[Hobbes]

Whether Quickening is a trap option is entirely dependent on your GM. If you have a lenient GM or are playing in a high-powered game where large dice pools are acceptable, then Quickening is the fastest and easiest way to make the leap to Prime Runner. (A good teammate should be quickening Combat Sense on everyone, not just themselves.)

But if your GM is playing things tightly in terms of wards and background counts and other things that might pop the spells then Quickening can be a rabbit hole. Whether it is worth the multiple initiations becomes a question of opportunity cost and what else you want the character to be good at, which can be just as much of a question about fun as it is about effectiveness.

This.  In a game with background count and consistent magical security, Quickening is good, but not broken.  Lots of dice pool buffs, but any kind of Astral observer is likely to see you coming.  Quickening is very Pink Mohawk.  Magical equivalent to walking around in Swat Armor and Riot Shield. 

[Senko]

Given the difficulty of getting around mana barriers is Quickening Metamagic a trap for the black trenchcoat types? 

That & it turns into a massive Karma sink too since you keep wanting to learn more & more spells to "buff" yourself with.

I admit I can't quite keep real life out of my spell desires like wanting to quicken control temperature 10 degrees on a room after our 45 degree (celsius) days. Sure its not going to help in running but 6 karam (assuming you initiated for other reasons) to have a permanently cool living/bedroom mmmmmm.

[The Bald Man]

Given the difficulty of getting around mana barriers is Quickening Metamagic a trap for the black trenchcoat types? 

That & it turns into a massive Karma sink too since you keep wanting to learn more & more spells to "buff" yourself with.

I admit I can't quite keep real life out of my spell desires like wanting to quicken control temperature 10 degrees on a room after our 45 degree (celsius) days. Sure its not going to help in running but 6 karam (assuming you initiated for other reasons) to have a permanently cool living/bedroom mmmmmm.

In real life everyoen who could afford one would have a sleep regulator. 

[Tarislar]

That & it turns into a massive Karma sink too since you keep wanting to learn more & more spells to "buff" yourself with.

Well the minimum amount of Karma you spend per spell is 1. Anything else just gives a bonus to dispelling, which is nice fo course, but maybe not too often relevant.
So for 1 karma you can get the semi-permanent benefit of Wired Reflexes 3, or increase an attribute by 4 etc... That is EXTREMELY cheap.

Even if it only lasts for a while, and you have to recast it every month or so.

I think you completely missed what I said.  Let me emphasize above in bold for you.

Its not 1 Karma.  Its 6 Karma, you learn the spell, then you quicken it.  It adds up fast.
Unless you took nothing but buff spells at chargen which makes little sense since buff spells, while nifty for making you hard to kill, are not a very diverse & useful set up for a mage.

A "typical" buff gives you 4 dice for some test.  Nice, but not the kind of boost that Having or NOT Having Improved Invis, or Levitate, or Fire Ball, or Control Thoughts, or Physical Mask, or Heal, or Detect Enemies XR, or Fashion, or  .......... well you get the picture.

Buffs make you better "defensively", but short of some boosted Drain dice, they do very little to improve a mage "Offensively" the way more diverse spell selection & power foci do.

[Hobbes]

Improved Invisibility, Levitate, and Detect Enemies XR (especially Detect Enemies XR) are phenomenal spells to Quicken IMO.

[Tecumseh]

Again, consult with your GM. Some GMs might not allow on/off functionality for quickened spells. Quickening Improved Invisibility might permanently turn you into the invisible man ("Wells, not Ellison," in the most literary joke from the Mission Impossible franchise).

For example, I have Physical Mask quickened on a magician, with the understanding that the spell can be tweaked or "updated" to represent things like growing hair or changing makeup, but not to turn me into the T-1000 swapping identities on the fly.

As a GM, I like it when players communicate their intentions openly so that we can reach an agreement in advance about how something will be treated in-play.

[Senko]

Given the difficulty of getting around mana barriers is Quickening Metamagic a trap for the black trenchcoat types? 

That & it turns into a massive Karma sink too since you keep wanting to learn more & more spells to "buff" yourself with.

I admit I can't quite keep real life out of my spell desires like wanting to quicken control temperature 10 degrees on a room after our 45 degree (celsius) days. Sure its not going to help in running but 6 karam (assuming you initiated for other reasons) to have a permanently cool living/bedroom mmmmmm.

In real life everyoen who could afford one would have a sleep regulator.

I know I would.

On topic I'm not sure you can really count it as 6 karma unless you ONLY learnt the spell to quicken it and given the costs personally I only tend to learn spells that are character related e.g. purify fire or I'll be using a lot. The metamagic cost could count but that would spread across however many you cast so I agree the minimum cost to quicken a spell is really 1.

