I haven't used any of this yet either. This is basically my first draft. What made me look at the essence costs was the actions of two of my players. Both are old buddies that played 2nd and 3rd ed with me. They wanted to make old school chrome sams but didn't see the point when they could make better Sams using heavy bioware. Both of them Used Synaptic booster 2 specifically for the essence saving. The price was so close that it didn't matter to them but they didn't like feeling like they were pushed by the mechanics to use Bioware. They felt forced to pick mechanics over flavor just to be competitive with the Mystic adept.
