Hi, I'm afraid I might read the book properly, please prove me wrong.

Question: does a magician's way adept having more magic than power points still lose one full power point if he loses one point of magic?

Say an adept of the magician's way goes for initiation. He's got, let's say, 5 points of magical power, and 1 point of being awesome at marimba (BAaM), with magic 6.

He's got the choice between taking an additional power point or learn a metamagic technique. Unfortunately for him, he decides to learn marimbing, some special metamagic technique for getting chicks and guys crazy about him when he does play marimba. So he has magic 7, with 5 points of magical power (loves this name, sounds like sailor moon), and one point of BAaM. That's to say magic 7 and 6 power points.

Since he'd like to get more guys and chicks to get crazy about him, he gets some tailored pheromones. And here, things go kind of bad. The book's pretty clear about losing one point of magic meaning one power point less. It doesn't say your power points are limited to your magic, it says losing one power point when you lose magic. So, our friend just gets to magic 6, and 5 power points, with magical power 4 and BAaM at 1… That sounds somehow unfair, because he got a "shallow" magic + 1, which virtually affected none of his magicians ability, and not so much of his real power, and losing it still gets him to lose his magical power point…

So, did I miss something about it, or is this interpretation right?

Additionally, is there any additional reason, past the possibility to get a power point for 20 karmas by the BBB, that the rule is not simply "no more power point than magic attribute"? As far as I understand, this "power point for 20 karmas" seems to be there just because they didn't want to put initiation in the BBB…

Oh the good old joys of that stupid wording on initiation of Adepts of the Magician's Way ...

Read this ... carefully and from beginning to end

Comment I: You found the major flaw of the common but "false" interpretation of said rules that got stupidly sanctioned by FAQ on SR3: The potential for an "empty" / "worthless" positive magic attribute that grants no powers, has no discernible effect on spell casting abilities of an Adept of the Magician's Way and affects only a number of Adept powers that you can count with one hand.

Comment II: I'm still heavily amused by the fact that initiatory rules of SR4 for Mystic adepts were in line with the interpretation of the rules as I provided for SR3 but got some shitload of "you stupid" reactions for back in the days.

Comment III: No, I won't go deeper into the discussion on the initiation rules for Adept's of the Magician's Way. All I could ever say is in the linked thread.

Wait, I don't want to start a debate, but to be clear:

You suggest that on initiation, the adept could gain 2 power points or 2 metamagical techniques in some cases?

Anyway, I don't think the issue I tackle here is in the thread you quoted. It actually highlights how the ruling you get by reading quickly (and the one in the FAQ) is gimping for magician's way adept. If they learn metamagic, they get useless magic point, and this magic point is CAN NOT EVEN BE LOST without consequences.

I think I agree with the Ol'Scratch / Doc interpretation. I'll check with my GM if we can change it so that magician's way adept just initiate like everyone and fuck it.

No. Under the interpretation that I prefer over how you seem to have interpreted said rule on p. 24 of MitS he could gain 2 power points during the process of a single initiation but he could certainly not gain two metamagical techniques.

Side note: Old Scratch's (Doc Funk's) position slightly changed over the course of said thread and what he's describing and defending later on is exactly the same thing as I described.

And trust me: Said thread most certainly tackles the problem you're having here because the posibility of creating "empty" / "useless" points of magic attribute are a direct consequence of the "false" interpretation you have used. Once the rule "magic + 1 = +1 power point" is correctly applied to Adepts of the Magician's Way there's no chance of creating such an empty magic attribute and the rules on p. 24 become a decision between either a metamagic (just as standard mages and adepts can chose as option 1 upon initiation) or getting a second power point instead of that metamagic.

One other thing you might want to reconsider is the explicit requirement for losing points in Magic Talent first upon Magic Loss.

Yep, actually, my first answer was before I had seen the final clear version of your (and Old scratch's) interpretation.

Well, as to my problem, what I meant by "tackle" was that the situation I described, that's to say ungeased magic loss consequences is not precisely described. One solution to this problem would just be to reword the consequences of magic loss so that you don't lose power point if you have less power points than your magic attribute before loss. The need to take off one power point for each magic loss is due only to the "buy power point with 20 karma" rule from the BBB, which is there only to compensate for the absence of initiation, so should be outright canceled if you decide to use MitS, and to which magician's way adepts are not subjects.

But anyway, that doesn't change anything, as the problem of magic loss actually adds to the stupid outcomes of the FAQ (and mine originally) interpretation. There are so many ways the FAQ's wrong that it makes me want to scream, and makes me wonder if the guy answering ever played a magician with no access to the astral, AT ALL, before fearing magician's way could be overpowered.

I came here because I wanted to be proven wrong. I got satisfied on this ! And I'll go with your interpretation if I have to be RAW. I find it overpowered, so I'll suggest to other GMs that we just cancel the paragraph in the adept description and go with the standard rules for adepts initiation.

About your last issue, honestly, I understand where it comes from, fluff-wise, but I really don't think that's a problem. I could make it a choice to the players if some really consider they're adept-like mages or mages-like adepts, but well, for now, it's for me only a game balance issue. I'm not playing for game balance, and the magician adept I created is designed to be ridiculously over-powered. So for now, I'll let that sleep.

