Editing Amber Diceless RPG (section)

==Character Creation==
Characters have four stats:
* '''Psyche''' for telepathy and magic (EVERYBODY uses magic and has psionics, so it's the most important)
* '''Strength''' for lifting carrying, and hand-to-hand (this is what makes fights deadly, so it's the most important) 
* '''Endurance''' for how long you can last (and this fuels any other endeavor, so it's the most important)
* '''Warfare''' for any kind of fighting, whether it be swords or guns or army tactics (and since this is used when you get into fights, this stat is the most important)
:: Yes, I see what I did there, but that's the way it's described in the book.  I'm not kidding.
Going through each stat, the players bid points to auction who will be the best in that category.  This is important because if another player has a better Warfare/Strength/Psyche, they will ''always'' win against you in a fair fight, doesn't matter if she bid just one point more.  Any points left over can be spent on getting powers like Pattern (hopping to different universes or bending existing ones to your will), Logrus (like Pattern, but you pull bits of other universes to you), Shape-shifting (including mind-shifting and many freaky powers, look out for chaos cancer), Trump Artistry (magic tarot/cell phone cards with many useful apps locked behind microtransactions), Conjuration (which is creating things out of nothing and/or out of existing nearby things, which is usually more efficient), and Sorcery (which can do just about anything at the price of taking fucking forever if you don't have a pre-prepared one ready to go), all in a few different forms, with most having associated "basic" and "advanced" packages.  The latter three work best when "backed" by other power sources, so they work anywhere rather than just in a few universes with similar laws of magic and physics. They are all fairly powerful and fucking expensive, so it's a good idea to try to have enough points left over after the auction to actually buy them, usually by getting some prices worked out so you can get a budget together ahead of time.

For any of these stats, you can get more points to spend later by taking a less-than-immortal rank in them, but that guarantees that you are completely fucked because people will pick on that stat every goddamn time. Some groups solve this with "silent auctions," where who bid what where isn't revealed, only your comparative rank.

'''Equipment''': Anything.  If you have Pattern, you just go to a universe that has what you want, and take/buy/earn/build it.  If you have Logrus, you just send out a tendril and pull it back to you.  If you have Conjuration, it doesn't take too long to whip up whatever you need on the go as long as it's not too complicated or powerful. The universe you're in may have different laws of physics (ie.: gunpowder doesn't work the way you expect at Castle Amber, which is why everyone learns swords).  There ''are'' powerful Artifacts you can spend points on, but the game designer was actively apathetic to anti-pathetic to them, so their rules suck and the books repeatedly tells the GM to rip them out of players' hands after they buy them, so this is one area of the game that is commonly subjected to houserules.

'''Skills''': Anything.  You're immortal, so it's nothing to hop to a universe of slow-time and spend 15 years to get a Ph.D.  Every one in the Amber family is a surgeon by this method because it's too useful not to.  The only limit is how bored your character would get studying.

Note that the book recommends an ''extremely'' adversarial GM/player posture that includes that bit about actively misleading your players during the auction.  Most GMs running the system don't do that kind of thing, but...  it's there, and it's baked into the game in a few ways.