MITS p24, they have access to Centering like Adepts do and can apply their Centering to other skills like Adpets.

And {EDIT} he already caught that by the time I was done typing.

almost... First sentence under "Adept Centering" page 73: "Unlike Magicians, Adepts do not use centering for magical skills".

Which goes with the line under the Magician's Way that says they used centering exactly like an adept. Apparently adepts cannot center sorcery or conjuring or any other magical skills. I didn't know that till I read it about a half hour ago.

Wait... OurTeam hasnt... posted... in this thread...?

Sorry for dragging up posts from a page ago, but I felt a few of these needed to be addressed. First off, wards are not created by any magical skill (otherwise normal adepts would not be able to create them), so the maximum Force available for a ward is the magician adept's actual Magic Attribute, 10. Second, magician adepts are no more or less vulnerable to Magic Loss than a mage with an equal Magic Attribute, although I suppose the magician adept might fear losing all of his Magical Power eventually if he gets smacked around enough.

As for the rest, well of course the magical adept isn't going to be as strong as the focused mage in his area of expertise, nor as good as the normal adept in his area of expertise. But, each metamagic technique he *does* get will be made much more effective by the wide array of different powers that he *does* have. You have already covered the example of how a magical adept uses Centering on physical skills in addition to being able to Center against Drain for the Sorcery and Conjuring skills he gets from adept powers. Other examples are the use of Enhance Aim with the Improved Pistols ability, the use of Improved Senses to target spells, possibly using touch-range spells with Distance Strike, etc. Magical adepts are "gimped" because if they were not they stand to gain much more upon a single initiation than either a regular adept or a regular mage would.

On the flip side, compare any of the magic traditions with, say, a sammie. A magical adept can raise his Magic attribute and either learn a metamagic technique or gain a power point for around 12 Karma. The sammie can raise one skill by a point, or raise his Willpower from 5 to 6. The magical adept wins, hands down.

As i understood it, Both have the same chance of lossing magic because they are pain/stim freaks, but the Physmage "burnouts" that much quicker.

Full mage with magic 10 has X chance of losing their first magic point (1 in 12?) and can take 9 hits to the magic rating before burning out.

Physmage with Magic 10 (magical power 6) has the same chance's all the way down as the mage above, but can only take 5 hits before burning out.

Yes/ No. Right/ Wrong?

Heh... well thats a start...

Now all you have to do is provide some sort of opinion or interpretation subject to potential agreement, and you can make Kanada Ten's post valid retroactively.

I think Kanada Ten trusts whatever I write whether I've written it already or not. Therefore his post IS already valid, and he made it that way all by himself. He doesn't need my help. I immediately trust his posts as being valid.

He's responding to BitBasher's suggestion that someone be picked to go through these parts of the book and make sense of it all. Thanks, Kanada Ten, for volunteering me for this work.

I think Shockwave's analysis is all wet. What GM runs a campaign where characters have to plan for how the campaign will turn them into a mundane? All magical characters are screwed in such a campaign. An adept will lose all his powers, one at a time. The Magician's Way power will simply be the first to go. And in Shock's 2nd example, he's not burned out, he's only as valuable a character as an Adept, which is a good character type to begin with.

OurTeam's first law of magic loss

Let's do some analysis before I present the second law. For a given character ("T") in a given campaign ("U"); let 'V' be the rate at which checks for Magic Loss are made (measured in the number of checks per 100 earned Karma). Let "X" be the rate at which Magic is Lost per 100 earned Karma (X can be computed, knowing V and the current Magic Rating). Let "Y" be the rate at which initiation is done per 100 earned Karma.

Given a character in an ongoing campaign, while X is greater than Y the character will lose Magic faster than she gains it. At each loss of Magic, X (the rate of loss of magic) will be lowered because Magic Rating has lowered. Loss of Magic will continue until X is roughly equal to Y, and a steady state is reached where the rate of initiation is equal to the rate of magic loss. The character will plateau at this level. While X is less than Y, the character will increase in Magic faster than she loses it. Upon each increase in Magic, X will be raised. Magic will continue to increase until X is roughly equal to Y. At that point a steady state is reached where the rate of initiation is equal to the rate of magic loss. In either case, there is a plateau affect. Sometimes higher than Magic 6, sometimes lower. Let us call the value of the Magic Rating at this plateau "Z". Given values for "V" and "Y", simulation can produce a resulting value for Z.

OurTeam's second law of magic loss

The GM's corollary to the second law

OurTeam's third law of magic loss

From then on, that character will only be as useful as an Adept (which is a great type of character).

The fourth law is simple.

From then on, such a character will only be as useful as a Samurai (which is a great type of character).

Sorry im not getting that slang, Cains say's i got it right, are you agreeing or disageeing?

and the term "burn out" in reference to not being able to cast spells not becoming mundane, granted i didn't make it that clear.

I disagree

Let's turn this around: What GM runs a campaign where characters have to plan for how the campaign will violate their core character type?

That's the major thing. Adepts of the Magician's Way don't have the Magic Power to lose enless they devote most of their power points to it; and if they do that, wtf's the point of playing an Adept of the Magician's Way? A normal campaign has the capability of violating an Adept of the Magician's Way unlike the other Awakened types.

