Yes and now in addition to paying 10 per 'feature'. You still need to pay for the skills and the magic rating to back them up. Which is why I say it's rediculously expensive. Just building a straight oldschool hermetic is 20BP for astral + spells. You've doubled the magician cost from 15 -> 30. A Mystic adept now costs even MORE than the base 10 it did before, and still has the mad skill distro problem w/ less points to buy the skills.

I have seen mystic adepts which work. Just that a player who uses it really needs to be aware of what he's using the different bits. And they tend to get royally hosed when having to deal background counts as well. While they can do everything, they really shouldn't even try to do everything. Quite frankly, I'd never let a new player play a mystic adept unless they truly understood the problems of the class.


Case in point...
Mystic Adept... summoning focus.
2 points in casting... 3 point in adept... a good power focus, to get his base 'magic' up to 4 or 5 plus skill. Don't bother w/ the conjuring group, just buy the summoning skill and the binding skill. Overcast a spirit of man bound to cast increase reflexes on you and sustain it for your extra IP's (requires 1rank in spellcasting and 3 more to buy the spell, but still cheaper than increase reflexes adept power, or bio/cyber).

He's a respectable adept in his own right, and can get some reasonably good physical stats if he uses the 'attribute boost' power intelligently. If you do it as a social adept, can work reasonably well also. High cha == lots of bound spirits. Many spirit 'powers' can double for spells (such as concealment, or confusion, or elemental attack). Not the best social adept... but in a fight a pack of reasonable force spirits can help a lot.


Another example... an 'improved' medidept capable of both first aid/medicine and magical healing
Techinical adept in first aid, w/ a specialization in heatlh spells. In combat you can cast improved reflexes on yourself and sustain it or use a sustaining focus, so you're not too shabby as a secondary combatant behind the combat monkeys. Pick up spells like heal, increase reflexes, detox (especially if you have guys who like the combat candy).


Again, both are helped immensely and made viable w/ the use of foci. However foci are double penalized in background counts too. You lose a point of magic, and the focus loses a point of strength. So where a non-focus mage would lose 1 point, you lose 2 in your specialty.

In a manner I was. I LIKE the idea of having modular magic, BUT I think the idea of doubling the COST of accessing those abilities is a really bad one. They tend to be expensive enough already without needed to add those extra costs into play.