Hey folks--

So let's say that I'm playing a Mystic Adept with an overall magic of 5. 2 points are spent on Adept powers, 3 points are for spellcasting.

If I take an aspect, like Spell Category (Combat), I am at -4 dice for all magic tests that are not spellcasting combat spells.

What happens to my adept powers that don't actually require a test to use?

Is there a penalty for Attribute Boost and other adept powers that require a test?

The reason I ask is because the Aspect counters the cost of the Mystic Adept quality. Effectively by playing a mystic adept with an aspect, the point cost is cheaper than playing an adept alone, and it opens the option to cast a small variety of spells. In the longue duree, the need to buy Spellcasting and learn spells balances out, but at CharGen if you don't actually buy anything on the Mystic side, you became an adept for free.

Not really. Negative qualities cap out at 35, so a 10-point aspected negative quality is something that could have been Spirit Bane or Allergy/Silver/Moderate for a "pure" adept.

And you aren't really getting the adept quality for "free", since you are still splitting up your Magic, getting 2 points of adept powers compared to the 5 a "pure" adept would get, and being extremely limited on the mage side that you spent 3 points on. And you are still paying extra at char-gen, since the spellcasting skill and spells both cost build points.

There is no penalty for Adept powers, although if you take astral perception, you will suffer that -4 penalty to assensing and astral perception checks.

Glyph--You get it for free in the short term if you don't buy anything on the Mystic side. (ie, take all 5 pts of adept powers and keep the option open for later learning limited spellcasting.) In the long term you pay for it when you purchase the skills and learn spells. The short term build cost though, the adept is free and unhindered by the spellcasting limitations.

What I was saying about negative qualities, though, is that the adept can get the same 35 maximum points that your example can, and thus still come out 5 points ahead.

And starting out with no points in mage abilities means that you will be spending points on raising your Magic, initiating, buying spells, and buying the spellcasting skill, while the pure adept will be able to become better as an adept and/or more well-rounded at other skills. And all of the points he spends on his mage side will only allow him to cast combat spells (unless he is okay with doing other things at that massive penalty).

He only gets it "free" in the sense that someone with no cyberware gets the Sensitive System negative quality for free - it is something that curtails your future options, and that is a valid negative quality.

imo, you can't buy 0 points on the magician side. if you don't put at least 1 point towards it, i wouldn't allow you to start with the quality, as per

Mystic Adepts are great if you can get 150 points of karma into them.

That's their problem.

SR4s implementation of Aspected Magicians is simply atrocious, which is mainly because the basic chargen system was not designed to accomidate them. Previous SR chargen systems made Aspected Magicians a great choice due to their reduced costs and useful out-of-the-box bonuses. However, the low initial cost of Magicians makes aspect less than appetizing. This is further exacerbated by the facts that Aspect is a Negative Quality that counts against the Negative Quality maximum, that it imposes a huge penalty, and it does not give any unique bonuses.

There is no reason for any character to take the Quality, and that includes Mystic Adepts.

MystAds aren't so bad if you really pick and choose your battles, but unfortunately that basically boils down to limiting yourself to Summoning and Counterspelling since you don't particularly need a very high Magic attribute nor do you have to purchase spells if all you want to do is summon things. I had an elf Social MystAd who followed the Mountain totem; between Adept Powers, his Mentor, a summoning focus and specialization, he had 16 dice in con/etiquette/negotiation while still managing 13 summoning dice for Earth spirits, 12 dice for a smartlinked semiauto pistol and 8 dice for counterspelling. Not a bad deal coming straight out of chargen, really. The only real drawback was the fact that he was limited to overcasting Force 4 Spirits (5 points of magic total, 1 burnt by 'ware, 2 on Adept Powers and 2 for casting) but that's still actually pretty useful, especially since he could hold back some of the focus dice to make soaking the drain very easy.

I agree that the aspected quality is total trash, however. The elf I just described sounds like a shoe in for being Aspected but quite frankly it'd cripple him. I just ended up giving him the Mentor's Geas instead.

I have made 2 of these types of characters both with 2 adept 3 magic.

Now I didn't do it cause it seems like it's being a magical user for free.

My reason was more towards the magican side rather than adept also.

Why you may ask simple cyber/bio take essance where as mystic adept takes none so I made specialized mages that do one type of spell one type of spirit.

Lastly I took increased reflexes for my adept side now I have 2 combat mages that start with 2 int. passes with out cyber/bio and sustaining spells just seems like the better choice to me.