So, the Immortal Elves usually aren't statted up, do huge magic, yadda yadda yadda. Talk I've seen around here puts them at initiate grades not just in the double-digits, but the *high* double-digits. Like, fifty, sixty, eighty levels of initiation.

That hurts my widdle head.

So, I did some digging around today while bored and found a few things.

Great Dragons are, by definition, level 10 Initiates or higher. How much higher isn't known, but I don't think as high as the things I've seen here in the past discuss. Not even close. I'd think 10-15 for all save the Big D and maybe Lung.

Mr Darke, said to be Harlequin's equal, is a 6th level Initiate. Even I think that's a bit low and would guess him to be closer to 10, myself.

The Black Lodge, supposedly *the* be-all end-all of magic hoohah has seven people in the ten and up league, capped with the grand master at about grade 15. I'd wager him to be stronger then Harlequin, personally.

The Blood Mage Gestalt has an initiate grade, when combined, of 30. This is known to dwarf *any* other magical being in the Sixth World, and by a good margin. I'd think that 15 to 20 would be the *utter* max for, say, Dunklezhan.

Anybody else have a view on this, yay or nay? I know the published dragons are all quite a bit less than this, but, everyone has their own take on things.

-- Johnny Reb

I've noticed a lot of people (especially on this bored) think that immortal elves and great dragons can smack down God himself.

I have a neat little pdf on Big D if you want it. Email me Frostynso@aol.com

My only comment on this is that I played Shadowrun regularly for several years and finished as a Grade 5 Initiate; and yet somehow I'm the weak sister round here, where discussions (especially regarding physads) assume that you will initiate up to around grade 10 in a relatively short time.

I think all of those numbers should be doubled, if not tripled.

If one was to have all of the metamagics in SR they'd be around 20, and that does not seem beyond the realm of possibility.

But, OTOH, I really think that IEs and GDs use magic more like ED and their abilities don't really transfer clearly. More to the point, since I'll never stat them I really don't think it matters.

OK, first of all, the Blood Mage Gestalt sucks for a magical group for the simple reason that the IOND has 500 guys and even if all of them are level 1 initiates each, they're still going to kick major ass.

I think that most GDs and IEs are in the level 10-15 range, with exceptional ones at 15-20.

I don't think it's reasonable for them to be that low. That's only what, about five to seven hundred karma? Even assuming one karma point per year during the downcycle, they'd have the stuff coming out their ears!

The IEs, at least. And Ghostwalker.

~J

That is assuming they'd never Hand of God.

Even if they do, they lose everything they have at that time, which probably wouldn't be more than one initiation's worth.

~J

What's the big deal? Initiate grade means jack shit.

Wether you have magic 6 or 120. You can still only cast spells up to the force you learned it at.

Sure you can cast higher force spells without physical drain. Buuut. I'd like to see you 'learn' a spell that high, and not to mention avoid knocking yourself out anyways. Skipping over the GM fiat of NPCs knowing any force the GM wants. Even then I somehow doubt that they'll have high double digit Will or Charisma to avoid drain.

Yes I would say that some of the metamagics that scale with grade would be impressive. You could astrally blind the hell out of someone by faking your Aura through Masking to be akin to staring at the sun with the help of binoculars. And the area of affect for their combat spells would be pretty mighty. A 20 meter wide fireball is pretty dam impressive, but kind of lacking if it still only has 6 power.

They 'could' have dozens of Foci, or Foci of incredulus power bound to them. That's far more impressive than initiate grade.

And whos to say that all they did was pump their init. grade? Karma goes fast when your gaining knowlage about the 6th world.

The Magic attribute is calculated into Spell Pool. Higher Magic = greater Spell Pool.

Assuming a point of karma per year, Harlequin could hit Grade 60 with karma to spare in spades. That’s not even counting initiation before the end of the Fourth World.

Edit: No, he wouldn’t. He’d be about a thousand years short and end up somewhere in the upper forties. Nonetheless, I consider that to be an unrealistically low karma earning rate, and he probably would have been in at least the high teens by the end of the Fourth World.

~J

You forget you do not gain Karma for going to the laundromat. Do you suppose that after a certain limit, Harlequin needs to save the world every year to keep gaining karma? I would think that sometimes there is nothing for him to do except watch the centuries roll by and not a single karma to gain. So yes, 100 years and only 10 karma is not impossible from my point of view.

You think that Harley's fixer calls him up every week and says,"Hoi chummer, the Horrors are here again. Need you to meet the Johnson at the Citadel"?

Normal people somehow manage to improve their skills. Why not Harlequin?

Besides, if there's one thing IEs are good at, it's getting themselves into interesting situations.

~J

Becuase he's not normal?

Exactly. He's getting into hazardous situations much more than Joe Peasant Farmer, but Joe still manages to end up somewhat better at farming than when he began.

~J

So then the reason why he is (and was) a powerful éminence grise, a legendary fighter and magician, is because he's an extremely slow learner and has a tendency to just lounge about doing nothing, and that goes for the rest of the IEs and GDs as well?

Do you have any idea of the type of things that could be classed as a challenge to him? I do not know about ED, but in SR, if he managed to gain that much karma, he would have died and risen on the third day to atone for the sins of man every few years.

He is Mr No-Stat. Anything that is even a challenge to him needs to be Equal No Stat. And that gets him only 1-2 Karma. Even if he did overcome Mr Equally No Stat Challenge regularly(which is impossible since the next Mr ENSC needs to be better to provide the same level of challenge), there would be nothing left for the other IEs or GDs to do.

