Initiation, A quick question Options

[Johnny the Bull]

I'm away from my books for a few days so I can't check for myself. Is an aspected magician (ie, a conjurer) able to initiate? I am pretty damn sure they can, but I can't be 100% certain.

Cheers lads.

[Deuce]

yes...

[Ol' Scratch]

Yes, and they follow all the same rules as a full magician when doing so. And yes, with the optional rules in the Shadowrun Companion, that means a Conjurer actually has something useful to spend his 35 Spell Points on during character creation (that's three grades of initiation in a group with ordeals, with one or two points left over).

[weblife]

Or a bucket load of elementals.

[Jrayjoker]

Yes, but the list of metamagics is truncated IIRC. Can't use shielding, anything that uses sorcery, or anything that requires astral perception (unless your conjurer can do that).

[Eyeless Blond]

Conjurers can astrally perceive; it's only magician/phys adepts that can't unless they pay for it.

Conjurers really really want invoking and probably centering right off. Masking is helpful, but not really as necessary. In fact you might be better off taking only two grades of initiation and making the second one a Familiar ordeal, tossing the rest of your spell points into that. Allies rock, and, if your GM rules favorably, can make up for your lack of Sorcery with spellcasting power of its own.

[Ol' Scratch]

Channeling trumps Centering for a Conjurer.

[Edward]

[Ol' Scratch]

Channeling will almost always provide results, and those results will almost always be very noticable. Centering requires two additional skills (one Active and one Knowledge/Language), and you need two successes against the same TN as your original test just in order to gain one additional success, and if the TN is greater than 4, you'll have to be very lucky to ever gain more than one extra success out of that huge investment... and you're going to have to be really lucky just to gain that one extra success. And that's assuming you have both Centering 6 and a linked Creative Skill at 6, too.

Centering is nice if there aren't any other techniques that really compliment your abilities (or you're playing an Adept), but that's about it. Hell, I'd take just about any other usable techniques over Centering for a Conjurer, especially ones like Masking and any of the ones that take advantage of Astral Perception.

[Edward]

Lately I have found centring against penalties to be exceedingly useful. If you can get the target number from 6 to 5 you have doubled your probable successes.

Edward

[Eyeless Blond]

Yup, that's pretty much the main reason for centering; the others are just in case you don't have a single penalty to center away, sorta like a default or something. That said, conjurers get less use out of that than spellcasters, as casters generally have more TN mods on their casting, like cover and visability, which conjurers don't worry about, so I suppose it's not as important there.

But Invoking, that one's almost required, especially for a shamanistic conjurer.

[Ol' Scratch]

Eyeless Blond just beat me to it; Conjurers -- especially Hermetic Conjurers -- rarely have target number penalties to center away which is why I didn't even mention it.

[Apathy]

I don't have my books handy and can't remember the specifics, but I do remember that when I read the rules for channeling I thought that the drain was so prohibitive that no one would ever bother using it for a decent-force spirit (5 or 6), and the powers aren't really that impressive at force 2 or 3.

[Modesitt]

As the GM objected heavily to initiation at char gen, I opted to just spend all of my conjurer's spell points on an awesome ally spirit. With Sense Link, it's pretty much a force 4 power foci that allows me to astrally project better than a normal full mage.

Unfortunately, the GM refused to give in to the interpretation "It only says I can't USE sorcery, it doesn't say I can't LEARN sorcery", so it can't cast spells.

[Magus]

what sourcebook is channeling or geomancy mentioned?

[Ol' Scratch]

[fistandantilus4....]

Channeling is in Target:Awakened lands. It lasts for 10 minutes per success, drain is F(D), resisted w/ charisma. So it bites hard, but is an awesome power.

Geomancy is in I believe SOTA 63, and just basically says that it can be used to aspect a power site to a particular group or person after using the site for I believe 28 days. That's it.

Sensing is a nifty one BTW. Not something you're going to be using all the time, but when you need it, it's great. let's you know what you're getting into. I have character that's basically doing a world tour what's - what of magical sites, and is trying to collect para-animals (has a pheonix, a cockatrice, a gargoyle - he's a gargoyle shaman, they actually get along, a few hell hounds, and a cerberus hound - he has to pay something like 10,000/month to feed them), and sensing has been awesome for him.

Another really cool one that I suggest that makes the game very interesting if you're more story style of play is psychometry. Kind of like divination in that it can add a lot more to the game, especally in the way of plot hooks and back ground information you might not be able to get.My gargoyle shaman has both of those, and symbolic linking. He can find out a LOT about a particular target just through his own magical recon (damn symbolic linking foci are cool!)