When yoru essence drops due to Cyberware (or other source), does it drop:

A) Your current Magic rating

B) Your maximum Magic Rating but not your current Magic

C) Both your current Magic rating *and* your Maximum Magic Rating.

For example, Frank wants to play an old-fashioned Burned Out Mage. He buys a Magic rating of 4, then takes 1.9 Essence of Cyberware.

Is his Magic rating now 2 (Maximum of 6), 4 (Maximum of 4), or 2 (Maximum of 4)?

Thanks a ton.

C

Both

Drops both.

And if your current magic drops to zero, welcome to mundanity and coping with useless skills.

Yep, once you get that magic, if you ever lose it, it doesn't come back.

Fortunately if you take Latent Awakening then you can load up on up to 5 essence worth of cyber and still get that 1 magic point when you do awaken.

Of course the downside of that is that you have to buy your magic skills and stats post-chargen and you have no control as to what kind of awakened area your talents lie.

Skills are cheap enough in the lower ranks.

A kind GM would also consider granting you a magical flaw or two, and skills for that cost (Aspected or Geased come immediately to mind. Take a Geas for 10 bp, and you can have Spellcasting 2 with a specialization, or Spellcasting 1 + specialization and Conjuring 1.)

I've got a somewhat related question - now, I recall in previous editions of SR that a character suffering from Magic loss (from, let's say cyberware), could take a Geas on the points they had lost, maintaining the same effective magic rating. Provided no geas was broken, of course. Now, I've read through the bit on Geasa in SM multiple times, but I can't exactly find anything that would constitute a definate ruling either way on this.

Short version - can you still take geasa to counter magic loss via implants?

Not that I know of.

This is something I've yet to fully understand in SR4.
In previous editions, taking on 'Ware would lower your magic cap.. but now it also affects your current rating as well...

Makes it difficult to play ex-Otaku with ware in them... cause you end up easily paying twice as much BP into Resonance just to overcome the penalty for a lower resonance rating.

Huh? In previous editions taking on Ware would lower both, but you always had magic at your cap.