In MITS pg 94 it mentions that a mage can take an astral quest and upon completion can learn a metamagic technique.

Is this correct??

I thought you had to take an initiation in order to gain a metamagic technique.

If this is true then a mage does not even have to be an initiate to gain as many metamagic techniques as he wants, right??

When a magician initiates he has the opportunity to learn a new metamagic technique. It is not automatic.

One of the ways of learning it is with an Astral Quest. /Edit: The other ways are learning from another initiate and bargaining with a Free Spirit.

Each of the ways of learning the metamagic technique requires a Test. If the magician fails the test, he may not try again until after he has initiated again.

No, an initiate does not get access to lots of metamagic techniques with the Astral Quest.

Well, first off you'd have to get initiated to get access to the metaplanes, unless you can find a gateway or a friendly spirit with the power.

And although the rules aren't explicit about it, I e-mailed wizkids about this a while back - an initiate can only have ONE metamagical ability per grade, regardless of how they learn it. We've upped that to two abilities per grade in our game cos we like a magic heavy game.

But the section on astral quests in MITS seems to imply that you do not necessarily have to take an initiation in order to learn a metamagic technique.

The same as if you were taking an astral quest to reduce the karma cost of a spell or to learn a formula.

For example an initiate grade 1 could have two+ metamagic techniques.

Is this correct??

No, it isn't. See above.

You could gain more than one metamagic at a single initiation grade if, say, you initiated to Grade 3 without learning metamagic and then learned all three at once.

~J

I know what you mean Sentinel', that's exactly why I mailed wizkids. I'm afraid the definitive answer is 'no you can't.' The reason given, however, was that it was simply because that's the magic level they want in a standard SR Campaign. If you want to play magic heavy that's entirely up to you, but it would be a house rule. Its an unclear point in the books imho, but hopefully if they reprint they'll now fix that.