Great, thanks for the help guys. As far as the resources thing, that's actually going to start off really low. XD Me and my friends are running a game where we're essentially playing slightly idealized versions of ourselves. We haven't found a gm yet, so we're assuming feet in the water. That being said, I'll have just moved to the town it'll be set in, with hopes of finding people to tutor/home-school on the mortal side for income (which is going to take some hunting for people who don't mind not being able to use a computer for it...maybe I can teach in a little nearby Amish community XD), and people in the magical community who'd like potions made (mechanically speaking mine will be power 8 after all) or some other service that they can't provide for themselves. Since both of these are small business ideas with their own limitations, it's going to take me a while to build a reputation so understandably my resources are going to start at crap. So ya, I'ma be stuck with more public areas for the purposes of research. It is a college town though, so that should make things somewhat easier as long as I stay away from the catalog computers.

Would potions HAVE to be ingested, or can they be set up to work on skin contact, or possibly activate an effect if the container breaks (ie, potion grenade)?

One of the examples in the book for eastern elements lists metal, wood, water, earth, fire, and spirit. If you were to do metal evocation, would it essentially be creating metal out of ectoplasm? Ie. a metal evocation attack summons up metal shards that go flying at someone?

As a side note, I'd just like to say, no I'm not trying to min/max much with this char. I'm actually trying to avoid it a bit. I came up with the concept, then reading through the rules about how it would work and started getting afraid of it being overpowered. You guys are doing well to aleviate that fear for the most part though.

Remember, thought, that " an  item’s  casting  strength  after all  bonuses  are  totaled  should  never  exceed two  times  the  crafter’s  Lore rating—at  least not without a very good rationale and a ton of baggage," YS280.

-EF

That's not hard. The build for this char is 2 2 2 2 with Lore and Discipline as the high stats, meaning base Lore is 4. Crafting spec and +2 foci would put the base power at 7 and could technically go to 8.

Also, having items that grant you power is basically saying that the GM will take them away some of the time.  Having a character that's useless without his items it probably not that great of an idea.  Of course, plenty of characters can get a real boost from enchanted items without having to rely on them, but he most exploitive characters seem to dump  all their points into them

Actually the concept for this char was meant to be focused on alchemy/items (thus focused practitioner template rather then sorcerer despite technically qualifying to being called a sorcerer, meaning this char is really somewhere in-between the two). The main point though was for the items to make him SOMEWHAT useful in combat (the character basically saying something along the lines of I don't wanna/can't learn evocation but I don't want to be helpless if crap goes down) where having full thaum makes him much more useful out of it. Though I do have to say I did think about the idea that they could get taken away, which helps balance the idea a bit. I'm just to used to thinking in terms of Harry who has issues using evo without his foci. XD

...which is why you take the Thaumonuclear Deathzooka as an aspect silly, that way the GM has to really work to take it away, and has to pay you fate points if he does.

If one of my players actually called something the Thaumonuclear Deathzooka I'd be tempted to allow it.

Welp, I know what my last aspect is going to be. XD

Yeah, that's all legal, but bear in mind the following things:

1. You need to roll (and almost certainly with a skill other than Lore, and thus a max of Good skill) to hit with that Attack Item.That's a powerful attack, but only decent ofdds to hit.

2. The Defense, while awesome for your level, is also breakable. All you need to do to get screwed is for one guy with a few Fate Points to break it and it's down for the entire round. A coordinated enemy group will have their highest Initiative guy do that, and then everyone will shoot you during your round of vulnerability. There's nothing really comparable without magic, though a suit as an Item of Power granting Physical Immunity with a Catch like Silver or Mistletoe is only -3 or -4 Refresh, and that's even better defensively.

3. An evocation specialist at your level of focus can have 5 shift Evocations on offense and 8 shifts on Defense if he wanted, which is again, roughly comparable, though with a bit less endurance and a bit more flexibility (though he'd likely do better with more like 7 on offense and 6 on defense). He's reduced to 5 shifts on both without Items...but you're reduced to basically nothing.

1. Not any worse then evocation as you can use discipline to roll for item accuracy just like evo. I'm rolling on a 4 disc so unless I'm trying to hit something silly like a six inch tall pixie on top of a building or something it shouldn't be much of an issue.

2. Noted. I actually hadn't thought of that. Given enough rolls, one of them is going to get through...not to mention at five uses if they focus on me I'll be in trouble, but hopefully with he way the party is built that won't happen...hopefully. XD

3. This is really the point that tells me I was other thinking the over-powered part. As long as others can do something comparable I don't have as much of an issue with it.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

Honestly just for versatility's sake I would probably not have the items listed. 2 potion slots, 2 for an offensive, 2 for defensive, and 2 for something that throws an aspect on opponents that we can tag to capture someone and/or run away.

See that's what I thought based on the way the rules are worded, but that brings up an odd problem of overpowering items. For example, I rolled up a feet in the water focused practitioner with full thaum and 2 levels of refinement. Say I split it out as 2 focus item slots and 8 enchanted item slots, and put my thaum focus as crafting power +1.

I roll up a focus item using both of the focus slots for +2 crafting power bonus (see 278 in Your Story, 5th and 6th paragraphs).

This would mean that I could have both of these.

An item that throws up a power 8 block with 5 uses per session.

An item that throws and evocation style magic attack with 8 shifts of power and 5 uses per session.

This is a feet in the water focused practitioner. That seems a little odd honestly, considering he could basically take an artillery shell and then blow up whatever launched it and still be good to go to continue combat without any real trouble.