Focus Items and Rotes

[akbloomfield]

Hi there, new GM here. Trying to make sure I have ALL the rules 100% down as I have experienced GMs as players and I ran into an issue with Focus Items. Nowhere in YS (either under Rote Spells on pg 257 or under Focus Items on pg 278) can I find a definitive answer on whether it's possible to use more than one focus item in the execution of a single rote spell.

TL;DR Can you use more than one Focus Item in the casting of a Rote Spell?

[Mr. Death]

You can, but you can't get the same kind of bonus from two different focus items.

So you could do a spell with two wands, one being Fire Offensive Power+1, the other being Fire Offensive Control+1. But you couldn't use two wands with the same bonus on a single spell.

Does that help?

[akbloomfield]

Yes tysm that's exactly what I was looking for. Lol it just feels weird casting something with like two wands

[PatchR]

It would look an awful lot like a conductor using both hands to control an orchestra, but with two of their batons.

[Haru]

Remember that if you link a rote spell to a focus item, you can't cast the spell as a rote spell, if you don't have that item. That means, of course, if you are linking a rote spell to 2 focus items and you only have one of them, you can't cast it as a rote spell either.

Dual wielding Wands can look pretty awesome, I think.
Besides:

(click to show/hide)

Isn't Molly dual wielding in her one-woman-rave?

[akbloomfield]

  I haven't actually read the books so I wouldn't actually know. My friends are just into Dresden and I'm into role-playing so I scoured OW and YS but none of the actual books

[Mr. Death]

One of my players dual-wields focus items--she's a lightning based practitioner, and she has a small wand for offensive control, and a bigger, metal staff for offensive power. Basically, the staff acts as a lightning rod to gather ambient energy (or, in the right circumstances, channel a storm), then she fires it out through the smaller wand.