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Interpretation Question

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Ed

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« on: <10-30-10/1247:04> »
When you all are reading published products and the product is referencing an Awakened NPC who is described as a mid-level initiate, what grade do you consider they're referencing?  What, in your campaigns, is a mid-level initiate?

Angelone

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« Reply #1 on: <10-30-10/1353:14> »
5-7ish  :-X I have nothing more to say.
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FastJack

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« Reply #2 on: <10-30-10/1359:03> »
5-7ish  :-X I have nothing more to say.
Whoa.  :o

I'd go with 4-5, meself... But it all depends on where you set the High Bar. For instance, Jane "Frosty" Foster is said to be a high-level initiate, at least grade 8 (Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk, p. 47). But you could also make her grade 10-11 if that's too low for you're type of play.

Angelone

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« Reply #3 on: <10-30-10/1411:19> »
4 is too low I think. Scanning the books quite a few npcs are 4th grade initiates. One is 7th iirc so between them is where I'd set the bar.
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The Cat

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« Reply #4 on: <10-31-10/1449:01> »
Low, Medium and High are some of those great "weasel words" that let us decide it based on a game to game basis.  I've had games where Karma was at a premium so a "mid range" initiate would be a 3 or 4 at best.  In another game, karma was flowing like water, so "mid range" was 8 to 10 or so.

So, my feeling is that it's going to be defined by just how much karma is flowing in that particular game.  In most of my games midrange is around 6 or so because players tend to rack up some spare karma with good ideas, good RP and some intense "between game" downtime play sessions with PCs being able to get to that level with a good bit of time, effort and work and but much higher being rather rare.
« Last Edit: <10-31-10/1451:00> by The Cat »

The_Gun_Nut

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« Reply #5 on: <11-01-10/0513:00> »
There are six grades (for normal metahumans, anyway), right?  So wouldn't it be:

1 - 2 = Low grade,

3 - 4 = Mid grade, and

5 - 6 = High grade?

Wouldn't that make a bit more sense from a pure numbers point of view?
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Mäx

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« Reply #6 on: <11-01-10/0919:07> »
You do know that there's no limit on iniation grade.
You can iniae as many times as you can get karma for, just remember to raise your magic from time to time.
"An it harm none, do what you will"

Medicineman

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« Reply #7 on: <11-01-10/1139:53> »
But raising MAG is Karma expensive !
It takes  nearly 200 Karma to raise a Mage with MAG 5 to Initiate 3 and MAG 9

I'd say:
1-3= Low
4-6= Mid
7+  = High Level Initiate

Hough!
Medicineman
« Last Edit: <11-01-10/1143:16> by Medicineman »
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nakano

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« Reply #8 on: <11-01-10/1335:43> »
I tend to treat low grade initiates as Grade 1-2, the folks that have the most common metamagics in my campaigns but little else, things like masking(always a godsend in my games), and perhaps a second metamagic technique.  This falls into the category of characters with prolly 200 karma or less.(Unless you are my wife, in which case you are absurdly well rounded at that point without having initiated.   ;)  )

Mid-grade initiates tend to range from 3-7.  A variety of metamagic techniques, some very cool tricks etc.  (Prime Runners here.  Big and scary.  Highest grade PC initiate I have had at my tables in running the game since SR1 is grade 5.)

Anything 8 or higher is high grade to me.  (And almost certainly falls into the category of NPC.) 


The Cat

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« Reply #9 on: <11-01-10/1348:47> »
You do know that there's no limit on iniation grade.
You can iniae as many times as you can get karma for, just remember to raise your magic from time to time.

The main limiting factor on Initiation in SR4 appears to be time.  Yes, you can throw karma at it at gain pretty much any grade you want (see-sawing back and forth between boosting magic and grade past your magic level), but acquiring that kind of karma takes a good bit of time.  Even with rapid earning (say an average of 10 karma per in and out-of-game week) getting to grade 6 will take 630 karma (504 if you use an ordeal) or 1 year and 2.5 months (11 and a half months with ordeals ignoring the time required to do the ordeal).  In many games a 630 karma character would be near godhood even without initiation assuming they survived long enough to acquire it.  At that point, they'd have to start purchasing magic points to go farther, so grade 7 would cost 210+35 (6 months time), 8 would be 240+40 (7 months), 9 would be 270+45 (about 8 months) and 10 would be 300+50 (just shy of a year) with each grade after that takes over a  a year to acquire the karma for even at that accelerated rate.

So 4 years of massive and constant karma gain to the exclusion of all else just to get to grade 10 is a serious limiting factor.

The_Gun_Nut

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« Reply #10 on: <11-01-10/1422:09> »
But you can only double your magic rating.  So for most (99.999%) metahumans, that is the normal max of 6 and an initiate max of 12.  As it says on page 198 of SR4A:

Quote
A character's initiate grade annot exceed her Magic attribute.

And further down the page, under INCREASED MAGIC:

Quote
An initiate's natural maximum for the Magic attribute is 6 + her grade of initiation.  She will still have to pay normally to increase her Magic attribute.
So a mage or an adept can only ever have 12 magic, is what it looks like to me.  Otherwise you start having all sorts of ridiculousness where a metahuman can walk around with a higher magic rating than a great dragon and blows up cities with a single spell with no drain.
There is no overkill.

