Basically, the way i read it was that an armor or block with a duration of one lasts one exchange, not just one action prevented. so if you have armor 2 and a block 4 on two different items, and guy A rolls 6 on his attack to hit you with a weapon 0 (fists), and right after that guy B rolls a 3, you have two different scenarios (excluding just dodging/parrying)..

1) You defend from A with your armor. You take 4 stress. You then can defend from B with armor (already activated) or with your block.
The choice is yours to take the 1 stress from using your armor, or block it completely with the block (but will mean you had to use both items).

or

2) You defend with your block.  You take 2 stress and your block is gone.  You defend from B with armor (for 1 stress) or just take the hit for 3 stress.

So the advantage of armor remains... it can take multiple hits the same round.  This is why people talk about a layered defense: having both block and armor, so you can choose whichever is best for the scenario.

Nothing beats molotav cocktails through a window... screw your threshold, buddy!

step 1) You Knock Prone someone, through either a spell or a physical maneuver (same thing).  
effect of step 1) the NPC now has the Sticky Aspect "Knocked Prone", meaning a free tag for the person who applied the aspect (or whomever he hands it off to) and it stays around until countered by a second maneuver.

step 2) the NPC goes to act, before the PC can act again.  The NPC can do anything he could do on the ground... fire a gun, cast a spell, ect, ect..., or to do a maneuver to counter the sticky aspect of knocked prone. As nothing is keeping him prone right now (the spell had no duration, ect), this is pretty much an athletics check of 0, meaning he's going to stand up if he wants. Note, however, that this technically costs him his action (as he is doing a maneuver). Alternatively, as this is really an uncontested, pretty much unrolled action, it sounds perfect for a supplemental action, costing him a -1 to whatever his action is this round.

but the GM and the player both have the potential to spend a FP to compel the NPC to fail any action here. The PC may choose to do so when it becomes apparent that he is going to lose his free tag, but he will also try to calculate how likely the GM is to compel the aspect (and thus save a fate point).

So as a GM, you have to decide to compel or not. Generally, I base this on the narrative I want to write. Is this an easily beaten bad guy, that I know the character will quickly defeat? Compel it, because it's a cooler story if the baddie just flops around and gets pwned.  Is this a character that I think the PC is going to intimidate for information, and leave alive? Compel it, slipping the bad guy a FP for a later scene. Is this guy supposed to be tough, or fighting to the death, and present a real physical challenge to the PC? No compel, because it doesn't fit the story.

So, if it doesn't get compelled, or is compelled and bought out of, lets say the NPC stands up and the aspect is gone. Otherwise, it gets compelled, the NPC loses an action, gains a fate point and we move to..

step 3) the PC goes again, and tags the aspect for a +2 to punch the guy in the nose. woot.

step 4) identical to step 2, because the aspect is sticky, and thus hasn't ended yet. The brilliant player says, hrm, I will compel the same aspect again, on and on, until I am out of fate points, because by then I will have pummeled him to death.  So he compels it.  The NPC spends the fate point he just got and ignores the compel, then stands up.

 Stun lock = impossible, because the first compel gives the NPC a way out of the second compel.

ninja'd, because i talk too much in my long posts.

Great, now I'm going to have dreams about Mr. Hicks as a norse god wielding a magical Dur Banhammer. Wait, that's a good thing!  *quickly changes into pjs and dives for bed*

Seriously, we ran into a *problem* of sorts when we ran out of ideas for an appropriate scope of 500-1000 shift spells. One of my players has the idea of starting swingers clubs and then channelling that energy into spells... If you got 50 people a night doing this, you can pull of spells of easily 100 shifts.   So what happens when you've got 500?  Or you start a cult, get 2000 followers, and do a ritual?

A lot of the famous death cults/mass suicides were in the 60-300 member range.  If 300 people each give you 20 shifts of power... blamo, a 6000 shift spell.

Totally possible for a player to do. 

Yup, I get it that it's the job of the white council and such to STOP THIS MADNESS.  That's part of the game!

Still, what do you think a cult leader with 6000 shifts of power does?  (Other than to fake his corporeal death alongside his followers and become a god)?

Murph's house was her dad's, if I remember, thus the threshold.  It's a generational thing.

Also, it's built on trust and safety.. which AREN'T things created by hazing, the alpha-mentality of competitive students, ect, ect, ect.

So i'd argue that if this is true, it's exceptionally rare.  If you have a house where girls are potentially getting roofied and date-raped, probably not building a strong threshold.  If you have a house where you are constantly worried about being accepted by other members of that household, probably not a strong threshold. 

If you have a single family home that's been in the family for generations but has been tied to generations of physical or other abuse, then I doubt the threshold there is very strong or even exists; it seems like a perfect place for demons to come and go freely.

Given that a strong threshold seems to involve a family, a sense of home, over time (preferably generations), and the safety and security of a loving environment, I'd say that a frat house barely counts.

Plus, the more like a meeting place or place of business that a building serves, the less of a threshold it is... and at every frat house I've ever been in, no one knows who exactly is there at any given time, and the building is quite public.. so.. probably at best, equal to an apartment building (no threshold on the building itself, each individual bedroom possibly having a low threshold).