I have always liked the underlying concept of SR magic in that you could cast spell till your head imploded. No mana or casting count to track, no memorization/preperation. Cast gently and you can cast all day. Push the magic too hard and it pushes back. Cast two (or more!) spells simultaneously and it's risky but can theoretically be done. Plus many targetting ranges are defined by true LOS. Nice, no need to get out the tape measure plus provides the limitations to curb magic in a techno world.

These are all, is my opinion, prime examples of the rules defining the setting. If they aren't in SR4, in some form, I can't see how that wouldn't constitute a setting change. So I'm going to assume they are there. But beyond that, what needs reworking?

0) Spell descriptions fleshed out. Wowsers does it need this. Those things were always so difficult to interpret, both effects, targetting, resistance, etc. Also how the spells interacted with other effects and objects in the 6th world. Spell interactions, there are none defined. This is linked to #1.
1) What the Force of a spell means. The way Force influenced the activity and effectiveness of a spell varied widely leading to overpowered Force 1 spells (for example Improved Invisibility).
2)
3) Resisting spells. This needed some clarifications, but this all changes to the new mechanism.
4) Spell defense, though I guess this is going to be redone anyway since the Spell Pool is dead. Just is it really bugged me how Spell Defense worked. It's hard to put in words, can someone else take a shot at putting my issues into words?
5) Group casting. In the past this seemed....just....ill defined. I think this could be redefined with a mechanism small enough to put into the BBB. Whether it will be or held onto till a Magic extensions book? *shrug*
6) Ritual magic. Creating a link seems too easy, and yet too hard. It seemed to lack degrees success that you find in other areas of SR, thus having the same failings as other systems that have a strong boolean pass/fail *cough*D20 scrying*cough*. That whole thing is a mess. Not sure they can fix it and still fit it into the BBB though.
7) The Ways. This turned into a jumbled mess of fluff with no crunch, making it hard to ajudicate in a fair manner that still allowed real differences in playing. It was like getting different beers from a major brewery; Different labels on the outside, but the stuff inside all tasted the same.
8 ) Adepts...addressed in another thread, but what do you think needs to be in the BBB vs. MitS4? I hope they have a full rule set layed out the BBB is a coherent core of what they later release instead of contradicting.
9) Spirits & elementals. Hmmm, these worked ok I think. Maybe they need a brush up on the powers descriptions, and better fluff on how the powers appear.
10) Foci. Any thoughts here?
11) Initiation. No way this will get proper treatment in the BBB, but looking forward to MitS4 what do you think about Masking etc. requiring Grades? What about progression of the Magic attribute? Should Initiation be unlinked from learning meta-magics? I think there is good things in that direction.

Well, I'd say that unless they can keep the party who was responsible for the last incarnation of the SR3 FAQ as far away from the development of the Magic chapter as possible, they need to assign Invisibility to the same dustbin of implausible spells not worthy of current editions that they put Turn to Goo into.

And the book that you refer to as MitS4 does have a name. It's called Street Magic.

Invisibility is just so damn useful and pertinent to shadowrunners I don't see how you can remove it, even if it is just a headache-inducing spell if you think about it.

I would also enjoy it very much if the Hermetic stuff from SOTA64, and more, made it straight into the basic rules. Hermetics deserve to have differant flavours and bonus/penalties like shamans do. It'll make it more fun.

In general magic has been one of the things that has changed a huge amount between editions (although you could say the matrix rule changes at least rival it but nobody really plays deckers anyway ) so until we have some vague ideas of how the awakened ruleset works at all there it is very difficult to anticipate changes.

However there are numerous areas that will hopefully be addressed between the editions. So here are my responses to you points one by one.

0)Spell descriptions: fewer spells with good descriptions and clear examples about problem spells would be a massive improvement. Considering starting characters generally have a pretty limited grimoire at start keeping the initial grimoire to 20-40 well described spells would be a very good start.

1) Force in terms of scalability definitely needs to be addressed. Having spells like improved invisibility 6 offers nothing over force 1 II but increased drain is a major flaw.

2) What 2

3 and 4) Resisting spells should be described better and clear diferentiations between awakened and mundane spell resistance should be highlighted

5 and 6) Ritual casting and really do we need a seperate mechanic for ritual and group castin need some major revisions to jive with the new dice mechanic unless you are going to have truly monstrous pools. I'm sorry but if people have to roll alot more than 20 d6s in any given test they tend to cry murder.

