The Jewel of Judgement

[RPGPundit]

It seems to me that, for something that is supposed to be the most powerful artifact in the universe, the Jewel in practice ends up being like the One Ring of the Amber setting, in the bad sense (in the sense that the One Ring is supposed to be so powerful and so desired, but all we ever see it do is make you invisible).  

The Jewel, for such a powerful artifact, seems to have relatively little practical applications written into the game. "it can control the weather"... ok... cool...

So how do you make the Jewel really powerful enough in your game that people might actually covet it?

RPGPundit

[Arref]

Or fear it.

[TonyLB]

I've said that controlling the weather was what it did for Eric ... that it does different things for different people.

I've found that uncertainty makes people become really hesitant to hand it over to anyone else.  Bad enough to think that it could help your rival (say) stop time the way it does for you ... but you don't even know it would be something that trivial.  For him it might do more.

Plus, of course, it gives the GM a totally free hand to readjust the Jewel's power levels on the fly to keep it powerful without making it dominate the entire game.

[Otha]

That's because the game skips over lots of canon powers of the Jewel.

You can draw energy from it.

You can move faster when you wield it.

You can use it as a portable super-pattern.

You can inscribe new patterns.

Holding it is a HUGE advantage... as long as you don't wield it too long.  The time-differential problem means that you burn energy faster than you can pull it from the stone, eventually burning yourself out.

No need to add anything to it.  Those are dandy by themselves.

[Trevelyan]

Otha missed out one very interesting feature of the Jewel - you can attune to the 3 dimensional Pattern within it, which even Dworkin thinks should give you the power to ignore/resist the standard Pattern.

One of the ideas that I play with, although it hasn't had any real impact in any game I've run so far, is that the Primal Pattern is still somehow limited. The Logrus is out there in all it's 3d, ever-changing glory and at some point in the past it won a round of the ongoing Pattern/Logrus conflict so convincingly that the Pattern, the real 3d Pattern, got trapped in the Jewel.

When Dworkin drew the Primal Pattern he was able to release some of the Pattern from the Jewel, maybe even most of it, but the True Pattern is the 3d example still trapped within the Jewel. It can act through the 2d form in many ways, but it's still not complete. Anyone attuned to the 3d version is beyond the power of the Patterns 2d self.

In practical terms, this might mean that the potential for advanced levels of Logrus mastery depends only on having walked the Logrus, while the potential for a pattern initiate is limited depending on which version the initiate has used. We know, for example, that the Amber, Rebma and Tir patterns are really only copies, and that the Primal Pattern is the closest thing to real available for most people. I generally make walking the Primal Pattern a prerequisite of Advanced Pattern powers, but would make attunement to the Jewel a requirement for taking Pattern mastery any further still.

[Lee Short]

I agree with Otha...the canonical powers go way beyond controlling the weather.  In fact, I tend to tone down the Jewel, because I think it's pretty overwhelming per canon.  So I guess I have some difficulty relating to your premise, pundit, because I and the people I play with work off a very different baseline "canonical Jewel."

[Croaker]

In my campain, it could manipulate reality anywhere, which is pretty powerfull.

However, I love Trevelyan's idea

[RPGPundit]

Unless someone wants to actually draw a new fucking pattern like Corwin did, what other practical CANONICAL use (besides the aforementioned weather control) does it have that you actively use?

RPGPundit

[Otha]

While the PC's in my game don't actually have their hands on it, they intend to save Brand's life with it, by drawing energy from it to feed him so he can survive a patternwalk.

When they get it.

Which might be a while.  Luckily Brand's locked up in a crystal coffin that will keep him from finishing dying while they work on that.

You saw my list, right?

[Trevelyan]

Unless someone wants to actually draw a new fucking pattern like Corwin did, what other practical CANONICAL use (besides the aforementioned weather control) does it have that you actively use?

RPGPundit

Erm, protecting you from an angry Pattern and Otha's points are all completely canonical. What practical use can be made out of them is down to your players.

I'd say that drawing energy from it is the most obvious use, but how that energy can be applied other than by keeping you up and moving for longer I don't know. Fiona seemed pretty interested, though...

Generally speaking, the most interesting uses for the Jewel are going to be non canon. Weather control is pretty boring and the drawing-a-new-Pattern thing has been done before. If you want to interest your players you'll need something they don't immediately understand and can enjoy discovering for themselves.

[Nihilistic Mind]

Well, in a very canonical interpretation of Eric's use of the Jewel of Judgement, other than playing with thunder and lightning, we have this: He puts tons of obstacles in the path of Corwin and Bleys' army. I know the ADRPG suggests it can be done with Advanced Pattern Imprint, but when I read the novels, I thought he was using the Jewel to accomplish that... At least to the extent of bringing their army from [insert extremely high number here] to [insert surprisingly low number here]. (What can I say, it's been a while, my memory is unreliable at times and I'm too lazy to go check right now).

[Otha]

I always thought that simple shadowwalking could do that.  I imagined Julian and Caine moving around in shadow, creating dangerous shadows in Bleys and Corwin's paths.

[Nihilistic Mind]

That would certainly be a way to accomplish that without the Jewel.

It's funny, I always pictured Eric, at the Amber castle, peering into the Jewel of Judgment and being creative with what else he could put on their path. Memory can play dirty tricks at times so I'll have to re-read this passage...

[Otha]

I think Occam's razor is a particularly effective tool in these circumstances.

[Nihilistic Mind]

Meh, we all make mistakes.

Weather working then...