Granted, a very POWERFUL wizard, who devoted enough Enchanted Item slots to get its combined complexity high enough ( which would probably take a decent number of enchanted items ) could probably get something along those lines, but would normally only work once a session, bar enough additional enchanted items to increase the number of times per session it could be used.

Remember that a practitioner can make enchanted items work beyond their "per session" uses merely by taking a point of mental stress per extra use.  For a non-combat item like a talkie mirror, the mental stress is usually trivial.

Me, I opted for making an Enchanted Item for this effect - a magic mirror with the ability to let my charcter communicate (sight & sound) with anyone/anything he seeks, provided there is a mirror near them...
So worth the item slots, IMO...

Clearly you've determined what the complexity should be, since items are duplicating effects that Thaumaturgy or Evocation could achieve.  What did you decide the complexity should be and how did you decide?

Message Carrying Water Spirits who know the ways and will deliver messages in exchange for tea (because water spirits love a nice hot cup of tea). Seriously though I think a low level messenger spirit would be the lowest complexity way to do this.   

Isn't "low level messanger spirit" just a trapping in this case?  It doesn't really matter whether you want to say you're talking through a foggy mirror, having spirits carry messages back and forth, or having your writing appear on a page in a remote location.  It's the same basic effect, just with different descriptive flavor text.

Hi guys,

Quick question. Our World states that

(click to show/hide)

Red Court Vampires basically loses all their mojo if their stomach is cut open, and it's listed as one of their vulnerabilities or catches.

How would you mechanically run this? I'm a bit stumped.

Someone would need to use a maneuver to place an appropriate aspect.  Something like the "In My Sights" example they always use for Guns, except that it would be "Targeting the Belly" and could apply equally to Fists, Weapons, or Guns attacks.  As usual the first invoke is a free tag, and after that you keep paying Fate points.  Also as usual, the vampire can try a roll to remove the Aspect from itself.

Also, that's a spoiler?  Really?

I had been wondering if Enchanted Items didn't kind of suck compared to potions, which are much more flexible.  Then when reading the Enchanted Item rules for about the third time, I _finally_ noticed that last sentence.

When a practitoner has already used all the 'uses per day' for an item, they can continue to use it by taking one mental stress for each extra use.  Gah!  That makes enchanted items about fifty times more useful.  This is especially nice if you're someone with Ritual or Thaumaturgy but not Evocation and aren't using that mental stress for anything else when not doing ritual casting.  Get yourself a nice Enhanted Item weapon and go to town.  Even for a full wizard, I can see a lot of situations where it would come in handy.

Am I the only one to have not noticed that rule on the first read-through?  Right now I'm feeling kind of dumb for having dismissed enchanted items.

I guess it also depends on how central producing tasty emotions is to a particular vampire's life.  All that stuff about carefully selecting the right target and carefully destroying them sounds awfully time-consuming.  Time spent doing that is time that can't be spend running businesses, watching football, getting drunk, betting on horses, reading comics, and any other thing that the vampire might find enjoyable in life.

Sure a particular White Court might act that way (selecting particular targets), but I don't think it should be taken as default behavior anymore than Red or Black Court spend all their time trying to find a particular person's blood to drink.

I see all this talk about finding good places to feed, but actually why should White Court vampires bother?

You want to feed off despair?  Find a random human, slap a hand on his shoulder, and he'll feel all the despair you could ever want.  Or lust, or greed, or whatever your Incite Emotion is.  With Incite Emotion, all a White Court needs is a steady supply of humans.  If he wants to be discrete, ideally he wants circumstances where there's some excuse for them feeling the emotion (so nobody thinks it's too weird).  But an excuse will suffice.

You needn't go out of your way to find a nursing home where humans already despair.  Instead a WC can go to any old nursing home at all, and soon enough there will be plenty of despair.

1) Many human opponents. Laws of Magic tend to tie up the wizard into playing support for the other characters in combat encounters against human opponents.

2) Nerf Wizards, as you suggest. This completely changes the dynamic, though.

A more subtle way to nerf wizards is to carefully ration out their opponents over a scene (so they can't try to blast them all at once).  They have a powerful weapon in Evocation, but it only has 4 or 5 (if using a Mild Consequence) "shots" in it.  Once that last mental stress box has been filled in, things get very interesting indeed and it becomes a question of how much the wizard is willing to damage himself to keep zapping away.

It really does get easy to use all that mental stress, especially if you want to toss down a nice Maneuver or something with Evocation as well.