Hey again, Dumpshock!

Super dumb question, I can't find it with my search terms so I turn to the greater community. Can you get initiated during character creation if you have karmagen? The answers I've found were for SR5, and I need SR4. I feel like the answer is "yes you can," but I just want to double check. In my experience, initiation is where mages and mystical adepts go off the deep end, and it feels wrong to me that someone will be able to start with a very high magical stat and a bunch of metamagic, but I want to make sure before I start bitching.

Thanks, gang!

Hex

Up to the GM as per the little black box on pg 43 of Runners Companion. So if you allow it you also set limits, like only 1 grade or only x metamagics.

Gotcha. The GM is new to running Shadowrun, so there may not be any limits set.

Thanks, Mantis!

If you are that concerned about it, ask your GM to set limits. Since he's new, make sure you explain why you think these limits are a good idea.
Though if you are starting with the suggested amount of karma (750), and a starting character won't be starting with either a group or deeds, each grade is going to cost quite a bit of karma. Combine that with the high cost of increasing the magic attribute there isn't much chance of getting too out of hand without seriously gimping the character.

We're starting at 800 karma, but character sheets are hidden from one another so it's one of those "how do I ask without sounding like a paranoid nut" situations. Hard to get a feel for what's going on. Once I got everything paid for, I had 16 karma left--and I didn't have a magic stat to worry about.

This is all very much me just fretting for the sake of fretting, but I have that fear that we'll have one walking god and four otherwise not very useful people in here, so I figured I'd pick the Dumpshock brain and see if the lynchpin of my concern was rules legal or not. XD

I wouldn't worry about it then. Assuming the mage makes similar choices and isn't a power gamer, 16 karma will just get you a single grade of initiation. Not really that over powering. Still, I would think the GM will look over the characters before play starts and ask for any obvious problems to be addressed.

It's a reasonable concern. You might ask what reasonable dice pools are at least, to get everyone into the same ballpark without requiring too much sharing of information. I've seen 12 for most skills, 14 for combat skills thrown around as reasonable starting maximum pools, but whatever number can be reached and agreed upon could work.

I would also second the suggestion to wait for group+deed initiation for the 40% (2x 20%) discount if it will be available. Use the points to buy spells, improve low dice pools (especially stealth, perception, or social), or otherwise get well-rounded. Mages need a lot of karma to improve in-game, so it's harder to convince yourself to shore up weaknesses later.

With 800 Karma, even if the GM is using the latest printing/errata (karma cost for metatype and Attribute cost is x 5), dice pools of 12/14 might be more the minimum you should expect to see for a character's specialty. Dice pools are very easy to get to high levels - soft-maxed main Attribute, skill of 5 or 6 with a specialization, then the dice pool boosts that you can get from tech, magic, or qualities.

And I'm not talking about squeezing out all the dice you can get or scouring the books for loopholes to exploit. Just a few logical choices at character creation, envisioning someone who has been doing this for a living for a good while, can easily get you large dice pools while leaving you well-rounded in other areas.