I've been thinking. A lot of people who complained about SOTA: 64 were complaining that basically anything a mundane can get, a magician can get, and more. It seems to me the logical solution is making a way for a mundane to access magic in a limited way, reversing the trend a bit.

My thought is Mundane Foci. Dunkelzahn mentioned them in his will, they've had a few years to work on them. It's time for them to appear.

When using a mundane spell or conjuring Foci roll die equal to it's rating. Drain is resisted as normal, but essence is used in place of the magic attribute in deciding if the drain is physical. Mundanes have no spell pool unless they have also bonded a power foci and are using it. Mundanes never suffer from foci addiction as they quite obviously have no magic to use. Mundanes also cannot bond the "Advanced" foci such as shielding or centering foci (Maybe in SOTA 66). Finally awakened cannot use mundane foci any more than mundanes can use magician foci, the hardware is wrong.

Otherwise mundane foci act exactly as normal ones.

Meh. I'm half-expecting somebody to come up with a way to allow anybody to use Weapon Foci. Granted, then you'd have all kinds of people yelling about how SR is becoming too much like D&D. (Which I'm sure some would with your Foci as well.)

Personally, I perfer the idea of awakened bioware for giving mundanes magical abilities.

Well, not to derail the topic but SotA64 also makes mentions of Charms made by aspected (called traditional) witches, which are mostly a type of anchoring foci and similar sold to mundanes.

One problem is that mundanes cannot bond foci, at all. I would require an intermediary between the foci and mundane. A spirit, something like Imps only controlled or bound to the focus, might work.

There was shadowtalk in relation to trying to isolate and mimic awakened properties in bioware. If it works, it would probably start with sensory enhancements. From there, I expect it would work as a weaker form of some critter powers. Since the process wolud be implanting foreign magical material, I suggest that it have a greater penalty on most awakened individuals. Possibly count them as permanently active foci, so that they apply their limits to both the foci count and the foci addiction rate. I have little advice on how much bio index and force index any such things should take, but it seems like the next stage from the tech side toward closing the mana-gap.

There was a discussion on TSS about Magical Bioware.

Considering that SURGE can already make a non-magical character obtain a magic point of one and also gain astral perception, aura reading skill ability, enchanting ability, and the ability to make wards and bind foci, I really don't think there is a need to push the mundanes further with magic use. They can already purchase anchored spells and do what they absolutely need, so if they really feel inferior, make anchored stuff more accessible for them. Simple solution.

It is curious why its mentioned in Dunkie's will though. As a Great, and one who was around in the ages prior to the current magical age, I tend to think he might have known that it was not only possible for mundanes to possess a focus of the type referred to, but inevitable. We all know that the writers are going to continue developing the magical aspects of the world as time progresses. It seems a natural progression to keep unveiling elements hinted at in some of the key SR sourcebooks that have already been published.