The Senior Council.

[Archmage_Cowl]

so i was setting in my room the other day thinking about the dresden files. Well according to dresden's character sheet he starts out at submurged(sp?) power level and is always, even in later books, talking about how his powers aren't at a full stature for wizard's yet. So it got me thinking if the average power level for wizards is that high how strong do the members of the senior council have to be?

I mean they are always talked about as being the most powerful wizards hands down and we even got a basic example about how powerful they are in dead beat

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when it talked about the merlin stonewalling the entire vampire army with a single ward

So its got me wondering how freaking powerful would they be? i heard somewhere on here that you can easilly run a game at refresh levels of up to around 30 before you have to start statting up some of the plot devices so i just really want to know how strong people think the senior council is gonna be.

Personally i'm thinking they will all be higher than 30 refresh as i sorta see them as plot devices. but i want to hear other peoples opinions on the senior council.

[SoulCatcher78]

I think the biggest deal with the Senior council is the depth of knowledge and level of control (not necessarily that they have huge amounts of power but they're so much better at using it).  Sure they can pull off some fantastic stuff at what seems like the drop of a hat but they've had lifetimes of study and experimentation to draw on.  The bigger magical stuff that they do is either extremely time consuming or requires more than one person (circle magic?).  Their status as plot devices makes sense from Harry's perspective (they loom larger than life with powers that are only hinted at) and therefore the characters in the game. 

We know for a fact that they are vulnerable just like everyone else so I doubt that they have access to power on the scale of the summer/winter queens

[ClarkValentine]

Most of the senior council wind up in the mid to high (negative) teens in refresh. Most are not fully statted and are left as plot devices, with guidelines about how powerful they are for when rolls are required. I think a couple (McCoy? I can't remember exactly) are fully statted, mostly for reference.

[Archmage_Cowl]

hmm only negative teens? i figured they would be a whole lot higher. unless they have like an ungodly number of skill points. I never played the fate system much but how many skill points is considered alot? 40? 50? 100? im thinking its not that last one but... you know lol 
Also a possibly related point. is gaining refresh the best way to improve your characters or are there better ways? like skill points or something similar?

[ClarkValentine]

hmm only negative teens? i figured they would be a whole lot higher. unless they have like an ungodly number of skill points.

Honestly I didn't think much in terms of skill points, but rather apex skills. 40 is a very, very highly skilled character.

Also a possibly related point. is gaining refresh the best way to improve your characters or are there better ways? like skill points or something similar?

Refresh is very powerful, mostly in its versatility. You can convert it into supernatural powers or stunts when you need to (and the narrative allows it), or you keep it as Fate Points.

Raising skills is extremely effective at making you more powerful, but it's very expensive due to the restrictions of the skill structure.

[Archmage_Cowl]

Thanks for the response. Okay so now they are starting to sound more like their bad@$$ selves.
But a bit of another interesting question(i know im full of them  ) do any of the senior council members carry focus's? I know it talked about McCoy having a staff like dresden's but in the event that they do have focus's are these like regular +1 or +2 focus's or are they like major heavy duty stuff?(i have no idea how high bonus's from focus can go but i would assume up to a plus 8 )

[ClarkValentine]

Hey, no problem!

We didn't want to go beyond what Jim has established regarding senior council members without explicitly calling it speculation, so in the stat blocks for them we use phrases like "We think" and "As far as we know" and "We just aren't sure about this, and I'm not about to ask" a lot. This is definitely the case with senior council members' focus items, for the most part.

[Archmage_Cowl]

okay i'll apologize in advance for gushing but... That's totally awesome!!! ... Okay im good now.  but seriously that kind of thing from a game stand point totally leaves it up to the gm if they want to use those stats or not while still heavily enforcing the feel that the books are written by the actual characters. Thats creativity that you just dont see often. so major props is sorta what i'm trying to say i guess. 

[ClarkValentine]

Glad you like it! "Make the setting your own" was a really important design goal for us (as was "Don't handcuff Jim"), so that seemed like a natural technique for dealing with unknowns - the conceit of having a non-omniscient character (Billy Borden) write the book helped, because it's expected that his knowledge is incomplete.

[TheMouse]

Honestly I didn't think much in terms of skill points, but rather apex skills. 40 is a very, very highly skilled character.

Yeah. SotC characters are quite impressive at 35 with a cap of +5.

Assuming they retained the pyramid structure of skill blocks, +6 happens at 56 and +7 at 84. So I'd consider 56 to be amazingly high and 84 to be just stupidly high.

It's also worth nothing that the +7 pyramid contains 28 skills, which is as many as SotC has, if memory serves. Assuming that there is a similar number of skills in Dresden, going higher than this requires the rules for skill pyramids to be reworded.

[ClarkValentine]

Honestly I didn't think much in terms of skill points, but rather apex skills. 40 is a very, very highly skilled character.

A clarification: While I didn't think too hard in terms of points, Fred and Lenny did - so my first cut at skill lists were often heavily modified by the other system gurus.

[Archmage_Cowl]

this might seem a bit of an odd question but can you do something like, say you wanted to make a character who had epic conviction. Could you do that if you got rid of a bunch of other skills as compensation or something like that? or do you have to go through the obvious building set?

[Ihadris]

this might seem a bit of an odd question but can you do something like, say you wanted to make a character who had epic conviction. Could you do that if you got rid of a bunch of other skills as compensation or something like that? or do you have to go through the obvious building set?

It depends on what the skill cap is set at. It takes 28 skill points to have one Epic (+7) skill, 7 points for the skill itself and then 21 points for a skill at every step below it to support it. Both "Chest Deep" and "Submerged" have enough points for you to have an Epic (+7) skill but the skill cap is set at Superb (+5 so) if you were playing using those game settings you wouldnt be able to.

You could of course change the skill cap for your game.

(Edited for typing mistakes.)

[Archmage_Cowl]

okie dokie thanks.

[iago]

Most of the senior council wind up in the mid to high (negative) teens in refresh. Most are not fully statted and are left as plot devices, with guidelines about how powerful they are for when rolls are required. I think a couple (McCoy? I can't remember exactly) are fully statted, mostly for reference.

That was the initial draft, too. I usually added notes in there on my pass saying that the high negative teens were likely a low-ball. If you ask me I'd expect them to be more like mid-twenties, mid-thirties types. INSANE amounts of Refinement, not to mention a the potential of having several of their abilities encoded as other powers as well.

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For example, given LTW's tricks in Turn Coat, I might be inclined to just give him some shapeshifting abilities outright on top of his spellcasting, which itself should be pretty formidable.