I have a pretty solid knowledge of character building in 4A, but my 5e skills are in need of development. What's the conventional wisdom re: building a full or aspected mage in 5E? Spells to get, spells to avoid, priorities, race, the works.

Dunno about what the conventional approach is but I have been playing one for a while.

1. Aspected Magicians are rubbish, there is no particular advantage they have.
2. Mystic Adepts are where it's at
3. Combat spells are...a bit meh, you'll probably do better with Manipulation mind control and a select few AoE combat spells (due to the way dodging vs. AoE works - or, more specifically, doesn't)
4. Hermetics have better Logic and so are better at resisting the effects of Focus addiction menaing they can risk using more foci, conversely the Shamanic types make excellent Faces
5. FAQs and comments form dev types on the Shadowrun Forums and the lack of a mention in errata seems to suggest the Reagents -> Focus trick is legit. What you do is find spells that provides their bonus from HITS not FORCE, cast the spell with loads of reagents at a low force and then stick it in a sustaining foci. E.g.: Force 1 Foci, cast the Armour spell with 5 reagents, you can get +5 armour stored in a cheap focus rather than needing a Force 5 focus.
6. the high object resistances make affecting electronic stuff really very tough
7. Human is a really good option for Mages due to low priority and special attribute points

The survivability combo I use as a MysAd is Focused Concentration 1 to hold a 4 hit Armour spell, a Force 1 Foci to store a 4 hit Combat Sense spell (see the errata version of the spell, not the core book version) combined with MysAd PP spent on Reflexes for +3 Reaction and +3 initiative dice and wear decent armour.

I focus mainly on being a support mage, Illusions and Manipulation to control the fight and buff my allies.

Reagents for spells where hits matter more than force also work well in general. Keep them in packs of 5 or so and boost your stuff for cheap.

If you want to play combat mage, the easiest solution is probably to go the summoner route. Elemental Attack nowadays is DV = Magic x 2, AP = -Magic, who cares about direct combat spells being nerfed?

This just came up in our PbP. F6 Air Elemental with Elemental Attack was rather impressive.

For general advice:

1) I agree with Xystophoroi about Aspected Magicians. The main problem is the way their priorities work. The only decent priority to take them at is usually D and supplement their Magic with Special Attribute Points from metatype choice. Conjurers work better than other aspected due to their lack of spells/preparations (that you would otherwise have to spend karma on since you don't get any for free).

2) Metatype: Humans, Elves, and Dwarves make good general magicians. Most people disfavor orks and trolls, but I think they can make interesting builds, they are just likely going to be very focused due to lowered priorities in other areas.

3) For priorities, there isn't really a set rule since as a lot of it depends on Metatype.
- High attributes is always a good thing to have so that you can have solid mental attributes for any Astral work and still not be useless in the Material.
- One thing to remember is that there are a lot of Magic skills if you want to be well rounded. Skills that I usually always take on a full mage are: Spellc

---Well fuck, the boards ate my post, it appears. Not going to retype all that, so hopefully the little bit that made it through helps.

Aspected mages should definitely get spells/bound spirits/etc.



I'd really love to know what skills you recommend

I'm building a Hermetic who moved to the Barrens in order to pursue magical research without being beholden to anyone.

There's two general schools of thought on building mages: the first is to go with a lowered Magic priority, raising Magic back up to 6 with the Meta priority, and going with Skills at A. You start off with less spells, but more overall skills to cover a wider breadth of capability, especially if you wanted to go the Shaman/Face combo, but this puts Resources at E (because Attributes E is a trap build as a human) and so you're left without any foci. The other way is to go with Magic at A and dump Meta to E so that you can have a higher Resources for foci (usually Hermetic due to their synergy with foci). This tends to build a character that's better at actually slinging spells, and more different kinds of spells, but is less capable outside of their areas of specialty.

Both of those approaches assume a human, but with a little system mastery any of the other races can work, however they'll usually be behind the human in some minor way. If your GM would allow a Sum-to-10 system, the other races get a lot more flexible in their choices. On the other hand, Orcs, Dwarves, and Trolls can usually use a lower Attributes priority, dumpstat Str and Bod, and still end up equal to or tougher, physically, than a human mage.

I'll echo the above on Aspected Magicians, but if you go MysAd (and there's little reason not to), buy all six power points in character creation, as you can't get them after, outside of normal initiation.

Also, depending on the GM's tolerance of cheese, buying Focused Concentration at level one to abuse the reagent trick is also no-brainer.

