Well, in my experience the ratio of people with legit Beta test books versus people who pirated them is quite high. Sorry to offend. Welcome to the forum, and hope you enjoy your Dresden gaming!

Yeah...no, a weapon you can make appear and disappear at will, even when possessed by another? That's worth +0. Ten heartbeats, FYI, for a person with an average heart rate, is about 10 seconds--well within the time of your average action in an exchange, with plenty leftover to act, and that's if you're not running at a high heart rate because you're in the middle of or are about to be in combat.

IF you required a full exchange to summon the weapon, I might give +1 rebate back for that.

In the Rifts Roleplaying Game, the St Louis Arch is a construct that permanently keeps a massive rift open.  Big nasty things come in through there all the time.

Ah, Rifts.

Yeah, the Arch is clearly a giant Circle to me. It could be used for all kinds of crazy rituals, but of course the only types crazy enough to do something like that are generally crazy evil.

Bears...not especially "rage-y" or "sloth-y" animals. Other than zoo-bears, they're really not lazy, and in fact are pretty fast animals in an all-out run. I would say bears fit better with Spirits of Protection, as that's their most common metaphysical link, historically, as I understand it. Even Grizzly bears usually only attack people over territory or perceived threats. As far as boars and big cats, they make a much better rage-spirit link than a bear IMO.

Chameleons, I feel it necessary to remind everyone, do not camouflage themselves with their color-changing abilities. They do for many reasons...but not to hide.

Any Spirit-of-Sloth sounds...frustrating and annoying to play, personally. Maybe not for other players.

Sweet, I'm thinking of rolling up a wizards apprentice from the dark ages who found his master's ritual that throws him hundreds of years into the future. I was just wondering if i need a Lawbreaker/should worry about wardens.

We literally had a PC do the exact same thing The apprentice wasn't a Lawbreaker, though the Master was. THe Wardens came for him and he sent the apprentice forward in time admonishing her to "wait for him." Alas, he never showed up. As far as the Wardens...well, some Wardens *might* still be alive hundreds of years later, but you're approaching the edge of a wizard's lifespan. It's doubtful that anyone could connect you in the future, now, to yourself in the past. And a Soulgaze should determine your innocence, if someone suspects you (maybe your ritual left an energy impression that clearly reads "time travel") then maybe you're watched or put on probation. I would say that's up to you and your Aspects, and the GM.

I kind of like this idea.  Maneuvers aren't nearly as efficient an action with spellcasting as attacks, and aren't really affected by the raw power that spellcasting brings.  They really shouldn't be limited in the same way.  While they open up the range of options to a considerable degree, they also come with the limitation of a base +3 difficulty in the presence of any other person.  I think I'd have them not cause casting stress outside of exceeding your conviction, and backlash or fallout.  This may even open up power over control builds for wizards that don't necessarily want to go all offense and would rather play a support roll.

Both the issue of Maneuvers and of Power changes dramatically when you allow Evothaum maneuvers to split a single "maneuver" type spell into several aspects, even to "spray" maneuvers....You might consider allowing this for all evocation.

Based on the book text you pasted, I think they mean you need more power and corresponding control. After all, the Power of a spell is equivalent to the "roll" from another action, with the exception of Attack spells. So other than with Attacks, trying to get a Maneuver or Block off when your spellcasting is Blocked means you've got to set the Power to meet or beat the Block on you. So how do we deal with Attacks?

At the end of the day...a Block prevents action from occurring. Sometimes that means "you spit bullets and they bounce off my shield," and sometimes that means "I spit bullets at the doorway, and no one is going to go near that doorway now to escape." In the latter case, if you're trying to Sprint through that doorway and you don't beat the Block, it isn't like you run into the doorway, dance around lead in the air, and come back--you just don't go for it. (Or, you know, a million other options, but stay with me: )

So. Blocking the use of magic. I think this makes perfect sense. It isn't infrequent for Harry to wind up too up-close to a Bad Guy to get a spell off...that screams a Fists or Weapons Block. Sure, some of that is compelled, but not all of it has to be. Or, for example, say that someone with some high Athletics and Speed powers is dueling a wizard in an all-out brawl. There are bystanders on the left and right side of their "arena." So the speedster runs around to place himself between the wizard and bystanders and keeps bouncing around--if the wizard misses, he's got a really good chance at hitting an onlooker, and we can't have that; ~Athletics Block against ranged attacks including evocation. Seems reasonable to me. He could compel this as well, sure, but...the Block should work too if that's what he wants. We can argue over whether that's a winning strategy for the speedster, but it seems like a valid strategy, at least.

So...how to handle this. The idea is that generally these Blocks makes it disadvantageous for a wizard to make the attempt moreso than make it impossible to get the spell itself off (I'll get to that). So in these instances...you don't know if you'll beat the block until you roll. Meaning you've got to call up power first, and then we get into the questions we have here. So you call up power, deciding on an evocation element and some kind of attack spell...you roll to control/aim it at the Speedster, and the roll is less than the Block value...what happens? Well, I recall when discussing adjudicating Athletics rolls that if your PC makes an Athletics roll to jump across a chasm, for instance, and fails the roll...they don't have to actually jump and fall; they realize that they won't make the jump and need to find another way across. In that vein, I think what I would say is that the power you call up doesn't just disappear--you took stress and have X shifts of power called up to work with still...but that you have to decide on an alternative thing to do with the power you called up, with what is allowed being what fits in the narrative. In this case, maybe you hit the ground beneath the Speedster or the roof above him, or Block him, or whatever...you just can't throw that spell at him in a straight line from A to B, because you're not confident enough on your aim.

Or, you can make the control roll and see if it fails...and if it does, just don't take any stress and say it's because you never called any up, because you weren't confident enough that you could hit the guy without hitting a bystander. I think I'd allow the player to decide--forget the stress hit from Power and accomplish nothing, or take it but redirect the spell in another way. A third option, if you're roll-happy, is to forget the stress hit from Power but then allow them to make a completely different mundane action after they failed the Control check, but that feels like double-dipping in a way other PCs can't do, so I'm not a fan of that.

As far as more...personal blocks, like grappling....I think I'd say the same thing. Figure out the spell but hold off on marking off Power stress. Make the Control roll. Will you beat the Block? If yes, then mark off the Power stress and adjudicate the spell. If no, then no Power is called up, no stress hit, but you lose your attempt at another kind of action.


^ The above ideas are all just for Attack spells because of the different Power/Control relationship they have. For Blocks or Maneuvers, you need to just worry about Power meeting/exceeding the Block, and the Control roll is a bookkeeping roll for yourself. If you fail Control and allow enough Backlash that the Power isn't enough to beat the Block anymore, that's your issue, and the Block holds.

Yeah, blackstaff, this isn't really a question to debate. The extra boxes go after the others, period. It's additional toughness over what you'd have if you were purely human. Even from a purely narrative standpoint it makes no sense to put the extra boxes first.