It's a simiple question. How much power would it take away from the mages and shamans if they were only ably to astrally percieve and not astrally project?

Extremely limiting. Huge amounts of power.

Well, it varies based on magical opposition, but there are myriad scouting possibilities against mundane targets or targets with limited magical resources that get cut off by removal of the ability.

~J

It also practically removes the ability to Astral Quest (for initiation and other stuff)

17% power loss

Well it is that ability rather than summoning that prevents me from playing sorcerers. It isn’t more powerful than summoning just more tactically useful.

If you do remove it much of the difference can be made up by having watchers scout for you and if your problem is it being used to track information down you will find that all the same tricks can be pulled with a spirit doing the running around without the risk to yourself.

Edward

I'm currently playing a Rigger/Aspected Conjurer. VCR 2, Force 4 ally spirit, 3 geasa.

The only reason I could stand the Conjuring part was that my GM ok'd having the ally spirit. My ally spirit has Sense Link and Telepathy, so I can effectively scout through it. In addition, we have at least two full mages(One's a normal hermetic, one is a Wheel Mage(Unsure of type). I'm unsure of the rest of the chars) to also do scouting duties. Plus, my drones can do some scouting stuff.

Astral Projection is a really important scouting thing. If you're into the whole Astral Quests thing, it's probably good there too(I'm going to need to use Astral Gateway power to do any quests and they will certainly be with the group. No melee skill = PWNED in Battle).

For the record, I think the fact that there are so few metamagic techniques a Conjurer can use is a great deal more crippling than the lack of Astral Projection. Between MITS and SOTA:2063, there are 7 they can use - Cleansing, Divining, Invoking, Masking, Psychometry, Ritual Severing, and Sacrifice. The only metamagic technique off limits to a Sorceror is Invoking.

My idea was to remove the mage's ability to astrally project, but still allow astral perception. Astral Quests could still be undertaken as well. This would help to solve some of the probelms I have personally had with shadowrun, and that I've heard other mention on dumpshock. Without the ability to project it removes the nessecity of wards esp. for the purpose of keeping spirits and sustained spells out. This would mean that a building could still be secure without spending several million nuyen a year to hire a team of mages to reward the damn place every 366 days. Also with so many mundane ways, and even magical with the use of spells like clairyonance and audiance, it seems rather unbalanced to given the awaken one more way to circumvent mundane security.
It seems to me that the lose of just projection is not overly limiting, since it does not interfere with the rest of a mage's ability: spell casting, summoning, aura readings, etc... On the other hand it prevents the awakened from having their way with any installtion that is unable to afford massive magical security.

Unfortunately you still need all that magical security otherwise spirits (free or conjured) will be able to bypass your security just as easily as astral mages did.

The amount of magical talent being wasted on security is a concern to me as well

Edward

I've thought about this too, but it does limit the mage in other ways. One thing you might want to try is just making it easier to protect buildings; just say that FAB is cheap enough to put in all of a building's exterior walls, or that there is a genengineered biofabric that can be cheaply strung over a building's walls, or that wards last longer (so a company can pay a mage a reasonable amount to refresh their wards every three months or so). Remember dual-natured paraanimals too.

Some places don't need astral security like that either. A big warehouse complex probably doesn't need astral security unless it is holding a lot of magic goods; normal items aren't going to show up on the astral plane, and a projecting magician can't see any labels or anything anyway. And if nothing is astrally active, it's not like the mage can cast spells on any of the guards or anything. In that situation, projection is useful for reconnaisance, but that's about it.

Another cheap method might be to build things in the sides of hills, to minimize astral exposure, as astral projection does not appear to work through living earth or rock. I can see "Nuveau Hobbit" becoming a popular architectural style.

I have never found Astral Projection to be a useful enough ability to make aspected magicians seem unworthwhile.