I'm not too worried about Soulfire itself, or its place in the campaign.  I'm a little concerned about the balance within the characters.

We have 5 players, all with magic and have at least one do-gooder aspect.  One specifically has full thaumaturgy and channeling (spirit), with a high concept of "arcane scholar" but aspects such as "not on my watch", reflecting his vows to protect innocents from predation by supernatural entities.

Compare his abilities to that of his associate, who has soulfire.  For essentially the same cost, the soulfire character has more power, with  a price-tag that is essentially ST-fiat (I have to decide if his actions fit with a "sponsor".)

Given that we are playing at submerged, the characters have a lot of power. I'm cool with that.  All I want to do is make sure that he isn't just power-gaming, taking things that give him bonuses with little draw-back.   The problem I have with using debt to keep him in check is that it seems like it may make the game more about his character, as I will have to run more scenarios for him to work off that debt.   The problem I have with him having full access to thaumaturgy at the speed of evocation is that it severely lessens the usefulness of 2 characters who focused on thaumaturgy.  Most basic divinations are less than 5 shifts of power, meaning that if they are investigating something then his character will end up being the one doing the divination.


So, I've had a couple of people agree that soulfire does not explicitly say "at the speed of evocation", which means it might not apply at all.  I'm totally cool with soulfire, as is, if it doesn't allow the speed.  Otherwise, I need something that keeps him balanced with the other members.

One of my players has a devout character with Soulfire. This is his only magic, at -5 refresh.  We're new to this and are still trying to suss out what all of the rules and powers mean, but his understanding of soulfire makes it sort of... overpowered.

Because soulfire essentially says "all the spells of thaumaturgy" and every other sponsored magic (minus hellfire) includes "with evocation's speed" clauses, he believes that in essence he can do any thaumaturgical effect that the Good Lord wants him to have at the speed of evocation, which essentially negates the entire speed penalty on thaumaturgy (when would his spells NOT fit the Lord's will, if he stays in character?) So at -5 refresh, he's gotten full thaumaturgy, faster than normal, channeling, plus all of the soulfire benefits vs toughness, at the cost of having to be in alignment with god's will, which he pretty much always will be. 

I'm kind of at a loss, how is this not better than buying regular thaumaturgy plus channeling for the same -5 refresh?  In exchange for having to -essentially - stay in character, he gets a big boost versus any toughness plus ignores the primary limitation of thaumaturgy (the speed)?   The only thing I can see is that Soulfire doesn't explicitly say "at evocation's speed" . So does that just not apply here?

I probably meant to say that horror is in, but "slasher films" are out.  I feel that the Omen and such kind of classic horror movies are pretty genre appropriate, but Jason or Saw are not.

Hmm. You appear to be correct here, my bad. My bad. I was going with the actual Potion description and missed that bit.

That's...really shaky, expecially on the Block (Wards are explicitly the Thaumaturgy version of Blocks, see p. 265, or p. 276), and violates the spirit of the system left and right. I mean, if it were that easy to do day-long effects of that nature, the ability to make Enchanted Items that do Evocation effects wouldn't even be listed.

But we're okay with getting a 12 perception at all?  that's why i asked about skill increases using magic.  It seems like someone could just whip out their "potion of guns 12" and go to town all day, which would make everyone want to be an alchemist. Potions clearly don't work like that in the books (Harry's are usually very short term)... so it's wierd that they would work like that here.

I can't find RAW support for it, but it seems like I've come across tons of player recommendations that potion duration start at scene-length or shorter.

Belial666: That mostly works...but the Potions are really iffy.

Firstly, a Potion is explicitly only one use, ever. Frequency bonuses are useless on them. If it's not a Potion, you get the three uses...but can't burn Fate POoints to make it more potent.

So here's a vote that potions are one use, despite frequency bonuses.  Can someone point to the book where these bonuses would apply to potions? (i already quoted the explicit one use line from YS280).

Secondly, as Veils act as 'a magical Stealth roll' it is very unlikely that the Veil will survive taking an attack action (Stealth usually doesn't).

