Potions as attacks

[Orladdin]

Dare I ask how this spell gained your enmity?

Orbius is pretty mechanically broken.  By itself, unaltered, it's not bad--because it's not good at anything.  When you take that effect and modify it, as they suggest you do in the DFRPG, it becomes a terrifying monster.

The problem is, it takes something that's not broken (the grapple rules) and breaks them in a subtle way.  The break isn't obvious in the example as-given.

Basically, a grapple is OK because it deprives a character of most of their options at the cost of some specific set-up on the part of another player and follows it up with continued wasted actions by both players.  When you use magic and a duration to achieve it, the primary player no longer needs to spend his actions maintaining it and can even add Area to it, effectively depriving a large number of characters their actions for extended periods at no additional action expenditure by the caster.

[FishStampede]

I definitely see that point. Unless someone has a better rewrite, I think I will just make Graveyard Dirt a basic attack with as many shifts of damage as he can manage. He practices the Sells Method of Munchkinmancy, so he can be a lot greater threat than his (far less impressive than Sells') stats would indicate. He'll be using it as a sneak attack so is virtually guaranteed a consequence or two that I can then compel and tag for all it's worth.

The players (and myself, the GM) are new so setting them up against a guy who mainly munchkins the system to be dangerous instead of using overwhelming power would hopefully be a learning experience. It should allow them to use what they've learned in the first couple sessions.

[Sanctaphrax]

Well said, Orladdin.

For what it's worth, I should probably add that the area effect thing may not be valid by the RAW. And that Orbius gets to inflict stress without taking supplemental action penalties.