Edging a Force 2 stunball (2 meter radius, minimal drain), is a very good way to take out a small group of guards without worrying about AoE effects against your team, but otherwise, direct spells took a large nerf, so you should stay away from them. Mind manipulation spells are just as broken as ever. I forget how exactly Detection spells worked in 4th, but in 5th the spell doesn't detect anything; it creates a new sense in which to detect things. The hits on the spell basically create a new limit for the new sense. You roll to roll, to see if you can roll. Detection spells and Complex Forms are the Yo Dawgs of dice rolling. Other than that, I didn't notice much difference in spells that stood out to me, but I'm probably skipping something.

If you had a specific question or concern, it'd probably get a more specific answer from us =p

LOL, OK. Here's what I do for a general mage build.

For Sure
Assensing: Very powerful intelligence collection tool
Counterspelling: Group "armor" against spells is great
Summoning: No cost temporary allies that can be incredibly powerful
Spellcasting: For obvious reasons


Nice to Have:
Alchemy: If only for reagent gathering. Would gain a lot if you didn't have to learn preparations separate from spells.
Arcana: Got to have it if you want to initiate (for now).
Banishing: A lof of people think poorly on banishing since you can achieve the same effect with a manabolt to the face, but I don't think it is actually that bad. The main question is whether your GM is going to have enemy summoners use Edge to resist your attempts. That's when it gets dangerous.
Binding: Some people would probably put this in the For Sure category. It is very, very useful, but also rather expensive.
Disenchanting: A lot of people overlook this one, but it can be incredibly useful if you tend to face enemy spellcasters with foci.

Rarely, if Ever:
Artificing: As it presently stands, this is tough to pull off as an individual and ultimately easier to just buy.
Astral Combat: If you specialize your build for this, it can be terrifyingly awesome. If you don't, it's mostly just terrifying. Other than the armor spell, you're only going to resist damage with your astral Body attribute so death can come quickly. I think it is usually better to just run.
Ritual Spellcasting: There are some solid Ritual Spellcasting choices, but a lot of it is poorly defined. It's largely designed for groups (although can be accomplished by yourself), but doesn't really fit into a typical shadowrun game.

Street game, Hermetic planning to get a cerebral booster, Priority system with no A and E taken twice.

For RP reasons I want Ritual casting, so I'll probably take the group (Magic B, made up to 6 with special points - gives me the group at 4).

We're using the Missions hotfix errata, so Mystads got nerfed:
Power Points cost 5 Karma per point instead of 2 Karma per point, and may be purchased up to your starting
magic rating.

Power Points are lost as normal along with Magic Rating if you lose points of Essence.

You do not get a Power Point automatically when you raise your Magic Rating.

You may gain additional Power Points by choosing to take a point during Initiation instead of a metamagic
ability.

You're trying to do too much, there really isn't a good way of accomplishing that. Consider: You have no A priority, you're placing Magic at B, to get it back to 6, needs at least a D in Meta, and to get a cerebral booster requires at least a D in Resources for the first rank, and a C in Resources for a rank 2. Either way, his leaves you with E's for both Attributes and Skills.

Then there's cerebral boosters, which at best gives you two extra drain resistance at the cost of one die one every magical action. Unless you're going to make the most of that lost essence with additional ware, this is a bad trade, especially because if you drop the Resources priority, you can raise the Attribute priority, and even raising it to D gives you two points... which you can put into Log, and end up back where you started, because the only way the Cerebral booster would get you a net gain is if you dumped 9 out of your 12 attribute points into Wil and Log, leaving 3 points for 6 attributes. And that's almost unplayable, considering you're going to be defaulting on almost everything else for a dice pool of zero, before modifiers, in anything outside of your skills.

And the Magic priority doesn't give group skills, only normal skills. And with 18 points as it is, you're going to be spread exceedingly thin even without Ritual Casting. It can be useful, but Spellcasting, Counterspelling, Summoning are almost mandatory for a mage, now add in the rudiments of athletics, stealth, and social skills....
As do most people, and MysAds are still close to a no brainer choice. I feel that the proper fix wasn't to make power points cost more, or even force MysAd's to pay for PP's separately, but increase the priority cost (make it exclusively an A or B priority, with a starting Magic rating of 4 or 2 respectively). There is little reason not to go full MysAd unless the character concept demands it, the game is going to specifically revolve around the astral in a major way, or your GM nerfed the Focused Concentration+Reagents cheese and you really want to get the full rating of that quality.

