Which might be the reason why Dragoonbuster was saying he'd be hesitant to allow it.

Yep

Could a Knight of the Cross make holy water, then? If so, why does Michael never make any for Harry?  Or did Harry just ask Father Forthill to make it for him before he'd met Michael?

Harry didn't really need it before he met Michael. Harry has said before that he asked Father Forthill for a big batch of it after the war with the Vampires broke out. I suspect a Knight could make it (I mean, just use the Holy Stirring Stick that is one of the swords and you've got insta-Holy) if he believed it was okay to do. But I imagine, if asked, the various book Knights would answer:

Michael - "That's really not my place, Harry. I'm not one of the clergy."
Sanya - "I am Agnostic. How would I make water 'holy'?"
Shiro - "Oh, no, I am sorry, but I am not a priest."


I've had a few Champion-of-God type players create Holy Water on the fly. Always as a Maneuver.

An 8 Survival roll minimum? Ignoring that it should really be Investigation (not particularly important), it would take a Legendary investigator to track them down? Okay, if that makes sense to you. I would've started at maybe Superb or the thing's Stealth skill, and seen if there were aspects or maneuvers the MBCV might have made to boost that difficulty--might be well more than 8 when done. But 8 is fine if that's what you want.

The duration you're using is way off. The minimum duration for a typical tracking spell should be AT LEAST "a few minutes" if not "a few hours" by default.

There's no need to deal with Discipline here. Typically, I wouldn't allow a "counter" roll from the target NPC; there's no reason to. In the case of your Master BCV, if they use magic, the PC might need to get around Wards or something.

Not only Wizards can assist with Complexity preparation. Anyone who could aid can help make declarations. The book specifically points this out as a good way to get the non-caster PCs involved. As far as multi-wizard channeling to cast it...I wouldn't bother rolling the control rolls here at all. Unless there's a specific time constraint, say, "I have to summon XX to deal with the demon banging down my door" or something, don't bother.


If you want this to be harder, put impediments in their way during the tracking spell. Or make them hunt down another ingredient they need to do the thaumaturgy--maybe the ghost has to be anchored in this world more to use it as a link, so you've got to get your hands on depleted uranium for ghost dust, etc. Also, remember that for all the time the PCs spend on tracking these two people (maybe the same person?) down, that NPC gets to do stuff too--make more goons, prepare for an assault if he knows it's coming, shore up defenses, much with the PC's lives, etc

I think you're overrating Mental Toughness a bit. It's certainly worth its cost, but the sort of shift-counting that you did there is going to give you a misleading impression.

Ignoring backlash like that isn't a good idea, and the measure of a wizard's power isn't the number of shifts they can put out in a scene. If it was, a guy who could cast power 1 control 1 spells for free would be better than the whole Senior Council.

I fail to see how you'd practically compare the powers in another way. I pretty clearly hedged my statements with the fact that I know there are flaws in the analysis, and what those flaws are, but there are always going to be flaws in any analysis. I'm looking at situations when you're going all out with your magic in a prepared fight where you've got the FPs or Maneuvers to weather most of the Backlash. If I'd more optimized the Focus Item assumption I made, the contrast between the powers would have become even more stark; a +4 to control offensive spells would have introduced another 4 shifts extra from MT vs SF, and if we compared defense it would've been 13 shifts extra from MT vs SG, and quite a bit less Backlash to boot. Mental Toughness obviously is less OP if you're not using it to its full extent...like any power would be. If you don't stretch both Soulfire and Mental Toughness to their limits, you can't get a practical comparison at all, short of running the exact same conflict twice with the only differences being the magic user's sheet, which still would see no practical possible differentiation until each PC was stretched.

