[FastJack]

Yeah, but even 50 Initiate/Magic would run 12,200 Karma...

[Dead Monky]

You better get gaming then. 

[Walks Through Walls]

One point of Edge buys all those rerolls.  

Using straight odds , let's say you get 33 hits, then buy a reroll.  That's another 22 hits, for a total of 55.  That drain disappears from just the Centering.

If you get the successes with your 1 reroll using edge. It isn't like in previous editions where you could keep rerolling till you got the result you wanted. All it takes is one time not making it and your toast. That would be an embarrassing way for an IE to die.

The summoning debate is even worse since you double the number of successes that the spirit has, and it can spend edge also to reroll its failures, and if I were a force 100 spirit I sure would. So now it has 55 successes using the same formula you did above and the mage needs 80+ successes to not be toast.

[Chaemera]

Yeah, but even 50 Initiate/Magic would run 12,200 Karma...

And that's assuming you never want to bind a spirit to long term service, quicken a spell, rebuild your Edge attribute after a few close calls, have other stats above 2s and 3s, learn to drive a car, speak english, etc.

Though in theory, un-capped magic can occur, in practice, you just need too much of the other stuff to live to see 50+ magic to reach it in any kind of sensible manner. Just think of how many different etiquette and language skills said IE needs to have lived until now:

Let's say he lived in Italy, from whenever BC to present, this gives us:
Caveman, Phoenician, Roman, Vandal, Visigoth, early Italian, middle-ages Italian, Renaissance Italian, Modern Italian, then English, if he's going to be involved at all in America.

That's just to ask for some water and food. If he's going to get around, add to that:
Riding, Pilot Chariot, Pilot Carriage (yes, they're different enough), Pilot Ground Craft. In Italy, he probably would need to get some Pilot Watercraft, too.

Now, if he wants to survive the fifth age (no magic):
Clubs, Blades, Archery, Exotic Ranged Weapon (flint-lock musket), Pistols

All of this also assumes he has no desire to enter the business world, or otherwise learn the plethora of ways he could make money and survive as anything other than a bandit in the woods, awaiting magic's return.

All that is a lot of karma. So yes, in theory, an IE could get to 100 Initiation and 100 Magic (or 50/50) in the 7000 years, but he wouldn't actually live long enough to do so without also learning the majority of the skills I've just laid out. Heck, I'd argue that he couldn't initiate or raise his Magic attribute during the 5th age at all, there's no magic or astral to tap into during this time, so even if he stored up the karma, he'd still have to spend the years doing little else but increasing his Initiation and Magic once the 6th Age began. Remember, each grade is said to take months to obtain (SR4A, pg 198). This could easily translate into years, especially if the GM decides to peg time to difficulty and difficulty to initiation grade.

So, yes, it's theoretically possible to get your magic up to 50 or 100 (and, therefore, initiation up there, too), but even with an iE lifespan, there is too many other things you need to do to survive the no-magic era for it to be practical to get up there. 15, 20, maybe. But, how many years in a no-magic world will you go without something qualifying as an "adventure", how much more likely are you to spend years as a shipwright (whoops, more karma expenditures) or a monk in a monastery (again, more things to learn, more karma not going to magic / initiation) and earning no karma, than hunting down and slaying beasties in the wild and performing sufficiently crazy hijinks to qualify you for those karma points?

[Ultra Violet]

All that is a lot of karma. So yes, in theory, an IE could get to 100 Initiation and 100 Magic (or 50/50) in the 7000 years, but he wouldn't actually live long enough to do so without also learning the majority of the skills I've just laid out. Heck, I'd argue that he couldn't initiate or raise his Magic attribute during the 5th age at all, there's no magic or astral to tap into during this time, so even if he stored up the karma, he'd still have to spend the years doing little else but increasing his Initiation and Magic once the 6th Age began. Remember, each grade is said to take months to obtain (SR4A, pg 198). This could easily translate into years, especially if the GM decides to peg time to difficulty and difficulty to initiation grade.

