My favorite villains are the ones that the players are forced to work with (or at least have the choice to work with) and one that the players may even be tempted to join; a bear outside the house is not nearly as scary as a snake inside if you get what I'm saying. Take a look at Silence of the Lambs and my favorite villain ever, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Even though he gave Clarice the info she needed to catch the bad guy and he was imprisoned nearly the entire time, the ball was always in his court, he outsmarted the protagonist every step of the way. Going down Jim's list in your link: he is definitely motivated by his need to toy with some and kill (feeding dependency maybe?) others. His power and admiral quality are one and the same, he is unquestionably and creepily intelligent. He knows you better then you know yourself and is sharp enough to know how to use it against you. And lastly, yes Hannibal is definitely unique and instantly recognizable.

I would use Hannibal as a template for one of your Red Court, a guy that may be obviously bad (due to the fact that he is a Red Court), but he is also smart enough to never let the evidence stack up against him so your players will not know the full extent of his "evilness" or be able to link any crimes to him directly. You can also have this guy approach your PC's (I'm not sure if your PC's are an official group or just random people working together but I assume their power levels make them stand out when they are all together) to work against the Black Court baddie. If the players don't dig they might be fooled into thinking that Mister Red is being genuine, that it is in his best interests to be truthful and not harm the PC's, but of course he's lying.

Now for the Black Court guy you can take a different approach. Because they are on the decline we can assume (and I believe both YS and OW mention this) that any Black Court left are powerful and clever to have survived this long. In one of my past games the GM had the Black Court hide in plain site. He was the head of some powerful multi-national corporation with so many political ties that he was nearly untouchable. This kind of villain is so frightening due to the sheer amount of resources at their disposal and it is difficult to trace anything back to them, they have so many favors and blackmails set up that they can hit you five different ways at once, all of them untraceable. Of course with this powerful an NPC you will need to give your PC's a helping hand in dealing with him. You can give them the help of some benevolent organization (a Knight of the Cross, some ex-cops that want to take him down), but it's more fun to give this help in the way of another villain, like the Red Court I previously mentioned. This way your players have to constantly watch their back and try to not get tangled in the web of politics, lies, and double-crosses that all the baddies will try to tangle them in and just makes for very fun games in my opinion.

Just remember that "admirable quality" doesn't necessarily mean that your villain is admirable in some way, just that something about them taken out of context is admirable. I wouldn't call Hannibal admirable in anyway, but when you consider just of smart and good at reading people he is (and ignore how he has chosen to use it), you can't help but respect the guy.

While it is true that flight does make you immune to ground based maneuvers it make you vulnerable to whole new ones, like if the day is exceptionally windy those on the ground would be annoyed but not particularly hampered while the airborne person could get swept around. And in order to attack anyone you'd need to fly into their zone anyway so you'll either be vulnerable till your next turn or take the -1 to fly up again. And if you had a way of attacking from a few zones away (gun, breath weapon) you would be rather conspicuous flying around unloading a pistol or breathing fire. Basically the person with flight could easily get compelled to fly to high and have some frightened mortal call the cops, drawing unwanted attention. I know these downsides are nearly all situational but I feel they add up enough to justify the -1 cost. Personally I feel that Crafters and those with the full Incite Emotion tree have a better chance of being OP than flyers.

p.s.: Since i am new to the system: Is conviction the right roll to resist fear of doing something?

No, Discipline is.

And I'm throwing my vote with the "No" crowd. Going back to your flash-bang example I think that a person's high alertness would help them there, not hinder them. They would have a higher chance of detecting the movement of the person about to toss the grenade, or if the can't see them they may here it being tossed. They would also have a higher chance of realizing what is was in that split second and know to look away and cover their ears.

I just can't think of a situation when having a higher skill would hinder you short of being compelled.

You cannot take a Crafting Specialization without full Thaurmaturgy and cannot craft your own items or potions without at least Ritual: Crafting. However, I see no reason your character cannot have enchanted items even though he only has Evocation (or Channeling) provided you explain this in your story. Whether your wizard father made you one on your eighteenth birthday, your buddy made you one, etc, because otherwise it would beg the question of how you got the enchanted item in the first place. A Crafting specialization is the same as a specialization in wards, biomancy, etc, it's just tweaked a little bit.

Item Creation is under the Thaurmaturgy section and yes it is a type of Thaurmaturgy.

Ah, I see now. Another question, because I don't have Evocation of any type would my Enchanted Items be any element I wanted or just default to Spirit, the most "neutral" element I guess you could say.

