Looking for some clarification.

According to SR4A when you initiate only your Magic Natural Maximum goes up not the Magic stat itself.

So is this correct for a mage with existing Magic 6 .

Init Grade 1 13 Karma + Raise magic to new Max of 7 35 Karma = 48 Karma

Init Grade 2 16 Karma + Raise magic to new Max of 8 40 Karma = 56 Karma.


Thanks

IronDrakon

That's how I understand it. Rather pricey, but yes.

Yep, that's how it works.

Thanks,

and...

ACK thats expensive compared to the how it was done in earlier editions.


IronDrakon

Holy hell that's expensive.

Did Karma awards get raised in SR4A?

"OK, 'Run is over. You get UCAS$200, a gift certificate for 500 at Stuffer Shack, and two Karma each. Except for you, you get three for coming up with the GoTH plan."

There's a bunch of ways to bring the cost down - joining a magical group, going on an astral quest, performing some ritual...I forget the complete list at the moment. It'll bring down the cost of the initiatiation by a few points, but not the cost of raising your Magic.

yes. you should expect between 5 and 10 per run. depending on setting and GM.

4-5 Karma is the absolute minimum I would accept & remain a player in the game, & that's assuming most things went wrong.

Expected reward is 7-8 Karma, with 10 being the usual upper limit. This is assuming 1 run = 1 session; I generally expect ~8 karma, +4 per each additional session for the run, assuming multi-session runs are uncommon/rare.

There are only two ways to decrease the cots. One for being in a group and having the group directly involved in your gaining in initiation level, that decreases the initiation cost by 20%.
The other way is to do one of the various meta-quests, these also decrease the initiation cost by 20%. You can combine both of these for a total reduction of 40%. These reductions
in no way affect the cost of increasing your magic attribute once you have gotten a new initiate level.

Just get rid of <New Attribute>x5 costs.

And Why, exactly, would you do that?

Thats not a good Idea
I'd rather stay with Karma x5 and more Karma
than with Karma x3 and way viewer Karma

Hough!
Medicineman

Because it pretty eliminates attribute progression and encourages stronger minmaxing at chargen, IMO. In our games, a single run typically spans over the course of 2-3 session à 6-7h, and awards us with approximately 6-9 Karma. Assuming you play weekly, which we do, it takes a month of real world time under the x3 rule to increase an average attribute score, and up to two months to increase any of the special attributes like Resonance and Magic. And this assumes that you actually save up your Karma to do that, instead of buying skills etc.

If you actually play with x5, it'll take ages before you get to raise anything. Now, I understand that some people are playing campaigns that take well over a year to complete, and are arguably afraid of characters getting out of hand. However, this has never been the case with most groups I've played/DMed with. Most of our games have ended at ~100 Karma, with the longest running being 160. And in that scope, x3 is a lot more reasonable than x5. As always, YMMV.

Have you considered that you may not be getting enough Karma in your game?

How much would you suggest would be reasonable?

5 would be the minimum, 10 the maximum. 7-8 being the average..

Well, SR4A recommends up to 15 per Session/Story. Sounds like your Stories run about a Month or so.

Each Session, I would probably award the following...

Character survived... 1 or 2
Character was particularly brave or smart... 1 or 2
Good roleplaying... 1 or 2

So 3-6 Per Session (Probably 4 or so on Average)

End of the Story, I would add the following...

Character pushed the storyline forward 1
Character had the right skills at the right place and time 1
Player impressed group with humor or drama 1 or 2
Overall adventure challenge/threat level 1 to 4
Per mission objective group fulfilled 1

Could Get excessive for Story End, Dependant upon how many objectives there were. I will Assume 3 objectives.
So likely an Additional 7-13 Karma for Mission Completion.

So for a 3 Week Run... you should get somewhere between 19-26 Karma.

Of course, that is just me. Even my GM is not quite so extravagant. Even still, the x5 Cost has not been an insurmountable impediment.

Tymeaus,

Thanks for the the more detailed reply on karma rewards. That seems much better in time takes to expand you magic though still way slower than earlier editions.

It does make progression for magic types or technomancers a bit slower comapared to the other archetypes.

Getting ahold of of a power focus seems to a quicker, cheaper route to a larger dice pool.

There is an optional rule in the Streeet Magic errata to trade metamagic for a power point which would ease things somewhat though leaving full magicians out in the cold.

IronDrakon

It also has a side effect of explaining why there are relatively few initiates actually out there. And that folks with more than one or two levels of initiation are REALLY rare.




-k

A single point of Magic is a really big deal in SR4. It bumps up the basic Force rating of all of your spells, and improves all of your dice pools involving Magic. Magic used to be a limiter, and only contributed a couple of dice to the Spell Pool. In SR4, it should be expensive.

The min/maxing is a problem with BPgen, not the attribute system. Attributes are crazy powerful, and most of them are still very easy to raise with cyber & fairly easy (less so than cyber, more so than karma) with magic. Raising the cost of attributes makes cyber & magic attribute boosts more badass and emphasizes skills. The way I see it, attributes aren't the sort of thing you SHOULD be improving hand over fist - when you get better at something, that's skill. Raising an attribute is more like concentrated bodybuilding, strength training, meditation to improve willpower, whatever. Those kind of things can take years IRL.

No Problems...

Power Foci ARE a quicker route to power, in some ways. Which is why so many magical types take that route. But a Skilled Magician with Multiple Initiate Grades under their belt is a better option for magical growth. One is a path to power, and the other is a path to enlightenment.