[Hobbes]

Again, consult with your GM. Some GMs might not allow on/off functionality for quickened spells. Quickening Improved Invisibility might permanently turn you into the invisible man ("Wells, not Ellison," in the most literary joke from the Mission Impossible franchise).

For example, I have Physical Mask quickened on a magician, with the understanding that the spell can be tweaked or "updated" to represent things like growing hair or changing makeup, but not to turn me into the T-1000 swapping identities on the fly.

As a GM, I like it when players communicate their intentions openly so that we can reach an agreement in advance about how something will be treated in-play.

Mana Static is your on/off switch.  But yes, Quickened Improved Invisibility turns you invisible all the time.  Quickened Physical Mask makes you look like someone else all the time.

Permanent Invisibility is only a problem if you don't have the right set up.  Trid Phantasm or Mana Static work as an on/off or as a *poof* here I am.  Or use an AR projection.  Lots of ways to cope depending on the expectations of who you're interacting with.

[Slipperychicken]

In real life everyoen who could afford one would have a sleep regulator.

Sleep regulator seems like something that would have some nasty side-effects down the road. Messing with your mind's ability to refresh itself is serious business.

Obviously the rules for a game about violent criminals (who lets face it are lucky if they last 10 sessions) aren't likely to dive into the long-term cognitive impacts, but a wageslave who plans on living to be 80+ years old might be concerned about those issues.

[Tarislar]

On topic I'm not sure you can really count it as 6 karma unless you ONLY learnt the spell to quicken it and given the costs personally I only tend to learn spells that are character related e.g. purify fire or I'll be using a lot. The metamagic cost could count but that would spread across however many you cast so I agree the minimum cost to quicken a spell is really 1.

There are very few spells that I quicken & then still cast a lot of the time.
Levitate is a good example of that, but the Attribute Buffs aren't, IMHO.  You basically learn them just to quicken them.

[Tarislar]

Improved Invisibility, Levitate, and Detect Enemies XR (especially Detect Enemies XR) are phenomenal spells to Quicken IMO.

DEXR is up there as my favorite quickened spell, and the one my GM most hates.
Ruins his fun of ambushing us.

Levitate is a great one since it doesn't have to be "on" all the time, I mean it is, but you don't HAVE to float,  you can set it to ground level.

I can't say as I've ever considered Invis short of blowing the 1 karma for an infiltration, but I doubt I'd leave it on the way your talking about.

[Hobbes]

Improved Invisibility, Levitate, and Detect Enemies XR (especially Detect Enemies XR) are phenomenal spells to Quicken IMO.

DEXR is up there as my favorite quickened spell, and the one my GM most hates.
Ruins his fun of ambushing us.

Levitate is a great one since it doesn't have to be "on" all the time, I mean it is, but you don't HAVE to float,  you can set it to ground level.

I can't say as I've ever considered Invis short of blowing the 1 karma for an infiltration, but I doubt I'd leave it on the way your talking about.

Improved Invisibility would not be an early choice for quickening for me either.  Detect Enemies, Detect Life, Clairvoyance (specifically lets you move it around), lots of stuff would be first.   

[Senko]

In real life everyoen who could afford one would have a sleep regulator.

Sleep regulator seems like something that would have some nasty side-effects down the road. Messing with your mind's ability to refresh itself is serious business.

Obviously the rules for a game about violent criminals (who lets face it are lucky if they last 10 sessions) aren't likely to dive into the long-term cognitive impacts, but a wageslave who plans on living to be 80+ years old might be concerned about those issues.

My feeling is there are none, or at least not now they've got the bugs out, it does describe itself as essentially compressing the amount of sleep so you sleep less time but more effectively. Of course for a runner there is the minor issue that it does warn (no mechanics though) you are likely to be far more deeply asleep and not as easy to wake during that time. Which in itself raises the interesting issue of wage slave needing only 3 hours of sleep a night vs wage slave needing 8 but being able to be on call as a phone/com call will wake them up. However that's another thread.

[Spooky]

Tarislar said: "Buffs make you better "defensively", but short of some boosted Drain dice, they do very little to improve a mage "Offensively" the way more diverse spell selection & power foci do."

my opinion is that the buff spells for reaction and intuition, combined with increase reflexes, all quickened,  make a mage almost unstoppably fast in combat, thus being very good at offense.

[firebug]

Don't forget things like Increase Agility, or even Increase Strength if you're that kind of mage.  Potentially also Quickening Analyze Device...  Let's also not discount that having massively increased defenses (Combat Sense, Deflection, Increase REA & INT) allows you to be more reckless and offensive.  Saying that buffs do little to improve one's offense is an ignorant statement.

You can say "it's only +4 dice", but in a game where starting dice pools are around 12, that's an increase of over 30%, which is significant.