Thirdly, you've burned 2 FP on this...a fair number of people could spot you pretty easily for an only slighly higher investment in FP (or even a lower one if they've got some navel-gazing Aspects available).

Right.  . A potion-veil would simply let you do one on the fly, without stress or worrying about length. It would still get pierced the first time you did anything aggressive, ect. However, nothing really says it goes away once one person sees through it (see, veiling buildings under thaumaturgy in YS).  But you would get more mileage out of just doing a ritual in the morning, because you could use declarations to set it higher.

The Invulnerability and Awareness potions won't get the day-long base duration of the Veil one, since in neither case is there Thaumaturgy to do that, so they'll last one round by default...and thus the invulnerability one's better as a non-potion, and the Awareness one is of somewhat limited utility.

most people seem to recommend that potions have a duration of "scene" anyways. There isn't really anything that says "if you have a magic effect that isn't clearly spelled out under thaumaturgy, it defaults to one round" as far as I can tell. Some of the examples in the book give effects that last longer than one round (the hyperawareness potion, ect).   One of the things I'd love to hear is how people are assigning complexity, including what time frame they are using as a base.

  I'm fine with you having a bunch of potions laying around, but if you want a special one, it needs to be part of the story.  (at least in my opinion)

           

I limit the "i just happen to have the perfect thing for this!" potions to the regular strength of (lore + specialty + extra slot bonus + any invoked aspects.) Which can honestly still push to 12 or so.  But yeah declarations only work if you're making it in game... my players have already made some stuff like this.

Frequency works on potions normally - it says so in the book.

Yup, and it states rather emphatically that "a given potion may only be used once, period" (YS280)... which confused some of our players as they thought they were being conflicting information from the book.  Basically, it should read, "period, unless you've increased the frequency or dedicated more slots.."

I'd like to add a bunch of questions to this:

How does increased frequency (from specialization) work with "potions are any one-shot item"?  One of my players has 6 potion slots and a total frequency of 3 (+2 from specializations). Does he have 6 potions each usable once or 6 potions each usable 3 times?

Did we decide if potions have the same cap as other enchanted items (lore x 2)?  How does specialties/focus items that increase lore work with this?  That same character has lore 5, +3 strength, for an effective starting strength of 8. Assuming he does the normal skill maneuver/tag bit, he can easily drive this up.  Is his potion making capped at 10 (twice his lore), 16 (twice his effective strength), or not at all?

Say he wants to make money selling potions that temporarily offer "male enhancements" or "boob job in a can".  The best I can figure out is to use it as conjuring or transformation.  (conjuring would produce fake results, ecto-peen, but could be made very realistic by adding to the complexity, real would be a true, albeit temporary, transformation, grey area of the laws and all).  Now, as this isn't complete or permanent transformation, I don't see it needing to have a complexity of 26 or whatever.  But, what should it be?  4 to cover the stress boxes, (assuming no resistance to get past), and then what? Is "male enhancement" an aspect, a mild consequence (even though it's positive?), or what?

Someone mentioned "powered by fate points".  I read somewhere else that to give yourself a power, even temporarily, should cost over 26 complexity (because of full transformation), but the book seems to indicate that you could have a lower cost but have the effect powered by fate points equal to the refresh cost of the power.  If we went that way (paying, say, 2 fate points to gain inhuman strength for a scene), what would the potion cost be?

What's the cost for just a base skill increase?  Say, +4 to athletics for a scene?  Some of the examples in the books seem to do this, but for specific things (jumping to overcome barriers, ect).  If this is possible, then could you make a potion just to increase your might? How is this different, cost-wise and effect-wise, than gaining, say, supernatural strength (as a temporary power)?

For example, the character made a potion of see lies.  Basically, a bonus to empathy for a scene towards detecting lies.  He doesn't want it just as an aspect (+2 once for free, then costing a fate point each time to invoke), but is trying to get a scene-length bonus. Is this possible? What should the cost be?

sorry for all the questions.  We just started playing and complexity of some spells/potions is a huge discussion for us right now.