Stating out Soulfire

[Kaldra]

i have been reading through the book and one of the sections i was most interested in was sponsored magic and Soulfire but when i read the entry i was let down with what they give from a stats point of view. soul fire is the magical rebar it reinforces and strengthens magical effects. it even costs one more point of refresh. but what does it actually do beyond reducing toughnesses and catches?

[Becq]

The bit about it reducing toughness and (maybe) ignoring catches is pretty significant, in my opinion.  Consider that some creatures that might be completely imune to magic might not be imune to magic+soulfire.  Also, the reduction of toughness is rather nice, too.  Consider, say, a vampire that has four physical stress boxes, plus inhuman toughness that gives him armor:1 plus two more stress boxes.  Without soulfire, you'd have to give enough stress to get into that non-existent seventh box, which might take four 5-stress hits, for example (before subtracting armor).  With soulfire, a single 5-stress hit would be enough to force a consequence, because the armor and those two bonus boxes don't exist for purposes of marking off the damage.  Compare this to Hellfire, which 'merely' adds one to the power of the spell, which translates to +1 stress.  (But only if you can control the extra power; otherwise it translates to +1 backlash!)

In additional, all sponsored magic grants one additional ability that you didn't mention: the ability to use debt to invoke aspects.  I think this is probably very powerful for spellcasters, as they are generally very low refresh, since it means that you can pump that extra bit of contoll into your spell even after exhausting all of your Fate (or before gaining Fate through compels), thus avoiding what otherwise might be a missed spell, or a spell that backlashes in an unfortunate way.  You pay for it later through debt compels, but Soulfire's sponsor is likely a bit less demanding than some of the other sponsors...

[Kaldra]

its powerful as is yes, but what about the thamuaturgy side of things? even in the book it says we do not know, seems like the mystical rebar of the magic world would help with complexity or perhaps in the creation of items department.

[Richard_Chilton]

Just reread

(click to show/hide)

Turn Coat

and what struck me was

(click to show/hide)

that semi-divine shapeshifter's reaction to soul fire.  It clearly bypassed at least some of it defenses.  That, and by how rare that thing thought soulfire was.  From that reaction I'm thinking you need to get it from an old god or archangel.

That passage really seems to put soulfire in a class by itself and probably

(click to show/hide)

changed someone opinion of Dresden, because if he had soulfire then he couldn't be all that bad.

I'm thinking that we will learn more about that power when Ghost Story comes out.

Richard

[KOFFEYKID]

Another thing about soulfire is it presumably lets you use all schools of thaumaturgy at the speed and methods of evocation, as long as your intent is in line with your sponsor. That is VERY powerful. More powerful than ANY sponsored magic.

[Lanir]

Another thing about soulfire is it presumably lets you use all schools of thaumaturgy at the speed and methods of evocation, as long as your intent is in line with your sponsor. That is VERY powerful. More powerful than ANY sponsored magic.

That really depends on how your GM reads it. Basically soulfire in the novels is a wild card still. It's a plot element that Jim chose to introduce but not explain much about. That means that even if he chose to divulge extra info to Fred & co. at Evil Hat about it, they really can't say too much about it. The cat is supposed to stay in the bag until Jim is ready to reveal it in a story. And because that's the state of affairs, we have a very vague write-up about soulfire in the RPG books. If you want to stick close to canon with your uses of it you should probably try to make sure people walk out with as many questions as they had going in. Not everyone will be up for paying 5 refresh for a mystery power though, so be up front with them about how you intend to use it before you let anyone buy it.

One caveat about it is I would be very surprised if anyone let you use Soulfire as a way of getting unrestricted thaumaturgy at evocation speeds & methods. That would be very silly and worth a lot more than 5 points. Just that alone would have to be worth more than 6 since that's what everyone else pays for normal thaumaturgy and evocation (what you're talking about would duplicate both). And we haven't even mentioned it's special abilities yet. Generally the balance points behind sponsored magic are threefold. You can only use the power in ways your sponsor approves of, it has set methods for how it works, and it has a limited subset of thaumaturgy and evocation that it's capable of.

[Kaldra]

would people agree that soulfire would perhaps help in the making of things? plus one to power or uses per sessions for items or plus one for complexity of thaumaturgy?

[Lanir]

I'd say do whatever works for you. Harry seems to mostly use it for fire and spirit evocations. As someone reminded me in another thread, he does use it in a summoning ritual as well. I might be missing something but that's all I can think of. If you want it to be usable in other ways in your game that's up to you. Harry definitely has a particular style of spellcasting and it's not subtle. If you want to focus on adding things it can do you might start by thinking of what you'd let Molly or Elaine do with it.

[Archmage_Cowl]

the thing about soulfire is its "mystical rebar" like when harry uses the silver hand "construct" I personally think that might be done two ways. First conjuration is it's specialty, possibly granting a refinement level bonus in that (say a +1 complexity and control).

Second is that it can grant duration to spells that normally have none, like an attack. Normally draw up 5 shifts. Get a weapon: 5. Use soulfire draw up 5 shifts and a point of debt get a weapon: 5 spell that lasts for two exchanges.

I could see either of these, though i am heavily leaning toward the conjuration style simply for game balance purpose. I think the attack would be really cool but it is possibly game breaking (though it may be more thematically accurate). This bears thinking upon for me and it's late, so i'll check this tomorrow and see what i think up.

[Wyrdrune]

Another thing about soulfire is it presumably lets you use all schools of thaumaturgy at the speed and methods of evocation, as long as your intent is in line with your sponsor. That is VERY powerful. More powerful than ANY sponsored magic.

Personally I do not read that from the description in YS. But as Lanir said - whatever works for you.

would people agree that soulfire would perhaps help in the making of things? plus one to power or uses per sessions for items or plus one for complexity of thaumaturgy?

I would have it give boni to conjurings and such - illusions (holomancy) and the like.

[mostlyawake]

Personally I do not read that from the description in YS. But as Lanir said - whatever works for you.

I would have it give boni to conjurings and such - illusions (holomancy) and the like.

We had this discussion in another thread a while back.  Soulfire is the only sponsored magic that specifically does not mention "with the speed and methods of evocation." Thus, some people see it as an oversight, and think soulfire should give you full thaumaturgy at evocation's speed (very powerful), and some people think it gives you nothing at evocation's speed, offering instead a wider range of thaumaturgy than other sponsored magics.  I happen to like the latter option, but only because I am trying to balance a group that contains both characters that paid 5 refresh for soulfire, and characters who paid 5 refresh for thaumaturgy and channelling... and the vague "sponsor's agenda" isn't enough to keep those 2 characters at the same level.