Old Italian Master up to new challenge: DFRPG Newbie's Questions

[Picozza]

Hi everybody and thanks in advance for your time. I'm new in DFRPG and i've got a cumber of question for you veterans. Here we go:
1) How many Focus item and Enchanted item slots a practitioner have? I can't find the answer...
2) Can I manuver to tag a aspect to myself? Ie: manuver to get HIGHER GROUND aspect and tag it for my next attack?
3) It seems to me that giving new refresh points only a Major Milestone it's way too slow for character development.... If I play a "chest-deep" power level camapign, my wizards don't have any refresh points to spend after acquiring the "Wizard" kit, so they don't get any refinement. To become better in the Art they have to wait a Major Milestone, to get new supernatural stunts (like refinement) and the Major Milestone is described as a "city changing" event, very rare. Maybe giving 1 new refresh every now and then (specially for the low power campaigns) should reward the players with new power a little more often. What do you think?

That's all for now, I thank you all and apologize for my not-so-good english, but as I said in the subject, I live in Italy!
Ciao!

[Cadd]

I'm a newbie aswell, but I'll take a stab at some of the questions:

1. Channeling/Evocation and Ritual/Thaumaturgy all give 2 focus slots each. Additional focus slots can be gained with Refinements. Each Focus Item slot can be turned into 2 Enchanted Item slots.

2. Those are what's called Navel-gazing Maneuvers, placing a maneuver on yourself. They can, depending on circumstances be opposed, just like any maneuver.

3. Apparently, according to what I've seen here on the forum, the game balance tends to break down somewhat at higher refresh, so that might be a reason. Personally, I think handing out extra refresh a little faster during the earlier parts of a chronicle seems reasonable, at least if you're going for a "growing into your power"-kind of story.

[Picozza]

Thanks for the quick answers!

[JDK002]

Be very VERY careful about giving out additional refresh too quickly.  One refresh may not seem like much.  But it can (and probably will) change the entire player dynamic.  There's a reason wizards have so many requires powers and so few fate points in the starting examples. 

In an 8 refresh game, a standard wizard with no additional powers and their one lowly fate point is very likely going to be the heaviest hitter, and the most versatile player in the entire group.  This gets compounded when they start stacking refinements.

Another issue is that templates like Pure Mortal, Minor Talent, and to a lesser extent Focuses Practitioner get exponentially weaker as refresh levels go up when stacked against other templates.

One last thing to consider is that by and large consequence slots and how much damage they can absorb remains static.  So as players start doing more and more damage, enemies typically can't sustain any more damage than they could when you first started the game.

[Locnil]

In addition to what Cadd said, Sponsored Magic also gives you four Focus Item slots. However, every discount (from already having Evocation or Thaumaturgy), reduces the number by two.

Also, regarding power advancement, I think it would simpler to just speed up the rate at which you give milestones. Or start at a higher power level - there are a bunch of custom power levels in the Resources Board.

[Sanctaphrax]

Faster advancement could become a problem if your game lasts a long time. But I wouldn't expect any real trouble until the Refresh total goes into the teens.

Lots of Major Milestones in quick succession could cause an unusual skill/Refresh ratio, but that doesn't have to be a problem.

[Mrmdubois]

Something I've been wondering, if you did skew your skills to refresh ratio in favor of higher refresh and lower skills, wouldn't that make higher refresh games more feasible?  As I understand it, when you roll skills the successes there tend to have the biggest impact on the game and stunts and powers almost universally rely on modifying or adding to skills, right?  Obviously, higher refresh indicates greater power, so does higher skills, but if you wanted the options that come with a lot of refresh without making characters and NPCs unstoppable...

[polkaneverdies]

It doesn't limit pc's as much as you think it would. Virtually Everyone would be a little less well rounded, but still max their apex skills.
  So They would suck a little more when they are out of their wheelhouse, but they would be just as bad inside of it.

[Tedronai]

And wizards would be even more disproportionately powerful than they normally are at high refresh, since Foci and Specialisations would make up a significantly greater proportion of their total modifiers.

[Sanctaphrax]

I actually do that, sort of.

If you look at the power levels I use on the Generic NPC thread, you'll notice that the higher power levels have fewer skill points per Refresh point.

Here's a (rounded to the nearest hundredth) summary of the number of skill points each power level gives for each Refresh point.

Hydrophobic: 5
On The Beach: 3.75
Feet In The Water: 3.67
Up To Your Waist: 3.57
Chest Deep: 3.75
Submerged: 3.5
Snorkelling: 3.08
Scuba Diving: 2.65
In A Submarine: 2.38
Deep One: 1.71

You pretty much have to do something like this, otherwise things get silly. The pyramid system doesn't work very well when the skill totals get really huge. And besides, the Senior Council doesn't deserve more than 65ish skill points to go with their 38ish Refresh.

But this doesn't really affect the balance issues much. And cutting the number of skill points has less effect on character power than cutting the skill cap.