In the Amber RPG, the sorcery system has a advantage ; it is simple. It has also a drawback ; it is sometimes too simple.  
As sorcery is considered as a minor power, it exists only in a " basic " version, whereas all the other powers (Pattern, Logrus, Trumps, Shape shifting) have an advanced aspect. But if you consider the Amber books, you easily realize that the level of mastery and the powers of the main characters in this field can be significantly different. It is rather likely, for instance, that Suhuy’s or Fiona magic powers are much greater than Merlin’s, for instance. It seems also quite logic that each sorcerer can have some favorites spells or field of magic where they are more competent. Mandor, for instance, is called by Merlin the " lord of illusion " ; you can thus consider that if he casts a spell connected with illusion, he will spend less time than for an invocation spell, let’s say.
   Another aspect is the existence of a hierarchy inside the wizards world. In Shadow Knight, Merlin meets  Oberon's ghost who evokes the existence of " Shadow circles " when it comes of sorcery. We can therefore assume that each wizard can be ranked, and even maybe that there is some kind of organization of wizards somewhere in the Golden Circle or in Shadow, and maybe even some kind of school teaching magic.

ADVANCED SORCERY

    The simplest way to introduce different levels in sorcery is of course to imagine an advance sorcery power. It should allow to assemble spells much quickly, by dividing all the times costs by five, and should also give the possibility to design more powerful and efficient spells. For instance, if somebody with basic sorcery wants to achieve a Stone Binding spell, the basic casting time is one and a half Hour, and each additional lynchpin is another fifteen minutes. Besides, the spell will be quickly dissipated if the victim is moved through shadow. The advanced sorcery power should then permit to cast the base spell in less then twenty minutes (1h30/5=18), each lynchpin will be three minutes only and the spell will remain wherever the victim is transported. At this level of mastery, it should also be possible to create some pretty complex spells that could not be removed by normal ways, such as mere dissipate magic counterspell or by simply moving through Shadow, especially if such spells have been created with the supply of the Logrus or the Pattern. All these improvements should put Advanced Sorcery around thirty-five points.

 

 

PARAMETRED SORCERY

    Another means to make the thing is to imagine a flexible sorcery system where each spell has the same parameters ; range, duration, power, casting time. And each time a character wants to cast a spell, he will have to distribute a constant amount of skill points between these parameters. The calculation is  based on the following boards ;

Spell Points	Duration
0 point	instant
1 point	few minutes
2 points	few hours
3 points	few days
4 points	few years
5 points	permanent in a shadow, few minutes in Shadow
6 points	permanent in a shadow, few hours in Shadow
7 points	permanent in a shadow, few days in Shadow
8 points	permanent in a shadow, few years in Shadow
9 points	permanent in Shadow
10 points	permanent everywhere

 

 

Spell points	Range
0 point	Touch
1 point	field of view
2 points	a town
3 points	a country
4 points	a planet
5 points	a galaxy
6 points	a shadow
7 points	a Shadow area
8 points	a Shadow region
9 points	Shadow
10 points	anywhere

Sorcery	Spell points
15 points	10
20 points	12
25 points	14
30 points	16
35 points	18
40 points	20
45 points	21
50 points	22
55 points	23
60 points	24
65 points	25

   It can seem quite complicated at the first look, but you will better understand with an example. Let's say that Arthur, a young amberite, wants to cast a mind touch spell on some people he knows in a shadow in order to get some information. He has basic sorcery (15 points), which gives him some 10 Spell points to use for his spell. He knows that the people he wants to contact are in the same shadow as he, and even in the same city, so he put only 2 points in range. (In comparison, if Arthur was in a close but nevertheless different shadow, he would have to put 7 points in range.) He only wants to ask for some information, what should not be too long, but just to be sure he puts 2 points in the duration of the spell, so that it will fade only after hours (but would be immediately dissipated if Arthur or the spell subjects move in another shadow). There are 6 points left. Now, as there are more than one person to be reached, it will cost him, let’s say, 2 more points (it would have been 0 if he wanted to speak with only one person), and as he is not sure that all the people he wants to contact are willing to open their mind, he adds 3 more points to strengthen the spell in order to force the contact and to add to the effect of his own psyche. There is one point left, and he puts it in the casting time, to accelerate the things a little bit, so that the spell would be quickly finished.

   Now, let’s take another example ; a very powerful wizard, having 50 points in sorcery, want to use a spell on himself to be transformed into a dragon. He has 22 spell points. As he is the spell subject, it will cost him 0 points in range (touch). He wants the spell to last for quite long, and plans to move into different places in Shadow, and maybe even near Amber and the Courts, and therefore puts 10 points in duration, so the spell is effective everywhere. (with 9 points –permanent in Shadow, the spell could have fade near some special places such as the Primal Pattern world for instance, and our wizard does not want to take this risk). Now, there are still 11 points left. He has all his time to cast the spell, and does not put any point to accelerate the things. But he wants to be very powerful in his dragon form, and that he why he spends 5 points to be sure to have some strong physical capacities ; it should give him an equivalent of an endless stamina, and an invincibility to all conventional weapons. Eventually, the last 6 points are used to give him some magical capacities ; moving through shadows, fire breath, resistance to magic, etc.

   The casting time will of course be managed another way in such a system. Instead of depending of the casting time of each micro-spell, the global casting time will only depend on the spell points. For instance ;

Spell points	Casting time ( depending on circumstances and caster's psyche)
1	few seconds
3	around one minute
5	several minutes to half an hour
7	half an hour to one hour
10	one to two hours
12	two to three hours
14	three to four hours
16	four to five hours
18	six hours at least
20	ten hours at least
22	a day

    Of course, you can add a rule giving a powerful wizard the possibility to put all his unused points to accelerate the casting time of a spell. It is indeed logic that if a wizard with ten Spell points spends one hour to cast a spell, another much more powerful, with twenty points for instance, casting the same ten points spell, should finish the work much more quickly, in maybe ten minutes instead of an hour...

    Now, if you find all that much too complex, you can reduce all these rules to something more simple and intuitive ; actually the main purpose of a system based on parameters was only to offer an alternative to the basic Amber RPG magic system. But you can also use the both systems in the same time, by changing some details of each of them. Do not forget that there are two different sorceries in the Amber universe ; the sorcery of Amber, and the sorcery of Chaos, and they are supposed to be quite different. So it can be fairly interesting to combinate those two different system rules to express this difference ; the standard magic system including advanced sorcery on one hand, and the parametred sorcery on the other.