Is there a limit to the amount of power a character can put in a spell?

[UmbraLux]

In general, Tippy's method fits in the rules.  I'd probably quibble a bit over the repeatability of aspects but that's solvable by creativity - just come up with a better list of aspects / methods of power storing. 

Fact is, I think this is what had to occur if you convert some of the novels' major bad guy rituals to game terms.  It's also worth noting, it took time to build the power and the power build-up was detectable.  Which is what brought Harry in to shut it down. 

Point is, building power like that will make you a target.   

[Emperor Tippy]

It's also worth noting, it took time to build the power and the power build-up was detectable.  Which is what brought Harry in to shut it down. 

Point is, building power like that will make you a target.   

Yep. If you want to stop detection you need even longer so that you can throw up wards to conceal the ward to conceal the wards to conceal the wards, etc. to conceal the incredibly powerful ritual.

That hundred complexity ritual might have cost you (if you add up all of the complexity of all of the involved rituals) two or three thousand complexity in the more extreme cases and will take you (at a bare minimum and with a very generous GM) months to more likely decades of dedicated effort and work.

Or you can grab a dozen or so people off the street and then sacrifice them for power, getting the whole thing done in at worst a week or two (and potentially in twenty minutes or so).

There are plenty of ways to make even very complex and powerful rituals relatively easy to perform. It's just generally a trade off between evilness and time.

[Haru]

All you are doing with those thousands and thousands of aspects is have an "I Win!" Button ready for everything. Rampant werewolf clan in town? Stomped. Black court scourge? Stomped. All in 2 minutes, game night is over, now what?

I understand where you are coming from, I know that mechanically it is absolutely no problem to do what you are proposing, I am just saying, that it doesn't make sense if you look at it as a whole. I mean, you say so yourself, Harry has enough downtime to do exactly what you propose. Hell, if power was all he needed to free Susan from being a red court, he'd have that ready in the year he's been studying it. No, there is, and there should be, more to it.

If any spell you want to cast can be cast with generic "Ritual preparation aspect #1-#20", then any spell you do is interchangeable, and there is no story to it. That's pretty much what I am trying to get across: Not all aspects are created equal. Yes, mechanically, you could get a +2 from a blessed cross or from an unplugged phone. For that matter, you could pick your nose and declare that an aspect, but that doesn't mean it is a GOOD aspect for the story of the spell.
What's more, if you do it, so can I as the GM, and we are in sort of an irresistible force meets immovable object situation. On the other hand, there is a rule of "if everyone has it, nobody has it". And the differences that are still there are well represented within the scope of Items and Specializations. That's why the Merlin can throw up a ward like he did, he has tons of specializations and focus items for it, because that's what he's been doing for all those years. With your aspect-avalanche, he could have simply obliterated everything in sight.

Even against a vampire army, a block doesn't necessarily have hundreds of shifts. 10-12, maybe 15 should be more than enough to buy enough time to escape, and that's easily done with skill+specialization+focus items. Maybe a consequence to boot.
Or maybe even easier, you can do it as a concession. Instead of fighting it out to the bitter end, you agree to end the fight, maybe the Merlin's player throws in a fate point and declares, that since he is the "Master of Wards", he raises a ward to help his side get away, even if that means leaving behind 3 wardens, because they are too far away. Because that's pretty much what the ward in this moment is, a way to end the fight without too many losses.

And if you really want or need a spell THAT powerful, I think it is better served to be a plot device, rather than something with incredibly high numbers on it.

Where is your problem with enchanted items, potions and focus items? I feel that that is a part of the magic rules that actually works pretty well.

[Emperor Tippy]

All you are doing with those thousands and thousands of aspects is have an "I Win!" Button ready for everything. Rampant werewolf clan in town? Stomped. Black court scourge? Stomped. All in 2 minutes, game night is over, now what?

Except that you only have that one "I win!" button and once it is used it is gone. So you press the button to deal with the rampaging werewolf clan and then what do you do three days later when the town suddenly has a couple of dozen higher end Red Court vamps, three Wardens investigating, Summer and Winter spies in town, and a White Court delegation show up; all attracted by the giant amount of power that was thrown out a few days ago and trying to learn exactly what happened and who did it. Or just showing up randomly.

