Templates

Every character in Amber is defined, to a greater or lesser degree, by where they come from:  Amber, Chaos, Shadow... or even someplace else.  The first step of character creation (following the development of the Character Concept) is determining your character's Template.

Age groups, as a label, is something of a misnomer. By this, we do not mean to imply that all 'Mature Adult' Amberites are generally the same age, simply that they are roughly the same level of... potency and perspective. With perspective comes maturity.

• Young Amberite: You are in the typical age group for starting PCs; this is the age of Discovery and Adventure for Adventures Sake.  It is also the age when you (finally) become truly useful to the rest of the Family...
• Young Adult Amberite: Too young to make your own rules, but too old to listen to your seniors, you are generally at loose ends unless you can find a place for yourseff in the Family... or find a place far, far away.
• Adult Amberite:  You are one of the Wardens of Amber: Adults are old enough to be trusted with the One True Kingdom, and young enough not to be cynical about it.  (Alternately, forget about protecting the Kingdom; having learned something of the Way of Things, some adult Amberites seek to gain greater Power:  political, mystical, or otherwise...)

"So I was imprisoned and Eric was crowned. I was prevailed upon to assist in the coronation, despite a small demurrer on my part. I did succeed in crowning myself before that bastard -- genealogically speaking -- had it back and placed it on his own head."
                    -- Corwin, Guns of Avalon

• Mature Amberite: With age comes perspective. This individual has learned to guard his words, husband his actions, and keep his alliances to himself...

"It is interesting," I said, swirling the wine within my cup. "In this light, then, it appears that everyone may have acted prematurely."
"Not everyone," said Benedict.
                    -- Guns of Avalon

I have created a spreadsheet that quickly calculates all these values. Download it here.

• Template: Lists the possible templates for a character of any kind.
• Attribute Points: The number of points a character of that age group can spend on their Attributes.  Simply, the total of your six attributes should equal the points listed as available.  Certain minimum scores should be observed. The bonuses for various Attribute scores are listed under the Ability Scores section.  
• Skill Points: The number of additional skill points a character of that age group has to spend on Skills. Skill information can be found under the Skills section.
• Bonus Vitality: The number of bonus vitality points (and hit dice) a character of that age group has simply because of age. These vitality are cumulative with vitality points gained from career levels, and are not affected by bonuses from Constitution, nor to the hit dice of the count towards effectiveness of spells.
• Base Feats: The number of Feats granted to a character of that age group, before gaining Feats from their career choices. Feat information can be found in the Feat section.
• ECL: The Effective Character Level of a character with this template, as compared to a standard d20 character.  This might have some bearing on the campaign, if the GM has decided that the game will start with everyone at ECL 15, allowing either Young Amberites with five character levels, or 0-level Young Adults.  d20 "Epic" rules should not be used until the character is actually 20 character levels (not ECL 20).
• Example: Where possible, examples of the templates listed have been provided, using NPCs from the Amber setting.