I have identified another problem with Adept creation with low essence, to try to duplicate Raven's issue, i created an adept with an essence of 1.5 using option D for magic. First off, Magic attribute can never go below 0. Yes when using special attribute points in character creation you have to buy up lost magic attribute points to "above" 0 if you want a magic attribute above 0 before the final step, but
In character creation the spending of Karma for skills and attributes is the only step that actually has an order in creation, it comes last after all other steps are completed, meaning that the essence loss has already taken effect lowering your magic maximum as well as your current magic to a min of 0... however if you have karma to spend in this step (like what I believe Raven did) the karma cost should be treated as if you are raising magic from 0 to 1 for a cost of 5 karma.
Now the problem I discovered was in trying to work around this issue. instead of spending the Karma in character creation, I saved 5 karma to spend after finalizing the character. When I started the character with a magic of 0 and what should have been a max magic of 1, It listed my max magic at 0 and would not allow me to raise it. This, fortunately for the cyber mages among us, is not how it works.
If your Magic is reduced to zero, you can no longer use any skill requiring the Magic attribute, even if your maximum Rating is still greater than zero (but you can still raise the attribute with Karma and then get back to the spellslinging).
I further experimented with an existing character that was made with cyber and had both a magic (From special attribute points) and a max of 4, when raising to 5 after initiating, I was being charged 35 karma as raising magic from 6 to 7, which would have been the case without the magic loss. The cost should be based on the current magic rating, not what it would have been without the loss.