If you pay 30 points for Magic, you can create a Magician Adept.

If you purchase 6 points of Magic, then you get 36 (6*6) spellpoints to buy spells for.

If you buy this power with a Talisman Geas you pay only 4,5 points.

Now you have a magician, who can both conjure, use sorcery and has 1,5 powerpoints left to buy other adept powers.

You also have more initial spellpoints to buy spells with, than a full mage.

The price you pay is inability to astral project, and you have to chose between Power or Metamagic at initiations, you can't get both like other initiates.

Saving the 1,5 powerpoints and initiating three times, and taking the Improved Initiative lvl 3, with another Taliman Geas costs you 3,75 points.

You now have a good wizard with +6 reaction and +3d6 Initiative dice.

What do you think? - Balanced or IMBA?

What??

You do not think the Talisman Geasa are the most practical and powerful?

Who is ever going to take that ring away from you. They can pry it from your dead cold hands. - Nothing stops you from having a spare ring, of the same type, in your drawer back home.

Its pretty easy to replace the talisman, and there are very, very, few situations while shadowrunning where you will lose a talisman. - Unless you pick a flimsy necklace or something..

The drawback is, that if you loose a magic Point, you can't use a geas to offset it, since you can only use one geas per magic point.

sorry noob to the forums...

IMBA? what's that?

and it seems to me, that if a GM really wanted to be a dick and totally make your character worthless he could just take your talismen away.

One simple example is, hey you just got hit with two narcoject darts, resist 6D stun with BOdy, twice... probably not gonna do so hot... once your knocked out, and you get captured, they take your rings, for one of two reasons,

1)it's prudent to remove everything from a captured shadowrunner, who knows what this guy can do, maybe he is a mage with a Power Focus???

2) they have a mage look in the astral and bam, he see your talisman and they take it off of you.

So in this situation, unless you have it up your *ss for some odball reason, you are going to lose all of your powers....

just my thoughts on the character idea
amadeus

IMBA = Imbalanced, usually in the context where something makes a game less enjoyable to everyone else, because of its IMBA'ness

But the build does have its weaknesses. A true mage fx. would be a much more powerful spellcaster with 3 initiate grades. - Masking, spell turning etc. and a magic of 9, allowing highpowered spells.

But compared to other adepts and streetsams, I do not see any drawbacks to being this kind of adept vs. a phys adept. - One uses boosted powers, but the other has access to spells such as ability buffs and levitate, invisibility etc.

Overall he is much more versatile. This is where I was wondering if any of you have had such a character in your party, and whether it felt too selfreliant/powerful?

Lots less powerful then a mage for spellcasting -- lower spell pool (it's tied to effective magic for spellcasting). Likewise, less powerful then an adept -- power points and skill points directed to magic.

That being said: they're even more of a karma sink then the rest of the awakened.. since every initiation goes to spellcasting or adept, so to increase both, it takes two initiations. There's more stats and skills that need boosted as well, to keep everything balanced. And the astral perception power is a must -- I didn't get it on mine, and it's causing serious trouble more often then not. You can't target things because your ally spirit says they're there.


Now.. looking at your particular spread: I'm not sure if I'd call that versatile. You've got much higher initiative then a full mage, but you're far less versatile then the full mage, and less powerful then said full mage, and nothing compared to most adepts. The advantage of magician's way adepts is in more than just initiative.. ignoring the rest of the powers (improved sense is amazingly helpful, so is pain resistance, just to name a few) is taking a serious handicap. Improved ability could be amazing.

GM opinions: Improved Ability (sorcery)?

Oops.. almost always lower spell pool. Same spell pool this case.. and in one really insane case, it's potentially higher. (8 points of magic power under a geas)

Unless my math is off, initiating 3 times is going to eat up almost all your starting spell points. You won't have much left for spells. You could buy more spell points, but that'd require a higher Resources priority, leaving you light on attributes and skills.

[edit-wrong thread]

Sorry, can't see the point in this at all. I may be being dense, but your going to have no spells to use if your going the initiatory path (or very few).

Why not just be an Aspected or Full mage and actually be able to sling some spells?

And if I was GM'ing, I certainly wouldn't allow it, seems a bit too twinky for me...