I think you're overrating your assessment of my assessment a bit; I'm pretty sure I've got a great impression of Mental Toughness's power, whether or not you agree with it. A measure of a wizard's power is LITERALLY the number of shifts they can put out in a practical scenario with reasonable assumptions. It is practical to assume there might be 6 exchanges in a conflict. Your counterexample is farcical and insincere; you can't assume most fights will go for hundreds of exchanges, which is what your scenario would require to balance--and that's assuming the non-single-shift caster's opponents are somehow tied up and can't act. Even if the Senior Council were totally out of magical gas, they can do things like punch and throw things and move around, and presumably these aren't all at Mediocre or Average for all the Council; Weapon: 1, 1 to strike spells forever is obviously weaker than even a normal spellcaster, let alone vs SF or MT, and using my comparison method would prove it HANDILY if you deigned to consider it properly.

This is the only way to compare two different sets of powers: how many shifts are you getting out of one versus the other, in the same situation? If it is not, how could you possibly make an objective argument regarding the strength of one power versus another? You'd simply ram opinions around, otherwise, and while there's plenty of room for opinion in an RPG, there are also definitely situational advantages one power will provide over another, demonstrably making it a better power for that set of assumptions.

If it were not, why is magic considered so powerful in DFRPG? Sure, there's room for doing impossible things you couldn't otherwise accomplish, but practically speaking that rarely really gives you an advantage you couldn't have created another way. The strength of magic in the system is obviously the fact that you can achieve incredibly high weapon damages and rather high Blocks and Maneuvers compared to most PCs. The most significant limit to this power is the clearly limited number of times you get to perform a spell in a conflict. When you take that limiting number and increase it by fifty percent, you've suddenly dramatically changed the effectiveness of that limitation.

Even if we applied Backlash shifts as negative shifts towards the total instead of ignoring them, you get:
Mental Toughness, Apex: 95 shifts
Soulfire, Apex: 64 shifts
48% more shifts

Mental Toughness, Non-Apex: 62 shifts
Soulfire, Non-Apex: 49 shifts
26.5% more shifts

Even if we were to allow for Soulfire users performing two actions when the MT-user has those two extra spells, to be completely even in the assessment, and assuming they have a useful skill to use at Superb, that's only 10 shifts more--you're still 3 shifts lower w/ SF vs MT in the non-apex situation. If you use those two actions to maneuver with Discipline for a +2 to control two spells, you've just now beaten MT in a non-apex situation by something like 9 shifts...but only until you use more optimized Focus Items or use a lot of defense, and then once again MT comes out on top. So in all situations you might run into where your magic is strained, except non-optimized non-apex casting (pretty uncommon...), MT comes out on top--and most of the time, significantly on top.

I realize I'm in the minority regarding my opinion on Mental Toughness and PCs, but that's why we all have our own sandboxes.

Yeah, it sounds like you're getting a good deal of utility to augment your spellcasting.  Sounds pretty close to how it works in the novel too.

How do you think 4 refresh of soulfire stacks up to 4 refresh of mental toughness (2 refinement and inhuman mental toughness)?

I dislike Mental Toughness, so my house rule is it doesn't apply to self-inflicted mental stress (so, spellcasting). By extension, the Refinement requirements are eliminated and anyone with a good reason can take it (which I call tiered "Will" rather than throwing "Mental" in front of "Toughness"). (Demonic Co-Pilot is not self-inflicted stress, technically.)

Since I haven't seen it in action vs Soulfire, I can't say for sure, but I would venture to guess that the IMT is better. Talking strictly evocation optimization, since these abilities are less useful for Thaumaturgy, assuming a Conviction and Discipline of Superb, zeroes on Control rolls, and four focus item slots spent on a +2 Offensive/Defensive Control item, the math is below.