And thank you all for you advice/insight/critique.

Also watch your pyramid with the refinements. i.e. you can't have a +2 power bonus for water evocations until you either have +1 control for water or a +1 power in fire. You can't have a +3 until you have a +2 and a +1. And if you have two bonuses at +2, you must have two more at +1 (straight out of the book YS182)

With a refinement you can either

• get a new element (not going to happen if you are a focused practitioner)
• get two additional specialization bonuses for evocation and/or thaumaturgy (some issues there again being focused)
• gain two focus item slots (which translates into 4 enchanted item slots)

That's it, I screwed up. I can only take the specialization bonuses if I take full Thermaturgy. However I didn't want my character to do any magic besides potion making, do you think it will be possible to accomplish a similar effect with stunts? For example:

Lore 5
-2: Ritual: Crafting
    -1:Block 8, 9 turns (added four enchanted slots to the four that came with ritual)
-1: Potent Potions: +2 crafting strength when creating  potions (adds two shifts and a limitation, in line with Mortal Stunt rules)
 -2: Potions ( 8 )

Refinements only allow to add (offensive or defensive) conviction or discipline to Evocation spells or lore (complexity) or discipline(control) to Thamaturgy spells so it looks like stunts are the only way for me to power up my potions (without taking Thamaturgy). I could justify the stunt by giving my character a background in chemistry or similar. Also you aren't allowed to use focus items to power up other focus items (and by extension I assume enchanted items as well).

So because I usually make "serious" characters I decided to make a guy who's kind of quirky. I decided to make him a Focused Practitioner with Ritual: Crafting. He makes quite powerful potions and sells them to local doctors and "spirit healers" as vaccines, antidotes, etc, but as I finished up his power list I just couldn't shake the feeling that he was too strong and that I had messed up somewhere. I'm going to copy-paste his powers and explain it a bit to avoid any confusion. I haven't decided what the refinements will be (a hat, ring, etc.) yet, I'm just focusing on the mechanics at the moment.

-2: Ritual: Crafting
    -1 Refinement: +4 Crafting Strength (combined with 2 free focus items from Ritual)
-2: Refinement: Block 10, 7 turns
                      Blast 9, 5 turns
-2: Potions (7) +1 Potion strength

Ritual: Nothing odd here, used the two free focus items and then bought a refinement to increase the bonus. Bonus is under Lore and potion strength is still under 2x Lore.
First Refinement: Used 5 slots here: 1 for item, 1 for increased power, and 3 for increased use.
Second Refinement: Used 3 slots, one for item, and 2 for increased use.
Potions: Essentially 2 refinements, just combined them to save space. Used 7 spaces for potions and one to increase potion strength (the book isn't very clear how this works, does the +1 apply ton all potions I ever create or just for one potion per game?)

It just seems like I messed up somewhere, otherwise I can (for only one scene of course) become nearly invincible if I drink a Guns and Athletics potion in the same scene, having at least one above legendary in each stat. I know drinking more than one potion at a time has bad effects, especially potions this potent and I assume this will manifest in an aspect on me, something like "Churning stomach" or something, but even with that it just seems like I can become a god for 2-3 scenes in any form of combat. I double checked the rules (I only have the PDF and I know the book is slightly different so maybe there's a modified rule there I'm not aware of) and can't find any mechanical faults, but like I said I just have a feeling that I'm missing something. The strength of the potions are 10, exactly double my Lore and the limit on the strength of craft able items. And just as a side note the refresh we are currently at in out campaign is 9, so I have 8 refresh to work with.

Thank you for your time.

Like I said if someone wanted to kill the horse they'd roll against my survival to but a maneuver on me, if successful I will have a "Horse shot out from under me" aspect and loose the benefits. The zone attack could be a problem, the easiest answer to me is that it would hit me and not affect the horse. I know this doesn't make much sense but you are able to dodge zone attacks in the wide open with no cover with athletics (outrunning an explosion doesn't make much sense either), my argument for this is that if I'm able to doge the zone attack than I'd just have to explain it so that the horse was fine too. Like I said it's not perfect, but I just don't want a one point power whose explanation takes up half of the power sheet. However I appreciate the criticism, I hadn't thought about a zone attack before.

And just out of curiosity why would the dodge (option #2) be more over powered than the other two? It's only a one point shift to a trapping and (unlike most other powers) I can loose the bonus at any time in the middle of combat.