A bit lighter and more frivilous than my usual questions, but...
What's the highest initiate grade you've played, GMed, or seen played?
Also, what are the quoted ranges of IEs & GDs? (for those of you with these numbers at your mental fingertips)
Thanks.

Grade 6. The mage only had a magic rating of 8, though, losing 4 points of magic total from various sources (all non-cyber/non-bioware). Oh, and that same mage HOGged as well.

Um, like Grade 3 in my games. Any more then that and things get a little more powerful then I like to run/play.

At the moment we have a Grade 5 Adept, but we haven't played with that group of PCs for a while.

The highest I've had is an adept who was Grade 6, but I misread a but of the book and let him mix the initiation with the 20karma/Power point rule. (the book mentions that initiation & that rule shouldn't be mixed) So he also bought three extra power points from that, so he was kinda like a Grade 9.
No cyberware or bio, he actually had 15 points worth of adept powers.

Second highest would be a grade 5 shaman.
(these are both with me as GM)

Highest I've played as a PC is, I think, 4.

Grade 1.

~J

Grade 11 Racoon Shaman, but he gave up a few points of Magic due to Bioware.

We have a grade 6 or 7 Cat shamen in our group.

Harliquin or Ellian the Scribe havent technichally appeared in our game yet but theyre like grade 80 - 100 odd.

I had a grade 6 physad wandering around at one point (all enhanced senses and detective-type stuff out the wazoo).

Somehow, even with the huge initiate grade, she wasn't all that game breaking...

Grade 6 in my games in one campaign. other than that campaign, grade 3.

My longest-played PC, who's completed several(probably two dozen) full campaigns in addition to dozens of one-shots, cameos, and other such roles, has an initiate grade in the low-to-mid double-digits.

Our highest was grade 5 or 6, its been awhile. Weve had a few characters make it up that high. The limit isnt due to power or advancement constraints, just that by the time we get that high we tend to get bored with the group and start a new one. If we ever managed to run a longer continuous party Im sure it would get higher.

Not everyone uses training time rules. I would like to hear the exact grade on this beast, though. Low to mid double digits is a pretty big range.

Games-wise, I've played him for... over ten years. Jesus, I (and Shadowrun) am old. The character himself is in his early fourties.

I've seen a Grade 13 Initiate in one of our games.

I refuse to offer any comments beyond that as invoking said character's name might draw the player's attention and I never want to see that character again.

TBO

PC: Grade 4, though it was only for one session. The highest I've seen played up is 3. Our campigns usually run about a year, so characters tend to cap out around there.

Grade 12, but we NPC'd him at Grade 10 (at the point he became an immortal elf - yes its a house rule, no i don't care how cheesy it is, it worked in the campaign at the time!).
The character concept was Emperor Palpatine (I SAID I didn't care how cheesy it was. Pipe down at the back!).

Yes, he did earn the karma, no he didn't have any real skills beyond his magical ones. Since he's Eeeeevil and an NPC he also has a potency rating, which will be going up soon now he's located the whereabouts of a trapped shadow spirit he can bargain with (which took a rating 12 metaplane quest - which very nearly killed him. That was a fun day for me as the GM!). The player gets to play ON HIS OWN every now and again to further his evil ends, and then I let the results feed back into the current campaigns I'm involved in. Works for us!

Typical max grade now amongst our players tends to be around 3-4.

My Physical Adept got up to 13 in a previous campaign (under SR2 rules) and when we left it the group was on the metaplanes, so I'd imagine he'd have gone higher after that.

In the current campaign one character (Magician's Way Adept) has got up to 13 so far as well, and looks like going further.

8-10 is more typical.

Sahandrian will probably kill me for posting this, but:

As you all know, we play a Play-By-AOL-Instant-Messenger/Play-By-IRC version of SR3 in our campaign.

My character, "The Foreigner", is an Adept of the Magician's Way (Hermetic), and a follower of the Invisible Way as far as his Adept powers are concerned (as if you didn't already know ). However, he hasn't yet initiated--he doesn't have enough Karma Points.

The highest-level characters of which I am aware in our campaign are Ceres, a Grade 1 initiated Physical Adept/Cat Shaman, and Malkav, a Grade 3 Physical Adept/Coyote Shaman.