Inhuman Mental Toughness:
+2 boxes of stress and Armor: 1 against mental stress; I believe the general consensus is that the Armor doesn't apply to spellcasting so I'll assume that. So, you get the typical complement of spell options, plus two more potential spells per scene, one at a potential +4 and one at +5 power, too.
-Your apex element can be cast @ +2 P/+1 C (assuming you have no more than the two Refinement)
- With this in mind, you can cast the following spells per turn, assuming you're using your apex element and are not worried about absorbing Backlash, tagging stuff, or spending FPs for enough Control:

Soulfire:
+1, +2, and +3 power on one spell (of any kind) each.
- Assume +1 to Control apex element w/ Evocation Specialization
- 3 spells that downgrade Toughness by 1 level (== free +3 Stress on successful strikes w/ attacks vs Tough opponents, effectively, given that most Attack spells strike in the upper range of an opponent's stress track)
- Possible +1 add'l point of power on each of those spells based on narration (easy to do), so now we're at +2, +3, and +4 Power
- With this in mind, you can cast the following spells per turn, assuming you're not worried about absorbing Backlash, tagging stuff, or spending FPs for enough Control:

My Assessment:
With apex-element casting, you can pull out 57% more shifts with IMT vs SF. With non-apex-element casting, you're getting 36% more shifts w/ IMT vs SF. If all your Soulfire spells are not Attacks, this ratio gets worse.

I don't consider the Holy catch especially worth anything much, since Fire in particular can cover a lot of thing's Catches too. There are ways of statting these options more optimally but I wanted more of an apples to apples comparison. On top of the extra shifts, getting to cast 2 additional spells per conflict, to me, is seriously powerful and tips the scales to me (which is why I don't like using it in the first place).

EDIT: Soulfire grants additional flexibility with narrative freedom from Evothaum, in addition to the ability to lay out several aspects at a time with evothaum maneuvering, which is powerful--but you only get a few of those and it's not as useful for outright offense vs an Attack spell. The flexibility is worth something, but not a score or more shifts per conflict, I'd say. Your spells appear a little easier to balance with Soulfire in terms of power vs control, but in practice I don't think that's as important a consideration. Soulfire is a pretty solid addition to magic--the PP RAW IMT is broken powerful.

EDIT II: Fixed some math.

Right?  So how does it work from here?  I have 8 shifts called up.  Do I need to control all 8?  Or am I controlling the 6 shifts and the 2 soul shifts are a free addition to my weapon value?

EDIT: I'm not creating anything, so I don't get a +1 anywhere, but it does satisfy the Holy catch of the vampire, yes?  If I were creating something, it would be 9 shifts that I would have to control, right?

You've got 8 shifts of power. Control it all.

Satisfies Holy. If you'd created something, yes, you'd have 9 shifts of power, so you'd have to control all 9.

In Summer Knight, Harry uses Toot and a horde of pixies to kill the Summer Lady. I got to thinking, how would one accomplish this in the RPG?

I'd model this as:
- Harry invokes an Aspect (his High Concept, if there isn't a more appropriate one here) for effect to call in Toot and The Gang and creates the aspect [Valise Full of Pixies].
- Billy goes to Wal-Mart and uses Resources to maneuver [Armed with Box Knives] on the pixies.
- ...in-between stuff happens, then Harry reaches Aurora at the Stone Table.
- Harry maneuvers with Rapport or Intimidation to place [Distracted with Monologuing] onto Aurora
- Harry releases the pixies to attack Aurora, using Contacts as an Attack, tagging [Distracted with Monologuing], [Valise Full of Pixies], and [Armed With Box Knives] for a +6 on it (alternatively, Distracted might be tagged for effect for Aurora to defend at Mediocre). The Box Knives count as Weapon: 1 and automatically act as a Catch vs Aurora's Toughness/Recovery powers, and Harry maybe invokes a few more aspects
- Presumably, Aurora has already taken some Mental and/or Social consequences in the lead-up to this fight, between arranging her plan properly and being driven insane via Nemesis, and therefore the attack is enough to take her out.


How would you model this instead, if you disagree with the above?

Secondly, if you were playing Billy-the-Werewolf or Elaine-the-Traitor, how would you feel about watching the Scenario end this way?

I need a submerged Cheshire Cat for an upcoming game....

Look up Malks in Our World pg 48. It's a safe bet that's where the Cheshire Cat originates from, given some of Grimmalkin's preferred methods. You might play with its Social Stats if you plan on it doing a lot talking.