Characters are built on 115 points with Attributes starting at Chaos level.

Some sort of Source is necessary plus enough magic to get by.

Some possible inspirations: Morrolan, Vlad Taltos, Tazendra, Elric, Aragorn, Atrix Wolf, Derkon, Thelinde, Baran, Dilvish, Semirama, Henry Spiers, Twisk, Lina Inverse, Antryg, Dewar, Clea.
One (each) might be an Amber Crown Agent or a Rebman Crown Agent, a shadowjack, a were, a Weir, a vampire (RZ's versions don't seem to be undead, mostly) or a Fae of some sort.

Motivation is important. You want something very badly. Revenge, redemption, reward, rescue, something.

Chargen Mechanics Summary:

• ATTRIBUTES
• SOURCE
• POWERS
• QUIRKS & STUFF
• ARTIFACTS & CREATURES either bought or Conjured.

ATTRIBUTES
I'm using the standard four.
Zero = 'Chaos' rank. You can buy down if you wish, in -5 point increments down to -15 ('Human').

• I'll be using a rank system.
• +1 Rank is a slight edge, a *hard* fight, easily lost,
• +2 Ranks is still a serious fight, loseable,
• +3 Ranks is an easy fight,
• +4 Ranks almost impossible to lose.
• As actual bidding is not possible, being First Ranked in something does Not give you more than being the best. Or equal to the best. No 1.5's, just equals. I'll let people know what the top stats are.

Strength and lifting capacity: At Zero (Chaos) Str you can lift 200 lbs over your head. (Or 100 lbs easily/one handed, or lug 400 lbs around with difficulty.) Add 20 lbs per point of Str over Zero. So, 10 Str = 400 lbs, etc. For negative Str, subtract 10 lbs per point. Many sorcerers will have increased their strength with permanent empowerments. Some have unusual bloodlines. Some aren't human at all.

SOURCES:

• Broken Pattern 10-25 points (commonest)
• Nature (for Faeries) 10 or 20 points
• the Blue Star 10-20 points
• the Moon 10-20 points
• Twilight 10-35 points (one person only)
• Great Daemons 10-20 points (Uncommon. Examples: the Chained God, Yogah (from Conan), Arioch, Tualua, the Vishanti.)
  The first five points of any Source go to the 'base' -- the ability to draw magic from it, extended lifespan and regeneration. I don't want to give the specifics to all the Sources openly as they should be secret to varying degrees, particularly their drawbacks.

POWERS

• Sorcery 5-29 points
• Conjuration 10-15 points
• Power Words 1 point each, each based on a Sorcery specialty or Conjuration effect
• Shapeshifting 5-30 points

SORCERY is mostly as presented in the Merlin books and ADRPG rulebook. Differences:

• Rather than a generic, does-everything power Sorcery is broken up into specialties: Black, White, Water, Fire, Air, Earth, Glamour, Divination, Necromancy, Green, Warp, Darkness and Beasts. The first specialization bought costs 5 points. Each one after the first costs 2 points.
  • Black -- pain, bodily disfunction, disease
  • White -- banish pain, pleasure, healing
  • Water -- move, shape, freeze, vaporize, blast, elementals
  • Fire -- move, increase, snuff, blast, elementals
  • Air -- move, blast (wind, electric), elementals, heat, cool
  • Earth -- move, shape, sort, elementals
  • Glamour -- mental illusion, delusion, control, influence
  • Divination -- enhanced senses, magical sight, probes
  • Necromancy -- command ghosts, animate corpses
  • Green -- fertility, shape plants, animate plants
  • Warp -- manipulation and access to subspace: portable holes
  • Darkness -- positive darkness, elementals, cold
  • Beasts -- call and control animals including insects

Teleportation is possible with 15+ points in Sorcery. Teleports are limited to:

• Destinations you can see or reliably detect
• Pre-set, magically marked locations
• FX involving your other Sorcery specializations
  

Sorcerers
The vast majority of sorcerers are practitioners of purely local power. Some learn to operate in a number of shadows or even a whole region. Initiates of a suitable power source -- like the PCs -- can learn to operate anywhere magic works.

Ordinary mages are also limited by the availability of power. Personal energies are insufficient for any but the weakest spells. Ambient magic is rarely much better. Mages who want to do much magic must find a local power point, like a ley line intersection or a holy place, and tap it, or resort to things like human sacrifice. Power Sources like a Broken Pattern, the Blue Star or a few sapient Powers may be tapped remotely and usually provide other benefits as well.

Casting and racking spells: The sorcerer taps his Source or power point and either casts the spell immediately or stores it and the power to execute it in a spell rack. Racks hold up to 12 spells. Spell Maintenence: roughly 5 minutes per spell per day -- 1 hour for a full rack. Sorcerers may have and fill multiple racks but maintenance will soon eat up a lot of their time.

Sorcerer's duels

• One experienced sorcerer can usually tell what the other guy is casting. If she has magical sight going, she definitely can. This is general, on the lines of 'casting fire', 'casting a glamour', 'conjuring missiles'.
• Sorcerers have a limited number of spells available. It's a good idea to have physical force and skills to fall back on. Daggers, poison darts, sneezing powder, whatever. Power Words come in handy too.
• In the absence of a power-assisted Psychic contact, Psychic combat is difficult without the cooperation of both combatants. If both are sufficiently arrogant though...
• Damage From Spells: You aren't artillery. Treat Psyche as if it were Strength and the spell an approproate melee weapon. So a Psyche 30 fire blast does about as much damage as an oversized axe wielded by a monster capable of lifting 800 lbs over his head.

