DFRPG In Other Time P... *AHEM!* Yadda-Yadda, Something About Claws and Stuff.

[Sanctaphrax]

An 8-shift ritual is up to the whims of the dice too. You can fail Declarations. And if you screw up a casting roll, you can actually kill yourself. (One of the biggest problems with Thaumaturgy is that it's rather dangerous until you have 5 control and perfectly safe afterwards.)

[Mr. Death]

Yes, you can fail declarations, but from what I've noticed, it tends to be the exception rather than a rule.

Even if you're forced to spend fate points for the ritual, each fate point is going toward a definite +2 on top of a definite 4, whereas a Mortal's invoke on a Contacts roll is a +2 to anything from a 0 to an 8, unless you're using it for a re-roll. If you want to be certain that a Contacts roll is going to make 8 from a start at 4, you're probably going to end up blowing at least three fate points to account for rolling a -1 or -2 on the dice--and that's if you have that many applicable aspects to invoke.

There is, yes, the chance of failing a casting roll, but that risk comes against the certainty that once you have those 8 shifts ready, you're going to end up with an 8-shift result. Plus, you get to set the difficulty of each roll. Unless you're in a dire hurry, there's nothing stopping the wizard from making 8 1-shift rolls to meet the difficulty.

[Sanctaphrax]

Yes, it's the exception. But then, so is flubbing an ordinary skill roll.

Which makes sense, because Declarations are ordinary skill rolls.

But you know what? You can make Declarations to boost your ordinary skill rolls too. They aren't Thaumaturgy-exclusive. Course, they do depend somewhat on your GM, but then so does everything about Thaumaturgy.

Anyway...what does this have to do with the comparative advantage that raising skill difficulties provides to Wizards? Your argument seems to be that Thaumaturgy is just better than skills.

[Mr. Death]

My argument is that a wizard has more avenues to reach a given goal than a mundane person, and I feel that can be well represented by upping the difficulty of the action as a whole and letting the wizards use those other avenues than by just making them more difficult for mundanes in particular.