Or maybe you are faced with your significant other being kidnapped and being used as a ritual sacrifice but the wards protecting the site are fifty or so shifts strong. If you hadn't blow all your power to stomp those werewolves then you would be able to spend it to bring down this ward but now you are faced with either resorting to necromancy, finding some other way in at possibly equally extreme cost, or letting your SO die and be sacrificed.

Plenty of story potential.

I understand where you are coming from, I know that mechanically it is absolutely no problem to do what you are proposing, I am just saying, that it doesn't make sense if you look at it as a whole. I mean, you say so yourself, Harry has enough downtime to do exactly what you propose. Hell, if power was all he needed to free Susan from being a red court, he'd have that ready in the year he's been studying it. No, there is, and there should be, more to it.

Except he doesn't have the power. Mother Winter had the power. Want to reverse Red Court infection? Well then you need enough power to overcome the "Red Court" mantle that has been placed on the infected.

(click to show/hide)

Now maybe it can be done on Halloween but otherwise you are talking so much power that Dresden might be able to gather it after a few centuries of constant work.

Or you can understand the magic well enough to actually disconnect the "Red Court" mantle from the host and maybe be able to do it with far, far, less power.

And Dresden theoretically could have saved Susan at any time. Changes showed that. All he had to do was wipe out the Red Court. A few thousand sacrifices, a couple of ley line taps, and a ritual that he knew how to perform by the end of Storm Front (Sells ritual being incredibly close to the Red Court ritual except in terms of power). But 1) Dresden didn't know this and 2) it involved a cost that he would not be willing to pay.

If any spell you want to cast can be cast with generic "Ritual preparation aspect #1-#20", then any spell you do is interchangeable, and there is no story to it.

Nah, those weren't generalized aspects. They were for a specific ritual. Such as "Ward Breaker part 1" through "Ward Breaker part 20". Those aspects only being useable for the "Ward Breaker" ritual and not to, say, turn a fly into a pony. You need different aspects if you want ones that can be generalized to any ritual.

That's pretty much what I am trying to get across: Not all aspects are created equal. Yes, mechanically, you could get a +2 from a blessed cross or from an unplugged phone. For that matter, you could pick your nose and declare that an aspect, but that doesn't mean it is a GOOD aspect for the story of the spell.

I never said otherwise. The point is that you can fluff aspects pretty much however you want and is in large part table dependent. Maybe a lucky aspect is tagged and the story effect is "got really lucky that today happens to be the one day every century with this specific stellar alignment that benefits this ritual" or maybe it is "sees X ingredient sitting by the side of the road".

What's more, if you do it, so can I as the GM, and we are in sort of an irresistible force meets immovable object situation. On the other hand, there is a rule of "if everyone has it, nobody has it". And the differences that are still there are well represented within the scope of Items and Specializations.

Which is a problem solved by story telling and the narrative. I would say that every major power has done things like this. If you want to fight at the "god" tier then the gloves come off, you only make it to that tier and survive by doing things like this and having your own counters to them. Does this mean every Red Court vamp has something like this? No, but the Lords of the Outer Night sure as hell do; and if you start blasting through rank and file Red Court vamps in job lots then one of the LotON is dispatched to deal with you and you find out just how thoroughly outclassed you are with your twenty years of life against the LotON's two thousand years of life.

That's why the Merlin can throw up a ward like he did, he has tons of specializations and focus items for it, because that's what he's been doing for all those years.

Then his refresh is in the -100+ range.

With your aspect-avalanche, he could have simply obliterated everything in sight.

Except that those he was facing have the same things. They could have spent their stored power to bring down his ward but then they are faced with being greatly weakened in the future (or maybe they had already spent a large portion of it), or they can let the White Council escape and save that power for another day.

Even against a vampire army, a block doesn't necessarily have hundreds of shifts. 10-12, maybe 15 should be more than enough to buy enough time to escape, and that's easily done with skill+specialization+focus items. Maybe a consequence to boot.

Fifteen shifts shouldn't last even a single exchange. Red King + LotON + RC Nobles working together and they can easily throw out enough power to rip down such a ward.

Or maybe even easier, you can do it as a concession. Instead of fighting it out to the bitter end, you agree to end the fight, maybe the Merlin's player throws in a fate point and declares, that since he is the "Master of Wards", he raises a ward to help his side get away, even if that means leaving behind 3 wardens, because they are too far away. Because that's pretty much what the ward in this moment is, a way to end the fight without too many losses.

