It's been 3 weeks, but I don't think that's necroing yet. I'd rather keep this thread up than make another SR topic that'll die after 2-3 replies, if that.

So my group is starting up Shadowrun after nearly 2 years away from it (focusing on D&D instead), most of us are starting new characters, but one guy is carrying over his character from last time. As a result, we get to start with some bonus karma to compensate.

I was originally going to do a melee mage (with a handful of touch range spells, and a melee weapon), but one of the other party members decided he wanted to do an unarmed adept, so I decided to switch it up, and will instead be doing a regular old mage, and am considering a focus on summoning.

But like I mentioned, it's been a couple of years since I played, so a lot of little details and quirks are lost to my memory. So I'm looking for any general advice. Particularly in terms of what spirits/spirit powers might be useful (as that's something I had relatively little knowledge of even when I was playing regularly, my group usually focused on the spellcasting end of things), and ideas on what the most efficient use of 39 karma after the initial 400bp would be (Honestly considering just spending it on a initiation group and initiating a few times). I know saving bp on specializations and buying those with the karma is better, but anything else that would be better to spend karma on?

Also, given that we have the option to take "bonus power point" in place of a metamagic(think this was an optional rule from SM), would it be worth it to go mystic adept rather than mage? (basically trading out the astral stuff for the ability to pick up other cool things for karma).