Ok, back in 2nd and 3rd edition, I had little problem biting the bullet and taking 1 point worth of Cyberware for mages..Cyber eyes with Image mag and thermo, a data jack, bit of memory and a display link, a Smart Link, maybe a Camera.

Now, I keep thinking: I have to pay for my magic, so, if I go with the standard of 5, and take that Essence Hit from Cyber, I end up with a Magic of only 4(which, I think, is still viable?). Is there something more that I am missing? Some hidden costs in the new rules that mean if I make a hermetic with Cyber/Bio in a token amount, I am more screwed then I think? Or is it still every bit as viable as it used to be to have the small hit to Magic, and still be quite effective as a magical person in the team?

Nope, in fact if you're a combat mage you'd better do it otherwise you'll get bent over by vision penalties when targetting on the physical plane.  Mages actually need cybereyes more than sammies, since sammies can just use goggles if they want...

You can still have a point of cyber/bio and be effective on the team, though 4 magic isn't really that high but its pretty effective.

With a spellcasting skill of 5 your rolling 9 dice for your spells roughly 3 sucesses. So if your firing off a manabolt you'd be doing 6P for damage, though even with edge the highest you could get it up to 7P, thats unless of course you overcast.

 
Magic 5 spellcasting 5 rolls 10 dice, same amount of successes as before with 3. Manabolt damage would be 7P, if you edge it you can take it up to 9P.


Personally I like a magician to have a little bit of cyber but with the nature of ware being affordable now and having to buy your magic its something I consider to be an after CG purchase. 

Mages do just fine by taking a pinch of cyberware, especially if they're logic drain. I had a stupidly powerful combat mage who had the following 'ware: Cerebral Booster 2, Alpha Platelet Factories, a Pain Editor and Alpha rating 2 Cybereyes. So, for a single point of essence loss he got this:

• Three extra Drain resistance dice with the Editor activated, 2 without.
• The ability to keep slinging stun drain spells with impunity even if his Stun track says he should be unconscious.
• Instant damage reduction when subjected to more than a single point of damage. In my group, (and imo, by the RAW) this includes Drain.
• The ability to cope better when facing vision penalties.

Honestly, when you're a combat rather than utility mage, that's pretty bloody awesome, because Force matters as much as hits for determining raw damage potential, so the extra resistance dice pays off quickly. And the second you face vision penalties you're actually coming out ahead on the spellcasting test vs. the full essence mage unless they blow a simple action to switch to astral perception, a move that also applies penalties to all purely physical tasks until they switch back (including defense tests!).

I like that setup Whipstitch, I'd have gone with a trauma damper over a platelet factory but thats just me, or if you could figure out a way to get both you could overcast nearly everything and not have to worry to much about it specially with the pain editor.


Actually never mind was just reading up on the trauma damper and it doesn't work with an active pain editor.

Who's next? Platinum, Iridium, Neptonium?

Yeah, the Trauma Damper wasn't in yet when I was running him. I'm still not sure I'd take it over the factories for sure though; the Damper's really expensive (I took the factories at chargen to shoot for an editor asap once in play) and doesn't work properly when the Editor is activated, which kind of sucks.

Yeah the editor+factories (if they work with stun damage and I see no information they don't) is a good combo. For drain on just a human you could be throwing 15 dice with the editor and cerebral booster 2.

So basically force 6 spells even at F/2 +2 don't even register and anything bigger you can always fetish and then have the pain editor and platelet factory to negate anything that slips by.

My favorite was Force 6 Fetished Stunballs. If they didn't appear to have counterspell support I would sometimes try multi-casting and "overlapping" the effects. It's pretty easy to take out an entire goon squad that way with a li'l luck. It helped that I had a good combat spell focus and Mentor Spirit + Combat specialization by that point. I'd split the dicepool unevenly too so at least one of the Balls was likely to stick. Honestly, with how feeble my character's physical stats were, I'd say it was more accurate to call him an Artillery Mage rather than a Combat Mage, but he really could do stupidly powerful amounts of damage in cramped areas.