Ok, so assume for a minute that your are playing a mystical adept who will be utilizing melee (bear mentor spirit) as his combat method of choice. In order to get initiative passes, which would be the best way? Only 1 point would be allocated to magic, the others would be for adept powers.

1. put points into spell casting, specialize in health spells, and use a sustaining focus 2 and cast improved reflexes on yourself.

2. Summon spirit of man, have it sustain improved reflexes on you.

Would this drastically change if you had a magic of 2?

First off, you would need at least 2 points of magic unless you want to overcast. Second, can you bind a focus higher than your magic rating? I'm not sure. Third, if you're at 2 you can overcast the spell at force 4 and have the cheapest way to get 4 IP's as a starting character, but you would have to sustain the spell yourself or overcast a spirit as well.

I'd personally go with a sustaining focus. The spirit would work, but depending on the DM, there could be negative modifiers for having spirits out (pg. 178, side bar), not to mention leaving them free for other more useful tasks.

Well the interesting thing about mystical adepts is that if my magic is 5, why shouldn't I be able to find up to a force 5 focus. But I see you point, and will continue with casting and sustaining.

Yes, definitly go with spellcasting and sustaining. I´d allocate at least 3 magic to magic power, so that overcasting makes most spells useful. As the drain DV does not increase because of overcasting, you´ll usually see no drain anyway. Force 5 can usually be done.

the other option of course is to burn a pint or two of essence and get the bioware. this has the advantaqge of not being abe to be dispelled or interfering with passing through mana barriers. Furthermore, once you've taken the plunge for bioware, you can round out the essnce cost with other very useful items like trauma damper or cyberware that cost's half what the bioware would in terms of essence. The main draw back of course is that you lose magic and the bp's for the Y cna be rather expensive.

Yeah, any Awakened character is almost always better off getting their IPs from bioware as opposed to spellcasting.

Bioware is the most expensive BP Solution because it costs a ton, making it potentially the worst if you're looking to buy many other things. It however allows you the greatest room for future growth because you can get for basically one magic point what would otherwise cost you 3, and with the right cash later in the game you can get for that one magic point the equivalent of 5.

However for a starting character out of the gate Synaptic Accelerators can hobble you, especially if you have so many things to spend bp as you do when you're a MA.

I'm not looking at it from a min-max perspective, I'm looking at bioware in terms of how easy it would be to manage in the day-to-day grind of a Shadowrunner, spells and spirits are trumped by wards, cyber pings sensors too easily. (I don't consider the Adept power as being viable over bioware since it simply costs too much.)

The other advantage of bioware is that you can't lose it because of background count. Still, for a mystic adept, it can be hard to afford. Having 3 IP doesn't do much good if you can't do anything effective with them.

Bioware is great, it just was not specified as one of the ways open here. I´m not even sure we are talking chargen, despite it seeming to be implied.

If you go for bioware (I´d support that decision), you should still do additional IP via spell/focus. Reason is that you do not always need that IP. So you need to recast the spell occasionally? No big deal. But the other things you can get for 80k¥ and one point of magic... Drain on Increased Reflexes force 3 is only 3 DV, I hate that spell for how good it is.

Take Muscle Toner +2, Cerebral Booster +2 as base.
Effect: Attributes +4, 0.8 of Bio.

Add either Cybereyes or a Trauma Damper, the more expensive Damper has you end up at exactly one point of essence loss, and costs of 76k¥. I´d prefer the eyes.
Add one point of adept powers and three points of universal magic. All additional magic points (those you buy later) can go to adept powers.

I think it's a really bad bad idea to rely on spirits to sustain spells. Two reasons: 1) you have to bind them if you want the spells sustained for any length of time, which is hellishly expensive, and 2) if you use bound spirits to sustain spells, it drains the Force away, and they hate you. You are literally shooting yourself in the foot by using that tactic, because pretty soon spirits will start resisting your pathetic magic 2 conjuring attempts with Edge, and maybe even trying to disobey your orders if they can.

Sustaining foci are never a bad idea, since they let you keep your spell running without maintenance when you need it.

I don't think you should look at bioware as being less efficient though. You know what's less efficient? Being a mystic adept and chucking your power points down the 'gimpy spellcasting' hole. I think you'd be a lot scarier as a pure adept with 1 point of bioware, since there's not much advantage you can eke out from 1-2 magic points of spellcasting. Especially if you're making a melee adept, you can't afford to waste power points.

Although you have to remember that by going the spell route even with foci you are glowing like a christmas tree on the Astral, and with ARSE's mana-tech that isn't really a good idea.

Plus remember that you are either going to be recasting the spell or poping wards all over town.

actually the total force that you can bind is magic times 5 It's listed, oddly enough, in the char gen part of the bbb. It means all of your magic rating regardless of how that magic rating is split up.
Personally I think using the spirit of man for sustaining focus is fine if you've got lots of cash.
In the case of a MA I'd probably go with the magic rating for spell casting/ conjuring of 2 and dump the other 3 points into adept abilities like killing hands and critical strike etc. and buy a sustaining focus and a power focus. most of the spells that you want to cast are decent enough at force 4 same with the spirits.

I think at least one aspect of the question was more focused [] on whether there was a Force limit on the Bonding of any one single Focus. Could a character with a Magic of 2 Bind a Force 10 Power Focus?

iirc there is no limit on that.
however, there are two very limiting factors costs in and karma. A force 10 focus would cost outrageous amounts of both.

Not to mention being pointless in Fourth Edition.

'Twas an example!

I know, just feeling ectra snarky today, I blame the forum's new skin and not being sure whether or not to use the Fourth Edition Combat Mage as an avatar.

My avatar is growing on me.

Depending on the character, pop psyche and reduce the sustained spell modifier to -1 and you're not as bad off sustaining the spell yourself. A health focused Bear shaman may not want to go the route of drugs, though.

Yeah, I like your avatar Fortune. I just went with the occult investigator 'cuz I nearly always play mages (but never combat mages). I might poke around for something else later, but it's growing on me a bit.

I spent an hour (off and on) going through all the avatars. I think the-dunner has done a pretty decent job. There are quite a few good pics in there, especially in the CCG section.