Only "Open fire" and "I need to reload."

FastJack

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« Reply #11 on: <11-01-10/1433:03> »
Umm... No, because the Grade is based off the current Magic Attribute. So, if a mage initiates to 2nd Grade, she can then make her Magic attribute 8. Then her maximum Initiate grade is 8. If you start with a Mage with a Magic of 3 and never increase it, then your maximum grade is 3.

As long as you keep increasing your Initiation and your Magic attribute, there's no limit to how high you can go. If Frosty, who's Harlequinn's pupil, is an 8th level Initiate, then it makes sense that it can go much higher than twelve, otherwise, Harlequinn and Ehran wouldn't be as "special".

The Cat

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« Reply #12 on: <11-01-10/1434:24> »
But you can only double your magic rating.  So for most (99.999%) metahumans, that is the normal max of 6 and an initiate max of 12.  As it says on page 198 of SR4A:

Quote
A character's initiate grade annot exceed her Magic attribute.

And further down the page, under INCREASED MAGIC:

Quote
An initiate's natural maximum for the Magic attribute is 6 + her grade of initiation.  She will still have to pay normally to increase her Magic attribute.
So a mage or an adept can only ever have 12 magic, is what it looks like to me.  Otherwise you start having all sorts of ridiculousness where a metahuman can walk around with a higher magic rating than a great dragon and blows up cities with a single spell with no drain.

Initiate grade cannot exceed magic rating, so a character with magic 6 can initiate to grade 6 (making them Magic 6 grade 6).  Now they can buy 6 points of Magic since the natural maximum has gone up by one per initiate grade (making them Magic 12 grade 6).  Then they can initiate 6 more times (Magic 12 grade 12) and purchase 6 MORE points of magic (magic 18 grade 12) than initiate 6 more times...  and so on to infinity.  The only thing stopping them from doing this in the RAW is the acquisition of karma and the time needed to acquire it. As I said earlier, just to get to grade 10 magic 10  is 1820 (around 1,500 if you take an ordeal for each grade) and years of work to the exclusion of all other attributes and skills.  That's a HUGE pile of karma in most games.

(Edited for a little math error)
« Last Edit: <11-01-10/1438:53> by The Cat »

Critias

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« Reply #13 on: <11-01-10/1530:45> »
But you can only double your magic rating.  So for most (99.999%) metahumans, that is the normal max of 6 and an initiate max of 12.  As it says on page 198 of SR4A:

Quote
A character's initiate grade annot exceed her Magic attribute.

And further down the page, under INCREASED MAGIC:

Quote
An initiate's natural maximum for the Magic attribute is 6 + her grade of initiation.  She will still have to pay normally to increase her Magic attribute.
So a mage or an adept can only ever have 12 magic, is what it looks like to me.  Otherwise you start having all sorts of ridiculousness where a metahuman can walk around with a higher magic rating than a great dragon and blows up cities with a single spell with no drain.
Not quite.

The important thing to remember is that Initiation doesn't automatically raise Magic (like it used to).  Your Initiation Grade is limited by your Magic rating, yes, but remember that as Grade goes up Magic may also go up.

Starting character, Magic 6.  If I really wanted to, I could Initiate six times and never raise that Magic score, just doing it for the Metamagics.  If I wanted to Initiate a seventh time, though, I'd have to raise my Magic attribute (by spending karma, which is an expenditure that's completely separate from the points I spent to Initiate).  At the point I want to buy my Magic up, I have to then check the "natural maximum for Magic is 6 + grade" part, realize that I'm in the clear, and then spend the points.

The checks/balances come in to make people to -- eventually -- spend a crapton of karma on Initiating and a crapton of karma on raising Magic, not just doing one or the other. 

The_Gun_Nut

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« Reply #14 on: <11-01-10/1709:22> »
Sorry about super big font, I was trying to make it easier to read in the quote and erred on the too big side.

What you are essentially saying is that the limit for initiate grade is your initiate grade plus some small modifier.  In philosophy, or rather in constructing a logical argument (which is used in philosophy or debate) this would be called a circular argument (circular initiation, in this case).  This makes no sense, and ensures that longer lived folks, like the Immortal elves, can, with one spell, blow up cities, as they have millenia to apply to their initiation.  Sure, the downcycle severely constrained their studies, but they can effectively kill any being on the planet by thinking about it (ritual magic use), slap a great dragon silly, and never, ever be worried about the coming of the Horrors, because they can just cast a single "Kill all Horrors" spell with an AOE of the planet.

This does not make sense.  Even allowing that PC's will never get that kind of time, or karma, to build up to those levels, internal consistency breaks down if the hard limit is not used.  Also, all the absolutely absurd ideas floating about regarding things like Possesion mages become far more plausible.

Hell, you want to see disgusting?  A Nosferatu infected Possesion mage gorged on stolen Essence can, without raising magic above 6 with initiation, have an 18 magic rating, summon a force 36 spirit and channel it to grant him +36 to his physical attributes, sustain a reaction boosting spell, and then walk around with 72 hardened armor and 18 points of regeneration a turn.  This is extreme and crazy and what you are saying that it can effectively be even higher through infinite initiation?
There is no overkill.

Only "Open fire" and "I need to reload."