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rpg:powers

Powers

Powers represent various things that the character can do that aren't universal. If you don't have Pattern in Amber, you can't walk between worlds, regardless of your attributes. In a fantasy setting, “powers” might include sorcery, turning to stone, or secret fighting techniques. In the Nano-Victorian Future, exclusive access to certain kinds of nanotech, special education in obscure lore or actual cybernetic modifications might be more appropriate. In a modern world with no magic or superpowers, “powers” might be uncommon skills (gun training, chemistry, etc.)

For figuring out how powers work, there's again two approaches; Amber DRPG uses the cost of a power as a sort of cost of admission. Buying a power gives you the ability to do the stuff the description says you can. How well you can do that depends on your attributes.

I wonder if that's an overly blunt instrument for something like “wizardry” in a fantasy setting though; the genre calls for a wide variation in the power of wizards, and attributes might not be the best way to achieve that. As an alternative, one could just have a power as another place to pool points, making powers a sort of secondary attribute that not everyone ranks in.

A third path might be to have “milestones” where a certain amount of investment in a power gives a character certain abilities with it, while allowing fine tuning in between.

rpg/powers.txt · Last modified: 2017/04/28 17:08 by 127.0.0.1