Interesting Focus Items

[Tedronai]

The only mechanical cause of the absence of a focus item that I can determine is a Compel.  All Compels being equal, and none being inherently 'bad', I see no wrong in arranging a character narratively such that a certain type of Compel to which they would otherwise be subject is difficult to induce, or even impossible.  Yes, the character will in this way ensure that their bonuses are available when they need them, but they will also be simultaneously and inextricably denying themselves the accompanying Fate Points from those never-were Compels.

[Sanctaphrax]

The only mechanical cause of the absence of a focus item that I can determine is a Compel.

I dunno about that.

Maneuver + tag for effect can disarm someone. Whether that counts as a Compel on the victim is up to the GM.

Hard to justify maneuvering away a focus ring or a pair of focus underpants, though. At least a belly button stud can be pulled out with minor tissue damage. Getting a tight ring off someone in a fight would require cutting off the finger, and pantsing away somebody's undies is pretty tricky.

[Mr. Death]

I dunno about that.

Maneuver + tag for effect can disarm someone. Whether that counts as a Compel on the victim is up to the GM.

The way I've usually played it is like this--maneuver and tag to disarm for the duration of a scene (or until the player goes and picks it back up) without a fate point, while a compel would mean they lose the item for an extended length of time.

pantsing away somebody's undies is pretty tricky.

And that's why you always keep a White Court Vampire on the team.

[Ulfgeir]

Well in the campaign I play in, there are two characters with focus items. My character (focused practitioner) and a changeling with sponsored magic.

My character has a pendant of crystal, set in silver and hung on a silver chain. This gives her +2 complexity on divinations

The changeling uses magix related to summer. He has one plastic waterpistol as well as some valve for a waterpipe for focuses. I believe his focuses are to gain more power for his evocation-magic.

[Lavecki121]

The reason I feel it is a perversion of the rules is that it's practically impossible to lose.

Harry can (and often does) drop his blasting rod.  The bellybutton stud is just this side of using a tattoo as a focus item.

Richard

I feel like a Tattoo would be really easy to break. Any scars and cuts would immediatly cause the focus to be scattered and thus needing realignment.

[Taran]

I feel like a Tattoo would be really easy to break. Any scars and cuts would immediatly cause the focus to be scattered and thus needing realignment.

Hard to justify maneuvering away a focus ring or a pair of focus underpants, though. At least a belly button stud can be pulled out with minor tissue damage. Getting a tight ring off someone in a fight would require cutting off the finger, and pantsing away somebody's undies is pretty tricky.

The right physical consequences could be compelled for stuff like that.  You have a "severe burn" on your arm?  Compel to say he loses his tattoo foci...same with trying to cut someone's finger off

[Haru]

I feel like a Tattoo would be really easy to break. Any scars and cuts would immediatly cause the focus to be scattered and thus needing realignment.

Spray paint, or a paint bomb if you want it a bit more drastic, should also work rather nicely.

One dirty little trick to find a good way to disarm somebody  of something undisarmable (that word looks like it's in pain ), is to put it in front of the players. If the players got a wizard with a tattoo focus, send them a sorcerer with a tattoo focus and see what they do. Whatever they come up with that works will be fair game for you to use against them later on.

[jberger990]

An old bolt action rifle, one of those with lots of wood to carve runes into. As an upside, it is simple enough that it could last a couple or rounds in a fight, or even a whole fight if very little magic is involved, without losing it's ability to shoot. Makes it easy to get around the "no kill with magic rule"

99.999% pure water, frozen as part of jewelry, kept in a container, whatever. The important part is just how difficult this is to make, as water disolves a little bit of whatever container it is in. The high difficulty of purifying water should lend it significant magical weight.

Henna tattoos, gets rid of the hole "permanently destroyed if you get hit" aspect. Would be good for spells that apply only to the body, such as a shield, that shields only you. Could even be an excuse for why you wizard has inhuman speed or the like, the tattoos increasing his reaction time. Also works well as an enchanted item

Winged sandals, especially for speed.

A vial containing the last breath of a dying relative, a newborn's first tears, the ashes of a hero, grave dirt from a mob boss, that sort of thing.

A ceramic statue of a flying pig

A bell.

A rope made up of a cat's footfalls, the beard of a women, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and a bird's spittle.

[DMS]

I really, really want to make a focused practitioner with a brace of dueling pistols packed with Forzare level force.  You wouldn't get a ton of uses out of them, but they would pack the punch of several jackhammers in each shot. 

Now that I think of it, Harry sort of uses something like this in Ghost Story, but I've kind of blocked most of that book from my memory.

[Dr.FunLove]

@DMS
Like the Force hand-cannons idea though I have to ask...not a fan of Ghost Story?

[DMS]

not a fan of Ghost Story?

No, it's easily my least favorite of the novels.  I thought that it could have used another judicious editing before publication.  Jim's usually really good at including a lot of pop culture references without making them seem like obvious fan service, but he was less successful on that front with Ghost Story.  Granted, this is all my opinion, and I love the series like I will love my first-born child (assuming he/she isn't somehow prenatally mortgaged in a deal with a Faerie Court in the next few years), but I felt like Ghost Story was a huge sidetrack from the over-plot of the series.  I know that I'm not aware of where the series will go from here, so it could (and likely will) tie into the plot in future installments, but it seemed to deviate so drastically from where the series had been heading til that point.  It's the only one that I haven't been able to reread more than once.

