Archmage Points

From Sagataflwiki

Archmage Points, abreviated AMP, are a brake on character creation, that discourages - wthout preventing - the creation of characters with powerful magic traits, especially multiple such traits.

Any such trait has two costs, one in aDvantage Points (DPs) which is paid directly, and another in AMPs. The AMP of all chosen traits are added up, and the sum is referenced in the table below, yielding one final DP cost, which must be paid as the "extra cost" to be a character who has that particular combination of powerful magic-pertinent traits.

Note that if a character's AMP total is 2 or less, there is no cost. The DP cost for this is zero.

Subject

Turn the below into a couple of stacked tables. AMP / DP cost 0: 0 1: 0 2: 0 3: 2 DP 4: 3 DP 5: 4 .. 6: 6 7: 8 8: 11 9: 16 10: 22 11: 32 12: 45 13: 64 14: 91 15: 128 16: 181 17: 256 18: 362 19: 512 20: 724 21: 1024 22: 1448 23: 2048

AMP totals higher than 23 are legally possible. Simply continue the progression, multiplying by the square root of 2, if you need the DP cost of AMP totals higher than 23.

Advice

AMP of 2 or less costs nothing. You start at AMP 0, as a Human, so you can be completely worry-free if you take one trait of 2 AMP, or one or two traits of 1 AMP each.

Even an AMP total of 3 or slightly higher is not a real concern. AMP 6 costs 6 DPs, AMP 9 costs 16 DPs. When making a high-powered magical character, built on many Goodie Points (e.g. 160 or 180 GPs), such amounts are trivial.

The AMP cost keeps going up, though, and you may well find yourself with an AMP of 13 or 14, that can be expensive to swallow. In such cases, take a long, hard look at each of your AMP-costing traits, to see if you can remove one, ideally the one least crucial to your character concept, to your envisioning of the character. At medium'ish AMP totals, even reducing the AMP total by just 1 does a lot to lower the DP cost, and this is of course even truer for high AMP totals.

The main intent of the Archmage Points rule is to discourage random grabbing of traits, perhaps. To force players to think more. You can always build a basic spellcaster with no special traits, and he'll work fine and be reasonably priced. Or you can upgrade him with any one low-poered or medium-powered trait and your AMP total is unlikely to raise to more than 3 or 4 or 5. Even for a single high-powered trait, standing along, AMP will not climb into the double digits.

An example of a weak trait is a Spellcasting Talent with a single Realm, and an example of a medium-powered trait is Strong Magic with a single Realm. One of these is eminently affordable, and serves to individualize your spellcaster.

Please note

AMP is the sum total of all the AMP modifiers of all your AMP-pertinent traits. Presently there are no ways to get AMP reduced.

Example, simplistic

As an example, your character might have one trait that gives 1 AMP. This could be a single-Realm Spellcasting Talent, e.g. with Air Magic. He also has Increased Spell Force I (Fire Magic) for 2 AMP, and Strong Magic (Fire Magic) for 3 AMP. Note these AMP costs are temporary example AMP values, the final AMP values have not been decided upon yet and may differ slightly from the ones given here.

Nevertheless, they are unlikely to be far off, so this example is basically sound. The total AMP is 1+2+3=6 Archmage Points. Looking up 6 AMP in the table above, we find that the DP cost of 6 AMP is 6 DP, so this must be paid, in addition to the cost of the three individual aDvantages. A quite small price to pay for having a character who was born with multiple gifts in the area of firey magics

Mini-FAQ

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The world

World impact

Archmage Points acts upon the entirety of the world, in that it serves to reduce the number of strongly gifted spellcasters (and other magic users, to the extent that AMP acts on non-spell magic-pertinent traits).

The Ärth setting

AMPs work in Ärth just like in the default rules. Nothing is changed.

As one would reasonably expect, characters with high AMP totals end to attract attention, not because of their AMP totals - because AMP in itself is completely imperceptible - but because of why the AMP total is high: The presence of multiple powerful magical gifts, in the same individual. A character with a moderately high AMP total may be assumed to be the seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and one with a very high AMP might be thought to be the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.

Of course, some characters try to keep their traits secret, rather than flaunting them. Some succeed better at this than others.

Design Notes

The AMP subsystem replaces an older and somewhat more awkward mechanic, in which the choice of one particular type of trait, an instance of Strong Magic, would act upon several other types of traits and cause their DP costs to increase, doubling them, or quadrupling them in the case of Very Strong Magic. The traits acted upon thusly were Strong Magic and Spellcasting Talent.

Furthermore, there were severl instances of lists and articles, where it was only legal to choose any one trait from the list or from the entire article. To increase flexibility, combination options were then included in those lists or articles, at inflated price (as a "rarity tax"), having the effect of making the lists or articles much longer.

Archmage Points also functions in this way, as a "rarity tax", serving to discourage, but not prevent, the creation of characters with combinations of these special traits, and to a lesser extent also the choice of single extremely powerful traits. It just does so in a much more elegant, and much more transparet fashion.

Archmage Points can be seen as a way of taking into account the synergy that occurs when a character has multiple strong magic-pertinent traits, and making he player creating the character pay for this.

A side effect of this is that the "rarity tax" or "synergy cost" is the same, whether there is real synergy between traits like in the example with the one-trick (Realm) pony character born hyper-gifted for Fire Magic, or where the traits are disjointed and each point in a separate direction, e.g. a character with a Talent for Body Magic, an Increased Spell Force for Divination, a Strong Magic for Earth Magic, and an Essence Reserve for Undead Minions.

Such a "disjointed" character will still be highly versatile, though, and have much potential for surprising his foes.

Quick mini-glossary

Archmage Points (AMP) Strong Magic Increased Spell Force Talent

and so forth...

See also

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Table to use