Pattern (v 2.0)

The Great Pattern of Amber is a blue-white glowing spiral shaped pattern on the floor of a dungeon room under the palace of Amber. It is said that if anyone not of royal blood steps onto it, they instantly die horribly. However, if one of the blood of Amber walks the length of the Pattern (a demanding task, both physically and psychically), they gain great power over Shadow.

As you can see, I've broken down the basic power. However, let me be clear on this: I don't want to see people who just buy a leetle bit of each Power, getting what they consider the most useful abilities of each. Thus, I'm going to be extremely skeptical of anyone who gets only the 30 point basic power for Pattern. That's really only justifiable if you've only very recently walked the Pattern. Anyone who's had any sort of practice with Shadowwalking is going to pick up the other Shadowwalking powers in relatively short order, and if you've got just a little bit of Pattern, I, as the GM, will eventually just force your XP into other Pattern abilities until you get up into the ranges of ability which the ADRPG book describes as "basic." gif of power tree

Basic Pattern

requires: Having walked the Pattern
costs: 30 points

These are the abilities which are trivial to use immediately after walking the Pattern. They include the power of the blood curse, the power to manipulate probabilities (though it will be a little flaky until your Pattern skill increases somewhat), and basic Shadowwalking. However, your Shadowwalking is confined to only being towards a specific destination that you visualize. No walking to "where ever Bleys is now," no walking to "the solution to my problem," and no Hellriding. You can walk towards generic items, such as "a sword," "a sabre," or "an IBM clone laptop with 32 Megs of RAM," but not a specific item like "Greyswandir."

Pattern Defense

requires: Basic Pattern
costs: 5 points

The ability to call the Pattern to mind and fill yourself with its energy. Makes you difficult to affect with Magic, Logrus, or Trump (though Logrus may be hazardous for both you and its wielder).

Hellriding

requires: Basic Pattern
costs: 5 points

You may now Shadowwalk faster if you are moving faster (for example, on a trained horse or in a vehicle). Essentially, with enough speed, you can make larger changes in a shorter period of time.

Shadowwalk to Non-Locations

requires: Hellride
costs: 5 points

Allows you to Shadowwalk towards something that you don't know the location of. For example, "Uncle Random," "Mom," "The Jewel of Judgement," or the like. Much slower and less exact than Shadowwalking to a location, and if the person is in an area which is warded to Pattern, you'll walk in circles and look silly.

Shadowwalk to Abstractions

requires: Shadowwalk to Non-Locations
costs: 5 points

Allows you to Shadowwalk towards vague ideas. Examples are "where I'm most needed," or "the cause of our trouble." This is very imprecise and may simply fail, or take the Shadowwalker where he or she subconsciously wants to go.

Pattern Sensing

requires: Basic Pattern
costs: 5 points

This is the same as the power given under Advanced Pattern in the DRPG. However, it does not include the power to create a Pattern lens. Pattern sensing can only show you areas you can currently see with your own eyes.

Pattern Lens

requires: Pattern Sensing
costs: 7 points

As the book.

Altering Rules

requires: Shadow Defense and Hellriding
costs: 3 points

Altering the rules is as the book describes. In this case, we are speaking solely of temporary changes to Shadow, which disappear as soon as the Pattern Initiate stops concentrating.

Editing Shadow

requires: Altering Rules
costs: 5 points

Permenant alteration of Shadows, including the ability to bar an area from Trump or casual Shadowwalking.

Shadow Pockets

requires: Editing Shadow
costs: 2 points

As the book.

Shadow Erasure

requires: Shadow Pockets
costs: 3 points

To make this power fair, I usually require it to take some time and be obvious to those in the Shadow. That is, no 'nuking the site from orbit.'

This is a rework of the Pattern Initiating powers originally published (and copyrighted) by Phage Press. The original work on this page is copyright 1999, Epoch. Permission to copy, but not distribute, this material for personal game purposes only is granted. Comments or questions can be directed to the maintainer at msulliva@wso.williams.edu