Yeah, there is no way to get what you want with a Street Level campaign without being pretty terrible. You can generally survive Meta E and Resources E, but trying to put Skills or Attributes at E is super challenging which you would have to do to get the Cerebral Boosters. If you wanted to forgo the Cerebral Boosters, you could potentially get away with an Aspected Summoner, but that doesn't sound like its the way you want to go.

You could do something like this:

Magic B
Attributes C
Skills D
Race and Resources E

B 2
R 2
A 2
S 2
C 3
I 3
W 5
L 5
M 5
E 2

You can also drop one of the physical stats to 1 to bump either your W or L to 6, and then use 10 of your karma to buy the stat back up to 2. (again, depends on how your GM is - personally I think characters with a rating 1 in a stat have some serious issues as far as RP is concerned).


Skills
Spellcasting 4
Conjuring 4
Counterspelling 4
Assensing 4

14 more skill points - which you can either use to bump up those skills above (not sure in a street campaign whether or not the GM wants you to start with maxed skills or not), or add the myriad of others you will need, Sneak, Perception, Etiquette, etc.

agreed, i would strongly recommend race and resources in E, put attributes and especially skills as high as you can. you shouldn't need 6 magic to function in a low-powered game.

If you're dying for ritual spellcasting, you could use Lobo's build, but be an Aspected Mage (Spellcasting focused). I'd probably go with Attributes D and Skills C. It's only a difference of 2 attribute points between D&C, but the skills swing is a lot more massive. You could dump one stat to 1 and spend 10 karma to bump it back up and drop Charisma to 2. You're going to be kind of weak in the attributes and your limits, but that's that. The biggest challenge with Aspected Spellcasters is you get no free spells, so that's a potentially massive karma expenditure.

Sorry, clarification: I plan to *eventually* get cerebral boosters (and cybereyes, and probably a pain editor). They're Avail 12 and I'm capped at 10 (and I'm aware I can't afford it to start regardless). I don't *have* to get 'ware, but I'm kinda stuck in the 4A mindset of "almost any build period should suck up 1 point of Essence loss", as in my experience it's almost always been a net gain.

[Edit:] Astral projection is really handy for scouting, so I want to go standard full magician.
[Edit 2:] Attributes D or E? 2 attribute points vs. 44k nuyen.

1. high drain dice
2. high edge
3. power foci at chargen (they are really hard to make or acquire after)
4. low power sustaining foci (use your reagents)
5. focus concentration 6 ( use to boost your drain dice attribute, one of the most efficient uses of karma in the entire game, secondary use sustain other spells that are better with high force ie, mind control)



for a street game,

B. magic
C. attributes
D. resources
E. race
E. skills.

There's no paying of double to max an attribute in 5th. Further, it's usually pretty easy to max out Magic, one way or another, but with the street level rules, if you wanted to go human, Lobo's priority would probably serve you best. You could go dwarf at B and Magic C to get Magic 6, but you're already down on skill points.

Dorf would also allow you to dumpstat str and bod and come out one attribute ahead overall with the extra Wil if you dumped Attributes from C to E, so what you could do is Magic B, Race C, Resources D (for the power focus), Skills/Attributes E.

B 3
A 2
R 2
S 3

W 7
C 2
L 5
I 2

M 5
E 2

Raise an attribute and Edge back to 2 with 10 karma each. You wouldn't have a max Magic, but this would leave you the nuyen for the power focus, none of your attributes at a 1, your drain stats maxed. The big weakness would be the 18+2 magic skills at 4 for your skills. If you're not going mysad, you can use the extra karma to buy up any skills you don't have to one, so you don't have to default on something like trying to run away.

Ignoring Elf because not a shaman.


Usually a mage can get away with astral perception as the group is physically staking out the joint, but yeah there are times where projection is just better, as is the ability to free up 30 karma to help shore up the weaknesses in a street level game is pretty good. However never having to worry about initiative is really nice, as is things like Improved Ability.

As for Resources, I'd honestly drop 4 skill points instead of 2 attributes if you really want the 50k. Making 12 Attribute points work on a human is... really hard.

Can you also just clarify what restrictions your GM is using?

Street level play in 5e has severely limited money - i.e. Resources D is 15,000, not 50,000 - which is a HUGE difference. Is he following any/all of these restrictions?

