Ok maybe im missing something, but under 4th edition, it seems ridiculously expensive to upgrade an adept (or mage for that matter i guess).

Initiation under new rules.
Starting with an adept with a magic attribute of 6, and an initiation rank of 0
Upgrading with karma as follows:

Good. Initiation costs were far too low.

Not that you can really convert characters from 3rd to 4th, but all the characters are .5 the man. The SR4 powerscale was slid all the way to '12 year old with a pistol' for SR4.

If there was some magic universe where you could pit two starting characters together, a blind monkey could make an SR3 character that kicked a SR4 characters butt.

At least thats my impression from the character gen rules that have been posted.

I kind of like the lower power starting level.

Why on earth would someone pay 1,000,000 yen to be able to take on jobs that pay out 10,000 for risk to life and limb? Why not just retire?

Buy the PDF, it is worth it even if you never plan to run SR4.

Maverick, i'm inclined to agree with Initiation costs seem on the high side for Adepts considering what they get vs. what Mages get. Even though Mages have to buy each spell too, the only do it once and every extra Magic point automatically increase the power of all the spells.

However i can't say i've been able to play it out over time, or even simulate that, to see how they pan out vs. Mage or Mystic Adept even.

EDIT: I will say though that i think that this level of Initiation cost + Magic increase is needed for Mages.

Maverick, do note that in your calculations, you're using shortcuts for SR3 (ordeals, initiatory groups) and the base SR4 cost. Once Street Magic comes out, I suspect you might see those in it.

I suspect the souped up cost is there to get rid of the SR2 and 3 problem of infinite initiation possibilities for adepts. Back then, the Adept could hit grade 12 in a high powered campaign at which point having a Street Samurai on hand was totally superfluous.

So, we have one thread that says Adepts are overpowered, and another that says they're crippled.

... sounds good to me.

@ Cochise

Yes, if you were able to take the maximum Initiation discounts it was cheaper much longer.

blakkie, JongWK, Mal-2,

Yeah good points, i hadnt really thought of expansion books yet...
I'll have a chat to the GM and see what he thinks...

Does anyone know when Street Magic will be released?


Or any of the other upcoming core books like cannon companion, rigger, matrix, sr companion etc?

*opinion:begin* I personally believe that initiation in 3rd edition was far too easy and far too good. Using the group initiation and ordeal rules on every magically active character just basically bent the power level of the game. I do not believe that the developers intented every magically active person to imediately join/form a group and then take an ordeal to initiate. There were 100+ karma characters in my game that never spent a point on anything other than bonding foci and initiating. And the game played into that mindset because of the amazing metamagics and powers you got when you initiated. Plus, if the cost is reduced, well why NOT join a group, there have got to be other magicially active people out in the world that want to initiate just like you do. I mean, the only skill any magic using character I played that ever got raised ingame was centering, and thats only because you could not buy the skill at character generation.

Now, while i still would like to see cost breaks on initation come out in "street magic", I do think that tonning down the jackrabbit pace magically active players enjoyed compared to sams, in SR3, is a good thing.

Imo Mystic Armor way underpowered in SR3. Nice they change it.

So the ki-ad fills up to 6 pts of magic and ware, the sam fills 6 pts of essence.

Should the ki-ad decide to pass that common border, he has to pay up. NICE!

Flexible character generation systems allow for varying levels of power. So far samurai had the greatest choice of balance between "out of the gate" power and upgrading potential. If one adopts the not-all-are-equal policy of SR4s magic rating, the adept retains room for growth until he hits the semi-hard cap of 6 pts. If you go straigth to the limit, you are in the same growth position as the zero essence samurai. Better is possible, but takes time.


Many mages might forfeit magic points in favor of higher initiation grade. If you initiated for the metamagic anyway and weren´t thrilled by one more point of widely useless magic, spending it on bioware was very tempting. Now, not so. Also NICE!

Actually, Initiation really isnt much more expensive than it ever was, its just most of the cost is all 'up front' now.

For example, lets say in SR3, your mage just nabbed himself some Karma. He decides hes gonna initiate, woo! So, first, he joins a magical group, that costs 3 karma. Now, he decides to initiate to grade 1 with an ordeal, that costs 9 karma (if memory serves) So far, hes spent 12 karma to get to grade 1. Thats pretty cheap. But lets look at just what that gives him: A point of magic, and a metamagic skill.
So what does that mean for him? Well, with no more karma spent, that means that he can try to summon a force 7 spirit without taking phisical drain, but thats not any easier to summon or resist the drain from. He gets no other benifit from his increased magic point untill he re-buys his spells at force 7. (except for putting up wards, he gets better at that for free! woo!) So lets say he has 3 spells he wants at max force, theres 21 karma he needs to spend. Oh, and if he took a metamagic technique that requires a separate skill (like so many of them do) to get it to a minimum useful rating of 4, he will have to spend another 14 karma.

So in total, for the +1 magic, the metamagic, and the ability to have 3 spells that take advantage of his new magic, he has paid anywhere from 33 to 47 karma.

Now, lets look at what it would be in SR4. The initiation would cost an easy 13 karma, without the trouble of finding a group or going through an ordeal (that would cost 18 in SR3) Then he raises his magic from 6 to 7, for 21 more. So what does he get this time? A metamagic skill that is instantly useful to him to at least a small degree, irregardless of which one it is, and the ability to cast all of his spells at a higher force without suffering phisical drain, and the equivilent increase of one point to every single magic based skill Thats an increase to the whole sorcery skill group, and the whole cojuring skill group. Thats like, 6 skills.

Raising just sorcery and conjuring to 7 in SR3 (barring huge attribute expenditures) would have cost something like 28 karma just by itself.

So, in conclusion, initiating really isnt that much more expensive, its just more obvious about it.

No, because the Mage can just go and buy the spell at a much higher Force than his magic once, and use an Astral Quest to reduce the Karma cost.