Thanks so much for your input guys - I'm going to get with the player and run some of these ideas past him to see how he feels. The Demense idea is interesting, but I think i like the 'flair' of using an Illusion or Glamour more, leaving them feeling sheepish and perhaps in compromising situations when the effects wear off. That said, its not my character so I'll roll with their preference. I'll let you know if anything else comes up!

So I'm looking to do my first game (i will be the GM) and i've been reading over the manuals. We're going to be running a game at Up To Your Waist, and one of the players wants to be a con artist who uses magic to dupe his marks. The basic premise is he wants to be able to "summon" a hot tub for his customers, grab their money, and then bail before it dissolves back into ectoplasm. I realize this is A) Ridiculous and B) kinda complicated, but he's really jazzed about the idea so im trying to figure out how that might work.

My first thought was a Focused Practitioner who did Thaumaturgy or Ritual magic, but a hot tub is mechanically fairly complex; even if its "inner workings" got reduced to "air bubbles come up, water stays hot," I'm not sure if it would be viable (How many shifts would something like that cost?). The second barrier i see to this model is that if it actually has real, actual water, could that be a part of the summoning and more importantly, would that qualify as "running water" and ground out the spell? Seems very anti-fun for that to be the case.

The sceond way I thought of tackling it is for him to be creating an Illusion somehow, with enough shifts that it could have some 'tangible' aspects, and instead his mark is really sitting on the floor or in a lawn chair thinking they've just had a hot tub installed. I have basically no idea how to stat that one out though.

Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas on how to bring this concept to life?