Can you buy Refinements for Seelie/Unseelie Magic?

[citadel97501]

Well the title of the thread says it all?  I was wondering because I thought it could be interesting to make a sorcerer who wants to eventually join the White Council but is having some issues with discrimination from them over his Evocation (Probably going to buy Evocation eventually as well, if I can.)

[Deadmanwalking]

It's a specialized versions of Channeling and Ritual, so it can buy Refinements like they can: For Item Slots and nothing else. If you want any of the other uses, you'll need to buy up full Evocation or Thaumaturgy.

[wyvern]

For your character concept, you might want to consider dropping item slots into a powerful focus item or two; it'll let you get a solid evocation strength even without being able to spend refinements on specializations.

As an aside, while buying item slots only makes reasonable sense for an ordinary human character, I did run into some issues trying to assemble stats for a low-to-mid ranked fae lord - someone who needed a bit more magical oomph than just the base sponsored magic, but wasn't up in the un-statted "I'm a walking plot point" level of power.
My solution was to allow said noble to buy unseelie magic as a six point power, mimicking full evocation + thaumaturgy, and then buy refinements up from there.

[John Galt]

You were supposed to take thaumaturgy, evocation and then unseelie for 2 more refresh.  You just arbitrarily lowered that cost by two refresh.

[wyvern]

You were supposed to take thaumaturgy, evocation and then unseelie for 2 more refresh.  You just arbitrarily lowered that cost by two refresh.

Except that the character in question doesn't *have* normal thaumaturgy or evocation.  He doesn't have access to elements outside those offered by the sponsored magic; what he does have is bonuses to power and control for one small subset of unseelie magic (say, ice magic).  What you describe would be the right way to stat a PC wizard who happened to have access to unseelie magic as well - which is explicitly not what I was trying to stat.

[blues.soldier]

I think that's an elegant solution to it; also it's your game, so if that works for you then go for it. With the restrictions you've placed on it, I'd say the Refresh discount is acceptable-- IF the character has a similarly restricted use of Thaumaturgy.

[AsaTJ]

I think it's perfectly acceptable, even for a PC, to just charge them 6 Refresh for (Un)Seelie Magic Plus!  Now with Refinements!  And then let them buy Refinement bonuses in Seelie/Unseelie as many times as they want.  Eventually they'll outstrip a mortal wizard with the same number of ranks in Refinement, but the fact still stands that they can not do any magic that doesn't relate to their sponsor.  So I think it's fair.