CONJURATION 10 points allows you to:

• Conjure mundane items out of the world's potential
• Empower items and creatures with 2 point A&C Qualities and (some) Powers. You are limited to enhancements (Vitality, Movement, Intelligence, Healing, etc.) and altering shapes (real and illusory) unless mixed with Sorcery. Combining the two lets you empower in ways related to your sorcerous specializations (flaming weapons, fireproofing, ghostkiller blades....) and to cast Conjuration spells.

+5 points allows you to conjure one 4-point effect out of this list: Movement, Vitality, Intelligence, Psych Sensitivity.

POWER WORDS
1 point each. Using the target's true name would make it work better... but your chances of knowing one in this game are vanishingly small. Each PW must be related to one of your Sorcery specializations or your Conjuration enhancements. The strength of the effect is Psyche-based, so Burst of Strength adds your Psyche to your Strength and so on.
Examples:

• Black -- Pain Attack, Neural Disrupt
• White -- Lifeforce, Purify food or drink
• Water -- Soak condenses water out of the air
• Fire -- Spark, Snuff Fire
• Air -- Wind Blast, Loudspeaker, Whisper ventriloquism
• Earth -- Weaken Structure, Heat Metal
• Glamour -- Fadeout limited 'where'd he go' effect, Dispel Glamour
• Divination -- Momentary Sight magical sight
• Necromancy -- Repulse Ghost, Exorcise weak ones, anyway
• Green -- Thornpass vegetable entanglements let you pass by
• Warp -- Sleight of Space access something stored in subspace/pull something out of a Portable Hole.
• Darkness -- Cloak cloak yourself in darkness for a moment, Blind hit someone else with it
• Conjuration -- Burst of Strength, Leap, Burst of Magic (usable, with sufficient Warfare, to deflect some spells), Psychic Disrupt, Magic Negation, Psychic Defense

SHAPESHIFTING
As in the Merlin books, mass doesn't change. Usually.

• 5 SS Wounds
  • 5 SS Parts
    • 10 SS Reassembly (severed parts don't bleed out and may be put back together, like Weir)
  • 5 SS Features
    • 5 SS Disguise (lasts until changed, even through sleep)
    • 5 Automatic
  • 5 Combat Form (armored skin, tough fangs/claws, maybe winged)
  • 5 Animal Forms
  • 5 an Extraordinary Form (A falcon, for instance, or a house cat. Mass goes away but so does most durability -- if someone hits you in a small creature form, you're in a world of hurt.)
    • 5 SS Animal Abilities
  • 5 SS Aura
    

So most Weres would have Wounds and Combat Form. (Weir add 10 points for the Reassembly trick.) Dopplegangers would have Wounds, Features, Disguise and Aura. A shapeshifting nature wizard might have Wounds, Animal Forms and Animal Ablities, and maybe Aura. A vampire would have Wounds, a Combat Form and maybe Animal Forms.

QUIRKS AND STUFF

• Quirks are 1-4 point advantages like excessive beauty, amazing acrobatics, some racial traits like inhuman running speed or resistance to cold or heat, things like that. 1, 2 or 4 points depending on how useful they are.
• Stuff good or bad is limited to plus or minus 5 points.

ARTIFACTS & CREATURES
Conjurors can have all the junk they've had time to make.

• Phantasm: Made out of the world's potential, 10 seconds/point, lasts hours, dispelled by any sort of magic or Psychic attack, limited to one shadow.
• Shaping: Conjured onto an existing item or creature, 1 minute/point, lasts days to weeks, resistance Chaos Rank, limited to one shadow.
• Empowerment: On existing item or creature, 30 minutes/point, permanent in one shadow, resistance = 10 Psyche (Amber Rank).
• Permanent Empowerment: 5 hours/point, works anywhere magic works, resistance = Conjuror's Psyche. = Bought With Points if it's the PC who's been so Empowered. Intended mostly for explaining inhumanly high Strength and such, not for permanent armor skin or the like.
• Complex Conjuration: Formed out of potential, 1 hour/point, permanent in one shadow, limited to one shadow, resistance = conjuror's Psyche. (Zero point items, like furniture, clothing or food, take 1 - 10 minutes, depending on the mass of the item.)
• Permanent Complex Conjuration: 10 hours/point, works in any shadow where magic works. Also known as Bought With Points.

A & C Restrictions Let's try to keep things in genre and vaguely Zelaznyesque.

• Armor: Must be rigid to be armor -- armor spandex is hard to damage but does not protect the wearer.
• Double and Deadly Damage: Greyswandir doesn't cut armor like cheese or shatter opposing swords like toothpicks. Use this for magic penetration or added damage effects -- flaming swords, poisoned blades and such.
• Psychic Barrier: No.
• Shadow Movement: As such is restricted to some non-trivial Creatures; it is not a Conjurable effect. You can use it as a mechanic for in-shadow teleport effects.
• Shadow Manipulation: Applies to a specific effect. Boots that leave no tracks, frex, or a succubus' lust-causing ability. Mold Shadow Reality doesn't exist at all.
• Regeneration. No.
• Shape Shifting: Is inferior to that of characters, slower, and mass does not change.

Bought With Points

• Half cost, usually. Why? Magicker types traditionally have lots of gadgets. If they have a secure base they might have tons of them. Plus, without real Pattern or Logrus, things are a lot more trouble to replace.
• Exceptions: permanent Empowerments. Things like Stormbringer that are indestructable and really hard to lose. Summonable items.