As for the Trade Metamagic for Power Point. It does not increase the Magic Rating of the character. There is a big difference between a Power point and a Magic Point, though they may have some of the same benefits.

Especially if you limit the level of a given adept power to MAG/2 rounded down, like I do.

Harsh...

My game has a lot of limits; it ends up more or less balanced, (IMO) more so than RAW by orders of magnitude. For example:

Electric damage works as follows (throw the RAW special rules out the window):
Biologicals are at -3 to all action tests for (unsoaked DV) rounds.
Vehicles & devices are incapacitated for (unsoaked DV) rounds.
Shock attacks vs. biologicals affect knockdown tests in the same manner as gel rounds (-2 to effective Body to resist knockdown).

Non-magical electrical damage does not scale up with hits.

Whatever works, right?

400 BP or 750 karma is a much more balanced choice with attribute*5 costs. Ingame higher karma rewards coupled with higher attribute costs make everything but attributes cheaper.

Initiation is now really cheap, given that some metamagics are based on the grade of initiation. Get both rebates if at all possible. There is the strong option of only increasing magic when it limits the grade. You can favour Magic, but IMO another school of spells or another power or another focus is better than increasing magic beyond 5. (Read up on enchanting. Calculate the cost of the parts of your next focus.)

Also remember that the maximum ranks of foci you can have active before rolling for addiction is based on your Magic. (2 * Magic IIRC)

[Edit:] Fixed the number

I´d make that a Power Focus 5 and two Sustaining Foci 5 (Health and Manipulation). What would you take?

I mistyped; I was thinking max 12 with 6 magic and somehow that came out as 3 * 6 in my head :-/

I would make it a F4 power focus and 2 F4 sustaining foci.

If you run a lower-karma reward game, there's nothing wrong with lowering the cost to raise the magic attribute for initiates. For example, you could count the cost of initiation towards the attribute cost.

That said, upping your magic attribute IS really powerful, plus you get some neato initiate powers to boot. It's expensive for a reason.

Off-topic here, but was calculating the Karma (as GM) I should have awarded my players after our 18 month (1-2 sessions a week) single run...

...Holy crap am I glad we run an amoral campaign. Nuyen certainly scales a bit better than 3-figure Karma rewards.

-Tir

I don't know... We have been playing the same characters for over two years now. We are sitting at Approximately 310 points (give or take a bit per individual character). I still have very few skills above 4, and none at 6. Almost all are at 3 or lower (most of Those are either a 1-2). Karma disappears rather quickly in play, I have found. There is always something else to acquire that you never thought that you would need. One of the reasons that the character I play has almost 80 skills now, with a list still to acquire.

And that is for a character that is not an Adept, Technomancer, or Mage.

same with me here !
I find it very hard to save more than 15 or 20 Karma .Every once in a while there is a new Skill to get, a new Knowledge ,
sometimes a disadvantage(like In debt f.E:) that has to be paid


I have 2 Chars with late awakening and I want to save enough spare Karma to raise their MAG to at least 3 once it happens
....80 Skills ....Wow Impressive .You should Chat with Doc-Byte who has a similar Char

with a saved Dance
Medicineman

Yeah, those Skill requirements just seem to crop up everywhere. I hate having to default. My goal is to have all my skills at a professional Level (Rating 3)... Taking a while, especially when I keep buying new ones.

I am alos a big believer in purchasing qualities as well, when I can afford them. Martial arts are not too expensive.

We recently started with 656 karma characters, and I´d like to spend at least 250 karma on attributes other than magic for my druid enchanter. I´d like a dozen other spells, three grades of initiation, magic 5 - another 100 karma easily. At least 50 karma will go into skills, mostly at rating 2 + specialisation. Another 50+ karma will go into foci. At 6 karma/session the first leg of the journey will take 75 sessions, or about 2 years.

reminds me of my troll druid (spellcasting, conjouring, melee), who after 200 karma (started karmagen) still lacks skills, but has all attributes at at least 4. only two initiations: Divining and Invoking, but Magic 7 is nice

did you start with karmagen at 656 karma or 400BP + 656 karma? Oo

by the way: is there a maximum for initiation grades? normally attributes are race.max x 1,5
does this count for magic as well? havn´t found any information yet

cheers

Your current MAG is the Maximum

with a maximum Dance
Medicineman

Karmagen with 656 karma, max. one attribute at 5+ racial mod, derived max. 328 karma on attributes total, max. one skill at 5. I do believe there was a limit on ressources, too, but I´m not sure, as I made do with 17500¥.

Maximum Initiate Grades are equal to your Magic.
Same with Submersions for Technomancers.

Resonance and Magic May be raised to Maximum Magic/Resonance + Initiate Grades. So. AS long as you raise your magic, you may initiate. Once you initiate, you may raise your Magic/Resonance. It is unlimited in play, though you will hit a point where you will not raise it any further due to costs involved.

happy to see you dance on many continents...

Two Continents, ca 10 different Forums
10 Years in the Matrix and I'm doing the "RPG-Dance " for 26 Years now

with an Old School Dance
Medicienamn

Sorry, to clarify: SR3.

Yeah...after that mission (about 12 different runs, long backstory and "End Times" loadout, ie:The heavy during the infiltration had 2 x tricked-out Panther cannons loaded with AV) I worked it out to ~ 450-560 Karma (If only doing good karma at the usual reccommended rate, which netted them ~ 180 Karma in attendence alone)

Soooo glad we're amoral. Those karma pools are something we leave alone.

-Tir