Given the previously taken example of taking six points, thats 36 spell points. So, with three initiations, thats...5 points for spells if we take the most extreme examples, and you'd have to be a fruit loop GM to allow someone to be part of an Initiatory Group and have succsessfully completed three ordeals at creation...

Correct me if Im wrong, but whats in it for the group?

"Yeah, we'll give this guy access to all our resources and magical power. That Force 5 spell might come in handy at some point..."

There are plenty of reasons why you may have initiated with a group before char gen. you won’t necessarily still have contact with the group however (did you buy it as a contact) the default explanation would be ex wage mage using corporate initiatory group.

I think you don’t have enough spell points however for spells, if you have initiated 3 times focusing so heavily on magical power you should have some spells between. You can mess around with exclusive and fetish spells to round out your repetwar but you need a few more powerful spells.

A single initiation is all I think you could justify.

Edward

I don't have my books handy here at work. When you break your oath (or destroy your thesis), do you just lose the extra magic point, or do you lose the meta-magic as well?

The points rased go together nicely.

The annoyance of the corp fits nicely with the fact that every SR character has enemies based on resources if the character has low resources then an additional extra enemy flaw should be taken (gaining appropriate points) to represent the annoyed corporation.

The first ordeal would almost certainly be oath which yes is broken, I would not insist the magic point be lost for this (in play it would have bee random) but the character may not gain a reduced karma cost for another oath ordeal.

The second would not necessarily be thesis, writing a thesis is not a quick think (my chars usually take 3 months, possibly with a break for a run) and if the thesis is not expected to be useful as a research work another ordeal would be preferable and a blood or tissue sample taken as a material link. In either case it is plausible that the ritual liken could have been stolen destroyed or misfiled. Wether the corporation is still in position of a material link to the character would be determined by the enemy corporations knowledge rating more than any other factor.

Edward

Destroying a Thesis causes you to lose a Magic point. Theres no actual losses involved in breaking an Oath, however these are tied into the groups Strictures, and they will know that youve broken one. If they decide to kick you out of the group, or you decide to leave voluntarily, and youve made an Oath, you check for Magic loss.

Either way, you've pissed off a group of high level mages with corporate backing. In other words, your dead...

So, your thrid initiation you alter your signature, thesis no longer acts as link.

How do you think it changes your signature? That's how the link exists, it's a link to your signature. Now, DNA will screw you, as it should.

You don't get "links" to your signature. An astral signature is merely an astral imprint that is left on all magical activities that any particular mage does (including enchanting, sorcery, and conjuring). A Thesis would have both your astral signature AND a ritual link to you. If you change your astral signature through initiation, the link still remains.

You can take ritual links and "hide" the link on a metaplane (MitS, p94). But that's about as far as you can go to prevent ritual sorcery. Of course, this isn't to suggest that changing your astral signature is a bad idea... ALL of those mages will be very familiar with your signature, and thus it would be a good idea to change it.

Well, there's my nugget of knowledge for the day, thanks.

Don't forget that joining a Magical Group costs you 3 spell points/karma. So, if a GM is silly enough to allow someone to have 3 group initiations with ordeal, pre-game, then the character would start with a whopping 2 spell points.

Magicians- way's are pretty easy to balance.
1) don't allow pre-game initiation. nasty can of worms, especially when you start figuring in groups and ordeals.

2) use the magic point OR metamagic rule. Keeps them from becoming all things in one

3) why use the adept power for improved reflexes? Quicken it. yes, it can be dispelled, but doesn't waste power points.

And yeah, I suppose technically you could use imp ablty - sorcery, but I wouldn't allow it. That's like using the exceptional ability edge for firearms skills, or melee.

BTW< where does it state that magicians way adepts need to purchase asatral perception. I don't doubt that it does, because I've learned to respect Hahnsoo's book-fu, but it doens't make nuch sense to me. IMO, a caster would need to be able to perceive the mana to manipulate it.

Sorcery adepts can't astrally percive, but they can still cast.

which sort of explains his lack of magical power in terms of spell casting. interesting point of view actually

As for MW Adepts and Initiation, I treat them as I would normal Adepts (as listed above). What they do with the Power Point is up to them.