So you have a sustaining foci for health. It's at force 3.

It looks like you're going to get into a fight soon, and you need an edge. Increase Reflexes should do the job.

So, can you cast it at force 3 and use reagents to up the limit to 6, then whack the spell onto a sustaining focus?

Sure. Why not?

Speaking of that spell, although the total dice are capped at 5, the increase to Initiative isn't capped. What do you think about spending a point of Karma to quicken the spell after casting it with Edge and a spirt's Aid Sorcery task? You should be able to get more than 6 hits and then rest a few days from the physical drain.

By the rules it is allowed.

Note that hits>magic means physical drain no matter the force.

However, since force is no longer an issue you cast force that deals only (the minimum) 2 drain so it is never a problem.

The implications are that sustaning foci higher than F1 are completely useless and buff mages are back as a powerful force after being exciled through most of SR4 (Where you more often than not suffered a net loss sustaining a buff spell on yourself).

I am not sure how I feel about this. Making drams more expensive or harder to get is a poor option.

One player put a 12 hits Reflexes on himself, (Edge 7 human) for +12 init (and +4d6 as maximum at 8 hits). WIth drams that kind of silly doesn't even become uncommon.

Let's look at this a bit harder:
Out of chargen, focused caster. 7 magic, 6 skill, 2 specialization, 4 spellcasting focus. That's 19 dice. Average of 6-7 hits. Add 7 edge, he's rolling 26 dice with exploding 6's. call it 10 hits. He's used his A and B in metatype and magic, probably C in attributes. He's rocking at least 2 foci (sustaining 1 and spellcasting 4), that means he's got a D in resources leaving E for skills.
Assume Mystic Adept (Because lets face it, that's where the metagame is at the moment) with full PP he needs at least 40 karma sunk into PP and foci. odds on he's got several other force 1 foci bound as well, capping out his starting karma.

Sure, he's got insane initiative. Sure, he has a metric ton of high-end buff spells. His edge is largely gone casting the superbuffs. He has no skills outside of spellcasting. When he's not casting from his specialized school he's down to 13 dice. His stats are either underwhelming across the board or he's dumped some stuff to buff his casting stat and willpower. He has his buffs and his adept powers.

At best, you could call this character 'strong but unskilled'. He's got a lot of oomph in his chosen field, as befits a specialist. Outside of that he's mediocre at best, and if he ever runs into even a low-end ward all those buffs come tumbling down.

I'd call that the incarnation of everything has a price.

He should have gotten a powerful spirit to help.

I think that that number of dice, you might get more hits by using reagents to raise the limit and then rerolling failures with Edge. Especially if you add dice with a powerful spirit.

And yeah, that is what would happen. It would be a high level ward while in an elevator or a moving car. Those buffs won't last one gaming session.

A shaman doesn't really have a problem with Wards.

You don't need to go balls out, some edge is enough. Using "Try again" is as broken and stupid as it ever was.

It is just about ALWAYS better to reroll misses. Imagine even a damage resist roll of 30 dice. Adding a Massive edge of 8 (lucky human) to total 38 dice means you get expected 12-13 hits, of those 6-7 are sixes that adds another 6 dice that add another 2 when all re-rolls are done. For a total of 46 dice. (Or 16 dice gained from edge + rule of six)
+ you have to gamble in advance with your edge.

Or, spend edge on demand and get more effect. 10 hits on 30 dice means your edge gives +20 dice and this works with edge 2-3.

Normal mage with mentor spirit and specialization throws 16 dice on spell casting test, roll 5 hits then re-roll 11 dice for another 4 or so hits. YOu expect 8-10 hits but can easily bounce up to above 10 hits without spending any lengths of karma on Edge. All it costs is a F1 focus (or focused concentration) and 240 nuyen of reagents.

Add more cheap foci for +4 in all stats you want. Focus addiction is not an issue. And with 10 Charisma (Human with +4 increase charisma, shaman, not even unlikely, don't need to max out elf or anything) + magic 6 you can force through most wards easily. Or just hit them once in astral, you have 10P base damage with Astral combat. Wards are wussies. They are a minor inconvenience and don't protect against a mage at all.

Cost of is 4k per foci and you can afford all of that at chargen without going skills E.

What to do? Send spirits on astral plane disrupting the foci, that works I think.... But, with buffed intuition and average reaction you'll see the christmas tree mage sit at 25 + 5d6 initiative and he decides what happens in combat :/

You seem to imply 2 things that I'd consider assumptions at best:
- the mage is constantly perceiving astrally in order to spot a barrier before crossing it while moving in any vehicle
- the mage can kill a barrier before the vehicle crosses it

I'd say the more likely (and still broken) scenario is that our mage fills his sustaining foci when necessary, but still only needs F1 foci and some nuyen in reagents to store pretty useful spells at almost no drain.

I think this works just fine. Just remember that in a world in which this works just fine, every security type mage should have several ranks in disenchanting.

To deactivate an active focus, make an Opposed
Disenchanting + Magic [Astral] v. target’s Force + owner’s
Magic Test.

Just need LOS on it and can be there physically or astrally.