Example Characters

Let's create a Marine Commander aboard the CAF Cruiser Meron. His father is Julian and his mother is the daughter of one of the Minor Lords of the Chaos house Minobe. She was exiled for absconding after her marriage to Lord Krane of House Jesby was announced, and then getting herself pregnant. We want Tank to be first in Endurance and first or second in Strength, with a good Warfare. However he's a bit thick so were buying down his Psyche to Chaos and using the points for Shapeshifting. We need to keep points back because we want to assay the Logrus and maybe walk the Pattern.

Blood of Amber and Blood of Chaos cost us 5 points total. The auction is first and we’re allocating 70 points to Attributes. The order determined for the auction (by drawing cards is)

1. Endurance
2. Psyche
3. Warfare
4. Strength

After all the bidding Tank has the following ranks

• Endurance - 1st - 37 points
• Psyche - Unranked - Chaos
• Warfare - ranked - 2 points
• Strength - 2nd - 31 points

Dividing the points ignoring ranks, we decide on the following

 

Psyche (chaos)			Endurance (37)
General	-		General	18
Willpower	-		Mental	6
Logic	-		Physical	17
Intuition	-		Healing	6
Memory	-		Constitution	8
Perception	-
Spatial Awareness	-		Warfare (2)
Danger Sense	-		General	1
Empathy	-		Strategy/Tactics	-
			Unarmed	-
Strength (31)			Armed	-
General	15		Swordplay	-
Bench Press	8		Propelled	-
Lift	7		Firearms	1
Torsion	5		Artillery	-
Impact	5		Guided	-
Agility	6		Armour	1
			Fighter	-

As 1st Rank in Endurance we get to add 5*37/4=46 points to Endurance:General and divide 74 points amongst the other categories.
As 2nd Rank in Strength we get to add 9*31/8=34 points to Strength:General and divide 62 points amongst the other categories.
As ranked in Warfare we get to add 2/2=1 points to General and 2/10=0 points divided amongst the other categories. Thus we get

 

Psyche (chaos)			Endurance (37)
General	-		General	37+46
Willpower	-		Mental	6+10
Logic	-		Physical	17+24
Intuition	-		Healing	6+10
Memory	-		Constitution	8+20
Perception	-
Spatial Awareness	-		Warfare (2)
Danger Sense	-		General	1+1
Empathy	-		Strategy/Tactics	-
			Unarmed	-
Strength (31)			Armed	-
General	15+34		Swordplay	-
Bench Press	8+15		Propelled	-
Lift	7+16		Firearms	1
Torsion	5+7		Artillery	-
Impact	5+12		Guided	-
Agility	6+12		Armour	1
			Fighter	-

Note:- Writing the stats as a combination of base+bonus helps keep track of changes, especially if we late decide to upgrade a governing attribute.

Having determined our attributes, our parentage, and got the auction out of the way we’ve used up 5+70-10=65 of our 160 points.
We’ve now got to allocate a minimum of 10 points to mundane skills that reflect our career as a Marine in a high tech society. As we’re not a warfare specialist we’ll pick up some skills that may be useful.

Energy Weapons - 2
Aerospace Fighters - 1
Unarmed Combat - 2
Zero-G Manoeuvres - 1
Force Blades - 1
Power Armour - 1
Grav-Bikes - 2

This leaves us 85 points to spend on powers either immediately or later in the game. We decide that Tank's quite flash and the universe looks kindly on him so take 10 points of Good Stuff - we can always burn these later on powers, attributes, or items.
The universe Tank comes from is high tech, magic, and is quite used to strange aliens and shapeshifters. Given his mother is Chaosian we decide that he's been able to shapeshift since he was a kid and has become quite good at it developing several forms to suit various needs over the years. We therefore can buy various Shapeshifting powers.

Basic Shapeshifting to Known Forms (20) -
Primal Form
Demon Form (Normal, Non-Flying, Air Breathing)
Human Form
Demon Form (Winged)
Demon Form (Aquatic)
Demon Form (Vacuum Survival)
Automatic Shapeshift/Primal Form (5)
Shift Wounds (5)
Shift Features/Body Parts (5+5)
Fluid Flesh Mould Unliving non-self Matter (5)

This uses 45 of our remaining 75 points leaving us 30. We're going to need 10 points later for Logrus Imprint and a lot more if we want to do anything useful with it. Similarly it's going to take 10 points for Pattern Imprint and 5 points for Shadow Walk if we don’t want to be reliant on our brothers and sisters. If we bank these we've still got 5 points to play with.
We decide to burn these on a suit of armour. As we know nothing of Amber or Shadow it can't have any powers relating to Shadow Manipulation but damage resistance and other such abilities should be okay.

Armour -
Engine Speed (4)
Impervious to Normal Weapons (4)
Extra Damage (2)
Amber Healing (2) - regenerative armour

Since we’ve gone seven points over our 5 we reduce our good stuff to 3.

MARLINA

Let's create a character from an AD&D type world. Abandoned by her father, Marlina's mother had a hard time in life, and Marlina grew up on the streets and became an integral part of the Thieves Guild in her home city. When she was 20 a job opportunity arose and she joined a group of adventures spending the next 11 years travelling the continent. Magic had always fascinated Marlina and one of the group she worked with was a Mage, and after several months of persuasion he agreed to teach her the ways of sorcery, although it never became her primary skill area. As a Rogue archetype Marlina needs good Dexterity and benefits from a high IQ. Translating these into Amber terms we need good agility, intuition, and logic. Since Rogues are reasonable good at combat we’re also going to need some skill at arms and a reasonable constitution to back all this up.

