...I Agree as well

Some characters (such as KK, my former decker Violet, and Field Medic/Sammy Markova) carried over pretty well with just minor changes. Others, while not working as a direct conversion did so by changing the archetype while still retaining the original concept (such as making my baseball throwing Tomoe Sasaki an adept instead of a bio Sammy). Still others are pretty much write offs, such as my Bio enhanced Sohei, Randi Rhodes (Resource and Availability caps) or my Ex Seraphim Agent Night Angel (Resource Caps, and specific Bioware/gear missing or in "yet to be released" sourcebooks).

Admittedly starting fresh has produced a several unexpected gems including my Cajun boxer-Adept Hannah, my street kid-con artist Da Brat, and ex Mossad operative, Bekka.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't elven shamans (or any tradition that uses charisma to resist drain dice) do just as well (if not better) as dwarves as starting characters resisting drain?

The max number of drain dice elves can start with without raising any attributes to the racial maximum (6 for willpower, 8 for charisma) is 14.

5 Willpower + 7 Charisma +2 Focused Concentration = 14

This makes elves the best for Charisma traditions. The Logic traditions, while not as good for elves, are great for dwarves and humans. (Intuition is harder to min-max the drain dice, but the best all around drain attribute, and the only one Orks are effective spellcasters with)

The reason Logic trads are great is because of cereberal booster. Instead of having to pay 20BP for an increase in Charisma, you only have to pay 4BP (14 if you want to take into consideration the loss of Magic, though any smart mage would also get skillwires or some other usefull ware in the remaining hole). This allows a human mage to start with the same amount of drain dice at start as an elf. Now dwarves can one up this with their +1 to willpower, giving them 15 drain dice at start.

6 Willpower + 5(7) Logic +2 Focused Concentration = 15

Taking a hit to magic is completely worth it to get 2 more drain dice as drain is what really prevents you from casting real powerfull mojo.

EDIT:
Did I remind you that Dwarves also cost 5BP less than elves, Get strength up to 3 for free (can anyone else say 'dump-attribute'), and get a bonus to body which is always great.

Also, let me say that I love elves more than any race, its just that SR4 rapes them.

Birth control.

Would you want to give birth to eight babies?

Ah yeah, I forgot about cerebral boosters. Damn. =)

Elves are still quite good, it's just that in SR4 they're only really good in certain areas, sadly.

While this might work well for your game, and I'm sure it does, I would never consider doing this as a GM under any circumstances. I want the players to be happy playing whatever they want to play. If a player only wants to play mages or only wants to play humans, more power to em!

Previous editions were ten years prior. Ten years ago, GPS was shiny and new and had just been made available for the public by Clinton. Now it's in my cell phone.

GPS wasn't guarded by ten, trillion nuyen corporations, and only known to a very, very small number of people. Remember, deltaware is hand in hand with cybermancy, and there is no way you are going to tell me that the Cybermancy metamagic was recently published in the New England Journal of Thaumaturgy.

As I understand it, Benjamin Franklin once wrote that three can keep a secret if two are dead. I also believe that Stewart Brand said that information wants to be free. It's still been a decade. Just saying.

I, for one, like a system with diminishing returns. It's self-limiting, self-balancing, and everybody settles at the point along the curve that is most efficient for them.

In SR4 we're looking at more cybermancy clinics, but not universal distribution. You've got more players but no "generic models" yet. Due to the extensive requirements in expertise and medical technology, proliferation of cybermancy is more analagous to nuclear proliferation than it is to algorithm proliferation

What I was going for with the availability rules for higher grades of work in Augmentation was to make finding Delta clinics a difficult but achievable goal, and didn't adjustthe difficulty of getting specific ware at all. The old rules, where higher grades directly influenced the availability of the ware had severe problems - high grade Datajacks were starting equipment and yet fanciful equipment like Move By Wires that could only be implanted in a Delta clinic anyhow was largely unavailable at higher grades.

Here's me crossing my fingers that it still fixes that old problem after it has been through layout and playtesting at he new company.

-Frank