If I'm playing a physical mage and take 1 level of Magic Power, can I then spend 6 points on the skill Sorcery?

Assuming I can do that, does that mean that I can use spell defense and throw 6 sorcery dice every combat phase when I and 5 other people within 100 meters of me are targeted with spells (this assumes that I'm not going to use those dice for any other reason)?

If that's true, those sorcery skill dice would be useable every combat phase, correct, as opposed to every combat turn?

Thanks!

You sure can on all accounts. Your skill has no bearing on your Magic rating or Magical Power rating, and vice versa Skill is a completely independant aspect of your character, well, save for the range of spell defense. But you already nailed that part.

Note, however, that if and when you lose a point of Magic, Magical Power get hits first. If it ever drops to 0, which'll happen if and when you do lose a point, you lose it forever and can are stuck being a regular adept.

It's also not worth the hit you take when it comes to initiating. Remember, adepts of the magician's way have to choose between a power point and a metamagic technique with each grade, unlike standard adepts who get both.

Are the metamagic techniques that valuable to adepts? I looked them over and couldn't really figure out how they'd help my adept.

Divining, centering, and masking are availabile to physads iirc.

Centering is a god-send, especially the way adepts get to use it (and they have to take it multiple times). Masking is always good, Psychometry kicks ass, and if you're going to be a spell defense junkie, Shielding is a must have. Divination is pretty cool, too, especially when combined with Psychometry and the Tracking adept power.

And yes, being just an adept is a bad thing when you spent 30 build points for it only to get what amounts to spell defense for a couple of runs. If you initiated before you lost that Magical Power point, you also lost out on some power points and/or metamagic techniques to boot.

Masking and Centering are both very nice.

The Abstruse One

Masking is *really* good for an adept who's already initiated once or twice, 'cause you get to carry your handy-dandy weapon focus around with you all over without getting caught.

Centering is of course very useful, but it costs a small mint of karma to build up the active skill and linked knowledge skill up from scratch. Once you do, though, you take this twice or three times and you get complimentary dice for nearly every skill out there.

I dunno much about divining; I tend not to trust such things because in my experience forcing the GM to reveal his plans to you only ensures that those plans will change by the time the divination comes to pass. Prophecies never help the prophet anyway.

(Edit): heh, wow you guys are fast typers.

Psychometry and Tracking? Where's that?

Target: Awakened Lands.

Cool, thanks.

Snappy service around here.

Regular adepts can take sorcery, but only if they have astral perception, and only for use in astral combat.

A quick note. An adept of the magical way will also get a Spell Pool. If you have Intelligence and Willpower of 6, you will have a Spell Pool of 4 even if you only have one point of Magical Ability. So you may have to stretch your Spell Defense dice out over the entire Combat Turn, but you get 10 dice (Sorcery: 6 + Spell Pool: 4), not just 6. Also, if that is your primary focus, you could specialize in Spell Defense (Sorcery: 5/Spell Defense: 7) to raise that to 11 dice.

You could also learn Absorbtion, and finally squeeze off a respectable spell with your little 1 magic power.

Metamagic page, for those who forget what all's out there.

Bah. They spread crap through too many books for me to remember 'em all verbatim

They [physical magicians] can make very powerful long term characters. In the right roles, like detectives, faces, and support, the physmage is very adept. The important thing is to compliment powers, spell, and spirits instead of trying to be overly general.

Spell defence's lone advantage over shielding is that it can potentially cause an incoming spell to completely fail. This only really makes a difference for elemental manipulations, which can cause havok with their elemental effects even if completely resisted. But shielding's ability to raise the Target Numbers for incoming spells, in addition to adding its dice, is a far more useful ability. Not to mention that you can receive those bonus dice multiple times if you get hit by more than one spell. Shielding only starts becoming effective when you have a few grades of initiation under your belt, since the number of people you can protect/TN modifier depend on your initiate grade. Until then, though, you can freely combine shielding with normal spell defense.


Adepts of the magical way can be very powerful, but their strength comes from versatility. To have an effective adept of the magical way, you have to envision how adept and magician abilities could combine to make someone who is great at a certain role. For example, combining an adept's improved stealth, traceless walk, improved flexibility, and improved senses: low-light and microscopic vision with a the ability to cast spells such as gecko crawl, levitate, magic fingers, and improved invisibility, and the ability to summon hearth spirits to use abilities such as Concealment, Guard, and Search for you. You now have a great break-in specialist.

This may just be my misperception...but your level of magic power is used as your magic attribute for spellcasting. With only lvl 1 Magic Power, you are going to be soaking a lot of Physical drain, or never effecting anyone else with your magic.

Edit: When determining Spell Pool, would you use the full Magic Attribute or just the lvl of Magic Power?

The second point now has a Geas. One with six natural points of magic can take Geasa for up to 5 points of magic.

Technically speaking, when adepts of any stripe lose magic, geasa are selected by the GM and not the player. So, the GM gets to decide if you permanently lose that point, or if you have to take a geas on it (as well as deciding which geas you're going to take). Yes, I know this sucks big-time.

Most of the time he is safe, but things can go bad. At some point the adept may be forced to break the Geas and thus lose the power forever. The best idea is to initiate and shed the Geas as fast as possible.

physad POM should never!!!! limit themselves to 1 point of magical power. you loose magic, you loose the ability to be a mage. i made a character with the same intent as our thread starter. i wanted someone with spell defense. so i got magical power 1 and sorcery 1. with 6 dice of spell defence from sorc and spell pool. it was always spell defense on myself only.

i had to use hand of god to keep the ability after failing the magic loss check after a deadly wound.

the POM character is incredibly powerfull and more immportatnly useful, but make sure you have at least 2 levels of magic power. if you lose one, initiate immediately and take naother. as i recall you cannot geas magical power losses.

the biggest consideratoin for POM charcters is anticipation. anticipate what you need and build around it. never choose a POM character for throw away runs or short campaigns that won't get you any real amounts of karma. remember you are a karma sink and pretty much cannot do anything without it.

and always make sure you are aware of the fat that anything useful you do as a mage is nearly garaunteed to feed you physical drain.

my recommendation os to create a mage concept you like, then geas magical power at 6 levels thenspend the other 1.5 pp on something useful. from there you can build fairly well so long as you get the time and karma.