Character idea-how it would work

[Sanctaphrax]

Seelie magic is a combination of Channeling and Ritual with a couple of random benefits tacked on.

Replacing those random benefits with a discount seems kinda munchkiny.

I'd probably charge a little extra if a player wanted to include spellcasting in their Modular Abilities repertoire. And I'd require them specify how they'd distribute their foci, specializations, and so on. No mixing that stuff up on the fly.

Thaumaturgy is more worrying than Evocation with Modular Abilities, since most of the time Modular Abilities is useless when Thaumaturgy is useful. So there's a balance concern there.

Then again, balance matters less than I tend to assume.

[Howl]

MAGICAL SELF-ENHANCEMENT [+varies]
Description: Many supernatural abilities can be mimicked through an application of spellcasting. But that requires specialization, of the sort that this power represents.
Musts: A character must possess the Evocation power in order to use this one. Other powers to link this power to are also required.
Skills Affected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Effects:
Limited Powers. When you take this power, you must select at least one other supernatural power that you possess. Which powers may be selected with this power is a matter of the GM's discretion. The selected powers are disabled, and the character gets a rebate equal to one-third of the powers' total cost.
Magical Self-Enhancement. This power allows the user to grant themselves access to the selected powers through evocation. Such evocations may be of any element that makes sense, and they may be offensive or defensive. The power required of an evocation that grants powers is equal to the refresh cost of the granted powers plus the intended duration. The user may extend this effect using the normal rules for the extension of evocation, and they may choose to grant themselves only a few of the selected powers. This also allows them to grant lesser versions of the selected powers. For example, a character who had selected Supernatural Strength and Inhuman Speed with this power may grant themselves Inhuman Strength for 5 exchanges with a 7-shift evocation.

This is a very interesting custom power. It just might work for what I had planned. Could you please give me an example for "Limited powers", I'm not sure I understand how exactly that works!?

Why not just put seven refresh in Modular Abilities?  That will give you five points to move between True Shapeshifting and possibly Flight when you're shapechanging and five points of spell casting when you're not.

That is also a good idea, especially since I had the idea that the character can't use spellcasting while he is shapeshifted. And with expanding what you can do with Modular Abilities he can have spellcasting and shapeshifting both, but not in the same time.

[Sanctaphrax]

Have you read GS?

If so, remember that guy with the unorthodox kinetomancy?

Mechanically, that guy had Inhuman Speed modified by this power. When he wanted to fight, he'd cast a 4-shift evocation rote that gave him Inhuman Speed for two exchanges.

He normally did not have access to Inhuman Speed. This power prevented him from using it unless he used a spell to activate it.

Speaking of which, I should expand the prerequisites to include Sponsored Magic or Channeling as options.

[Howl]

Yes I did read it and I do understand now. Thank's for the explanation.

[devonapple]

The only problem I see with Magical Self-Enhancement is that a lot of the powers folks will take cost an even amount of points (unless they get the top version of that power), but they get a rebate of 1/3rd the cost of the power: if nothing else, you should establish whether players round up or down.

My suggestion:
Most of the scalable powers (Toughness, Speed, etc.) tap out at 6 points. 1/3 of 6 is 2. So let's set the +X for this as +2, with the caveat that the power cannot be reduced below 1 Refresh in cost. This may serve to encourage folks to get the 3- to 4-point powers for ultimate min-maxing, though, so that may be an undesired consequence depending on your view. But we could use the pre-existing Catch phraseology.

[Sanctaphrax]

No.

Here's why:

This power becomes much more disadvantageous when attached to a big clump of powers. It's like Feeding Dependency; Feeding Dependency on 2 refresh worth of powers is trivial but Feeding Dependency on 10 refresh worth of powers is a huge problem.

By making the rebate constant, you encourage players to only attach the minimum number of powers. That is a bad thing.

We want a player playing a Listens To Wind knockoff to attach this to all of his shapeshifting powers, not just some of them. And we want to compensate him for the incredibly large drawback that that entails.

So the rebate has to increase when the value of the attached power increases.

But I admit that a 1/3 rebate is a clunky way to handle it. I'd love to hear a better idea.

PS: 1/3 is rounded down, 2/3 is rounded up. So the power gives a 1 refresh rebate when attached to an Inhuman power and a 2 refresh rebate when attached to a Supernatural power.

[devonapple]

My apologies - I misread the placement of an apostrophe and interpreted this as a "per power" rebate, not a total rebate like the Catch.

[Sanctaphrax]

Actually, applying this power separately to each power might not be a bad idea...

But I'm not sure how to do that so I guess I'll just keep the same effect and make the wording clearer.

[Quackerjack]

Why not just use Water - Evocations to Shapeshift? If LTW can do it (Jim said he (and the Alphas) is using water - magic) why not your character?

[Sanctaphrax]

Because that doesn't actually work very well according to the rules we have.

The power I posted is an attempt to make your suggestion viable.