And if you can concede in that manner then you should be able to raise the ward in a similar stretch of time without spending a fate point. Conceding by essentially saying "I'm spending a fate point to throw out a 30+ complexity ward in one to two exchanges" really doesn't seem inline with the game.

And if you really want or need a spell THAT powerful, I think it is better served to be a plot device, rather than something with incredibly high numbers on it.

It is a plot device. Seriously, I would let a player do it a few times and then hit them with a compel in their next fight along the lines of "you triggered a ward upon entering that removed all standing magic effects", no potions, no enchanted items, no ritual boosts, no focus items. Unless they have the four or so fate points to buy off the compel then they are suddenly in deep shit and the character should learn to not always depend on such external aids.

Where is your problem with enchanted items, potions and focus items? I feel that that is a part of the magic rules that actually works pretty well.

The fact that you can't create enchanted items with standing magical effect is a big one. It's literally impossible under the enchanted item rules to create a magic light bulb that will stay active for weeks straight, despite that requiring far less energy than (say) blowing a car through a skyscraper. One of those can be done under the enchanted item rules, the other can't.

Then there is the fact that in setting you can do something like enchant your duster so that it drains the kinetic energy of anything that hits it and transfers it into rings to be later discharged as force attacks but under the rules you can't. The best you get is lowish level armor for one or two scenes and no ability to use that absorbed energy for anything else.

It's a system that is decent for modeling Dresden, it's not a system decent for modeling the Dresden verse magic system.

You have the inability to stockpile potions, despite the fact that not being able to do so makes absolutely no sense. You literally have to spend more refresh to stuff an extra vial into your backpack. Under the rules stuffing four extra vials into your back pack is worth as much as inhuman toughness irrc. Please tell me how that makes sense?

A potion focused character is better off playing Morrowind alchemy with potions to produce single massively powerful potions than they are producing a couple dozen or hundred potions that they keep sitting in their closet at home (or in their potions belt) to select from for the situation that they expect to be facing.

From a balance perspective they might work alright but from a fluff/in setting perspective they absolutely suck.

[Sanctaphrax]

"Or triggered".

"I say bippity boppoity boo" is a careful trigger.

Actually, the rules are very vague about what's an appropriate trigger. That may or may not work.

The fact that people in the novels don't do that kind of thing combined with the fact that doing that kind of thing would unbalance means that that should not work. And since it shouldn't, it's sensible to rule that it doesn't.

Regardless, your original plan of just having the taggable Aspects hang around is very clearly against the rules.

Nope, it isn't. Killing someone to fuel your magic is a hell of a story to tell. Besides, not all people are created equal in this context, either. Getting any regular Joe from the street will not help the necromancer nearly as much as getting someone close to a named character, or even a friend of the PCs.

Pretty sure everyone is worth 20 shifts regardless of importance, actually. It's lame though, I know.

The fact that you can't create enchanted items with standing magical effect is a big one. It's literally impossible under the enchanted item rules to create a magic light bulb that will stay active for weeks straight, despite that requiring far less energy than (say) blowing a car through a skyscraper. One of those can be done under the enchanted item rules, the other can't.

A lightbulb that stays active for weeks straight is actually quite possible as an enchanted item. Just spend the shifts you need to extend the duration of your light spell to "a few weeks". Items can contain ritual spells, so it's pretty easy to kick the duration up.

Then there is the fact that in setting you can do something like enchant your duster so that it drains the kinetic energy of anything that hits it and transfers it into rings to be later discharged as force attacks but under the rules you can't. The best you get is lowish level armor for one or two scenes and no ability to use that absorbed energy for anything else.

Your hypothetical duster is draining the energy of everything that hits it. But that only matters mechanically a limited number of times per session. (Unless you spend stress.)

You have the inability to stockpile potions, despite the fact that not being able to do so makes absolutely no sense. You literally have to spend more refresh to stuff an extra vial into your backpack. Under the rules stuffing four extra vials into your back pack is worth as much as inhuman toughness irrc. Please tell me how that makes sense?

Actually, Harry mentions that he doesn't stockpile potions because they don't last long enough. The number of potions you can have on hand depends on how many you can make in the time it takes them to expire, so you need extra skill to make extra potions.

Stuffing vials into your backpack is free, but you have to pay for the ability to make those vials.

