If you were going to add back in the idea of spells being force-limited, you wouldn't have to do it in a way that requires an upgrade after EVER increase in Magic. For instance, you could just say that spells come in Lesser (Force 3), Normal (Force 6), Greater (Force 9) and Legendary (Force 12) versions. Or some other set of tiers...you know, whatever works for you. That'd keep the feel, where your experienced mages are off hunting for rare formulas that will let them take full advantage of their ability, but keep it from being a tedious process that they have to go through EVERY time they Initiate.

heathen

I need tons of spells. And when the big book of magic comes out, I'll need even more. Ok as a DM right now I need very little but as a player it is very important to me.

1: direct combat spell
2: direct area of effect combat spell
3 indirect combat spell
4 indirect area of effect combat spell
5: analyze truth
6: combat sense
7: detect enemies
8: detect life
10: mindlink
11: detox
12: heal
12: increase reflexes
13&14 increase spell casting attirbutes
15: oxygenate
16: stabalize
17: chaos
18: chaotic world
19: trid phantasm
20 improved invis
21: physical mask
22: silence
23: stealth
24: armor
25: levitate
25: magic fingers
26: petrify
27: physical barrier

Ok I'm a freak but that's my essential must eventually have list. Asuuming I start off with 8 of them, that leaves 19 to pick up in game or 95 Karma. Which is quite a bit I'd think. The sam can do quite a bit with those 95 Karma which is imporving the number of dice being thrown, not just massively broadning there options. Of couse the sammie could also pick up some new skills for the broadning the options type growth.

That's exactly why I still use SR3's Money-for-Karma and Karma-for-Money rules. That way, as a GM I can hand out karma and nuyen at normal rates and let the players be the ones to handle the bugeting of their resources.

I tend to give out about 5 karma and 7,500 nuyen per run (on average) over the early stages of a runner's career (that is, below the 100 karma mark). That means, in roughly 20 runs any given character will have 150,000 nuyen in earnings when they reach the 100 karma mark. This is not nearly enough money to keep a cyber monster happily upgraded, but more than enough karma to let them learn virtually every skill they want and increase said skills to reasonable levels. Likewise, 150,000 nuyen is a virtual fortune to a magiker, but 100 karma is just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to their karma needs.

With this amount of income (in both karma and money), both general character types have enough income to upgrade a bit, but no where near what they need to be truly competative. Remember, all this time the opposition is getting tougher and more insane, and most of the time the opposition has an unlimited budget.

So, when the 100 karma point in the campaign rolls around, the players still want more. While marginally satisfied that they've been able to upgrade a bit and save a bit of money, they still often feel desperate to get that little bit more karma/ nuyen that'll let them Initiate again/learn that new spell/afford that piece of beta-to-delta grade 'ware that they feel they need to stay one step ahead. That's where the Karma-to-Money rules come in, allowing the character to trade off what they don't need (as much) for what they do (desparately) need. This makes the players happier, but also has the side-effect of draining their resources which leaves them needing more money/karma. Which means they go on more runs, facing tougher and tougher opposition/problems and making more enemies that they need to upgrade to cope with, which leads them back to the same dilemma.

The net effect of this is that it leaves the players always hungry for more, and it works like a charm. In 15 years of playing and GMing SR, I've never had a "campaign" end due to lack of interest and only seen a grand total of 4 characters actually retire.

This is how my group works it nowadays (from our house rules):

A few clarifications -
1) A "significant amount of down time" can mean anything from a couple of days to a week to a month or more depending on the player's justification for the exchange. Giving 50,000 ¥ to help establish a school on the outskirts of the barrens would take a few weeks (to round up volunteers, equipment, security, etc), but blowing the same amount in a gambling and partying spree to honor Coyote could only take a couple of days (plus recovery time of course ).

2) "Only with gamemaster permission" generally means an exhange like this:
PC - I wanna blow some money to get some karma.
GM - Ok, you've got some downtime to do it in. What's your explanation?
PC - {insert plausible explanation here}
GM - 'Kay {forks over the karma}

3) The stipulation that the character that receives the Karma does not necessarily have to be the one who pays for it is our game mechanic justification for college education, military training, etc. It has never come up in game.

4) The Karma Inflation and Nuyen Multipliers are variable for a reason. In the early stages of a campaign (25-50 karma) I use the base rates to prevent player's from abusing the system (and screwing themselves in the process). As things progress, the Nuyen Multipler tends to go up (depending on circumstance and local conditions) while the Karma Inflation rate tends to decrease slightly (but never below 1). This has the effect of allowing me to both simulate the campaign's local economic environment and to tailor the exchange rates to the PC's needs to a degree.

5) The Karma-for-Money rules use a variable range to simulate the vaguries of luck and to easily work with our house rules for handling the stock markets, which are as follows:

They originally came out in the SR2 Companion book, and were reprinted in the SR3 Companion. Prior to the release of the SR2 companion, groups I've been involved with just used a hapzard way of exchanging the two comodities. The Companion provided a more solid framework to use for this sort of thing, but as you can see in the house rules I just posted some of that hapzardness is still hanging around, one of our many legacy systems

That's exactly what it comes out to at our base rate (on the karma end), and we haven't changed the base rate since SR3. Weird

Does this mean that you not only get money out of trading stock but also Karma?
Wait....You invest in stock, go sell it later, then have to immediately spend it on Karma? THat's a little weird...

What kind of justification can you give for getting Money for Karma??? Does anyone have examples?

Serbitar has the right of it in this circumstance.

The other way, trading in money to get Karma, can be viewed as paying to attend things like spiritual retreats, motivational seminars, and paying for "blessings" from that creepy hoodoo guy who lives in the abandoned brownstone down the street.

Or sometimes things like helping the downtrodden, giving to charity, working to restore some house burned in a fire(That left a family homeless), etc.

Nope, you don't get karma per se. You get what basically amounts to points to plug into the same formula used for Money-for-Karma. That's why I refer to them as "psuedo-karma" points. Here's an example of the actual process of selling stock under this system:

* Since he is a Shadowrun player, the GM has far more than 40 six-siders lying around, just in case

Again, some notes:
1) Notice that the GM used the Nuyen Multiplier to reflect the current approximate condition of Proteus AG's stocks, letting the mechanic reflect the setting.

2) Notice the GM didn't tell the player what the actual Nuyen Multiplier was, he only told the player what the market analysis program determined. This allowed him to fudge the Multiplier if the 40d6 roll was really high, thus maintaining setting integrity (ie Proteus AG's stock was in a slide and Nightmare wasn't going to profit much if at all from the sale) and excercise some control over just how much income Nightmare made by doing essentially nothing.

3) The GM didn't do it, but he would have been well within his rights to make Nightmare spend one or more actual karma points on the sale. This would have resulted in more profit (+1d6 x 250 ¥ per karma point), but would have helped enforce a bit of balance if the sale stood to be a major windfall.

Geekkake, Shadowmeet, Nim, and Serbitar pretty much covered this one.