Street-Level play
• Modify the resources column on the Priority Table as follows:
• Priority A: 75,000 nuyen
• Priority B: 50,000 nuyen
• Priority C: 25,000 nuyen
• Priority D: 15,000 nuyen
• Priority E: 6,000 nuyen
• Karma: Each player receives 13 Karma to customize characters
(maximum of 26 Karma).
• Gear Restrictions: Device Ratings must be rated at 4 or less.
Maximum Availability is limited to 10 or less.
• Nuyen Restrictions: Characters may only convert up to 5
Karma into nuyen (10,000 nuyen).
• Follow all other rules for Character Creation/Advancement
as laid out in this chapter.

Standard rules save for the odd priorities thing (though oddly Resources E is 6k in both cases) and a max availability of 10. Used ware can be purchased at chargen, but used alpha/betaware uses rules for used standard 'ware once implanted (so no benefit to getting fancier ware used).

Ok, cool.

I like the idea of tjn's dwarf - for me personally I like to have more skill points - but that is just personal preference, his build is good as well.

Personally (and this is just me), you are giving up a lot for that power focus. You are giving up 2 attribute points (which is a minimum of 20 karma - possibly much more, depending on where you take those points from), plus the 12 karma to bond it, plus 36,000 Those two attribute points and 12 karma could go a decent way (especially the karma) to rounding out and fleshing out the character, as opposed to just tossing 2 extra dice.

I'm not trying to downplay the usefulness of the power focus, I know it is good, I'm just saying when you are working with such limited attributes and skills, long term it is probably better to have higher skills and attributes and get the focus later. (not to mention that from an RP stand point, you'd be paranoid about someone making off with it, as it is small, portable, and expensive - but that is a secondary consideration.)

I like dwarf, but the increased lifestyle & gear costs hurt. Is tech-based spellcasting (i.e. shades) still verboten? If so a dwarf might be nice for the natural thermo vision. OTOH, I still might suck up some Essence loss for a pain editor, cybereyes, and a cerebral booster. Thoughts?

Lobo: You make some really good points. I'm not sure of this guy's background yet, but it's hard to imagine someone who chose to live in the Barrens would be able to afford a power focus. That kind of money tends to go to necessities first. Maybe an heirloom?

Note: PbP persistent world game, 2k nuyen and 1 Karma per 2 in-game posts.

Here's what I have so far:

That's...really minmaxed. I know you're limited with options but you have someone who has 1/3 the physical strength of a normal adult, a body of a sick person, the dexterity of an extremely clumsy person, the reactions (you missed it out but I assume it's a 1 as well) of a seriously arthritic person and the charisma of the foulest person possible.

How does this person convince other runners that they are a reliable, trustworthy fellow who they want to take on a run? They will need good social skills to sell themselves to others!

This stat array means that any skill you don't have at least a point in for Ag, Rea, Charisma especially you will be defaulting to 0 dice. I.e.: cannot ever possibly succeed. Without points in etiquette you're causing offence to everyone you meet, without Con you cannot ever tell a lie etc. Want to run somewhere? Nope. Climb something? Nope. Shoot a gun? Nope. Throw a punch? Nope. Sneak past a drunken lazy guard watching a porn trid? Nope.

Even with ranks in the skills your odds of success are not good. Put a point in stealth and a specialty in urban for 2 skill points and roll 4 dice. Is averaging 1 hit on stealth something you'd rely on?

Skills D is 22/0, you'll want points in your Spellcasting and Summoning at the very least.

I...don't know why anyone would take this person on a run with them. Perhaps have this person sit down back at home and cast buff spells off camera but would you bring what amounts to magic casting deadweight that blurts out secrets on command with you?

Tyro,

You've got some mechanical issues to deal with:

1) Magic B gives you a Magic Attribute of 4. Race E gives you a Special Attributes bonus of 1. That means your Magic is 5, not 6.

2) You may only have 1 attribute at racial maximum in char gen. So of your W, I, and L, you are going to have to reduce 2 of them by 1 point to a 5. (which is good, it will help make up for the fact that your other attributes are terrible - you can raise 2 of them from a 1 to a 2).

3) You need to have a Reaction attribute - currently it is a 1, but it isn't listed.

Lets see what skills you come up with, and then we can address those. (remember that you can raise some of those 1's to a 2 with 10 of your 37 karma).

Err... I'm really not sure how you got that spread. On top of the concerns Xystophoroi posted (which I agree 100% with, as any runner who has zero dice to lie or gtfo of dodge has a short shelf life), but one, you're only allowed to max out a single normal attribute, and two, with a magic at B, and a meta at E, that'd put the Magic rating at 5, unless you pumped karma into it, which I don't see accounted for? Also, be careful with addiction; read the rules and understand how to keep the monster at bay, because it can cripple a character. And as a GM, the number of attributes at 1 concerns me, but individual tables vary on expectations. I'd also aim for a body of 3 for the extra condition monitor box, but that's a personal preference.