Not really, the SR4A give some examples and one of them is months of research and writing a scholarly thesis the other is a shaman who might undergo a vision quest and seek guidance from her mentor spirit, translated into an astral quest, that takes only a couple of hours (max. days). The quintessence is the actual time period of an initiation is flexible.
And only additional the 5th world wasn't without magic or astral space it was only a very low level of Mana but something was there every time. It takes much more effort to gather enough Mana to do magic effects but some IE (like Aina) done it. Another thing to keep in mind is that the secrets and knowledge about the arts of magic that a IE could have conducted in this years of the 4th World is more than a magician of the 6th World could imaging...
And if I recall it right, some of the IE were bad-ass Magician and such back in ED-Times (circle 12-14 in more than one discipline).
Leonarus alias Leonardo alias Brightlight alias Dr. Antonio Vieri was a walking great library back in the days, his knowledge was compared to that of great dragons, and he had his own magic tradition, and technics and powers nobody else had at that time, maybe not even today (in the 6th World)...
Such characters are considered with reason as Superhuman, so they aren't bound by normal PC rules (see SR4A p. 285), and can do or become anything the GM decides.

[The_Gun_Nut]

One point of Edge buys all those rerolls.  

Using straight odds , let's say you get 33 hits, then buy a reroll.  That's another 22 hits, for a total of 55.  That drain disappears from just the Centering.

If you get the successes with your 1 reroll using edge. It isn't like in previous editions where you could keep rerolling till you got the result you wanted. All it takes is one time not making it and your toast. That would be an embarrassing way for an IE to die.

The summoning debate is even worse since you double the number of successes that the spirit has, and it can spend edge also to reroll its failures, and if I were a force 100 spirit I sure would. So now it has 55 successes using the same formula you did above and the mage needs 80+ successes to not be toast.

Um, yes, true.  But the spirit could roll 0 hits and I could roll 100.  Or the spirit could get 100 and I could get 0.  But who cares?  You can't base these what if's on either the best or worst case, only the one that makes the most sense from the perspective of probability.  The most probable outcome.  Otherwise you are just exercising some wish fulfilment.  And given the rather large number of dice involved, the statistical average shoud pop up the most often.

EDIT:  Also, as a quick note, I thought you were speaking of non-average numbers of hits, so disregard most of what I said.  (The point still holds, I just didn't entirely get it, for some reason).  Speaking of spirits and Edge, if I'm not mistaken, the spirit will only spend Edge on the summoning test if the summoner is weaker (summoning over his magic rating) or is unpopular (has mistreated spirits in the past).  If the summoner is popular with the spirit, he won't spend Edge.  If the summoner is smart (he's Immortal and thousands of years old, meaning he's picked up a few things) he will only attempt to summon a super-high force spirit that is friendly towards him, reducing the chances of a spirit spending Edge to thwart the summoning significantly.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Purchasing magic 99 and magic 100 costs nearly 1000 karma.  Let's say our IE mage only got to 98 and saved that other 995 karma for all that other stuff.

It's still doable, but, yes, it is really unlikely.

UV makes a good point, though.  The downcycle wasn't totally without magic, it was just so low as to be negligible to the world at large.  An IE could, theoretically, pump up their initiations and magic ratings.  It would just take longer, and would be a lot more difficult.

Even at 50 magic, a mage's power is ridiculous.  I don't like the open ended magic rating.  Or, rather, I feel it is too easy to bump up magic, even at the higher levels, when Immortal Elves are considered.

[Kot]

Well, we're forgetting something... During the Downcycle Metaplanes were cut of. So, no Initiation, no Magic raising.

[FastJack]

Good point, Kot!

[The_Gun_Nut]

Except that summoning did happen during the downcycle; excruciatingly rare, but it did occur.  So the metaplanes were accessible, although in a greatly reduced fashion.

Evidence is that Aina could do so, if I'm recalling the book series with her and Ysrgrathe correctly.

[FastJack]

I don't think Aina/Ysrganthe counts. They had a bond between them allowing all the interaction.

