I'd say that you get the power at the level the adept/critter you are draining it from has it. So if you suck out mystic armour you get is at, say, rating 2 if that is what they have.

-Strobe

I think I would limit the Adept to gaining one (full) Point worth of Powers for each 3 points of damage dealt to the 'donor'. This seems to be in keeping with the rest of the Powers, like Cannibalize and Sacrifice.

so to get Imp Reflexes 3, they'd have to inflict 15 boxes of damage?

Ah, alright. I wasn't familiar with the power (not having read street magic) and so was just going on your quote. I didn't realise how it worked. Anyway, what Fortune says seems to be fairly sensible.

-Strobe

Great, I have this vision of a bunch of troll adepts all hung up (drugged and on IV drips) to be periodically bled for powers...

Well that could be handled in a number or ways.

Firstly (and most simply), just allow the attacker just know what powers they have when they attack and choose the one they want.

Secondly, have them "look" for a power when they attack. If they don't have that then they look for another etc. etc. until they get one.

Thirdly, have the GM assign one.

Fourthly, get them to roll for one randomly.

-Strobe

Nah, you've gotta get a selection. Silent way ninja wanna be here, elf speaker there, troll monster there. That way you can choose what you wanna be good at before you go out for a night on the town.

Yeah, but even with the karma investment one troll might not survive you draining them dry when it wears off the first time. Or it might. The healing rules can be read to be very... forgiving.

That's not to say that I wouldn't have a whole collection of different adepts in my underground lair. It's just that you have to have backups.

Something like that.

I've been applying the wound penalties to healing rolls, which means that most characters will, if they suffer a serious injury, need to seek medical attention to heal at all. I don't know if that's explicitly mentioned as not being applicable in the rules, but it works for me.

Oh hey, that's a good idea.
I've been making the threshold to heal a box of damage equal to the current damage boxes, rather than 1. So by my rule one box of damage heals very rapidly, but if you've got 8 boxes of damage, just getting down to 7 takes some time.
I like your idea, though. I wonder if it's official.

As far as I can tell the healing rules are the way they where because some people complained that it took to long to heal in SR3. You took a serious wound in the old rules it took a month (IIRC, could have been a week) to heal. That is a long time for shadowrunners to be out of a job. Yes, you could heal faster than that, sometimes much faster.
The new healing rules, as I see it, where meant to reduce down time due to injuries. I agree that they are way to fast. Why don't you just have a set number, say a box per day. So a person with 10 boxes of damage heals in 10 days. Even that seems high but staying with SR4 "modern" medical technology it might be doable.

Edit: If you implement Dice pool penalties to healing tests you run into problems where a character could die because the team does not have access to a street doc. (they could be out of town, away from their regular contacts) That, in my opinion, is unfair to players; who basically would just watch their characters die.
If you implement a threshold equal to the damage (healing extended test, threshold = wound level/1 day test) you run into a problem where trolls heal much faster than everyone else just because they are bigger (not that the current rules are better with a troll healing to full in a day) it is just an unfair advantage that hurts everyone else.

SR3 serious wound was something like 2 - 20 days of healing. I know this because that's what we've been doing and I seriosuly screwed up one of my players last game. he was near death , and the SR4 rules would have had him up in something like 2-3 days. We both agreed that was nuts, so we went with SR3.

Indeed.

The trolls are good under sr4 rules since they'll have more boxes to take damage from. Though, if you really want to be funky, have them infected with whatever that'll give them regeneration. I don't know, definitely not the vampirism one because it'll be hard enough to keep them under wraps and heaven help ya if they get out. The ghoul one? Maybe, but I imagine it'll be annoying to constantly get them metahuman meat to keep them fed. Shapeshifter? Well if they regenerate then you dont' need to be troll specific anymore. Other option, giants, can you imagine how many boxes they'll have for damage? Hmmm...