So my Mage is about to undergo his first initiation, and I'm going to have him get the Quickening metamagic, it seems the most useful. What exactly does that look like on the Astral? Are Quickened spells as common as cyberware? If my character is sauntering into Mr. Johnson's high-security hideout with several Quickened Increase [Attribute] spells, are the (Mage) guards going to notice and have him wait outside with the Troll?

Consider every time he moves through a ward the spell can get disrupted. It has to roll to beat the ward (or other variety of barrier). If he fails the spell drops, losing all that Karma spent on quickening. If he succeeds the spell doesn't drop, but the creator of the ward knows instantly someone breached his ward.

But that's it? I picked up manabolt for the express purpose of bustin' through wards. That doesn't help when on an elevator that passes through a ward, but a peek on the Astral is all that's required to avoid such a Karma loss. I'm concerned about more persistent spell-disrupting threats like other characters.

Wards shoudl nto be uncommon. If you're going to Infinity to meet with a Johnson in a green room do you think that the owners of the establishment will appreciate you manabolting their ward so you can walk into the room? Do you think they would appreciate that their magical security firm puts up a red alert when you walk into the meet and their mage instantly knows that you either succeeded or attempted to breach his ward?

There will be cases where you are required to enter a warded area, and if that's not enough of a penalty to quickened spells then I'm not sure what is, because it's a serious one.

This brings up an interesting question on ward permissions. Rules state that the creator can pass through their own wards, and can allow others to do so as well. How does this happen?

Are they specified at creation time (and must they be present)?

Can the creating mage retune access after creation, and must all parties be present at the ward? Or just the creating mage, so long as they know the others' astral signatures? Or can it be done remotely?

Is it a one-time thing ("you may pass this once") or can it be set permanently?

How about another form of advanced ward, a "keyed ward", that allows a mage to imprint an astral signature on collections of items that if carried allow the bearer to pass through? I suppose they'd have to be very minor (no bonding required) focus items that could be activated and brought with to the astral to really work properly. Hrm.

I'm just thinking that exclusive magic nightclubs might have heavy warding, and it would be a serious pain to manage access to a large (but heavily initiated and likely quickened) clientelle. On the one hand you might just require the staff at the door be the same folks that erected the wards, but wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to hand out (and collect upon passing through) tokens to allow the Right People access? Heh, my Ars Magica and "Aegis of the Hearth" thinking is showing through I guess...

Yeah, can a Mage open a section of the ward like a door? Then the bouncer at the Awakened clubs could ward the door and open it for the best-dressed.

also if you are walking around with a quickened spell, and an astral perceiving lone star mage sees you, he might just pull you over and ask to see permits for your restricted spells. better make sure he's got a good fake sin with good fake permits.

I always assumed that since the spell forumla were restricted then the actual spell use would be to.

Laws against magic vary from region to region. I seem to recall hearing that any use of magic without some pretty hefty authorisations was illegal in 2070 UK.

Wards should be pretty common, but Quickening should not. Of course, it's reasonable for the GM to put other ways of getting around the wards, such as going to the wage mage that set it up and forcing him to not report when you breach his ward.

Lastly, I don't think manabolt will help you bust through a ward. The RAW says that a ward may be engaged in astral combat, or a mage may attempt to press through a ward. In SM there is a spell specifically for destroying wards however, so I could be wrong.

Wards are so common that they ended up in the common costs list on page 304. Its 200 NewYen per hour to rent a warded private room.

I would go for masking first.

Yea, Manabolt would work just like Shattershield vs. a Ward, but for higher drain.

Save Edge for when breaking through Wards and consider Extended Masking to hide the Quickened spell.

I think part of the problem might be that we need to change the way we think about quickening. Quickening can make a spell on a metahuman permanent, but that's not really what it's for. That's what sutaining foci are for. Quickening is for making an area spell permanent, or maybe an illusion, or something else that isn't going to move much.
But if your end-goal is to walk around with sustained spells without having to sustain them, get sutaining foci. That's what they're for. Quickening is capable of doing the same thing, but it's just not as good for it, largely because of the prevalence of wards, and because you can't turn it off.

First a clarification, quickening is used to make a sustained spell sustain itself, not make the effects of a normally sustained spell permanent, though Tattoo quickening can make it almost so.

As Moon-hawk mentioned, quickening should not replace a sustaining focus. Quickening the Increase [Attribute] spells at a fraction of the karma cost to increase them naturally should not be without a drawback, and that drawback is that they are quite obvious (at least astrally).

An easy way to fix this is to avoid wards. There is only one way to truly pass through a ward unnoticed, and that is with flexible signature and astral tracking. Book explains how so I wont go into it, but by faking the signature of the creator, you can trick the ward. Other things you should probably take before quickening are the Masking and Extended Masking though, as they can hide your spell.

My current mystic adept wants some tattoo goodness, but I may just have to sit out of the meet or avoid wards until we resort to plan B to prevent his spell from giving away the group.

A question to ask is whether Extended masking hide the spell from a ward or do you still have to make the test? And if you still make the test, does the ward's creator know?

...the one (and only) advantage to quickening over a sustaining focus is no risk of focus addiction.

A magician cannot attempt to "sneak" through a ward without Masking.