[Chalkarts]

I just need to see if the way i'm explaining it is correct.

If I want a character to start with essence 2 then his maximum magic rating is 2, but to achieve that rating I'd still have to buy her up to 6 magic to compensate for the lost essence?

[PiXeL01]

No, only actual rating matters. So going from 0-2 magic as long as your maximum magic rating is 2+ will cost you 15 karma.

[Iron Serpent Prince]

If I want a character to start with essence 2 then his maximum magic rating is 2, but to achieve that rating I'd still have to buy her up to 6 magic to compensate for the lost essence?

No, just up to rating 2.

If your Magic is reduced to zero, you can no longer use any skill requiring the Magic attribute, even if your maximum Rating is still greater than zero (but you can still raise the attribute with Karma and then get back to the spellslinging).

EDITed: to fix brain fart.

[Michael Chandra]

I just need to see if the way i'm explaining it is correct.

If I want a character to start with essence 2 then his maximum magic rating is 2, but to achieve that rating I'd still have to buy her up to 6 magic to compensate for the lost essence?

It's a bit of a loophole, but technically you can start with magic that becomes 'negative' due to the essence loss and then is capped at 0, then buy back up to 2 afterwards, all in chargen.

[Chalkarts]

I;m working on a heavily cybered former mage street sam that can counterspell super well.

[Michael Chandra]

If you oversummon Force 4 Guardian Spirits they can Magical Guard and wield a gun to lay down suppressive fire. =) Or horribly fail at firing grenades at the right spots, making combat a living hell for party, enemies and gm alike.

Or you want to consider heavily aspecting with Forbidden Arcana.

[kainite311]

I;m working on a heavily cybered former mage street sam that can counterspell super well.

Another angle to that is the Hapsum martial arts and Harmonious Defense metamagic, but it requires Unarmed skill and one initiation. Works well as an adept, might dovetail into a burnout adept (I have never tried it, just did it with normal adept, and ended up with 15+ dice to counterspell after a few initiations). Depends if you want spells or not.