Physical Mages?! Say what?!, Question about those darn Physical Mages Options

[CyborgSteve]

From what I recall from MiTS they are called like "Magicians Way" or somethin. And they are Adepts with Mage powers. Is there such a thing as Mages with Adept powers? And...why would FASA allow these things?! :\

[fistandantilus4....]

well, FASA started it, Fanpro continued it. At low levels, they're actaully pretty week, unless you really trick them out. It's the higher karma levels (a lot of karma gets sucked down the ol' initiation drain with these guys) that they begin to ge unbalanced. They don't need to bother with a lot of the aept powers to boost stas and inititive that usually eat up so many points, becuase they can do other stuff like quickening too for example.

[toturi]

The Magician's Way Adept doesn't get Astral Perception or Astral Projection. So most of the time they are pretty weak, but their greatest advantage is their versatility.

[tisoz]

Mages have spells to mimic many adept powers, or they can create a spell that will.

I wonder how SR2070 will handle magical way adepts. Sounds like they should be more prevalent since you buy magic attribute.

[Critias]

They really aren't as broken as they might seem at first glance -- it's not like they get a full 6 Magic (for spellcasting) and a full 6 Power Points worth of Adept goodies. They tend to go strong in one way or the other (Magic 5 w/ a few small Adept cheapie powers, or Magic 1 or 2 for some low-Power augmentation and gimmicky spells), at least at first, and it's only at very high karma levels (and quite a few Initiations) that they get as potent as you seem worried about.

[hyzmarca]

Physical magicians are karma sinks. The multiple skillsets they need to maintain versitility are expensive to aquire . They have more choices at initiation. They'll probably be bonding a few foci. However. the physical magician can become very powerful if correctly planned.

Geasing magic power is a cheap trick that is fairly popular. The a voluntary geas on magic can provide some flavor and lets the physical magician have level 4 Magic Power at the cost of level 3. This leaves some room for adept powers. He could take geased Astral Sight and still have 1.5 power points left over. Geased Improved Reflexes is a good choice. It can't be dispelled and won't set off wards. Because of the cost reduction associated with the geas it can be upped to IR3 with 2 initiations.

Add to this a Force 2 Power focus and the Magician's Way Adept has a virtual magic rating of 6, equivilant to any real magician. Now he is as powerful as any aspected magician but has some adept powers and fewer spells. The only problem if the extra BP cost.

It is when initiations come that things branch out. There are so many metamagics and so many powers. It is easy to get lost trying to create a powerful character. However, as versitile as they can be Physical magicians are more powerful when specialized.

Unfortunatly, the FAQ ruling and the rule it calrified makes the Physical Magician lame compared to other Adepts. The 2 Power Point this is just silly.
Personally, I think that should just give the Physical Magician 1 Power Point and 1 metamagic and let him choose between extra magic power or adept powers.

[Hoondatha]

But according to the priority system, can't you allocate both priority A and B to magic? That would give you a physical mage with all of the powers of both a mage and an adept. (I haven't reread chargen in a while, so I don't know if that's expressly forbidden. I do know my GM made an NPC that way, and boy was he scary)

On the other hand, in the long run you have to make a choice with that character, since you can't initiate both sides at the some time. So you tend to end up with an initiated mage with a starting adept's powers or vice versa.

[Herald of Verjig...]

According to priority, you select each alphabetical value exactly once across the categories. There are as many alphabetic values as categories.
Sum to ten lets you use the same rank multiple times as long as the sum remains ten. Otherwise the same.
BP and BeCKS are probably the only ones that you could almost get away with that sort of nonsense. BP because few people actually read the rules, but you still need to be a good negotiator. BeCKS because the whole thing is one colossal house rule and you can extrapolate from the even more optional rule about multi-million nuyen starting PCs that you could take magic multiple times.

[Cain]

[weblife]

Naturally, the more magical options a character has, the more powerful he will become as you add more Karma.

The FAQ ruling is just ridiculous, its too opressive, but the original MiTS description, however vague, of granting 2 PP's or 1 PP and 1 Metamagic pr. Initiation might be too powerful.

In my group we restrict the MW Adept to normal Initiation, like any other mage or adept. 1 PP and 1 Metamagic.

An MW Adept will never be as good a mage as a real mage, nor as good an adept as a real adept, but the more karma you add, the more he will catch up. If he geases most of his powers, he can speed it up some aswell.

He'll never gain astral projection for more than minutes of a time, but in most regards he'll be quite powerful, eventually.

[blakkie]

[Hoondatha]

I stand corrected then. He was still a terrifying NPC to deal with. Thankfully, my character got on his good side. He even gave me a beer. Others, however, were not so lucky.