In the ghoul thread, it occurred to me that you could make a full mage character with no magical skills, and nothing would keep him from initiating.

We all know this sort of character would kind of suck out of sheer inefficiency, but what could this character do?

Unitiated
1) Astrally percieve, and assense people/places/things
2) Astrally project.
3) Feed free spirits well.

Initiated:
1) Changing signature - not that he leaves one anyway.
2) Get astral pool
3) Masking - to look like the mundane he almost is. And ward-sleaze while projecting.
4) Divining? I can't remember if it has a separate skill or not.
5) Cleansing?
6) Posessing?
7) Others? I don't have the SOTA 2063 book.

Psychometry would be another one in SOTA 2063. Probably some others in Target: Awakened Lands etc (sensing?).

The guy could also make wards and no doubt some other things. But yeah he would suck in general. Interesting though.

I think you could go on astral quests too, yeah?

Divining needs a seperate skill btw.

I stringly suspect such a character would pick-up some sorcery or conjuring with their first batch of karma.

Masking is probably the most useful of those. Divining does use a separate skill.

ZDM is right about psychometry, wards, and astral quests.

When you say "Feed Free Spirits well" are you talking about sending them Karma? If so I think you need either a conjuring or sorcery skill for that (or at least to do it cheaply)

A magician, without any skills, can give Good Karma to a Free Spirit at a 1:1 ratio. To improve that ratio, for yourself or someone else, you need to make a Conjuring skill test. A low-Force Free Spirit could easily pump up to an insane Karma count that way. Force 3/SE 1 Free Spirit could be getting well over 5 Karma for every 1 Karma donated to it.

Divining requires two skills, the Divination Active Skill and an appropriate Knowledge Skill. The Divination skill is the one that actually gives you dice to throw, but it's limited to no higher than the Knowledge Skill. Same deal as Centering, I believe.

That need to buy up two skills, plus the number of successes you have to get, against fairly high TNs, to get anything useful out of it, pretty much cripples Divination. It's cost-prohibitive for PCs to get it at useful levels. (And I suspect that was done deliberately and with malice aforethought in order to make the GM's life easier.) My most recent PC took it anyway, because a Viking sorcerer who can't cast runes is no Viking sorcerer at all.

Back on topic... can you default to Willpower with Sorcery and Conjuring, or are they skill-required activities? I don't remember and I don't have my book handy.

Oops! My bad. Didn't notice that bit. You're absolutely right, can only improve the ratio by 1. So, to Karma-pump, just make sure the Free Spirit has no Spirit Energy left and is below 11 Force, that should allow a skilled Conjurer to improve the ratio most times.

Can't default to Willpower for Sorcery or Conjuring.