Street Magic - Questions, Some questions for the devs and DSF Options

[L.D]

I haven't read the entire book, but I've searched for the answers to some of these questions both in the book and here, but I've been unable to find anything. So here we go. (And yes, I know I can houserule about a lot of this but I just want to know what the devs and this community thinks about this.)

* The book talks about "Paths of the adept" and how those without a path "inevitably find it harder to develop their gifts." but I haven't been able to find a mechanic for this. You'd think that if you follow a way you get a discount on your powers, or perhaps a karmadiscount for raising you magic, but no such luck. On page 31 there's the optional rule about adepts and geasa, but that's got nothing to do with paths. So what gives?

* While I'm talking about paths, lets take a closer look at the The Shamanic Way. Do you just pick an animal and try to behave like it or are you as a follower allowed to pick the Mentor spirit quality? And if you can pick the mentor, what are the advantages? Because most animal totems have advantages that are purely for spellcasting/conjuring but have disadvantages that are behavioral. In MiTS the shamanic way adept got the possibility to do the astral quest ordeal and I'd like that.

* Speaking of ordeals... I wanna talk about meditation. Is it really meant to be impossible at lower grades? Because seriously... if you want to use it for lets say your first initiation... yeah... as if. I'd have 4 days to finish two tests: 1) with 6D6 (18, 1day) and 2) with 7D6 (20, 1day). Maybe I'd be able to pull it of for my second initiation, but probably not...

* And how about suffering... 10BP of Negative qualities... no matter what grade. If I'd later want to remove those, that'd be 20 karma. Talk about loosing out on the first couple of initiations... I was thinking about a scale where the first 3-5 grades gave you 5 BP, the next 3-5 gave 10 BP and so on...

* Lets talk about groups... one of the benefits of a group is "Group initiation" and if you read the description it says: "An appropriate initiation rite (p. 50) must be prepared in advance and must be attended by at least three other members. The number of members in a group equals the maximum grade one can achieve via group initiation." and that's pretty cool (puts a bit of a dampener on small groups, but whatever...) until you read about founding a group where it says: "Starting a magical group requires two or more Awakened members"... Say what now? I can start a group with just 2 members, but to be able to use group initiation (which is the main purpose for players to join/found a group) there's gotta be 4 members? How does that work? Really... I want to know...

* And speaking of founding a group... how it's done leaves me a bit puzzled. The book says: "This ritual requires that all participants make an Arcana + Logic (number of members) Test using teamwork (p. 59, SR4)." So... if there are for example 5 people trying to create a group then all five would have to make separate tests, but using the teamwork rules? Am I correct?

* More about founding a group... the text says: "If the character is already an initiate, his initiate grade adds to the dice pool." But the Group Founding Table says that you receive a -2 dice pool modifier per member who previously initiated in a magical group. So it's both a benefit and a disadvantage to have been previously in a group? Yeah, I know you can be initiated with having been in a group, but still.