Bergstrom Method for Amber Combat? Not!

EDIT: Not sure what this is. I thought it might have been my old system, but eventually an Archive search revealed it wasn't. Not sure if this is the Testerman/Trimmer system that mentioned, or an unpublished third edition I was working on, or the first edition that doesn't appear to be archived, or someone else's revisions to mine, or whatever. It was familiar, and I grokked it well from just the table, so that probably means I used it at some point. But I don't know who created it, at least don't know with anything approaching certainty.

Here's what I posted a few days back, take it with a grain of the unknown...

While cleaning up one of my hard-drives today, I found an old file. I think it may in fact be the chart from "The Bergstrom Method" of Amber combat. If so, it's like finding my own holy grail. Basically, years back I wrote up this method for handling combat in Amber, and put it up on geocities. Years later, I googled myself (admit it - you do it too) and found that my long-defunct site was largely mirrored in three different places, which gave me a huge ego boost. A year or two later, I went to show off, and all the mirrors were defunct or just plain gone.

Today I found this old excel file on my computer, and I'm pretty sure it's the heart of that system. There's also a tiny chance it's some unknown web-entities revisions or improvements to my system, but it looks really familiar. I'm not 100% certain, but I'm hopeful it's all mine. If anyone reading this knows otherwise, please butt-in and correct me via a comment here and a comment to my latest post, whatever that is. I'll gladly give credit where it's due if prompted.

Philosophy: The point of the following system is to bring consistency to Amber combats. By providing a frame work and yardstick for the GM, you make fight scenes less arbitrary. This reduces the chances of favoritism creeping into the game, as well as improves the verisimilitude of the GM.

Defender Stat	Attacker Human (-25)	Attacker Chaos (-10)	Attacker Amber (0)	Attacker Low Rank	Attacker Mid Rank	Attacker High Rank	Attacker 1st Rank
Defender Human (0)	2min. 1st hit KO	1min. 1st hit KO	30sec. 1st hit KO	15sec. 1st hit KO	Instant KO	Instant KO	Instant KO
Defender Chaos(-10)	30min. 2nd hit KO	10min. 2nd hit KO	5min. 2nd hit KO	2min. 2nd hit KO	1min. 2nd hit KO	30sec. 2nd hit KO	15sec. 2nd hit KO
Defender Amber(0)	3hr. 3rd hit KO	90min. 3rd hit KO	40min. 3rd hit KO	20min. 3rd hit KO	10min. 3rd hit KO	5min. 3rd hit KO	4min. 3rd hit KO
Defender Low Rank	12hr. 4th hit KO	6hr. 4th hit KO	3hr. 4th hit KO	2hr. 4th hit KO	1hr. 4th hit KO	30min. 4th hit KO	25min. 4th hit KO
Defender Mid Rank	20hr. 5th hit KO	16hr. 5th hit KO	12hr. 5th hit KO	8hr. 5th hit KO	4hr. 5th hit KO	2hr. 5th hit KO	90min. 5th hit KO
Defender High Rank	36hr. 6th hit KO	30hr. 6th hit KO	24hr. 6th hit KO	18hr. 6th hit KO	12hr. 6th hit KO	8hr. 6th hit KO	6hr. 6th hit KO
Defender First Rank	40hr. 7th hit KO	33hr. 7th hit KO	26hr. 7th hit KO	20hr. 7th hit KO	13hr. 7th hit KO	9hr. 7th hit KO	7hr. 7th hit KO

Using the chart is simple. You cross reference the attacker's rank vs the defenders rank in the same attribute. The tells you how long they duel before the defender is beaten. It also says roughly how many negligible "warning" hits it takes before the final incapacitating blow is dealt. So an entry like "3hr. 4th hit KO" means that he'll go down after 3 hours of dueling and jockeying for position, and the GM should narrate 3 hits, each getting successively worse and providing hints they should flee. Consult the chart twice, once with character A as Attacker and character B as defender, then once the other way. Whichever gives the smallest time frame is the version you use, with the attacker in that scenario being the winner. Should there be a tie, winner is determined by who has the most actual points in the attribute. If that too is tied, then Good Stuff / Bad Stuff determines the outcome.

Of course, Amber combat isn't that simple. You have at least three options in combat - full attack, opportunistic fighting, and full defensive. This system and chart allow for that as well.

• Full Attack - when on full attack, you read 1 column to the right of normal while attacking. However, the aggressive stance makes you also read one row above normal when the Defender.
• Opportunistic - Read the chart normally for this character.
• Full Defense - when fighting defensively, the Defender reads 1 row down, improving their life expectancy greatly. However, they are unlikely to win a fight while focusing purely on defense, so they read one column to the left when being the attacker.

Factoring Endurance: Even Amberites have limits to how long they can duel, wrestle, or engage in psychic combat. When a person is in the Defender column, they use the lower of the time figure generated above, or the number below based on Endurance.

Defenders Endurance	Max Life Expectancy
Human	15min
Chaos	30 min
Amber	1 hour
Low Rank	3 hours
Mid Rank	8 hours
High Rank	24 hours
First Rank	48 hours

Example: Corwin fights Benedict. Corwin is Mid Rank in Warfare, but 1st Rank in Endurance. Benedict is 1st Rank in Warfare and Low Rank in Endurance. Looking at the chart with Benedict as the Attacker, we see it takes 90 minutes of dueling for Benedict to win. However, if Corwin is smart, he can go on Full Defense and wear Benedict out - doing so stretches the fight to 6 hours, which is well beyond the 3 hour limits of Benedict's Endurance. Eventually older brother Ben gets tired, and thus sloppy, and Corwin wins. As a GM I would narrate an hour of fencing for position, then in the second hour Ben starts inflicting warning hits on Corwin. But as the fight stretches to the 3rd hour, Benedict's motions slow down from fatigue, and I switch who's taking the warning hits. Ben's player had better look for ways to bail, and quickly. (I note that if Ben had Mid Ranked endurance, he'd stay in top form till a couple hours after the point where he'd taken Corwin's head.)

Dirty Tricks: No amber combat would be complete without surprises and villainy. Most tricks shift the fight one column or row in favor of the tricker. Particularly nasty tricks might be more effective - like that bit with the black road grasses Corwin pulls on Benedict in the books.

Playtesting: The campaign I wrote this up for involved very little combat, so it didn't get tested a whole lot, and then it got filed away for years. It looks pretty solid today, but I'm not sure what logic went into the picking of the specific numerical values, especially hours. Let me know if you run into any problems with it, or have constructive feedback.