Attribute Ranks:
Ranks: (Some of these may be refined as I find better descriptions. If these are not what you were thinking they should be, please start a new thread, so I can keep this one clean.)
Human (-25): Means you are going to die. There's a reason a 100 point character gets 25 extra points for this. You are a "typical" mortal. Or, in D&D terms, have a stat of 10. (although anywhere between 3 and 14-ish would fall in this category.)
- Human Psyche: Means people holding a trump card of you can rip apart your mind.
- Human Strength: Means you're looking at one hit KOs in unarmed combat.
- Human Endurance: Means you get tired after 10 - 15 minutes of full on action. (That's a sprint, without pacing yourself.) You also do not "full heal". The Pattern kills you within minutes of stepping on it. (Maybe within seconds.) IF you can shapeshift, it's once a day.
- Human Warfare: Means you're able to be killed without the chance to defend yourself physically.
Chaos (-10): Roughly equivalent to human maximum. You may still have some flaws in the attribute that would spell doom. D&D (2nd ed) means 18/00 or 18s. In 3rd ed, you're looking at 18 to about 23.
- Chaos Psyche: Like Derren Brown, you can read people well. You can get hunches and manipulate others, unless you have to deal with real power.
- Chaos Strength: It is up for debate if Bruce Lee is Chaos or Amber. Still, it means you can take on the winner of the Kumate and stand a good chance of winning.
- Chaos Endurance: Means you get tired after 2 - 3 hours of full exertion. You can regenerate lost limbs but it might take a century. (Harry Dresden has this.) You cannot walk the entire pattern, you will get winded, collapse and die.
- Chaos Warfare: The best fencer in the world is a worthy opponent. If you played chess against everyone on the planet, you MIGHT lose a handful of games. Your skills are important here. If you have no experience in chess, you'll probably lose a lot more games to the top ranked players.
Amber (0): Think low level greek demi-god. Amber level means you have no obvious or crippling weaknesses.
- Amber Psyche: Not only are you really good at reading people, you can do some touch telepathy. Spock is a good template for the kind of mental power you can display.
- Amber Strength: Catch flies with chopsticks? You're fast enough. In a street brawl, you can hold your own against any human, past or present. Any character played by Jackie Chan is a fairly good reference.
- Amber Endurance: Means you get tired after a day of full exertion. You can regenerate lost limbs but it might take twenty years. You can walk the pattern, though it does take a lot out of you.
- Amber Warfare: The first time you play chess, you have a 50/50 chance of beating the best player in the world. After that, you clobber him. The same goes for fencing, battle simulators, or actual battle command. You can quickly adapt to new weapons and rules of war.
Other Ranks:
- Unranked/Amber: 0 - 5 points
- Low Rank: 5 - 15 points
- Mid Rank: 15 - 25 points
- High Rank: 25 - 50 points
First off, you'll be competing with PCs and your own powers, so how you compare point-wise is most important. Higher point value wins... Except when you cheat. Traps, clever use of powers, political maneuvering, overpowered weapons, and Zanatos Gambits are all ways that you can defeat a superior opponent. These are the core of Amber.
Tricks and tactics are more important than a 1, 5 or even a 15 point difference. In fact, they're more important than "first rank". My thought is that the greater the difference, the greater a hail Mary that's needed.
The point values listed in the book for NPCs are on crack. So, I'm not going to worry too much about them. My goals are to make the point values more linear (once you pass Amber), and a bit more sense.
There are a number of attribute tricks listed in the book, and my gut instinct is to let people to develop one of these every 15 - 20 points... Although, some of those tricks would have a different minimum. (And some, like endurance, can have more, like poison resistance.)