And it's 8 vials for the cost of Inhuman Toughness, assuming 1 slot per vial.

A potion focused character is better off playing Morrowind alchemy with potions to produce single massively powerful potions than they are producing a couple dozen or hundred potions that they keep sitting in their closet at home (or in their potions belt) to select from for the situation that they expect to be facing.

Single massively powerful potions are usually impossible. Lore x2 is the strength cap barring exceptional situations.

From a balance perspective they might work alright but from a fluff/in setting perspective they absolutely suck.

I don't think your interpretation of the setting is the same as the actual setting. The power-stockpiling you suggest doesn't happen in the novel world. The rules reflect that.

PS: Does your name refer to the D&D thought experiment?

[Wordmaker]

I think part of the problem here, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that Emperor Tippy is looking at the mechanics as a representation of the game world's reality. A character has high Guns because he's trained with firearms and has combat experience. A wizard has only 2 potion slots because he only carries two potions at any given time. A character has the aspect "Death to Vampires" because he hates vampires.

However I find it's easier to think of the mechanics as a representation of what we see in the novels, essentially a way to depict a certain fiction. The rules don't reflect a character's abilities. They reflect the kind of stories a character is involved in and the kinds of things they do in those stories. A character has high Guns because their stories often involve them shooting things. A wizard has 2 potion slots because the story features his use of potions being spread out over a longer period of time (sessions) instead of using them all at once. A character has the aspect "Death to Vampires" because his stories are about hunting vampires.

It's a subtle difference, but I believe FATE is designed to hold story over simulating a fantasy reality. Once you start to see the system from that perspective, it becomes easier to accept that you can't just have your character spend all their downtime preparing one mighty spell, because stories where a character has such an effect on standby, to be triggered as soon as the Big Bad shows up, are boring, even if they only happen once.

[Haru]

I think part of the problem here, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that Emperor Tippy is looking at the mechanics as a representation of the game world's reality.

That's what I've been trying to get at, yes. Thanks for the clarification.

Which is a problem solved by story telling and the narrative. I would say that every major power has done things like this. If you want to fight at the "god" tier then the gloves come off, you only make it to that tier and survive by doing things like this and having your own counters to them. Does this mean every Red Court vamp has something like this? No, but the Lords of the Outer Night sure as hell do; and if you start blasting through rank and file Red Court vamps in job lots then one of the LotON is dispatched to deal with you and you find out just how thoroughly outclassed you are with your twenty years of life against the LotON's two thousand years of life.

It will play out in the narrative, and it should, but you don't have to have thousands of aspects at the ready to do so.

If, for example, you have 100 aspects and your opponent has 99 aspects, that would be the same as you having 1 aspect and your opponent having 0 aspects. You can still describe it as people throwing around tons of power, but you don't have that ludicrous amount of aspects lying around. Another example would be weapons and armor. If at some point every character has armor:2, then you'll need bigger weapons to get through that. Or you remove the armor rating in the mechanics and keep the weapon rating down the same amount. It's a zero sum game that will add nothing to the story, that's what I am trying to tell you.

Long term investments in power, things that are part of the character are represented by aspects and powers and stunts. If you want to have a long term advantage from something, spend refresh on it. Even if you find a magic sword, you should pay the refresh, if you want it to be a permanent part of your character, that's what that is all about.

Except that you only have that one "I win!" button and once it is used it is gone. So you press the button to deal with the rampaging werewolf clan and then what do you do three days later when the town suddenly has a couple of dozen higher end Red Court vamps, three Wardens investigating, Summer and Winter spies in town, and a White Court delegation show up; all attracted by the giant amount of power that was thrown out a few days ago and trying to learn exactly what happened and who did it. Or just showing up randomly.

Or maybe you are faced with your significant other being kidnapped and being used as a ritual sacrifice but the wards protecting the site are fifty or so shifts strong. If you hadn't blow all your power to stomp those werewolves then you would be able to spend it to bring down this ward but now you are faced with either resorting to necromancy, finding some other way in at possibly equally extreme cost, or letting your SO die and be sacrificed.

So at the beginning of every game I would have to throw something at you to steal all your prepared aspects, just so we can play a game you don't just stomp? That's kind of silly, don't you think?
More than other RPGs, Fate is about the players and the GM working together, not against one another. If you want to play a game about werewolves, we play a game about werewolves. If you don't and I force it on you, I'm doing a bad job. If you feel the need to stomp it, because you don't want to deal with it, I am doing a bad job. So let's play those adventures you don't just stomp, those that keep us at the edge of our seats while we play them, because we have to fight through things to get to the goods.