We're not sure what Ambers powers we want so we're going to try and save some points to buy skills as they come along and we get as feel for the game. The game notes indicate that Pattern or Logurs are important, and the GM has hinted that pattern would be useful, so we'll reserve the 10 points for Pattern Imprint.

We haven't got a clue about who we should have as a parent so we roll a d10 ignoring 10's and get a 1 - Brand is our Father.

The auction is first and we're allocating the full allowed 80 points to Attributes. The order determined for the auction (by drawing cards is)

1. Endurance
2. Warfare
3. Psyche
4. Strength

After the bidding Marlina has the following ranks

• Endurance - ranked - 10 points
• Warfare - 7th - 10 points
• Psyche - 5th - 30 points
• Strength - 1st - 30 points

Dividing the points ignoring ranks, we decide on the following

 

Psyche (30)			Endurance (10)
General	15		General	5
Willpower	4		Mental	2
Logic	4		Physical	2
Intuition	4		Healing	3
Memory	4		Constitution	3
Perception	4
Spatial Awareness	4		Warfare (10)
Danger Sense	4		General	5
Empathy	2		Strategy/Tactics	-
			Unarmed	-
Strength (30)			Armed	3
General	15		Swordplay	3
Bench Press	4		Propelled	4
Lift	4		Firearms	-
Torsion	4		Artillery	-
Impact	6		Guided	-
Agility	12		Armour	-
			Fighter	-

As 5th Rank in Psyche we get to add 30/4=7 points to Psyche:General and divide 30 points amongst the other categories.
As 1st Rank in Strength we get to add 5*30/4=37 points to Strength:General and divide 60 points amongst the other categories.
As ranked in Endurance we get to add 10/10=1 points to Endurance:General and divide 10/4=2 points amongst the other categories.
As 7th Rank in Warfare we get to add 10/10=0 points to General and 10/2=5 points divided amongst the other categories.

 

Psyche (30)			Endurance (10)
General	22		General	6
Willpower	4		Mental	2
Logic	10		Physical	2
Intuition	10		Healing	3
Memory	4		Constitution	5
Perception	10
Spatial Awareness	10		Warfare (10)
Danger Sense	10		General	6
Empathy	2		Strategy/Tactics	-
			Unarmed	-
Strength (30)			Armed	4
General	52		Swordplay	5
Bench Press	14		Propelled	7
Lift	14		Firearms	-
Torsion	14		Artillery	-
Impact	16		Guided	-
Agility	32		Armour	-
			Fighter	-

Thus we get Having determined our attributes, our parentage, and got the auction out of the way we've used up 80 of our 160 points. We've now got to allocate a minimum of 10 points to mundane skills that reflect our career as a Rogue come Sorcerer.

Detect Traps - 1
Disarm Traps - 1
Pick Locks - 2
Move Silently - 2
Hide in Shadows - 2
Climb - 2
Rope Use - 1
Balance - 1
Identify Magical Symbology - 1
Decipher Magical Inscriptions - 1
Spell Lore - 2

This leaves us 64 points to spend on powers either immediately or later in the game. We want to reserve 10 points for Pattern Imprint leaving us 54. We’re not unlucky but we're not particularly lucky either so we'll take 2 points of Good Stuff, and we'll bank 10 points for skills later. This leaves us with 42 points to use to purchase Sorcery Skills and Magic Items.

Looking at the Sorcery Skill we need Magical Initiation, 5 points, and Basic Sorcery one side of Ygg (what ever that is) 3 points. Our GM suggests spending the additional 2 points to get Both Sides of Ygg. We’ve now spent 10 of our 42 points. If we read the power descriptions we can only store 1 spell which is not much use so we take Spell Rack, 3 points. Reading this power description suggests we might need a container to actually rack our spells in and the GM confirms this. He also confirms that to get Advance Sorcery we do need 35 points of Basic Sorcery despite their only being 15 points listed in the table- what we need to do is spend more than the required number of points on any power which increases our understanding. Before we do this we'll have a look at items. A magic sword would be useful and we need a container. The problem is the Items section is difficult to understand and interpret. To get say a Frost Brand we need Deadly Damage(2), Manipulate Shadow(2), Impervious to Normal Weapons (4) + Transfer & Retain (+15) = 23 points! A 'simple' sword , Deadly Damage, however costs just 2 points. We could add a Spell rack to this but we prefer a ring so pay 2 points for a name and numbered spell rack ring– stores up to 12 spells. Rings generally work differently so it is better to have magic armour rather than rings of protection, so we get a suit of leather armour Resistant to Normal weapons for 2 points.

We've now spent 19 of our 42 points. We now add Spell Stealing (purely because it sounds neat) 2 points and start adding points to get our 35 in Basic Sorcery, which include the 5 points for Magical Initiation.

Magical Initiation - 5
Sorcery - Both Sides of Ygg - 5 + 10
Spell Rack - 3 + 8
Spell Stealing - 2 +2

This actually cost 43 points, with our items reducing our banked points to 9. We could opt to take an Advanced Sorcery power at this point, but we choose to develop it ‘in game’ instead.