Do you think I should just have this as a 1-refresh upgrade to the easy evocations power that says "you can incorporate weapons into your earth evocations done with this power and get their weapons value"?

I guess that would at least be worth testing out.

I still don't think any of this really addresses the issue of Warden optimality though.

If you want to do it right, you should probably do it simply. Complexity is generally bad.

I don't know what you mean by "erode your ability to use this Power".

And honestly, the whole things sounds overcomplicated and fiddly.

A normal wizard might have to choose between whether to use his stress boxes to attack or defend -- with this stunt, they're free to put up an enormous Block against all attacks, then attack at their leisure for free.

Potentially worrisome. Still think it's worse than just throwing nukes though. Especially when you take enchanted items into account.

I realize that you'll probably just think that this makes the power more problematic, but you really should be able to use this power for defense and maneuvers when appropriate, not just attack.

Okay, that makes it worse. I don't think that's a good idea.

That was kind of my point. If Breath Weapon is the game's model for a "free" magic attack, this proposed stunt blows it out of the water.

It's not the game's model for a free magic attack at all. It's the game's model for an unarmed armed attack. And this requires more arms than anything else; it combines weapon reliance with focus reliance.

And of course, Breath Weapon is already a very questionable way to spend your Refresh, optimization-wise.

But the majority of the time, the players are going to have them, while other stunts that add +1 to attack or +2 to stress tend to have more narrow applications than just, "Have the weapon you're probably going to have most of the time."

I think it's totally appropriate for combat stunts in general to apply "probably most of the time". If a player takes a stunt that gives them +2 stress against black court vampires and their minions, in a game that's about hunting black court vampires, or a player takes Target-Rich Environment in a solo game, I think that's totally working as intended.

That's right, you don't -- thing is, there's a problem when a 6-refresh Pure Mortal is able to trounce monsters that, in canon, give full-fledged-wizard Harry consistent trouble.

I actually think it's good that Harry punches below his weight. He starts at Submerged and rises fast; him being comparatively bad at fighting means we can realistically have Harry-like stories at the normal power levels.

I thought that if you rolled a 10 or whatever for your attack, that was the value your target had to beat to avoid the attack. In this case, wouldn't that be conviction + power?

You roll Discipline + control to control / aim spells. Conviction + power is used to draw the shifts of power that fuel the spell.

Actually, would allowing stunt bonuses to stack help to fix the problem of wizards being so much better at combat than other characters?

It's an open question whether wizards even need nerfing. If they do, though, I don't think that's a good way to address it. A game where the swordsman has five semi-overlapping +1-to-hit stunts seems like a pain in the neck.

If you want a quick and easy Wizard nerf, say that enchanted item blocks require an action to activate.

Because it doesn't replicate what I'm trying to replicate. I had considered designing this power to allow wizards to add their earth power bonus to their weapons/fists skill, but the original point of posting this was to resolve the problem of "making wizards have high weapons/fists skills is unoptimized" while still allowing Morgan-type characters to run around with swords and stuff.

I don't think this is a question of replicating anything. It's a question of rebalancing the game. Morgan is already represented very cleanly by the rules, he's just not spending his skill points efficiently.

With that in mind, I don't think adding a custom Power to the game is likely to be a good solution to your problem.

One idea I've toyed with: compress Discipline and Conviction into Will. Instead of using Discipline + Conviction, spells use Will + the skill you'd normally use. So you'd use a combat skill to use combat spells, Investigation to use divination magic, and so on. Would make it almost inevitable for fight wizards to be great swordsmen / martial artists / whatever.

What do you think of my suggestion of adding his earth magic power bonus to his weapons score?[/b]

I think that's a very bad idea. Would make it trivial to get a Weapons skill that's absolutely unattainable for anyone who isn't a spellcaster.

2, maybe?

But I'm not confident there's any cost that'll work well.

It's a bit awkward because the value of a severe consequence is so dependent on what level of Recovery you have. If you've got Supernatural Recovery, you can use your consequences frequently; if you have no Recovery, you can use them rarely.

You'd need tight limitations to prevent that from being broken, and I suspect that any restrictions which made it fair would make it pretty pointless.

How would it differ from the standard ability to maneuver with evocation?

Four weapon 9 accuracy 10 sight-ranged (potentially zone-wide) attacks is in most battles much stronger than an unlimited number of weapon 3 accuracy 10 weapon-ranged attacks.