That's useful to rule out a contest against a mystic.
You gained a Target Number. Or a benchmark, in other
words.
But more interesting, to me, is a _rule_ to determine
how the mystic arrived to that level (or whatever
benchmark fits your/mine glorantha).
Maybe a sort of long (game life long) ritual.
The character who will become a mystic starts with a
"normal" keyword, values for magic, abilities, wealth,
relationships, cultural legacies and so on.
THEN he decides (or is pushed to or is called to) the
path of mysticism.
The player and the narrator consider how the various
abilities clash one against the other in "building" a
single meta-ability called (ooooh, wonder at my
creativity) Mystic.
A sort of augmentation where everything the character
is/has/has done (as written on his sheet) contributes
as pro or contra (positive ability or flaw) to a
Mystic definition which the player and the narrator
agree upon.
Let's suppose the resulting value is Mystic 10W.
Ok, no way: you are a petty mystic, unable to trascend
even to the otherworld or to bear the temption of a
daimon power (10W3 benchmark).
*But* if the player accepts it, then here it goes: a 10W mystic. And the game continues.
If the player OTOH wants to be a "more mystic" mystic
(please pass me the conceptual aberration), he has to
buy down or buy up the correct abilities with
heropoints.
I.e. severing impeding relationships (flaws if
compared to mystic state);
building up the meditational/inner knowledge skills,
like Chanting or Tolerance.
Then, after several sessions of play (and several
heropoints spent) the player and the narrator repeat
the algebric sum.
Now maybe the result is 15W, and so on.
Remember that the resistance a character (even a "mystic" character) faces ultimately depends on his player's or his narrator's choices. Therefore I could think that 10W mystics are perfectly playable as long as they don't meet a "strong" temptation (such as the daimon above), which according to the game situation can "attack" the Mystic's state and possibly destroy its balance, converting it back to a "ruined mystic". That is a character who has spent a lot of heropoints to achieve something and then this omething is robbed from him/her.
The above is not Mysticism, but just a humble attempt to a playable "Mystic Path" for gloranthan characters.
Ciao,
Gian
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