I have to disagree with you on various aspects there. The necessity of giving up powers worth - at least - 1 power point upon magic loss unless Geasa are accepted have nothing to do with the 20 Karma rule. The rules for Magic Loss are pretty explicit in that regard. The reason why the Magic Loss rules do not deal with situations where you have a magic attribute higher than your power point count is pretty simple: That case normally cannot exist outside of the "false" interpretation of initiation for Magician's Way adepts. A standard Adept strictly speaking cannot face that situation but only the reverse: A power point total that exceeds his current magic rating before Magic Loss ... through the 20 Karma rule.

And no, said 20 Karma rule certainly is not there as mere compensation for the lack of initiation rules in the BBB ... and that rule certainly should not be removed once MitS and initiation are involved. Heck, the vrry existance of that "extra power point" rule for Adepts of the Magician's Way actually suggests that the continued use of that rule for standard adepts is both valid and expected.



Personal experience with Adept's of the Magician's Way has taught me one thing: That perception of "overpoweredness" is usually ill-perceived because of the relative power of both adept and caster metamagics that are far more interesting (relative power level wise) than getting extra power points for powers that are capped in levels and simultaneous use by magic rating.

This part of my argument was actually taking FAQ's ruling as a premise. Indeed the rules are explicit regarding adept, but I think, and I precise it was here just my opinion, that they're here only because the 20k/PP was there. And, this is my opinion too, I sincerely believe that the intent of the game is to provide power points via initiation only, and that the rule in the BBB is there only to make it possible to play an adept with it. Well, there's a quote about that in the FAQ, but we know what it's worth.

And where I disagree is when you say that you need this 20k/PP rule to support your interpretation. Because you don't, the wording on how adept initiating gain power points make it pretty clear that the power point is obtained through gaining magic. Hence the "extra power point" is really an extra, and clearly an alternative to gaining a metamagic. Many would consider absurd that they wouldn't have gimped magician's way adept to the point that they could not alter their astral signature or shed a geas. So clearly, the extra power point is there only as an alternative to learning metamagic. No need of the 20k/PP.

And it's pretty logical to me that they considered that the guy should have a way to increase his magical power like a standard magician do and also gain at the same time a standard adept point. I see it as pretty faire actually, since the guy gives up on metamagic technique, or astral sig modif. doing so.



Sorry, I was not clear, the ridiculous overpowering is not linked with being a magician's way adept, it's just linked to the ability to summon force 5 spirits at char gen without any drain ever. I just wanted to play a magician adept parallely to this build.

Slight misunderstanding there:

1. I certainly don't need the 20K/PP rule to completely justify the presented interpretation of Adept of the Magician's Way initiation. However, when looking at the context within the paragraphs on p. 24 the standard 20K/PP mechanism is explicitly referenced, then forbidden for Adepts of the Magician's Way and then the special rule implements an explicit mechanism for Adept's of the Magician's Way to gain such "extra power points". So the 20K/PP rule certainly helps with interpretation and understanding the concept behind "extra power point" there. However ...
2. ... the rules on p. 24 MitS with their explicit reference to the 20K/PP rule and the recreation of an individualized mechanism for Adept's of the Magician's Way also serves as a strong indicator that - and this is where our POVs differ - the 20K/PP rule is not supposed to be put aside once you play with initiation rules. How "unfair" would it be to deprive standard adepts of that mechanism for additional power gains outside initiation rules while explicitly implementing it as an additional alternative within the initiation rules for Adepts of the Magician's Way. By "RAW" it appears that the combined use of both initiation rules and the 20K/PP rule for adepts is in fact both valid and expected as standard procedure for normal adepts. The standard 20K/PP rule could be removed however, if all Adepts received that metamagic vs. extra power point choice within initiatory option 1.

That's something a full magician or a conjurer aspected magician easily can do as well. And trust me, a specialized conjurer build can be far more dangerous "out of the box" than the majority of Magician's Way Adepts that aren't totally tricked out and / or are built without extreme emphasis to either their adept side or their caster/conjurer side.

Indeed, my opinion is they reluctantly made the choice to assume their 20K/PP rule, hence p24 MitS, but that's quite a general point of SR's additional book to rarely cancel BBB's rule. But I'll agree that I'm making a wild guess here. The FAQ's stuff saying the same, FAQesque as it can be, make it not so wild I guess.



Oh, I believe you. As I told you, the "Magician's way" part is just for some fun. The only point of the build is 10 Charisma. It makes it ridiculously easy to get invulnerable and powerful spirits on the fly with huge karma pool. Long story short: I wanted an aspected conjurer, but Charisma 10 needs you to have sorcery and some sustaining focus if you want to play at all. So I had the choice between full magician and magical adept. I didn't care for spellcasting but wanted to trick out a bit combat capacities, which actually I could do with cyber and bioware. So magical adept was quite the good stuff. Lack of astral is quite limiting though. But throwing 9 dice by standard with SL2 is somehow really satisfying.

But, hey, I'm not bragging here, I just meant that I didn't care for game balance and played an overpowered character, related to the average you get at chargen. There are so many ways of getting there that there's nothing to brag about.