EDIT:

First of all, it's dorf dammit. Tolkien was a hack =p

Also, the lifestyle costs were errata'd to specifically not include gear costs, only lifestyle costs (which somehow include the customization costs on gear? It's badly worded).

And tech based spellcasting only works if you paid essence for it, yeah. But the modifiers for darkness, smoke, and whathaveyou got changed to a chart, and you take the worst penalty instead of stacking a bunch of individual modifiers. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it until you get into prime runner territory where you can expect the first action is to pop a thermal smoke grenade. Engineering the fights to your advantage before going in will serve you a lot better than cybereyes.

As for the focus... yeah, if I was making the character, I'd go for attributes over the extra nuyen, but this is something that's dependent upon each table.

Ugh, I blame chronic pain and tiredness. You're right, that spread needs a rework. I defend the stats at 1, though - the idea was someone who's physically unimpressive but who makes up for it with magical power, making him desirable to a team even if not especially well liked. Also, Initiative is less of a problem for a mage specializing in Detection spells.

Attributes at 1 is far from Physically Unimpressive (with 4 stats at 1, it is crippling bordering on useless), in my opinion. 2's would suffice, as you are still 1/3 below average at that point, if you are going for the physically unimpressive bit.

Why would initiative be less a problem for the Detection Specialist? Initiative is ALWAYS something that matters. the more of it you have, the better you will survive the shadows. Of course drugs can help with that, but that is a long wait for a train don't come.

Might I add that Insomnia is really bad when you are a mage (and will be taking stun damage from spell casting, let alone from the enemy) and your dice pool is an 8? (assuming that you leave your Willpower at 6)

Getting 4 hits on 8 dice is not something you want to be banking on.

At that point your are banking that your Insomnia is actually going to kick in and only get half your rolls (4 instead of . That is what I am doing now with my current character. Her nightmares and flashbacks cause such mental trauma that she really has issues sleeping, resulting in a roll every 2 hours rather than the normal every 1 hour (same DP of .

I think it will depend on where my Drain attributes are at. If I go dwarf with 7/5 Will/Log I'll probably go insomniac, esp. since I'll be avoiding higher Drain spells for the most part - utility mage, not Karl Kombatmage. If I go human with fewer drain dice, I'll probably swap out for a different Negative Quality.

Okay, take 2:

You have 24 points worth of skills and Specializations, so you have to drop 2 skill points there.

Other than that, mechanically it is legal, you have some interesting choices of skills - curious to see the background.

I'm open to suggestions re: background specifics. As suggested by his Qualities, he doesn't like being tied down, big problem with authority. He's researching the Unified Magical Theory. Maybe he was a researcher at a public college that got bought out by the corps. He's in the Puyallup Barrens now, living in a compound with a bunch of steampunk-obsessed scroungers and a technomancer tribe.

Any suggestions on the skills?

With Social Stress and an Etiquette of 1, you have a 46% chance of causing at least a glitch in any scene where someone's telling your character what to do. And if you don't get at least one hit, it's automatically upgraded to a critical glitch. Now my math might be wrong, but I'm getting a rough 1/5 chance of a critical glitch in every scene where someone's telling your character what to do. Like say, a Johnson. If a teammate blew up at the guy paying me once out of every five runs, there'd be serious questions as to his worth.

If the GM is going with a slightly pink mohawk group of fuck ups, it'll fit right in. If your teammates actually like getting paid for the work they do... they might have a problem.

At first, I liked the idea of the flaw, but the characters for whom this flaw is somewhat archetypal, they almost get crippled by the flaw. Whereas faces, those where it's somewhat out of character to have this kind of flaw, it's almost free karma because the flaw has so little impact. For example, my face/mage would go from 6 ones needed to glitch to 5, on 11 dice, and a critical glitch would be almost unheard of.

This is something of a continuing problem for SR's Flaws. The vast majority of them can really kill a character concept, even if (or more often, especially if!) that flaw fits with the archetype the character is following. Prejudiced basically turns any social encounter with someone in the specific class into a no-win situation. Uncouth, for 14 karma, basically makes the character completely unplayable in any game remotely mirrorshades, but is almost free karma in an over the top pink mohawk game. Uneducated, for the awesome amount of 8 karma, somehow makes the character completely unable to use a computer, as in Scotty talking to the mouse level of ignorance, in a setting basically surrounded by computers 24/7. And then there's flaws no one takes like Codeblock which actively hinders the character's primary role but you can't take these flaws unless it specifically applies to your character's primary role.

