So... I've encountered a rather interesting problem concering the new adept power "heightened concentration" listed in the digital grimoire. As a matter of fact, mystic adepts can learn this power which allows to ignore a single situational modifier up to your magic attribut's rating.
The question is: Is sustaining a spell a situational modifier? And would this qualify for the "heightened concentration" power thus allowing to ignore the negative dice pool modifier for sustaining a single spell like say... heightened reflexes oder invisiblity?

I don't see why it wouldn't work. Heightened Concentration would only counter one sustained spell, though, even though it has the ability to counter a single modifier with a value up to the adept's Magic attribute.

yeah. that's perfectly clear. I just wasn't sure if the modifier for sustaining a spell would qualify for being a "situational dice pool modifier"

I would say that you can use it, however I disagree that it only counters one sustained spell. As I read it, sustaining spells is a single negative modifier that becomes increasingly bad. You could ignore the penalties for sustaining multiple spells completely so long as the penalty is less than your Magic.

Ouch. That is a scary interpretation. A Magic Attribute of 6 would then allow sustaining 3 spells with no detriment. This would be an incredible advantage for any mystic adept. It would be worth going mystic and spending one Magic point just for this power.

"For each sustained spell the magician maintains, she suffers a -2 dice penalty on all other tests." (SR4, p. 174)

I don't know... to me this sounds like a separate penalty for each spell.

Yes, but isn't it described as A spell sustaining penalty? That stacks?

I can see it going both ways. Playtesting would have to determine whether it was unbalanced or not.

It's unbalanced in that it effectively makes Sustaing Foci obsolete if you allow it to ignore up to magic rating in sustaining penalty. I'd be ok with one, but it's still a majorly useful power (bordering on overpowered). Think of it this way, a primary example of situational penalties is in ranged combat. It is affected by Visual Penalties, Cover, Attacker's involvement in Melee, Wounds, etc. The power allows you to ignore one of those modifiers of a value up to or equal to your magic rating. All of them stack for your ranged combat pool, but you can't just ignore the value of your magic rating in penalties, you choose one of them. Same goes for sustaining penalties, which are each individual situational modifiers and the power allows you to ignore one. Still a useful power that I will have to include in my next Mystic Adept build.

Not really, as only the part of the Magic Attribute allocated for adept powers would be relevant here.
So, if you had a Magic of 6 and distributed 5 points towards the magician side and 1 point towards adept powers, you could only ignore 1 point worth of penalties.

Try again Ras, the power reads "ignore one situational penalty of a value up to her Magic Attribute". The Mystic Adept with that power counts their whole magic rating.

Edit: Fucking FAQ. I'm wrong.

Nope, Ras is right. The magic rating in this case is the mystic adept's magic invested in his adept powers because it is an adept power. The FAQ clearly states that. Besides I by myself strongly support the "one spell only" theory for being a single situational dice pool modifier (bringing the power in line with the techomancer's ability to ignore his sustaining penalty for a certain CF given to him by the Swap echo)

Try again, Drogos:

The FAQ clearly says the following -

The Magic points allocated towards Magic-based skills counts for all aspects of those skills. This includes: Magic-linked skill tests (Summoning, Spellcasting, Enchanting, etc.), overcasting, and maximum spell Force, for example.

For power points and Magic when used by adept powers, only the points allocated towards adept powers apply. This includes Attribute Boost Tests and the like.

For all other purposes -- i.e., non-Magic-linked skills -- the mystic adept's full Magic attribute is used: pressing through astral barriers, initiation grade limit, Masking metamagic, and so on.

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So the Magic stat relating to the Heightened Concentration is just the adept bit.

So would you say a fully initiated, magic 12, 6 for adept, 6 for spellslinging, mystic adept could ignore 3 spells?

I'd only let them ignore one spell, counting each spell as a separate situational modifier, but that's just me...

I'd second that.