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Anyone who has extensively played Amber is both intrigued and repulsed by the use of magic in the game. While it is great fun to cast spells and work magic, the magic system itself leaves much to be desired. It is too cookie cutter, too pat. Magic should be of many times, and styles, and varieties. Why should every magic user be a basic sorcerer? Isn't it far more likely for their to be mental magicians, elementalists, runic sorceresses and so forth?
NEW! Take a look at a proposal for Magical Classifications.
Note that there are two basic classes of sorcery variants. There are, like the Arcana in a Tarot deck, Major and Minor. The Minor Sorceries are specialized magics which by themselves are weaker than normal sorcery.
The Major Sorceries are Sorceries which are either extensions of Sorcery, or are full fledged replacements, of equal or even greater facility. They are, of course more expensive.One might make the assumption that the Minor Sorceries are not worth using. I would counter, however that used properly, the Minor Sorceries have proven to be in my role playing campaigns to be very effective indeed.
| Minor Sorceries: | Major Sorceries: |
|---|---|
| Mage Sight | Runic Sorcery |
| Mind Magic | Pattern Based Sorcery |
| Water and Mirror Magic | Eso-Elemental Sorcery |
| Reshaping Magic | (Elemental)Unity Sorcery |
| Blood Magic | Elemental Affinity |
| Magical Classifications | |
Thanks go to:
Jim, Arref and Jeff, players in my Strange Bedfellows campaign who supplied some of this material and help with playtesting (especially the Pattern Sorcery, Mental Magic, Water/Mirror Magicand Elemental Sorcery) as well as Meera Barry, whose Runic Magic in her Black Oak Hart campaign was also inspiration.
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Go to the Strange Bedfellows Page