8 ) Adepts probably need a decent amount of revision just to fit with the new ruleset but I think people might be very happy with definitely revising the geasa rules for adepts significantly

9 ) While the core book needs spirits and other critters (although I debate the need to dragons to show up in the core book because well they are more high end threats than spirits) I think they should focus on making them easier to use for novice gamers by making them a bit more prepackaged.

10) Foci well considering there seems to be significant changes in the base mechanics I figure foci will likely be significantly changed but I really can't see any of them being dropped in the new edition (although depending on how spellcasting looks power foci might be way too powerful).

11) Initiation fortunately this will wait until the street magic book comes out so we will get to see the base system before we get to see how much this needs to change.

Some areas of my own concerns

Focus more on hermetic and shamanic traditions even if it means the alternate traditions get shafted to a small extent. While voodoun and the other paths have thier place in the system the base book and street magic should likely assume that the game is centered in North America or Western Europe. Perhaps for the various alternate paths they can be covered in great detail in regional specific books?

Yeah. Rename Invisibility to Conceal, and put in a note that "at high levels of Force, this spell renders the target effectively invisible" and you have a solution.

Why even have forces for spells? It's not like it's going to change your target number any more. It's not even like it will change the number of dice you roll, unless each spell is a separate skill (and then it still wouldn't be a force, it would be your skill in that spell with magic as the linked attribute and no sorcery skill at all).

Without variable TNs, the concept of force is invalid as we know it. There's almost no way to rescue it intact.

So I think spells will be binary things--you know them or you don't. Since I can't see how there's going to be a power/damage distinction either, I think if you want to do more damage you just throw more dice into your attack roll, or get guaranteed successes (unless the spell fails), in exchange for having to soak more damage.

For some spells, there can still be quantity of success distinction (e.g. you will levitate faster with more successes, presumably). In others, perhaps not (e.g. a detect truth spell, once successful, probably can't distinguish levels of truth).

Do I like this? No, not really. I think it will suck out much of the diversity and interest in the spell system (do you cast a 6L damaging spell or a 3D one?). But to me, it seems like the natural extension of what they've said so far.

Good point.

Force as a success cap on spellcasting rolls?

That's complicated and unnecessary. You probably won't have enough dice to get piles of successes--why cap them?

Well, if you wanted to retain the idea of levels of power in a magical spell. The difference between Force 1 and Force 4 would still be significant; the difference between 12 and 15 less so, except for extremely superhuman spellcasters.

The idea of differently powerful versions of a given spell has been with us since 1st edition (where, IIRC, spell Force was rolled instead of Sorcery when spellcasting). While that's no guarantee it's being retained considering what else is happening to the system, I would imagine that they've tried to represent this somehow in SR4.

A binary system, where you either know a spell or don't, smacks of D&D. It would constitute further loss of SR's "mechanical flavour". Obviously this guarantees nothing, but I'm inclined to imagine that such core aspects of a game's magical paradigm will be retained somehow.

In addition, it's an existing mechanic in SR3 that many spells, especially unresisted ones, have their effectiveness capped by Force. It would be a sensible and, IMO, straightforward way to carry that mechanical flavour to a new core mechanic.

Force could also be the 'skill' that you use for that spell. Force 6 Invisibility lets you roll another six dice at the casting (I've fallen a bit behind on the magic discussion, so if this is in error, oops).

Yes. IIRC, that's how it worked in (at least one) earlier edition of SR.

It does make the Sorcery skill rather useless, though, assuming there is one.

It's simpler to keep sorcery and drop force. For some spells (e.g. damaging spells) you may want some mechanism to increase damage at the cost of increased drain to avoid a profusion of identical spells with different damage properties, but there's no real reason to make this universal--just go off of successes for most things. For things like dispelling, you could undo successes instead of reducing force.

I don't really agree that there is no place for spell Force in SR4. My "solution" of making spell Force a cap on successes does everything that your hypothetical mechanic does, and retains the difference between a Force 1 spell and a Force 6 spell.

However, this discussion has definitely drifted into the land of "talking about things we made up". Neither of us have evidence to back up our positions, so I suggest we wait for the next FAQ update.

I more than a bit leery about dropping force as it seems pretty critical as a multiplier for success on stuff like range and length of effect as well as determing drain. While you don't absolute need it to have a successful design it does allow for greater granularity in magic design.

I'm not sure what you guys are assuming at the current time for the rules but I tend to assume that sorcery will be something like magic + sorcery skill vs TN 5.
Maybe force can be applied as bonus dice to the test?

So while most of the time a street mage might be comfortable using a Force 1 manabolt against the mooks there are definitely going to be times when they will want to use that force 6 manabolt against targets with heavy spell resistance.