In Shadowrun 4th edition a mystic adept had to decide which part of his magic attribute was for wizard and which for adept, thus if one had Magic 6 he could have been the equivalent of a 2 magic adept and a 4 magic wizard.
Now in SR 5 the rules for magicians are quite changed, and I haven't found any such rule. Thus the question: is the magic attribute still split, or is a mystic adept with magic attribute 5 a magic 5 adept and a magic 5 wizard at the same time?
Best Answer
There is only 1 magic attribute in SR 5 and it's used for adept powers and other applications of the magic attribute (e.g. spellcasting). There aren't any rules indicating something else. There are some restrictions for mystic adepts, however:
mystic adepts buy power points(PP) for 5 karma each at character creation
mystic adepts can't astrally project and need to by a adept power to astrally percieve
mystic adepts don't get PPs when they increase the magic attribute; they need to buy PPs as metamagic, if they want to get additional power points. That means even if they buy all the PPs they can get, they are still get less PPs than adepts and also don't gain the benefit of other metamagics a magician/adept would buy when initiating.
(they can also "gain some additional PPs", if they choose a way (Streetgrimoire), but at most
floor((magic attribute)/2) * 0.5 <= (magic attribute) / 4PPs)a mystic adept only gains 1 of the Adept/Magican advantages of a mentor spirit, not both
buying magic in the Magic or Resonance column of the priority system is more expensive than for adepts, which means they'll most likely get less Edge and/or Magic at character creation