I don't know if this factored into Lormyr's character, but most Chicago campaign magicians made heavy use of the "Working for the People" rule unique to SRM.
Employed to the fullest allowable amount, of course. I was surprised it was allowed to remain in any form for Neo-Tokyo, it's poor for balance.
If your GM let you walk around with perfect rolls force 1 quickened spells without any disruption then quickening quickly becomes very very powerful (game breaking even).
It was a Missions characters, so all hits were bought. Quickening by itself, with bought hits, is very strong. Once you factor in a combination of the breadth of spells in the game, assisted casting from spirits, and/or rolling hits as opposed to buying them it is most certainly game breaking.
Quickened spell attached to your aura will be immediately obvious for any astral observers. They don't even need to take a test to notice it.
Yep, subtlety was out the window for that PC. He also ended with a 10 or 11 public awareness.
Regularly walking around with active spells should attract unwanted attention. You should be singled out in a crowd. You should be asked to drop your active spells when walking into establishments. Local authorities should pull you to the side and run SIN verification checks on your fake magic license connected to your fake SIN (often).
This was pretty easy to get around with SINs, licenses, social skills from the party, and the occasional bribe. Also there was that force 18 water spirit glowering over my shoulder.
If you on a regular basis walk around with quickened spells then astral entities should try to dispel your quickened spells on a regular basis.
Clever GMs, like Ray, targeted my foci from time to time, and I would occasionally shut those down for safety. Since I could easily survive the drain from casting spells at maximum force, I routinely did that for the ones I quickened, so dispelling them was pretty well outside the realm of mathematical possibility. Counsterpelling + Magic vs. force + magic + karma invested in quickening, then soaking the drain of the spell regardless of how it goes, is just not economic in any regard. In my case it was 37 dice resisting the dispelling at the end.
If you are constantly walking around with active magic then you should also constantly need to worry about wards. You can't even walk into a bar without passing through a magic ward.
I find the bar example unrealistic and excessive (unless we're talking class A and B neighborhoods), but other than that little nit pick, yep. There was more than one occasion I waited outside while the team talked, or said fuck it and just broke the ward and strolled through with stealth out the window.
The tools are there. Its up to the GM to use them. Shrug.
I had it a bit easier due to the confines of Missions gaming, but let me tell you, every exceptional GM I played with that knew my character made my licensing and social life appropriately difficult every chance they got.
I've 3 Missions PCs, and the other 2 are mundane. I'm not saying I recommend playing this way, but I did have a lot of fun both building and playing it.
Sure, it's clear he's very high karma (however he came by them). But if you look at that sheet as a library of multiple techniques, they don't all need sky-high karma to pull off. A mage could get quickening and a couple of attribute buff spells for, what, 30 karma or so? One initiation plus the spells (if they don't already have them) plus 1 karma Quickening on each.
And that is the point. The character had over a 1,000 karma at the end, which just makes the example stupider, but you don't need anywhere near that to hit the "I can't die unless you target me with a deity or character exceptionally outside of my karma total" point. A centering foci, 4 initiations, 6 or spells, and a handful of karma for quickening. The build goes off around 75-100 earned karma.
