I remember a thread in here some weeks ago about how to handle a character starting out awakened, but not a magician, and various steps between there and fully trained as a magician. Does anybody have any results of that discussion or links to sites that provide character creation and karma upgrade rules for running such a character?
See, I'd had an interesting thought of playing a game with characters 'not quite shadowrunners as of yet' but learning the trade or in related fields and transitioning to it. I'm thinking it'd be fun to play a novice mage in such a circumstance.

-JL

Eh - there were house rules buried in the thread, but the general response was "oh hell no."

Bad experiences with power munchkins have ruined the concept.

Although nothing prevents you from buying magic at CG and simply not spending points on spells and magical skills.

-Siege

I agree with Siege's post. Simpler is better when you don't need complexity.

Keep in mind, you will save points compared to a full-fledged starting mage. A normal mage has to buy conjuring: 6 and sorcery: 6 (this is a bare-bones build without things like aura reading or enchanting), then spend 25 spell points on spells and/or foci. Someone starting out with the ability but not the knowledge won't buy those two skills and can turn in those 25 spell points for 5 extra build points. So, you are effectively spending 17 less points than a "normal" starting mage. On the other hand, it will take you about 85 Karma points to get to the equivalent of that "starting" mage, so this is really only suitable for a campaign like yours, with nothing but similarly gimped characters.

only 5bp? ouch.

Here's a discussion thread from last November on the topic

I got around the concept by buying the magic, giving the character the spells and that, and having them not realise that they were magically aware until they were in a high-stress situation (which can be worked in quite nicely with shamans) and accidentally had one of the spells cast itself. (getting the gm to roll the dice and the drain for this is fun.) it means that you may have to buy a new contact who can teach you about all this stuff pretty damn quickly, or that you create a contact in char gen that your character hasn't met yet (or better yet, just write in the words "gm decision" and leave it at that)

Anyway, it's possible, but probably best off to put the points in but make sure the player plays the character as a mundane and let the 'awakening' be a gm decision.

Becoming Awakened is also a SURGE option isn't it?

Its a very limited form. You can only percieve astrally and use enchanting.

How 'bout BeCKS?
Want to be a full mage? 90 karma. Maybe put 60 down at first and just be aspected for a while then pick up the rest when you have 30 more to spare? Of course, that doesn't include the cost of the relevant skills you'll need, or the karma to learn spells.
note: BeCKS was not, by my understanding, intended to be used exactly that way, but it does give good karma equivalent values to starting priorities other than the two that can be bought with karma. (attributes and skills)
I'm sure you could break the abilities down even further, but that should give you a good metric to keep you on track. Basically, if you want to have an already balanced character pick up magical ability as a new thing, it's going to have to be a main theme in a long campaign. At least a couple hundred karma. Sounds like a fun idea, though.