As with Vampire, there are charts that you sometimes don't want to continuously open your books for, so here they are as HTML documents and MS-Word (.doc) downloadables.

White Wolf has put out a Revised set of rules (Vampire 2nd. Revised) for Mage (and Werewolf). Overall they're pretty good (and realistically, as long as you have Vamp Revised and know the other game(s) well you could easily adapt the rules yourself). The costs have changed somewhat (and dramatically, especially at the lower levels).  for the full table (Vampires, Werewolves, and Mages). The old and new costs for Spheres get smaller and smaller as you progress in the particular trait (from 4th to 5th in a Sphere was 32pts, now it is 35).
 
In an e-mail to WW I asked about this and the answer was... well, .

Follow this link to an ever-growing discussion of why magic(k) is not dead and why the Traditions should not just surrender to the Technocracy, as some have posted in the newsgroups.

I've seen a few arguments over Magickal ranges vs. damage, and how mages must decide the range of their attack vs. the amount of damage done by said Effect. If you would refer to my Table, you'd see that Correspondence is the only thing affected by range. When rolling for damage (using Forces, for example) as long as the target is within sensory range (usually visual, but even taste would work) it gets affected fully by said Effect.

The Umbra

Here's an interesting question: if Technocratic science dictates that the umbra is some sort of inter dimensional plane which connects our plane (Earth) to all of the others (Realms), would this not defeat the purpose of strengthening the Gauntlet? After all, the more we advance scientifically, the more inter dimensional travel becomes commonplace, and the easier it would be to [unknowingly] interact with umbral spirits. Not a good thing, methinks.

Destroying Avatars

Once all Sleeper Avatars are destroyed, aside from pissing everybody off and possibly causing a cataclysm, would this not make magick exceptionally easier to perform? Would it not completely destroy sleeper influence on paradigms? Furthermore, would it not [almost] completely remove the threat of Paradox and Unbelief?

Okay, according to Mage 2nd Edition (and all of the books after that until #24... so far), this is what reality is all about. These are the foundations of reality, from the beginning. Neither the Traditions nor the Technomancers nor anybody else made these. Mages can change these, of course (they do manipulate reality), but they have always been here, regardless of who defined what the hell they are.
1. The Earth is round and orbits the Sun. It didn't just 'shift' one day because Copernicus said so (although 1st edition says this, it is contradicted in 2nd ed).
2. Gravity.
3. Dinosaurs.
4. Sand.
5. Water.
6. Dirt.
And on, and on. You get the idea.

Here's something that's never been explained to [my] full satisfaction; why can't mages be immortal? If you have any ideas (backed by official book stuff), please let me know. Until then, here're some interesting points for you to ponder -- keep in mind that these points assume the mage in question has the appropriate Spheres and, more importantly, the desire to see every loved one die of old age.
• Life 3 would allow permanent physical alterations, such as looking nicer, being stronger, etc. It also allows you to re-shape your body into looking different (black, white, etc.). There's nothing that prevents you from reaching 40 and then using a simple, permanent Effect to change to 20 and start the cycle over again.
• The Sphere of Time should allow you to age very, very slowly, if at all.
• Entropy ought to allow your body to age but not decay... so it should allow your body to not age.
• If you really wanted to be flashy, you could use Life 5 to create a soulless body, and then use Mind to transfer yourself into it once every couple of decades. Since you are not appropriating someone else's body, no annoying umbral spirits should come along to bug you for not dying.
• Mind and Entropy mixed together should keep you from losing your mind (see below) for quite a long while -- on the order of many centuries (millenia, honestly).
• Paradox should never set in if you're really old, as "Horizon" indicates (one permanent point per 50 years after 150), and here's why; reality's supposed to get upset over the fact that you've been around too long, however, it doesn't seem to mind having three or four HIT Marks running around until they "go vulgar" (sprouting an extra arm, whipping out the chain guns, etc.). Keep in mind that if you saw someone walking down the street that looked 30, you'd not think "Maybe he's 400 years old... I wonder." and there'd be no external (or internal, for that matter) indication to contradict your nice little Effect, so there's no real reason why you couldn't just walk around forever. The paradigm says you cannot be immortal, but it also does not support cyborgs (regardless of what some STs say).

• Just like Vampires, mages die and therefore the "old" population would be kept low... if young mages had any real reason to kill old mages (it's not like they can diablerize the old man). This is the only hole in my 'issue' on immortality and it only deals with game balance -- a very old mage would be able to teach many secrets and would therefore be cherished and protected far more than some dusty, anachronistic Methuselah. Besides, when 'pops', as the younger chantry members call him, has the power to level mountains...

Here's something to take to your fellow players/STs; in Techno realms (Constructs, to the uninitiated) tech-magick is coincidental and all other forms are vulgar. This makes sense, as it's exactly opposite in Tradition realms. Now, what the books hint at (especially "The Book of Worlds") is that all forms of Tradition magick would be vulgar in constructs, which does not work right. See if you can follow me; constructs have a set paradigm of super-science, based entirely on our earthbound paradigm of science which permits coincidences, therefore some magick that is coincidental on earth should work just fine in constructs, albeit it would be far more tightly controlled.
    The reason I bring this up is because, in science, there's theory and there's fact, and the simple truth is that they almost never jive 100% with each other, so what should happen and what does happen can vary slightly (at the very least).

I'll begin by saying that the book is excellent. Just like "Dark Ages", it really delivers the medieval/early renaissance world in ways that, quite honestly, put all high-school text books to shame. Spheres are left unchanged (if it ain't broke...) except for some of their names.
    Now, onto the rants:
1. Paradox (Scourge) is dramatically different. It is now beneficial as well as malign, and depending on circumstances having a 16-die backlash can bring about miracles of gargantuan proportions. Scourge is fairly similar to karma in M:tSC. My problem; why did this change in 500 years? It's far too radical for unbelief (MtA) to be the cause, especially since MtSC actually deals with it and it's effects ('coincidental' magicks that become 'vulgar' from one day to the next and so forth).
2. Other creatures (Vamps & so forth) can now countermagick!!! How in the hell do you explain countering True Magick?!? What the hell is the difference now between it and hedge magic (other than the fact that it's dynamic)? I truly believe that someone just wimped out at WW and decided it was unfair that the others had no defense against True Magick (other than dodging the lightning bolts). In order to counter, however, the creature has to have some type of magical knowledge (one or more dots in either Thaumaturgy or Gnosis).
•  Mages are now officially the weakest of all the WoD creatures. a) they are mortal, b) they cannot soak aggravated damage, c) their powers are not guaranteed to work, unlike everybody else, d) their powers can be countered by creatures that can actually use magic more than once per turn, and e) their Arete is now going up against the Wits + Occult rating of their opponent (which will generally be higher).
3. After picking up "Crusade Lore" (the game screen and add-on for the main rulebook), I'm even more disgusted at how wimpy mages are! The whole feel of the book was "Well, we have rocking powers but we need to be careful out there," which I completely agree with (MtA had this tone, and it worked quite well) "and everything and everyone we deal with can mop the floor with us." which just doesn't work. Besides, in the era of High Magick (MtSC), considering MtA's attitude, Mages should have had egos second to none (save that of Vampires). Consider; that all-powerful Elder (vampire) can be turned into a turd with the snap of a finger without Paradox setting in, and even if it does chances are that it will be beneficial, and you can see my point.
Well after all these rants, I should probably let you all know that I LOVE playing Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage. I just hate to see a really cool group of supernaturals get shafted in such a way.