AFAIK, both are currently inactive.

(My first and only 'run--so far--was in July and August of 2003, but I'm not certain whether or not the other players continued without me. )

--Foreigner

Currently in my game the highest is a level 3 Raccoon Shaman (wave hi, Lina!)

Highest when I was a player - 0. The GM kept killing us off or letting us kill ourselves. I managed to get my fox shaman enough karma to initiate - and failed to bond. He then died in the next mission. *doh*

My group has a grade 4 phys/ad and a grade 7 mage, and the toughest they've gone up against is a grade 9 initiate.

Currently a lvl 3 Initiate. Now need to start broadening my spell arsenal, then Foci next.

actually, increasing your initiate grade takes, by the rules, no time at all. though that character does have quite a few skills at high rating.

I have seen 7 on a PC..Said PC was the crazy powerful shaman of dun dun mouse!

One PC in our old group got up to Intiation grade 9. He was a shapeshifter with a temper and kept getting dropped and losing magic. He had a magic rating of only 9!

huh? why would it take years to learn a single force 12 spell? 24's a pretty high TN, but if you do a metamagic quest first for extra dice and then karma it a few times, it shouldn't take more than six months or so.

oh. well, those types of games also aren't generally the types that reach the level of karma wireknight's character has, so it all balances out.

My raccoon shaman is up to either three or four, and she's been more or less retired for a while. We had a trio of shamans that got pretty far up there in the initiate grades, and they've been unofficially retired save for runs where we know we'll need the firepower. We seriously like broke our GM from being able to karma away most anything he could throw at us.

In my current campaign we have a Grade 13 Physmage, Grade 10 Physad, Grade 9 Physad and a Grade 9 Mage.

Highest Grade was under SRII when one guy had Grade 15, when converting to SRIII he came down to about Grade 12 or so though.

Grade 3's teh highest that I've ever seen.

The Great Dragons get 'great' status at Initiate 10, with few being higher than that. Dunk was about a 20 and the single strongest magician around. I don't think anyone else is higher than 15 at this point.

-- johnny Reb

Off-Topic:

without getting into the argument about what grade immortal initiates should be, Johhny Reb's info is a bit off. according to DotSW page 180, most GDs are at least grade 10; the promotion to great isn't automatic. i'm also unsure that it's ever stated that Dunk was the greatest magician around--as best i recall, that title actually goes to Harley.

Actually it explicitly states in either H or H's Back that Harlequin is not the most powerful magic user on the planet.

I once ran an epic campaign for 4. The femme fatale was a magician adept who ended up earning initiate grade 9 before I whisked her into the clouds (The player had to quit because her husband thought we were up to no good. Shame. We knew her first, dammit!)

One of the players in one of my campaigns became a level 8 warrior path adept.
He was retired to NPC status shortly afterwards.
He went hand to hand with a gang of force 7 mantid spirits and won!!!!!

Had a grade 7, give or take a grade, pysad in second edition. I forget exactly because of that silly grade 0 thing.

Grade 5 in 3rd edition.

Not to hijack the topic, but I do believe that Dunkelzahn was likely the most powerful magician on the planet prior to his sacrifice. I'd actually say that Lofwyr holds that title now, as they were, to my recollection, the oldest and most arcana-focused (gathering lore, learning new spells/rituals, etc..) of their race. Lung might also be that potent, though. His history isn't as defined.

I've had an initiate up to Grade 12 myself, but that was only once.

I've always wondered what you could get if you never initiated, and just put all of that karma straight into sorcery and high force spells. THere would be some definite disadvantages. No centering (but you could make up for that with higher will up to a point), no shielding (although a higher sorcery could help with that a bit as well). Masking wouldn't be as much an issue, because people would look and go "oh, not an initiate.Ok, well this guy's no biggie", which could lead to some underestimation, which is always good.
Just wondering if anyone has ever gone that route, and how it worked out.


Currently working on Grade 7 by the way.
As just a little tanget, what metamagic do you prefer the most? And the least?
I know shielding and masking are big ones for me. Anyone use sensing or geomancy for anything?

So far, the highest we have in the PnP campaign I'm in is 3, if memory serves. I know I promised myself my PC would put a bullet through the head of the first to reach 5, just so they don't start getting god complex