Initiations and Submersions, Is there a hardcap? Options

[Konsaki]

Ok folks, here is a question I have on my mind and it doesnt look like the answer is in the core SR4 book.

Is there a hard cap to the ammount of times you can initiate or submerge?
I'm not asking about the "You can only initiate/submerge up to your magic/ressonance attribute." rule.

I always figured since there was a hard cap of 6 on average, that there is a hard cap of 6 on these two stats. This would give mages and TMs a max magic/res of 12, preventing the 'given enough time they are gods' event.

The problem is that it is never mentioned in the book about this and I wanted to ask other people of the DS forums what their takes on this is.

[Synner]

There is no hard cap on initiation or submersion in the core rules. However, neither automatically gives you a point of Magic/Resonance (they just raise your current cap of Magic + Initiation grade). This means that theoretically you could have a Grade 12 initiate with Magic of 6. Increasing both beyond a certain level is horribly expensive (cost of initiation/submersion + cost of raising Magic/Resonance) but possible. [edited per Frank's comment]

[FrankTrollman]

Synner is incorrect in the specific example, but the general case holds. There is a separate limitation that you cannot raise your initiate grade higher than your magic (SR4, p. 189), so no character could have a grade of 12 and a Magic of 1.

But you could have a Magic of 6 and be Grade 6 - giving you a maximum Magic of 12 but an actual Magic of only 6.

-Frank

[Eben McKay]

[Synner]

I stand corrected.

[Jaid]

also, if you ever lose 6 or more points of magic or resonance from anything, you can no longer initiate/submerge due to the interraction of the rules mentioned above.

and for the record, magic or resonance 12 is plenty to scare the crap out of almost anyone. (GDs and IEs excepted of course)

[Garrowolf]

I thought about a house rule where they couldn't go above 9 magic rating/ 3 initiation. This would put it in the same line as the regular attributes.

Then you could use the Street Magic alternate rule that you can buy metamagic seperately from initation once you have initiated. That way you could still get up to 9 metamagic techniques and it keeps the magic rating down.

Now I am not sure what to replace the initate grade rating meter for most of the metamagic. It was originally set up with the idea that your magic rating was 6 to start but now I was thinking that anywhere it says your 'initiate grade' - you could replace that with the 'number of metamagic techniques'.

yes I like that.

[Cold-Dragon]

There's no technical cap, but as you keep getting higher, the karma cost is going to turn into a big, fat, UGLY zit of a sink, so in a way, that's the cap - how long can you go saving karma for those two alone?

[Jaid]