So as the tin says, we are converting our existing DFRPG characters to DFA. Most of it is pretty easy, but one of our characters is really throwing me a curve ball. He is Focused Practitioner with the focus being Rituals:Crafting, ie the one that doesn't have any other magic abilities than crafting potions and magic items. How would you approach converting this one to DFA?

Ok, the story I'm running is coming to an end soon and I due the improvised nature of the game, I've run myself into a bit of a cul de sac. Soo.. let's see if I can generate  some extra ideas for the grande finale with these parameters:

The big bad of the story is spiritmancer, with a plan to create a necropolis which she can rule over. We are the the point where her next step is poisoning lots of the city population with a specially made drug. My players have been investigating of course, but don't yet know who is behind the events, or why. They already had a showdown with a vampire who was working for the big bad, so I'm trying to think something else than just an attack to the Evil HQ.

Some open questions are:

• What sort of clues could I feed to my players without going all deus ex machina (they can be sometimes a bit oblivious)?
• What would make an interesting finale, other than the classical Meet Evil & Fight Until She Dies?
• How would a strong spiritmancer defend herself, or what kind of defences in general (like wards etc)?
• What sort of novel applications for spiritmancy are there?
  

Thanks in advance!

In the rulebooks words “faith,” “holy,” are related to some supernatural monsters (and their catches). For example:

Demons: “Lastly, they are vulnerable to exorcism (magical and faith-based), the power of faith, and holy objects.” (OW35)
The Fallen: “almost certainly vulnerable to faith magic.” (OW55)
Ghosts: “Faith magic works best when simply fighting ghosts…” (OW57)
Ghouls: “Affected by holy water.” (OW58)
Vampires: “True faith and holy objects can burn vampires.” (OW84)

But when it comes to rules mechanics, there's not much to go on. I'm specially interested how faith-based exorcism would work (priest with true faith vs. demon inside human body). Other examples of faith-based interactions vs. monsters are also welcome.

this I'd go with something like   hideous bat-like creature latched on to the person's neck, feeding upon him, draining the colour from his spirit so that the blood flowing from the wound is all the more vibrant in contrast.

Big thanks, this was the sort of evocative comment I was looking for.

Thanks for the link to that older thread (as you know the search function is often useless). Many of the get rich schemes thwarted in there seemed to be by notion that someone more powerful is already doing it..

My original thought was something more subtle than turning lead into gold.. a little nudge here and there to smooth things out for you, depending on the scheme.

You could embrace the problem. Have your non-human PCs take Aspects like STICKS OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB and Compel those to make trouble for them.

In most cases you don't even need to do that as you can compel their high concept (which should relate to their non-human aspect in one way or another).

So we've had some combats under our belt now but we're still occasionally struggling to figure out the DF combat paradigm. Here are some examples, maybe you can comment on them through rules expert goggles.

Exhibit A:

Our focused practitioner (geomancer) attacks an major NPC who is giving orders to his goonies. Instead of inflicting stress he just wants to stop him to give out orders. Our geomancer has a bag of sand that he magically blows against the NPC. So he does a Maneuver to inflict an aspect like "Sand in the windpipe". How does this actually stop the NPC then.. should the player compel that Aspect (and giving the NPC a fate point) or what? Or is the NPC unable to command until he removes the manouver. And what's the difficulty in removing the aspect in this case, against the original channeling roll or something else?

Another option is to do a block with the sand, I guess, but maintaining the block takes his following action(s)?


Exhibit B:

Our living dead reporter (yes) grapples a NPC goonie and uses his might to throw the goonie against the wall. Then he proceeds to ask "so how much damage does the NPC take from the throw..? ". "Err.. none", I answer with a straight face. As This was followed by disappointed looks, so I relented and gave the NPC an aspect "Spread eagled on the floor". This was probably not within the rules, but within the paradigm I think.

So now we have an NPC with "Spread eagled on the floor" aspect. How does this effect him? Is he on the floor until he removes the aspect? Or is it only taggable bonus for our PCs? Or both? And what's the difficulty in removing the aspect in this case, against the original grapple/throw or a standard "Get on your feet -roll"?

By the book, there are exactly 2 way to get a bonus to a skill roll, and that's by invoking aspects when you use the skill or taking stunts for a specific application of a skill.

Yes, that certainly implies this. It's probably mechanics-breaking if enchanted items grants straight bonuses, but would be nice if the rules 
were more explicit.

If you look closely, my proposition above didn't say "take an IoP that gives you +5 to athletics", it said "take an IoP with inhuman speed", which is a power that (among other things) increases your athletics.

Yeah I got that and that's why I chose those other skills (meant discipline and presence of course) as there's no ready made power that effects them. But I guess you could come up with a new power, like "Inhuman Resolve" that increases Discipline in certain situations..?

I've noticed that it's a bit tricky for a newbie to find the balance in new powers & stunts, but I guess only way to learn is playing the game.