*shrug* It's isn't so much just beating on mages specifically. It comes down to how dangerous the GM makes the world in general, and how big the Karma awards are. If it is very dangerous you tend to burn more Karma. That is the one thing that can actually keep the Karma Pool from taking over the game.

Of course the same sort of world makes it a lot tougher to have Grade 20+ initiates too.

Hard cap imposed by the designers.

And no, only because the mages tend not to find themselves getting dealt Deadly wounds. If they do, magic loss is the least of their concerns.

If the mages power increase comes from elsewhere is that really the end of all? Granted it does take a mind shift because names have changed.

I don't actually expect Magic to hard cap, but i've long liked to see much sharper diminishing return on karma spent than currently. It would be nice to have something other than the fine line of near-death be the main check for keeping Magic in the range of mortals.

In case you hadn't seen it i started a poll in the main DSF, since i'm curious about how this normally occurs. Dawnshadow's description is kinda what i'm used to. Well perhaps not quite that deadly, but close. Given that mage invincibility is tied to Magic, if the Magic doesn't take off then you tend to continue to sit in around that low double digits...until you die.

To put it as bluntly as possible: I can't, and I won't, discount that possibility so long as it remains an open question.

Yes it's possible. Just as it is also quite possible that it would be good thing.

A cap on the Magic attribute is not nessasarily a total cap on magic.

Bah, that is merely a pesimistic contruct from a mind corrupted by playing SR1.

I don't think you'll see less dice within a roll at all. I wouldn't be surprised to see 20% or so more dice. The loss of all those pool dice is likely to be easily offset by the extra dice from Attributes and die count modifiers. If they still have Complementary skills that add dice you could be rolling quite the fistful at times. In SR3 you could be rolling 18+ dice, including complementary dice, with brand new PC.

As far as less rolls, that seems to me an obvious place to "streamline" the rules. It would be part of removing steps in the mechanics. SR3 vehicle combat has what, more than a dozen steps?

EDIT: BTW, not to rain too hard on your idealistic parade, but the below suggestion just gives me the giggles every time i see it. SR3 basically is a collection of house rules tacked onto SR1/SR2 arranged in various levels of options. Heavy odds that the spagetti of SR3 would be nothing compared to what you'd be fighting through with legions of volunteers rehashing and building upon such an unstable base.

So? Aren't there enough people here already who are willing to accept and/or assert that?

LOL, well it certainly can seem absent from your posts.

I guess it succeeded then, for me at least.

actually it's their shadowrun and they can do with it what they want. Just like Ted turner when he tried to colorize many classic black and white films. When people protested he said "the last time I checked, they were my movies."

He did it, he chortled over what he had done, and didn't understand why no one was watching them after the first couple, and most of the money he put out was not...appreciated, by the general public. A few weeks ago they released They Died with Their Boots on strangely, no one wanted the colorized version.

I've already invested enough in a system that works for me and my group. From the posts put out by the advocates for the system, they will have the core book and you can buy the suppliments you want- magic, guns, cars etc and then, oh hey, wait, we did that with the 2nd ed and the 3rd ed and I'm not doing it all over again unless someone can convince me why I should.

I've posted else where and will repeat here "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The fact that the core rules and concepts of SR work fine is shown by the fact the RPG is over 16 years old. How many other RPG's have that longevisty of still being in print and development?
Traveller? Gamma World? Snit's Revenge? (I really dated myself there kids). D&D was languishing and needed to be revitalized, there is no evidence of this in SR.

ok, a wrap up book as to what's gonig down would actually save me from even buying the 4th ed book to keep apace with the world development. I'll probabnly keep buying the informational stuff but not the game mechanics.

Probably presented in the same way as the two campaigns, but much more world-shaking, i guess (hey, the contain the next matrix crash!).