QUOTE (The Jake @ Jan 31 2009, 09:21 AM)
I simply interpreted it that the (starting) absolute Magic rating at character creation is what caps your Initiate grade. I interpreted this because there were now skill caps as well (when they didn't exist previously) so I thought they were looking at capping Magic along with skills.
I can see how that interpretation could be construed but I'm quietly confident that's not what was intended (unless one of the writer's wants to jump in and correct me - at which point I'll happily eat my hat).
Not that I believe you should eat your hat - unless of course it is a hat made of chocolate chip cookies - but there is no "hard" cap for magic rating. Individual GMs can, of course, institute any cap they'd like. But per the rules, a magician/adept can continue to increase their magic and Initiate grade as long as they have the karma to spend and their
GM's permission.
I don't know about other games, but
my GM makes it increasingly difficult to initiate, starting around grade 4. Spirit Mentors start requiring a magician to perform some task - which can involve a run (or runs) that involve the entire group, or stretch out across multiple campaigns. Magic groups will require something challenging and almost impossible - and often the magician/adept must pay karma to learn some new skills first (ie, our current Shaman has to make a hand-carved wooden mask before her Magic Group will let her initiate to level 4. She has to learn an artisian-wood carving skill to level 3 to do that. For level 5, she has to make and bind a foci, which requires several other skills she doesn't have... plus she'll have to do a metaplanar trip and get her Mentor Spirit to agree to the initiation. And the foci has to stay at the magical group's lodge, so she can't even use it). Free spirits who promise to help in return for... something (generally something that has a high likelyhood of getting the magician and friends killed). And even after all that, he's been known to set up challenges in the metaplanes that the magician can't pass (or actually, could pass if the player could figure out the key, but that's a different story).
Now, he makes it (relatively) simple for the street sam to find a delta clinic and get some deltaware synaptic boosters... *grumble grumble*
QUOTE
Even with this most favorable interpretation of yours, you'll find the karma costs for for increasing the Magic attribute of a magician really steep. The reality is even if you throw karma at a character like confetti (like we did back then too) and even if you allow nuyen:karma conversion (like we house ruled back then) you invariably find that players want to spend their karma in other areas anyway and so the whole thing does balance itself out reasonably well.
Yeah, that's the whole point. Do you continue to sink that karma into initiation and increasing your magic grade, or start buying skills, learning spells, getting foci, improving attributes, etc, etc... At some point,
in my game, the Awakened characters have always reached that point of diminishing returns. "Oh, I could get my Magic to 12... or I could get three new skills at rating 4... hm..." In the last ten years, I can only think of 1 PC Adept who took his magic above 9. Adepts, with powerpoints tied to magic rating, are a bit more likely to raise it high. Most of the Magicians in my group rarely go above Magic 7.
[note that my GM delights in sending NPCs against us who have
much higher magic than that. Sometimes they're even on our side... and sometimes we run away screaming like little girls]