I am about to begin running SR4 (finally) and have come across a few questions while rereading the magic section:

1- Does the sustaining spell penalty apply to drain tests, the RAW seems to imply that it does?

2- When you Initiate it only raises your max Magic, is that right? Does that mean you still have to spend the karma to raise your magic attribute? If so Mages and Adepts are even worse karma sinks than they used to be.

Can someone clear up these quick questions for me?

1. No

2. Yes you have to pay Karma to increase MA as well.

Well something to remember is that in Fourth Edition ( Rating 4 ) is the same as Third Edition's ( Rating 6 ), so yeah, you have to buy each point of magic, burt you shouldn't have to be buying it nearly as high as you would in Third Edition.

However, for some reason, whoever wrote up the Adept rules didn't seem to get the memo.

...as I have come to learn.

they are karma sinks, but you will not find many here who think mages are underpowered.

One thing you may have to adjust to is the fact that adepts are not simple smmie substitutes. In SR4 you get more of the social adept, sense adept, or hacker adept. Thought they can still be excellent combat(often by putting a synaptic accelerator in them). Also if you add combat sence and dodge/gymnastic boostsw you can have a really really hard to hit character. stuff like that

As for Adept advise, it seems to be a common theme to burn two points of magic in roder to handle your IPs and stat boosting needs with bioware because trying to do the same with Power Points is akin to breaking down a brick wall with your forehead.

Well actually the bioware in the adept thing is contested. Especially burning two points. But it's certainly done if you just want a combat guy.

Well the vast majority of the time when my players want to play an Adept they are looking for a "combat guy" so that is why bioware is the first thing that pops into mind when I think Adepts.

many adepts will want to cyber lightly anyways...

the face is going to want his tailored pheromones, whether he's an adept face or not.

the perceiving adept may choose to pick up some cybereyes/ears.

the hacking adept may want extra IPs to be able to hack in AR.

and so forth.