Damaging and Destroying Foci
Sometimes a practitioner will channel so much raw power through their foci that it becomes damaged, or destroyed all together. These rules are aimed at pinning down how that happens.
When a practitioner takes backlash stress from channeling power in excess of his discipline, a common practice is to take a physical consequence. By channeling a portion of that backlash into the focus he may downgrade the physical consequence he takes by one step per Focus Slot the Focus has. Unlike most consequences, the consequences to a Foci does not heal over time. An effort must be made by the player to repair the damage. Otherwise you may loose part of the benefit offered by a Foci, like Harry's damage shield bracelet in Dead Beat. A focus that has lost the benefit of all Slots through consequences is destroyed.
For Example:
Harry Dresden is being chased by a big, big, nasty ghoul. He has a Conviction score of 5, and a Discipline score of 3. He decides he is going to call up one huge fire evocation, he has a fire specialization, and he has a Blasting Rod that gives him +1 Fire Control. He pulls in 13 Shifts of power, 7 over his modified average for a fire evocation. This fills in his 3rd and 4th slots on his Mental Stress bar. Next Harry rolls his Discipline. He rolls a +3, making his control for this spell 7. He doesn't have many fate points left, but he invokes his aspect of Not So Subtle, Still Quick to Anger. Now his roll is 9, 4 points off his Goal. He only has a Mild Physical Consequence left to tap, which he does. Two backlash left, and Harry decided to channel them through his blasting rod, inflicting a Mild Physical Consequence on it (which applies the Fire Offensive Control Broken aspect to it, canceling its bonus, and since that is all the focus does, it is broken). He manages to control it all, and he hits the ghoul for an INSANE FUEGO, cutting it in half at the waist. Sadly though, his Blasting Rod burnt to a cinder, and now he has to craft a new one.
What do you guys think?