There's a reason certain flaws, like Code of Honor, Allergy, or Weak Immune System come up over and over and over. Because the majority of flaws aren't worth the karma to take them, and some of them are actively trap options. But since those 25 extra karma can go really far during character creation, it's fairly important to load up on those few flaws that don't outright mechanically mangle your character. Hell I wouldn't be surprised that in Missions (which outlaws some flaws that are hard to keep track of in a convention setting), a good 95% of the runners have an allergy to some rare substance or another.
This is something based upon each table's expectations, so it's variable depending on perspective. My "requirements" for every runner are at least a one in: Running, Sneaking, Palming, Gymnastics, Etiquette and Con. They also need a decent Perception and some sort of combat skill at a decent rating, which depends on their role. For a mage that's Spellcasting, but Counterspelling and Summoning are also mandatory, and I usually peg them as high as I can get them. Assensing comes next, followed by Binding, as skill points allow. Beyond that is up to character concept. Hermetics have less of a point to Binding since their Cha is usually fairly low. It's useful to have a spirit on call in emergencies, but especially if you've got Spirit Affinity, you can use it to develop a specific bond to a specific spirit as a role playing opportunity, and as such they probably won't be rolling edge against you, and if you need a high force spirit, you've got regular summoning for a disposable spirit for that specific run.

If I was making this character, I'd have Spellcasting, Counterspelling, and Summoning at 6 each, Assensing and Perception at 4 each, and the rest of the above at 1 each by spending the necessary karma to get each at one. But that's just me.

It's a persistent setting game, multithreaded PbP. The thread I'll be involved in is less "runner team" and more "individuals dicking around in the Barrens"

I like Codeblock for Characters (I often use it for Hackers/Technomancers), and for a society that is "surrounded by computers 24/7" Codeblock is an awesome flaw (especially if you take it for common tasks that anyone does).

As a researcher I'd try to get Arcana a bit higher in skill. I'd be tempted to try and shave 2 points from attributes so you could take C skills. But I'd shave other skills a bit if necessary, to get it to at least 4. If there were one skill i'd take to 6 for a researcher who wants to research magic on his own outside the structure of corps etc it would be arcana. And most of my knowledge skills would be around this.

Parazoology
Parabotony?
Magic SOTA
Magic History
Magical Threats
Artifacts
etc

What uses are there for Arcana in 5e? I'm pretty sure I know most/all of them, but I want to be sure I'm well versed.

His research is mostly academic, testing ideas in re: the basic laws of magic; I doubt he'll need more than 4 Arcana + spec, MAYBE 5, and a boatload of Knowledge skills. He'll probably have those at 5, maybe with specs of their own. Don't forget the +2 on Arcana tests he gets from his mentor.

For example, "can't Google shit" is kind of a noteworthy flaw.

Sadly, even when I can Google, sometimes I just so epically fail at it that it is embarrassing.

well right now admittedly there aren't tons of arcana uses. Though spell design will come into play once the magic book is out. But for me the dice pool is less important in many instances for a character concept than the skill rating. 2 is
Rating 2: Novice You’re a hobbyist, but not an enthusiast.
4 is
Rating 4: Proficient
You’re comfortable with what you do and perform well under
normal pressures. Professional level for most jobs.
6 is
Rating 6: Professional
You could easily sell your skills on the open market.

To me your concept says more than a hobbyist.

arcana is used for initiating now, is it not?

Remember, snake magicians take great risks. For just four attribute points (in this case 60 karma, 3 contacts karma, and 2 language/knowledge karma), two level 4 skills (40 karma), and two spells (10 karma), grand total 115, you get a point of Magic (30 karma), Sorcery skill group at rating 5 (62 karma), and loads more skills to hopefully keep you alive. Eventually bump all your 1s to 2s and quicken Improve Attribute spells for 1 karma each (plus the cost of learning the spells). Is your street level campaign going to have magical defenses that will be a match for you? If so, just recast and quicken again for 1 karma. You can also buff your street level teammates when they need it. If your gm won't allow minmaxing, see if he'll allow you to spread out your intuition in order for you to keep a high drain pool. Bonus points if you can spend 13 more karma on positive attributes. Do you really need that Influence spell right away? Or maybe you could get away with one more Attribute at 1. You'll be more help to your team if you're a decent magician than if you have a bunch of rating 2 attributes to go with rating 1 and 2 skills.