Balance Issues, SR3 & Firearms vs. Sorcery Options

[bwdemon]

I've been working with SR3 for so long now that I forgot some of the things that set me off when I first looked at the revision. Among those was the switch from a single Firearms skill to the former concentrations thereof. While that alone didn't bother me (I approved of it wholeheartedly), the fact that they did not do this to Sorcery was wrong.

Someone who has the Sorcery skill, absent modifiers for totems or whatnot, can cast each and every single type of spell equally well. Illusions, combat, manipulations, etc... the caster can throw them all around with no difference between them. There should be variation. Magicians should be allowed to learn only what they want to and to gain some real benefit for choosing to focus. Magicians who want to do everything should have to commit the appropriate amount of skill points toward doing so.

Now, I understand that spare skill points are difficult to come by for the starting magician. They've either got limited open priority slots or limited build points. Going to a system that divided up sorcery into its component concentrations would mean that the purse strings get a little tighter for the magically inclined. To that I say... so?

Magic is worth far more than the priority or the build points required for it. The stealth aspect alone makes magic the "best" possible thing to go with in the game. By this, I mean that it carries the least amount of strings and offers the greatest benefits for the cost. It doesn't make any character more of a "character" than another, but it surely makes them more effective for the same cost. That's a key imbalance that I think could have been addressed with a simple change that was already in place for Firearms.

Was this was even considered during the revision process for SR3 and, if so, why wasn't it used? If SR4 ever appears, is this the sort of change that might be made? Anyone out there use this as a house rule?