[Kot]

Well, summoning something from the Metaplanes that has a lot of power on itself is not the same, as entering the Metaplanes on the Initiation journey/vision quest. So, even if an Immortal Elf, or other mage could summon a spirit, doesn't mean he could Initiate to higher levels, or even enter any metaplane. And the summoned spirit would be as impaired by the abysmal magic level, as a mage on the moon in the Sixth Age.
As for Aina, she could summon Yrsgranthe, and the son she had with him because of their unusual connection. I don't know if she summoned spirits in the book. Maybe she did. Maybe there was a place she could do that. And Yrsgranthe always seemed different from other Horrors to me. Even his description in the Horrors sourcebook was interesting. Hell, he appeared as evil, but reasonable and almost namegiver-like.

[Bradd]

@Kot: There are always Domains and similar phenomena that allow access to magic, even during low-magic cycles. I don't know how amenable it would be to astral travel and metaplanar quests, although it ties in well with certain legends (including Camelot/Avalon).

@Gun Nut: I think the point was that the more you attempt DV 50S magic, the more likely you are to blow the roll, even with Edge. Any time you pull more drain than your Physical + Stun track combined, you risk rolling so poorly that the drain kills you. The average doesn't matter here, just the cumulative chance that you miss one of those rolls. The odds pile up against you surprisingly fast with repeated use.

FYI: If I recall correctly, Harlequin is supposed to be the most powerful magician of the Sixth World, with an initiate grade in the high double digits. Use that as a guideline for what's realistically possible over thousands of years, rather than hypothetical numbers. Why don't immortals get more done? For one thing, the more karma-worth stuff they do, the more they expose themselves to risks. Immortals are immune to age and disease, but not accidents, murder, or war. They're generally powerful enough to deal with threats, but eventually you run in to the same problem as casting DV 50S spells: If you repeat a low-risk thing enough times, you actually have a pretty big risk.

[FastJack]

@Kot: There are always Domains and similar phenomena that allow access to magic, even during low-magic cycles. I don't know how amenable it would be to astral travel and metaplanar quests, although it ties in well with certain legends (including Camelot/Avalon).

@Gun Nut: I think the point was that the more you attempt DV 50S magic, the more likely you are to blow the roll, even with Edge. Any time you pull more drain than your Physical + Stun track combined, you risk rolling so poorly that the drain kills you. The average doesn't matter here, just the cumulative chance that you miss one of those rolls. The odds pile up against you surprisingly fast with repeated use.

FYI: If I recall correctly, Harlequin is supposed to be the most powerful magician of the Sixth World, with an initiate grade in the high double digits. Use that as a guideline for what's realistically possible over thousands of years, rather than hypothetical numbers. Why don't immortals get more done? For one thing, the more karma-worth stuff they do, the more they expose themselves to risks. Immortals are immune to age and disease, but not accidents, murder, or war. They're generally powerful enough to deal with threats, but eventually you run in to the same problem as casting DV 50S spells: If you repeat a low-risk thing enough times, you actually have a pretty big risk.

Both Elves {Re: Ehran and Harlequin} are full-powered hermetic magicians and Initiates of incredible rank.

Harlequin is self-initiated to a double-digit grade, but even that statement only works for purposes of comparison because his magic functions differently. As a rule of thumb in role-playing Harlequin, if it exists as a spell he can probably cast it (or fake it quickly) at a level no player character can hope to resist. He also possesses enough self-activating protections and wards to make him virtually invulnerable to all save those who can use magic on his level (which means slottin' near nobody).

He's not in the high double digits, but he should be more powerful than any PCs in the game by a long shot. Of course, with most games, that could place him at 25...

[Ultra Violet]

He's not in the high double digits, but he should be more powerful than any PCs in the game by a long shot. Of course, with most games, that could place him at 25...

Where did you see that in your Harlequin quotes?
Harlequin is self-initiated to a double-digit grade
Could mean anything from 10 to 99. And that was a different Edition, where the Magic Attribute improved with any initiation, too.
If you look at the values of Frosty in her Adventures (see Harlequin, Harlequin's Back and DotA I) and use the Superhuman rule for Harlequin himself and Frosty as Runner comparison. We could get a peak how much Karma Harlequin has probably picked up in the last 20 years. As rule of thumb, it should be about 200% of Frostys Karma value, and she is initiate grad 8, aso...