But it's not outside the land of possibility to lose two or three points in a relatively short amount of time in a normal campaign, and losing those two or three points might just evicerate an Adept of the Magician's Way's Magic Power. While there is still hope to climb out of that hole for every other Awakened character type, there's a good chance that an Adept of the Magician's Way is screwed.

The player chose to create an Adept of the Magician's Way because they wanted to play an Adept of the Magician's Way, not a normal Adept or even a Samurai. Whether or not they are a good, great, or even viable type of character is meaningless.

It boils down to the fact that an Adept of the Magician's Way does not have as much room for error in relation to maintaining the character type as other Awakened character types.

As far as their version of initiating, it's a piece of drek. Their advantage is their limitation; the fact they can choose their path means they didn't choose the other path. The fact that Adepts of the Magician's Way have the potential to do it all, doesn't mean they can do it all. Every Karma spent on spells is karma they don't get to spend on Adept abilities and what-have-you.

P.S. Can we please get a one word term to describe this character type in 3rd Edition? "Adept of the Magician's Way" is overly obtuse.

EDIT to make Doc happy

I would rather have a root canal than see that term used. Sames goes with the archaic (and, I might add, longer and more complicated) term "PhysAd" versus "adept." They're either "magician adepts" as they're referenced in the sourcebooks or, if you prefer, "physical mages" or even "adept mages."

What a character initially wanted to play is largely irrelevant after some real playtime. part of the game is that characters evolve, which can be for better or worse.

It wasn't so much a distortion as an extrapolation. You were using that as an excuse to explain why it's perfectly dandy to ignore an adept magician's weakness to Magic Loss so I took that argument and applied it to other character concepts to show the absurdity in it.

And I'm sure they all started off as heavily-cybered death machines or hermetic magicians, too.

I'm not saying that mundane humans with no implants aren't fun characters (they're amongst my most favorite, truth be told). The difference is that when playing a mundane human with no implants, you created them that way as opposed to being forced to play one that way despite creating a completely different character to begin with.

I have no problem with logical reprecussions for a character's actions. I don't even have a problem with traditional magic loss. The big difference here is that adept magicians get screwed ten ways to Sunday when it comes to magic loss... moreso than any other magical character. In fact, the only other character concept in the game that I know of that gets screwed like that is the otaku, and... I have plenty of issues with them beyond just that. 'Course their weakness is from age which is rarely an issue in most campaigns, so the adept magician still gets it way worse.

What's even more odd about adept magicians is that, despite being traditional magicians who have delved into learning adept powers, they end up becoming normal adepts and losing their standard magical abilities when they suffer magic loss. That, in and of itself, is ass-backwards.

That's because, straight aout of the book, they are adepts, they starts as adepts and they end as adepts. Nothing evers says they start as a full mage, in fact it specifically states the opposite. They are specific path of the Adept that costs 5 more points than a normal Adept. Their spellcasing ability is an Adpet power that costs one point per level. They are adepts. I really wonder why you keep saying that when the book directly contradicts that view.

Do me a favour and quote the whole part that deals with magician adept's (My MitS is still out of reach). I'm pretty sure that they don't start out as Adepts and end as adepts, regardless of them using Adept rules (easier to implement I guess).

I'm particularly interested in the sentence that goes somethimg like this: "... are magicians that devoted some of their magical talent into learing adept powers ...

With a specific description that leaves them not as "normal" Adept with some additional powers but as magicians with access to adept powers ...

Now that's the rule part. And at least to me it's quite obvious why it happens to be that way: easier to implement ...

As I said: Do me a favour and quote MitS ... It might even be that it's the very first sentence on those "Adepts" ...

And that still doesn't resolve the extremely different sounding description.
And the simple fact that Adept rules are easier to implement, makes it a rather logic choice of listing them under Adepts

That's one of the things that has been critizised

I agree with that.

And I agree that the Initiation rules for them suck, and that you should just use the normal Initiation rules for them, even though it loathes me to agree with Funk.

This is rather different than the last time we had this lengthy discussion!

I was rather proud of my accomplishment in changing your mind about this, so it saddens me to see you go back

And if they were good at both then it would be very unbalancing. It's a bad concept from the get go.

My opinion on how these rules can be interpreted hasn't changed. The one you "forced" me to accept would be equally acceptable (yet controversial) as the one I'm still favouring.

What you didn't change however last time are the facts that
a) The FAQ solution is not in line with the wording
b) my personal feelings about the unneeded gimping of magician Adepts

Your pride was then directed towards an illperceived accomplishment. You only provided a possible interpretation that I could accept as valid (and only based on the english wording, the german wording which most of the times has priority for players that I deal with, doesn't open that third interpretation), but you did not change my opinion that the (common) interpretation as presented in the FAQ is not in line with the rules as written => That interpretation is still not a valid one for me.

That leaves me with two possible interpretations. And obviously I do prefer one over the other ...

Translated:
The Initation rules allow for 3 options:

1) Increase Magic attribute and learn 1 metamagic
2) Increase Magic, change astral signature
3) shed a geas (magic attribute goes to previous value, virtual increase)

For adepts (without limits): Increase magic attribute, +1 power points. In using the 3rd option, as one increases magic and recieves a power point, one can only officially recieve a power that was previously geased.

Physical Magicians have to decide between either a powerpoint or a metatechnique.
That's the gist.

@Cochise: I left out a small bit. But this is more or less the rules from Schattenzauber, right?

Don