Items and creatures are no longer built up from separately costed qualities and powers, but are bought outright, on a sliding scale of costs reflecting the power and utility of the item/creature. When you pay points for an item or a creature, it becomes bound to you as part of your personal “reality”.
Since there are no longer any hard and fast rules for Creature/ Artefact creation, anything that you come up with will probably be subject to negotiation. Basically, think of the artefact or creature that you want, decide what it can do, and spend what seems to be the appropriate number of points (see below). I’ll then suggest any changes that I think might be in order. In general, I'm not wild about standardised, generic items - ideally, they should be personalised, idiosyncratic things with a history behind them, so that it makes some sense why they should have become part of the character's "reality". So a few words about them in the background would be nice. Giving them a name helps.
Please also note that creatures and artefacts must be bought individually - you cannot use Quantity Multipliers as in the Amber DRPG rules. The exception to this is an item that is made up of a number of separate parts, but which can only really be used together (i.e., a pair of matching swords would have to be bought separately, but a set of stones used for scrying could be bought as a single item).
Costs and Examples
| Cost | Artefact | Creature |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A well made item without any unusual properties (e.g., a weapon, suit of armour, sailing ship, etc.), or an otherwise mundane artefact with some supernatural aspect (e.g., a self-filling hip-flask) | An ordinary animal - a fine specimen, perhaps, but with no unusual abilities (e.g., a horse, cat, hunting hound, raven, velociraptor, dodo, etc.) |
| 2 | An item with some unusual property (e.g., a supernaturally sharp sword, armour that repairs itself, a self-reloading cross-bow that generates its own ammunition, an unnaturally fast ship, a set of intelligent lock-picks, a flying carpet, etc.) | An ordinary animal with some unusual ability (e.g., a supernaturally fast horse, a telepathic cat, a velociraptor with super-sharp teeth and claws) or a supernatural creature (not too powerful) such as a griffin or a wyvern. |
| 4 | An item with a number of minor but unusual properties (e.g., an ultra-fast ship that is resistant to cannon-fire) or with one major power, (e.g., a scrying mirror, a sword that can summon storms, a magical focus or accumulator) or the ability to transcend the limitations of Shadow (e.g., a gun that works in most - if not all - Shadows, a compass which can guide movement through Shadow, etc.). | An animal with a number of minor but unusual abilities (e.g., a telepathic and invisible cat, or a bullet-proof horse that can breathe fire) or with one major power (e.g., the ability to shape-shift, to use magic in some limited way, or to move through Shadow under its own steam) or a reasonably powerful supernatural creature (e.g., a minor daemon, a small dragon). |
| 8 | An item with a number of major and minor powers (e.g., a super-sharp flaming sword that is also a magical accumulator) or with one particularly potent power (e.g., a mirror of teleportation) | A creature with a number of major and minor abilities (e.g., a fire-breathing hell-hound able to move through Shadow) or some powerful supernatural creature (e.g., a major daemon, dragon, etc.). |
Creatures and Artefacts of Power
Creatures and items with magical powers will tend to have
limited, specialised abilities (e.g., a cat that can start
fires, or a gauntlet that can shoot lightning bolts by
pointing). Items with any real power (Pattern, Trump etc) will
not be available to Player Characters - a Pattern blade like
Corwin’s Greyswandir could be bought in theory, but would
probably be a 16 point item, and so (I’m afraid) is out of
your price range. The only exception is the Trump Artist’s
personal Trump Deck (free with Trump Artistry). Creatures
with Pattern, Trump or Real Chaos powers do exist, but you
cannot pay points for them. They are called NPCs.
Allies etc.
Allies, Friends or Devotees can be bought as in the main
ADRPG rulebook. Note that "Amber devotee" or "Chaos devotee"
have little use in this variant setting (you could always
choose "Avalon Devotee".) Note however that these people are
still NPC's with their own agenda's, and that having paid points
for them do not make them "yours".