During the downtime? With little magic available, and what there is coming like blood from a stone? Quite a few things.

~J

And Mr Blood from Stone has less mana to work with too. Mana level remains equal for both sides.

I'm still trying to figure out where Johnny Reb gets the 'fact' that Darke is said to be even in the same league as Harlequin, let alone his equal.

Well, Harly has displayed abilities from like 3 high level adept classes in ED right? Just add up all those, then add up the number of Grades of initiation he would need to learn most of the good metamagics in the 6th world that arent covered in the ED classes. That would probably give him a grade around 30-40. Remember ED classes are roughly equal to initiation grades in level, and that Harley wouldn't be initiating during the downcycle.

Well, it did say thet Mr dark was "one of, if not the most powerful human mage on earth" which is gigglingly laughable. I don;t remember it ever being said he is on par with Harley.

And for reference, it's explicitly stated in Harlequin that he is in fact a high double digit initiate.

I recently dove into the Earthdawn (ED) books and was reminded of something. In classic fantasy games, while the dragons were very powerful, player characters did indeed kill them upon reaching certain levels. The Uber dragons of SR are portrayed much weaker (My opinion) in ED than they are in SR.

So, why do we suppose that is? Why is it that adult and great dragons in ED appear to be so much weaker than they are in SR?

***I am drawing this conclusion based upon the different way the books are written. In ED, while their is respect for the greats, of the 4 books I have pursed NONE of them carry the outright fear that the greats are given in SR.

That's kind of true, but just to be fair Dragons in most other game systems are complete paper tigers compared to GD's in SR. I mean their karma warping abilities alone will mean you're screwed.

I wonder how much Karma he picked up as Arthur ...

I think that was meant as "had" in referencing the downcycle. Really low mana means big effort needed for even a force 1 manabolt.

Or it could be an editing oversight, since you probably have several different authors submitting portions of the book.

Well, considering that none of the IE's were played for very long, they probably haven't earned very much karma at all. If I take a two year break from SR and come back to find the campaign has moved along by two years, and I want to play my old character, I'm going to guess my GM will give me about zero points of karma for that downtime (despite the fact that I role-played it effectively. I mean, the character wasn't there, I wasn't there. That's method, baby).

To say that a guy has lived for thousands of years and earned karma (even a point a year) during that time doesn't impress me, because it takes no actual effort. If someone did a run a year, playing an IE up from character creation, for 2000, 4000 or 6000 runs; and survived, then talk to me.

Personally, I think the idea of statless npcs in GM laziness. And to the entire IE, Great Dragon, high double digit initiative grades, I can only say this:

Wouldn't Darke have Potence as well as initiate grade to contribute to his magical power?

If you look to the novels, specificly Beond the Pale, Darke and Harlequin fights in the metaplanes and are fairly matched. This is even though Darke has the power of the Gestalt, a few hundred virgin sacrifices and a mysterious stone called a Locus or something that connects and channels mana lines at his disposal. I would say more but I don´t know how to make a spoiler tag. Anyway, depending on what type of foci and stuff Harlequin broght with him, there´s no telling what their initiate grades are by this example, eccept that they are both very powerful. But I´d say its very likely that Darke has a VERY inferior initiate grade to Harlequin, but that the resources of a mega corporation like Aztecnology should never be underestimated. And that is what makes them equals in their battles.

I don't think Harly had any foci. He also had to contend with a small horde of lesser Horrors in addition to just Darke.

All things considered my vote for big mage gun goes to Harlequin. Others in the top five would be Aina, Lofwyr, Lung, and Ghostwalker, with the alternate going to Alachia or Alamaise.

yes, actually, i do give karma for hiding and laying low in their safehouse, if they do some good role-playing while they're in there. perhaps you should re-read SR3 p242-244. i don't see anything in there about characters not getting karma because a run was too easy. i do see lines in there that say things like " every surviving member of a team gets Karma for staying alive, succeeding at a mission, and for the degree of danger in the mission." so, while harley might not get any karma for 'degree of danger', he certainly gets karma for 'completing the mission' and 'staying alive'. there are also a couple of individual awards that might apply to someone like harley: guts (facing off against horrors isn't for pansies), smarts (harley tricked ehran during harlequin--that takes some doing); motivation (harley's machinations have been the focus of at least two SR modules and one video game), and maybe even 'humor and drama', since he's been in at least one book.

but, in all that, i still don't see anything about not giving a character karma because they're too powerful. for the record, your counter-retort wasn't ridiculous, just erroneous.

While it's used as experience, Good Karma is still good karma. Helping an old lady across the street can earn you good karma. It doesn't matter if you're an 8-year-old boyscout or a 20,000-year-old immortal elf.

Believe it or not, shadowrunners aren't the only people in the world who earn Good Karma, and performing criminal acts that put your life on the line isn't the only way to earn it either. I know it's a difficult concept to grasp, but it's true nonetheless.

Even if you just want to set it up so that your average, normal person only earns about 1 Good Karma per month... a 20,000-year-old immortal elf has had a lot of months (240,000 to be exact) to stockpile Good Karma. Even if you put it at just one Karma a YEAR, they'll have more karma than you can imagine... even the younger ones born at the end of the Fourth World will have earned in excess of 5,000 Good Karma.

Now take a 20,000-year-old immortal elf who has been on many of the the most epic adventures throughout history (including those in the Sixth World -- hell, two of 'em have his name in the title), and chances are he's earned more than a handful of karma in his time.