Dark Path Sorceress

[Belial666]

Made a few changes, added a way to defend against the Sight (no peeking, you perverts!) and added some Thaumaturgy examples.

[jalrin]

Sightblinder is cool but not worth it.  Any ritual with that much raw power is going to show up on a practioner's arcane senses and can be targetted without having to open the third eye.  Sadly, because the ability to become invisible without any possible counter is basically an "I win power" there is going to be a counter to any veil that a good GM will allow you to use.  This is aside from the obvious "if Elena deploys this the Council would immediately order McCoy to hunt Elena down and kill her and he would probably bust out the Blackstaff to do it via thaumaturgy".  Sometimes using the lower key approach is best so that Elena does not become such a threat that the major powers decide they need to eliminate her immediately (even Kemmler did not have the power to survive one major power making that decision, let alone several as Elena's antics would.

[Belial666]

They are going to feel the presence of something wrong. But that sense is very vague, not enough to target magic. Think of Harry and the Skinwalker; the bad guy hid behind a very good veil and Harry had to open his Sight to find him... but as soon as he did, he almost got blasted on the spot by the horror of that vision. That very thing is what Sightblinder emulates. Consider that even rituals doing 20-35 shifts of power are not always visible unless you open your Sight (Harry could feel but not pinpoint major curses and the Heart-Ripper until the last moment)

Also, Elena isn't a threat in the direct way Kemmler was; she has no armies of undead wrecking havoc to half of Europe and she does no major rituals that would kill tenths of thousands for the chance to become a deity. Just consider the level of threats requiring mass warden intervention or involvement; the Heirs of Kemmler, vampire armies, major Outsiders walking the earth freely, the Denarians trying to start the Apocalypse, the Faerie Courts duking it out and so on.
Now consider the level of threat that did not warrant mass warden intervention; the Loup-Garou, a red court noble making a serious power play, a warlock coming back from the dead as a serious nightmare, several Fetches running around and murdering mortals, the Denarians trying for a localized plague and so on.

As long as she is not wielding dark magic openly and in a large scale, there are bigger and more immediate threats out there.

[HobbitGuy1420]

Uh... Personally, I'd disagree that she's not doing anything worth attention.  She's a willing and open servant of a creature who, by its very nature, wants to tear down all of reality to make way for the proverbial interdimensional bypass.  There's a reason the Seventh Law has a Council member all its own to monitor and prohibits even *learning* about Beyond. 

[jalrin]

This game must have an ultra-permissive GM.  If the argument above is accepted, I do not see how Elena can be matched or beaten while veiled.  How is any PC supposed to compete with a godlike uber-PC that can become unbeatable just by casting a single spell?  What counter to this seemingly broken set of powers am I missing?

Hobbitguy has a good point.  The destructive consequences of Elena's antics would be more than enough to justify all of the major powers calling down the thunder on her so that she does not keep bringing more outsider influence into the world.

[Belial666]

Seeing as in two out of three fights of our level that I played her she has fared worse than the other PCs survival-wise, I don't think being invincible is an issue. First of all, a great deal of people other than wizards can pierce veils with supernatural senses that aren't the Sight. Secondly, if wizards see a blast of power coming from a zone but not where exactly in said zone, they simply blast the entire zone. Third, there are a great deal of conflicts other than physical. Social and Mental come to mind - as does information/investigation/research, as well as having a goal other that protecting oneself. Fourth, there are always ambushes.

Basically, currently in the game we have

1) A social goddess (spirit, actually) that also attacks at range at +7, weapon 4.
2) A master thief/assassin with true seemings that can veil the entire group as a supplemental at +7 strength for free, so we can ambush the enemy, veil again, then ambush the next round. Rinse and repeat. Plus he has very good mundane stealth, perception and guns skills.
3) A melee guy that easily attacks at weapon 8 and has a physical stress track of 12 boxes plus armor 3.
4) Elena, the resident artillery and ritualist.

[infusco]

Yeah, I'd definitely say ultra-permissive GM. This is some pretty impressive twinkage. A pure glass cannon. I'll have to get home to check the math as I am curious. That being said, this is obviously a very high powered campaign, quite a good deal beyond Submerged.

