Cap for High Level Magicians? Options

[RedRum]

Is there a point in a magician's career when, through karma gain and initiation, he will no longer be able to counteract drain from his most powerful spells?

That is to say, is there a limit on how powerful a spell can be, because drain will be impossible to negate?

[Jaid]

not as such no.

provided they take the centering metamagic, that is.

[Ravor]

Sure, because even our unlimited Karma uber Mage can only raise her Drain Stats so high, and Centering only gives you additional dice for the Drain Test.

Of course, if a Mage is willing to burn Edge then the issue may become moot depending on how your DM feels about the Hand of God.

*Edit*

Remember that Centering only gives you extra dice equal to your Grade, and a good semi-accurate rule of thumb is 3 Dice = 1 Sucess.

Drain increases faster then Centering does so even with it your head will explode at some point with nothing you can do about it save Edge.

[RedRum]

Re-read and understood. At first level of initiation a magician taking this will be able to counteract drain with the same ability no matter how powerful they get.

[Jaid]

[RedRum]

:D nice. I was asking for an npc magician I am making. As you may have guessed I don't have all that much experience in the SR world.

[Ravor]

Sorry but you are mistaken Jaid because Drain increases at a flat ( Force/2 ) while Centering only averages at ( Grade/3 ), so there is a point where the uber Mage's spells will cause more Drain then he can safely resist if cast at full force.

[Ol' Scratch]

Infinity/3 = Infinity
Infinity/2 = Infinity

[Demerzel]

[Particle_Beam]

Even so, the drain is capped at that exact force that you choose. So, yes, with infinite karma, infinite magic and infinite initiate grades, the drain resistance wins over the drain, because you can't choose an infinite force when casting. You chose a clearly numerical and therefore limited force level, whose following drain code gets beaten by the unlimited drain resistance dies provided by the Centering metamagic technique.

[hyzmarca]

[Ravor]

Ok, now that we've gotten that bit of snarkiness out of the way, in the context of resisting Drain ( X/2 ) is going to increase faster then ( X/3 ), rounding issues aside.

[Demerzel]

Basically it is this:

Drain increases as F/2.

The dice used to soak drain increases as grade.

The amount of drain you can soak with a given confidence increases with increased dice, and is unbounded. Thus given a perpetual progression of grade you can have a perpetually increasing force at which you can be confidant to within any non-unity probability that you will not take drain. However since this is all integer units on force and dice you will not have a smooth progression.

But no matter how good you are, if you are looking for a 99% probability of completely soaking drain continued initiations will eventually allow you to increase the maximum force you are capable of casting and maintaining your probability of 99% of the time not hurting yourself.

Keep in mind that this force does not increase nearly as fast as the maximum force you are capable of casting given Magicx2 as a cap.

[Demerzel]

[Particle_Beam]

Ehrm, guys, no matter what, you don't cast spells at infinite force, even if you can select from an infinite range. You cast a spell at a clearly definite grade, because you must choose it.

Even if you have infinite magic, in the end, you must choose the force of the spell or the spirit you're casting/summoning. The drain becomes a real number that is less than infinite, while the drain resistance dices provided by the infinite high initiate grade and the Centering metamagic technique is still infinite.

However, the one good thing to counter infinite strong mages is that they can't stop resist the drain, because the dices are infinite, and therefore never end, and so, the infinitely strong mage is forever trapped in the drain resistance moment. :D

[hyzmarca]

[WeaverMount]

If you are talking about a Mage who really really doesn't care about karma or his spirit reputation, you could spend a few weeks cooking out a ton of ally spirit forumae and repeatedly have it take the drain of your force magic*2 spells. Yeah it will slag the drek of a force 1 ally spirit but it was only 8 karma. That kind of brutality could make for a really loathsome villain.

[Dashifen]

^ Could be a good run where the PCs are working for a free spirit.

[Demerzel]

[James McMurray]

Hehe. They're arguing about what happens when you have infinite karma. :)

[Particle_Beam]

[Demerzel]

But you cannot have infinite dice, just as you cannot divide into the infinite. The only way you can bound an infinite is if they are infantesimals, such as in Zeno. You cannot have an infinite dice pool, you can at best approach an infinite dice pool...

[hyzmarca]

[Particle_Beam]

I assumed that the infinite Karma was already spent to create infinite magic, initiate grades and whatever can be brought with it. Yet, still, in the end, all that happens is that a character gets forever trapped into a moment of doing a test that can never ever end. Because here in this discussion, time is not relative. :)

[hyzmarca]

You cannot have infinite magic or infinite grades. Infinity is not a number, it is a state. It is the state of increasing without bounds.

Neither magic ratings nor initiate grades can be in that state. It must be an integer. But, that integer is arbitrary because there is no limit on karma.