(click to show/hide)

The Fitz plot was kind of hokey, and never referenced after it concluded.  The sequence with Star Trek Molly was kind of out of the ordinary for Jim's writing (not tastefully done, but more gimmicky).  And the Nazi beachhead where the Neutral Evil Bob and the... "Bob"-Bob fought seemed more like something from a Zack Snyder movie than a Dresden Files novel (and that is not praise from me).  The whole city of Chicago had a very different feel to it, and the physics of the world didn't seem to work the same way that we were used to (magic works differently for Harry as a ghost, etc.). And finally, the over-villian (the Fomor) aren't explained and therefore don't carry a lot of threat to them.  They're just a nebulous sort of boogity that sends lackeys to deliver threatening messages.  And that's made worse by the fact that they're barely (if at all) mentioned in Cold Days.  In point of fact, almost none of the events of Ghost Story are reprised in Cold Days, which leads me to believe that Jim came to similar conclusions to mine: that it wasn't his strongest effort, and he needed to come back to what worked well with his writing in the past.

I think that the publication team (Jim, editors, etc.) missed out on the real tragedy of the story, which was Molly's trouble dealing with a post-Harry world.  The part of the story that I cared the most about was watching her spiral down into depression and self-destruction.  If Jim was okay with changing things for this book (as in, you know, Harry being dead[ish]), then I would have preferred to see a story that focused more on the characters who had the most emotional weight to them (Molly and Murphy, specifically - though I know Murphy did already get a longer story in "Aftermath").  He wouldn't have had to change POV for it either, as Harry is a ghost, and can pretty much wander around after either of them and narrate their lives for a change.

Also: my first reading of it was on audiobook, and James Marsters didn't read that one.  The temp guy drove me nuts (he said "potatuhs" instead of "potatoes").  It lent to the overall feeling of that book not fitting in sequence.

/endrant

[Dr.FunLove]

@DMS
Firstly, great breakdown DMS.

Secondly, I think the core of the story was Harry dealing with the fact that well...he's Harry (and has a lot of...issues) and, secondly, the Molly-arc. I think, for me, where it falls most flat is that Ghost Story seems to be on an island of its own (as you indicated by saying that it feels segergated from the main plot). I don't feel Harry grew as a result of his experiences, I don't feel Molly has been handled well at all post-Ghost Story (minus the one bit at the end of Cold Days).

Harry is still Harry and everyone is still pretty much themselves (granted, you can say there has been attempts to move the characters forward but...). Everything feels pretty much the same in Cold Days as it did before Changes/Ghost Story. That I feel is the biggest let down for me because I felt that maybe things where changing as a result of Changes and Ghost Story (which isn't a problem if you like the characters as they were prior to those books...I personally wouldn't mind seeing some development).

The one thing I disagree with is...I thought the mind-battle in Molly's head was awesome. I felt it was consitent-ish with the character. How else would she portray all of that do you think?

[DMS]

The one thing I disagree with is...I thought the mind-battle in Molly's head was awesome. I felt it was consitent-ish with the character. How else would she portray all of that do you think?

Sure, I agree it's consistent with her character.  I took issue with it being consistent with the mood of the story at the moment. 

(click to show/hide)

At that point, Harry is powerless to help Molly, Molly is barely able to hold her consciousness together, and Capiocorpus is about to take control of the body of a very powerful practitioner of magic. That's fairly serious stuff.  It's important to the narrator due to his inability to help his apprentice, it's important to Molly because of all the stuff she's dealing with (with regard to Harry's death, what has happened since then, and what's currently going on in her own mind), and it's important to the world at large, because the Corpse-Taker is about to steal a new body, one with a helluva lot of punch compared to her previous one.

And then we get a scene from 1980's Sci-Fi?  To me (and this is only my experience, etc. etc.) that was the literary equivalent of a single obnoxious tuba note sounding in the middle of a concert. Especially because I wanted to be just emotionally distraught after Molly's denouement of "Not only did I invade your mind, I did so with your encouragement, and it's driving me insane," but I, as the reader, had my emotional priming blown by being on the bridge of the Enterprise, and the catharsis that should have come after the moment of truth with Molly kind of passed me by.

So, them's my thoughts on that.  If you had a different reading, that makes me happy because the more enjoyment folks get from these books, the better place the world is.

[Dr.FunLove]

I totally agree with you that the impact wasn't in the right places and that Butcher missed the ball a bit with the character arc's and their progression here. Like I said, it falls down even more when you consider the lack of follow-up with it in Cold Days.

All of this though, of course, is just a matter of opinion. I also agree with you on your last statement and will add that in everything, we gotta bring the fun!

[Lavecki121]

First off, DMS that filler guy was no marsters and I had issue with that as well, constituency is key.

However your conversation has gotten dangerously close to(if not already breached into) spoiler territory so you should probably put up spoiler edits