Balancing a Wizard/White Court Virgin PC

[Wolfeyes]

I finished DMing the first arc for a group of friends and we've been looking to go forward and see where the group's adventures take us. It's the first time any of us have played with Fates Accelerated so we're still getting a feel for how to handle things and make adjustments as we go.

One of those adjustments is balancing one of the PCs, a wizard/white court virgin. It's a combo that gives some fun scenarios (i.e:PC doesn't know about Wamp heritage and nearly got mind whammied into Wamping out on his crush) but in terms of gameplay it leans towards broken when the player can take something like Evocation Specialist and get a +2 to evocations and then add vampire stunts to up the roll further.

With this in mind, any thoughts on how this can be balanced? Me and player have debated things like limiting what stunts can effect what actions (like, even if magic approach is forceful not being allowed to add vamp mods to it) as well as simply adjusting scenarios to make it so she can't spam all her abilities in one go (i.e: adding more confrontations or making the hunger a bigger concern), but it'd be nice to have a better idea before moving forward with them.

[khadgar4606]

color me instrested i to have similar combo so how to not broke the game over my knee i will appreciate

[Wolfeyes]

Well, what we've currently settled on so far is a) the character doesn't get to use Burnt Out condition to increase his magic, similar to how Harry doesn't get that in his example profile because he has Winter Knight mantle, unless he earns the condition back in a later level up b) he can't use his virgin wamp abilities to increase magic ones and vice versa.

We'll see how it goes but we got a good reminder the dice and opponents can make a big difference in balancing. He got glitterbombed by pixies a few times and ended up In Peril'ing himself by being blinded for most of the session to avoid ticking all his stress points lol.

[Sanctaphrax]

I don't know much about DFA, but...White Court Virgin lets you take a Pure Mortal mantle in addition to itself. So you probably want to cut down the Magical Practitioner mantle until it's roughly equivalent to a Pure Mortal mantle. Maybe removing the ability to exhaust yourself for a power bonus would work?

A White Court Virgin already has one way to exhaust themself for a power boost. A second feels a little redundant.

[g33k]

It seems VERY much to me that -- as canonical Dresdenverse powersets go -- Wizardry & WhampVirgin are diametrically opposed.  Wizards use focus & discipline to bring their gift to greatest fruition, but a WhampVirgin is LOSING focus and discipline as they give into the Whamp urges.
So I won't almost never allow bonii to stack.

[Wolfeyes]

I don't know much about DFA, but...White Court Virgin lets you take a Pure Mortal mantle in addition to itself. So you probably want to cut down the Magical Practitioner mantle until it's roughly equivalent to a Pure Mortal mantle. Maybe removing the ability to exhaust yourself for a power bonus would work?

A White Court Virgin already has one way to exhaust themself for a power boost. A second feels a little redundant.

That making it the equivalent to a Pure Mortal Mantle sounds like a good way of putting it, thanks! We  decided to take out the Burnt Out condition for that reason, so will see how it feels once we do more sessions with encounters.

It seems VERY much to me that -- as canonical Dresdenverse powersets go -- Wizardry & WhampVirgin are diametrically opposed.  Wizards use focus & discipline to bring their gift to greatest fruition, but a WhampVirgin is LOSING focus and discipline as they give into the Whamp urges.
So I won't almost never allow bonii to stack.

When put that way, I might suggest that to the player to keep in mind, especially for play and leveling up. Since, the largest appeal of the combo narratively is the branching potential so if they ended up giving into their Whamp urges I'd imagine their wizard abilities might drop off and vice versa (especially if they somehow get the conditions to remove Whamp Virgin mantle).

[g33k]

  When put that way, I might suggest that to the player to keep in mind, especially for play and leveling up. Since, the largest appeal of the combo narratively is the branching potential so if they ended up giving into their Whamp urges I'd imagine their wizard abilities might drop off and vice versa (especially if they somehow get the conditions to remove Whamp Virgin mantle).

I think a full-on (non-Virgin) Whamp has similar benefits from concentration as a wizard gets.  Papa Raith, Lara, Thomas -- the ones who are dangerous even among Whampires -- show that they have a LOT of discipline, focus, self-control.  Whamp-Virgins notsomuch with the self-control !!!

I would expect that trying to "level up" both at once would be very VERY hard.  I could see a Whamp Virgin with the Salic Gift getting some training as a Wizard 'prentice young (and carefully without any MOTAS' around!!!!), then laying magic aside while they roil around in Whamp-V Puberty, maybe?  Then taking up wizardry again once the Demonic Hormones settle down a bit ... Maybe?

It appears that Whamps CAN use some magic... q.v. Vittorio in White Night (granted, most of the Big Deal stuff was likely done by Cowl or the Outsider, and when the duel went down, he was straight-up WCVamp combat powers of speed & strength)... Thomas can work Harry's tracking-spell.