any other character in the books in regard to dealing with the unexpected.

We have to face the fact that teh Pattern guys won because that was the correct narative result and Zelazny hadn't invented Chaos Sorcery or Logrus yet.

[Ivanhoe]

We have to face the fact that teh Pattern guys won because that was the correct narative result and Zelazny hadn't invented Chaos Sorcery or Logrus yet.

There is also a world-twisting hypothesis that I like : that Chaos is a Oberon/Dworkin creation to re-unite Amberites. That it was designed to look dangerous but is in fact vastly inferior to Amber's faction. After all, it is never said what Oberon did during all these years away. Of course that leaves the GM with the necessity of inventing a whole new origins theory.