And I need to know if there is any process by which a mage's magic attribute can be GREATER than his/her essence. Is there a way to do that, through initiation or what have you? This is for NPC bad guys that I'm throwing at my team and I'd like these guys to have a bug bad magic rating. If there's a way inside the rules for that to exist I'd really appreciate the info. The bad guys are Tir na nOg military types who would have off-the-charts levels of initiation, jusy FYI. Please help

Lily

Initiation increases the magic attribute regardless of essense. An optimal thrice initiated mage will have a Magic rating of 9.

Yeah, what Herald said.

Erk, eek, ick.

On behalf of your players, may the dice fall gently and the bodies carefully.

-Siege

Thanks guys... I get evil just before a run, I think I'm involving the holy grail in this one.

Yeah, initiation works... It's kind of hard to describe what's involved without copying several pages out of the book, though.

I don't know what you mean by "off the charts", but someone with, for example, 5 levels of Initiation (+5 to magic, and potentially boatload of metamagic abilities) would have to spend at least around 60 karma on it (assuming he always was able to initiate in the cheapest way possible) and that doesn't include the money and karma it would take to have the skills and spells needed to make use of that much magic...

Eh--

Intitiation: "A Canon process by which magically active characters may increase their Magic Attribute by spending lots of karma. Not only do they acquire higher magic ratings, but they also receive metamagic techniques -- which, if you don't have MitS, is spiffier magical abilities that really would require several pages to properly explain."

-Siege

well, we're talking experienced Tir combat mages and then there's the one career mage who works for Aztechnology... and they're all NPC's, so I don't have to worry about their playability.

I know enough about those things to make it dangerous. I've got them all invisible, astraly masked, and hiding behind still hot fire barrels (to fool thermographic vision). And the team will walk right up to them. FIrst, I geek the mages from hiding and then the shooting mach begins.

Invisibility will fool thermographic vision by itself, you dont need the fire barrels. The problem you will have regarding the ambush being detected lies with astral perception - there are a number of ways to get around this, most of which are detailed in MITS.

In general, you should pick up a copy of Magic in the Shadows if you enjoy using high-powered magical enemies, of if you just want to expand the magic system... the info contained therein is really nice.

Oh... I hope your players dont frequent these forums.

Considering the massacre was slated to happen in two hours earlier in the day, I doubt they've been tipped off.

Frag, given the ambush waiting for them, I wouldn't be adverse to a friendly warning for pity's sake.

-Siege

Yeah... for some reason I dont think that I would be willing to place a great deal of money on the runners' survival. Just a hunch.

Heh- we're not even going yet... leave it to this group tp procrastinate. But I swear to you, nobody's gonna die. There is nothing you can throw at this bunch that they won't figure a way around. I once had them walk into an ancient magical ritual being performed by a mage with 12 levels of initiation and surrounded by armed guards and nobody even took a serious. They've beaten back a genetically engineered, awakened biological weapon and have talked death into letting them escape. These players are too smart and characters too good to think that one might get dead as a result of me.

Why didn't you tell us Sphynx was playing? That puts everything into perspective.

-Siege

I depends. It could get boring if they are literally cakewalking through it to escape relatively unscathed. But if they are furiously thinking, deviously planning, improvising cunning tactics, fast-talking, and sweating bullets to escape relatively unscathed, then it could be far from boring.

I don't agree with the philosophy that characters have to be killed, badly wounded, or otherwise fragged with to make it a "challenging" game. The potential for such things should be there, but the GM shouldn't arbitrarily inflict harm on the characters just to keep it "realistic" or "gritty". That's not challenging players; that's sending them the message that they might as well not waste the effort on all of that planning and roleplaying, since they are going to get effed up no matter what they do.

I think Flak is implying that if the PCs can withstand the firepower an ambush like that implies, they're probably a little over-powered by the casual definition.

It's a little hard to walk, talk or fight your way out of a setup like that if the OpFor opens up, guns blazing.

-Siege

Lily: You are making good use of TN modifiers (especially those for visibility), aren't you?

As a note, the PCs in my game would be dead, deader, Deader, and DEAD, don't forget drek we are so freaken dead!

They had a problem going against three street punks in the last game. And the punks had heavy pistols. (Nodody got a serious, in that encounter, now they are trying to escape.)

I have had multiple people above deadly damage, and survive. (the amazing thing is this game is going strong now for only about a month and a half.) I have had two PCs die in the game.

Mutant regenerating Juggernauts with Sorcery.

Yeah. Add magic resistence as well. And paint a smiley face on both sides.

You guys are great- thanks for the advice and I am pleased to report that, after almost eight hours of gaming (not unusual in our group) the characters have all made it out alive. They got whta they went in for and a few trinkets on the side (one guy robbed a hotel of almost its entire wine cellar). The fun with characters as hard core as ours are is that you have to chalenge them mentally as well as with dice pools. I think it went okay. It was fun having this running dialog as I was planning the run. I'll remember that for the next time I have a question and not the time to slog throuh sourcebooks to get the answers.

*kisses*

Lily

Well, they did have to find some way of capturing the bloody thing and keeping it controlled long enough to get into orbit and fitted into the launching system.

Alternatively, they just flew over the target area and rolled the things out the back of a cargo plane. Not as spectacular, but it works.

-Siege

Not as cool, besides you dont get the impressiveness of a 48,000 mph reentry from a Juggernaut that was counterrotating the earth's rotation.

Skipping this process also puts the people out of business that were paid to glue the ablative heat tiles to the Juggernaut. Hey, there has to be entry level jobs someplace.

Juggernaught is overrated. His assist is predictable and easily punished, and although his one super is quite powerful, everyone knows about it and expects it a mile away. He's huge, easily comboable, slow, and has so few tools as to be totally predictable.

pardon my ignorance, but what or who is Juggernaut you speak of.. I only know of teh X-Men villain...

PAoNA, I believe. Big nasty thing. That's more or less all that can be said about it.

Think naturally-occuring tank minus the main gun.

~J