That being said, a few things:

- The Wardens, the Gatekeeper, plus anyone else they can find, will definitely be hunting this character down with an obsessive passion. An Outsider mage would be chipping away at reality every time she uses her magic. This character is clearly a bridge between our reality and 'things man was not meant to know'. They would interrogate, and likely even torture, everyone this character knows, even on the offchance that they *might* know someone who knows someone who knows where she is and what her defenses are. Outsider magic is far more feared and reviled than even Necromancy, and look at the kind of resources the White Council brought to bear to take Kemmler down. Seriously, if the GM isn't setting up a chunk of each scenario throwing a half dozen wardens and a member or two of the Senior Council at you, he's doing something wrong.

- As others have mentioned, banishing people into very hostile realms where they are much more likely than not to be killed does count as a First Law violation simply due to intent.

[MijRai]

Seeing as in two out of three fights of our level that I played her she has fared worse than the other PCs survival-wise, I don't think being invincible is an issue. First of all, a great deal of people other than wizards can pierce veils with supernatural senses that aren't the Sight. Secondly, if wizards see a blast of power coming from a zone but not where exactly in said zone, they simply blast the entire zone. Third, there are a great deal of conflicts other than physical. Social and Mental come to mind - as does information/investigation/research, as well as having a goal other that protecting oneself. Fourth, there are always ambushes.

Basically, currently in the game we have

1) A social goddess (spirit, actually) that also attacks at range at +7, weapon 4.
2) A master thief/assassin with true seemings that can veil the entire group as a supplemental at +7 strength for free, so we can ambush the enemy, veil again, then ambush the next round. Rinse and repeat. Plus he has very good mundane stealth, perception and guns skills.
3) A melee guy that easily attacks at weapon 8 and has a physical stress track of 12 boxes plus armor 3.
4) Elena, the resident artillery and ritualist.
5) A sword/practitioner guy who hunts monsters for a living, and hits with a weapon 5 that ignores 2 slots of armor.

Fixed it for you

[Belial666]

Well, I don't see the council hunting down Cowl and the rest of the Black Council - even if they not only have been using black magic openly for decades but have also called Outsiders that were used against the Council itself in an attempt to destroy it. And at least three times of that was very openly, before hundreds of wardens.

And still the White Council insists there is no Black Council.




So why, exactly, would they even bother with a sorceress that uses Outsider magic far less openly? Even if they knew who she was at all.

[infusco]

Because the Black Council is secretive, patient, and has members within the White Council to keep their activities as off the radar as possible. But the White Council, after the events of Dead Beat, is quite aware of Cowl. Cowl himself always acts through proxies these days and never interacts directly with the protagonists anymore. In fact, the Vampire-Wizard war itself might have been triggered and assisted by the Black Council as a means of keeping the White Council and the wardens off their backs.

So what has your character done to remain in the dark? Remember, Harry Dresden set up a wide spanning network for minor practitioners to report unusual and threatening activities, so unless you are making sure to take out all witnesses to your particular usage of magic, word will eventually reach the ears of the local wardens.

[Lanir]

The White Council are classic bullies. It's less about "Who's doing the most damage to reality?" than "Who can we take down without getting a bloody nose?" with them.

That said, there are plenty of things to keep them busy. And there's no real reason to try and pick apart a character that fits into her own game. I know, I've played in some pretty odd games before and if I'd talked about my character with players and GMs from other groups they'd have assumed I was twinking out pretty hard-core when in actuality I made less waves than anyone else in the group. If everyone's near each other on the power curve and having fun it probably doesn't much matter how you do what you do. Playing the only normal-ish character in a group of twinks makes it awfully difficult to have fun though, I've found.

[Becq]

The White Council has admittedly been tied up for quite some time by the war against the Red Court, and has had to be more choosy about pursuing rumors of Warlocks. 

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But with the destruction of the Red Court, some of their assets may be more available for quashing such threats...

[infusco]

Becq, take into consideration that the game itself is set just after the events from Small Favor, so the war is still in full swing.

Characters such as this one are indeed up to GM discretion. Personally, I'd only allow players to build characters using the available templates. Take into consideration that those templates do offer customization options, but I like them simply because I find them moderately balanced against each other.

That being said, I'd totally use this character as an antagonist