What are the base magic attributes (before initiation) of Dragons, Great Dragons, and Drakes?

Obviously, Great Dragons are so out of anyone's league that it's sort of a moot point, and DotSW says Bred Drakes are Magic 6 (or 0) (at least if you're PCing them).

But what about lesser dragons, and true drakes? True drakes start out with essence 8, but then again so do shifters, who still only get Magic 6.

Any thoughts?

I'm too lazy, too. I would go with 6.

Well, theres no such thing as a new great dragon AFAIK. A Great dragon is a dragon thats been around for many thousand years. The odds of him having an unmodified magic rating are less than zero IMHO.

The stats for all dragons are the "base" stats. Individual ones are always improved over that.

Unfortunately, since they put the rules for initiation in another book entirely, there's no mention of a dragon with initiatory grades or any of the other optional/expanded rules. At least not for the stat blocks in Critters or Shadowrun 3rd Edition.

According to Dragons, great dragons minimum magic rating is 12.

Take it as a given that at least Great Dragons initiate. Rhonabwhy, for example, is a minimum Grade 13 initiate. The stats for initiated Great Dragons have been posted before. By the same token, I've never seen stats for a lesser Dragon who initiated, but I assume it's possible.

Dot6W says (p. 180) that dragons are almost always initiates, unless they're very young, and that Great Dragons are always at least Grade 10 initiates, except for very young ones (like Masaru, maybe?).

Other than that, it says that dragons with magical skills have Magic equal to their Essence, which doesn't really jive with the initiate grades they are supposed to have. Maybe they change the signatures often and ditch the extra magic point? Or maybe that's their base magic attribute and you should add on the initiate grades on top of that (ugh. that would be REALLY nasty)? Dunno.

Or it's entirely possible that initiate grades just dont work the same way for dragons. It's already established that can do things magically that PC's cannot, and cast magic in a way that is foreign to humans.

True dat. There certainly are spirits that metahumans can summon that dragons cant. The Magic point increase thing might be one more reason that dragons like Schwatzkopf and Ghostwalker are really interesting in metahuman magic... An interesting thought.

Ixnay. Ghostwalker has not yet been known to summon any kind of Spirit of Man or Ancestor Spirit.

AAh okay, I could swear what I said was almost verbatim from the description of him molesting Denver, but I've been wrong before.

DotSW, bottom of page 180:

Spirits of Man are Nature Spirits, but Ghostwalker probably just has been unable to summon them yet. He's trying to learn how though. The thing that was odd for Ghostwalker (and most dragons) was that he summoned both nature spirits and elementals, something humans just can't do except to a very limited degree (Tir Paths and other specific magic traditions...other than those, it's Shamans = Spirits, Mages = Elementals and never the two shall meet.)

The Abstruse One

GW has summoned Spirits of Man, I think. Hasn't he? Isn't the Spirit of Denver sort of a free Spirit of Man (City Spirit)? While he hasn't put it back together or anything, he's certainly been adept at messing with parts of it (also Sprits of Man, I suppose).

You don't have to be able to conjure a spirit to be able to control it or banish it.

Ghostwalker, if i remember correctly, was VERY interested in Ancester Spirits and the Loa because Despite his ability and astral quest, he had never heard of them let alone summoned them.