Besides, high numbers don't necessarily make powerful beings. I could easily play a game on a god level with 6 refresh, or a game about mice with 20+ refresh. It's all a matter of how you tell the story. What is true is that the more refresh you have, the more power you have to influence the story. But that isn't equal to in story power.

Fifteen shifts shouldn't last even a single exchange. Red King + LotON + RC Nobles working together and they can easily throw out enough power to rip down such a ward.

That's if you are assuming that the opposition is always fighting perfectly. I as a GM would let the red court vampires run into the ward for an exchange at first, and once they realize what is going on, they can start working together. So that ward will buy you at least one exchange, which can be plenty.

But

And if you can concede in that manner then you should be able to raise the ward in a similar stretch of time without spending a fate point. Conceding by essentially saying "I'm spending a fate point to throw out a 30+ complexity ward in one to two exchanges" really doesn't seem inline with the game.

This goes back to what Wordmaker said. From the perspective of what the Merlin does, you are right, if I wanted to simulate him throwing up a high power ward out of nowhere, both those accounts would have to be the same. But that's not what I am doing. I am looking at it from a narrative point of view.
If I am able to throw up a high powered ward in the middle of a battle, I can actually turn the tide of that battle. I can catch all the vampires and kill them of one by one, if I make the ward permeable from outside. It's again an "I Win!" button.
As a concession, however, it is the exact opposite. It is a way to deal with the loss of a situation in a way that you don't lose everything. Going into the scene, the intent of the Merlin was to "Get everybody out", while the intent of the vampires was "Kill them all!". Now the Wizards have already had some losses in the fight, and if they don't want to go down in this fight. So they offer a concession, lose only a few more, but in return the rest is safe. When the GM ask the player to describe how this is going to happen, he offers the solution of the big ward, and the GM agrees that is a reasonable solution. Sadly, a good friend of the Merlin is caught outside the ward and he watches in terror, as he is ripped to pieces.

The fact that you can't create enchanted items with standing magical effect is a big one. It's literally impossible under the enchanted item rules to create a magic light bulb that will stay active for weeks straight, despite that requiring far less energy than (say) blowing a car through a skyscraper. One of those can be done under the enchanted item rules, the other can't.

I would probably not raise an eyebrow at an always on magical light bulb. Not any more than I would charge another player something for a flashlight. It's something so mundane, that it doesn't really need anything in terms of refresh or parts there of. That's for things that really have an impact on the story. And the more impact they are supposed to have on the story, the more of your limited resources you should spend. If you want to play a wizard with tons of magical equipment, you'll have to pay for that in refresh. I know, other games don't do that, but as I (and now Wordmaker) said before, this ain't other games.
There was a great post about this sort of thing in the Google+ Group a while back:
https://plus.google.com/108546067488075210468/posts/EDqaCxsjobL

You have the inability to stockpile potions, despite the fact that not being able to do so makes absolutely no sense. You literally have to spend more refresh to stuff an extra vial into your backpack. Under the rules stuffing four extra vials into your back pack is worth as much as inhuman toughness irrc. Please tell me how that makes sense?

Potions are, as Sanctaphrax says, rather short lived. You can be making fresh ones every now and again, but that takes time and effort away from other things, so you can only do that with very few. Those you pay with enchanted item slots.
Though I would always allow you to do a special potion for a special situation, if that is how you want to solve the situation. Harry brewing the blending in potion would be an example of that.

If you want something like that to have a more permanent effect on your character, again: buy it with refresh.
An "always on" protection spell on your duster? Mechanically, get an item of power with inhuman toughness.
Potions that can do all kinds of crazy stuff? Modular abilities is your friend. Combine it with human form, to represent the "I need to drink a potion" part to activate the powers.
You could, make a supernatural stunt that grants you a bonus of +1 to the weapon rating of an attack spell, if you cast that spell after you've been hit and you duster caught it. And there you are covered for your storing kinetic energy from attacks power.

Enchanted items are good for easy, quick stuff. For more complex and more powerful stuff, you can take powers and say they are enchanted items your character made. Much more elegant.

[Wordmaker]

It will play out in the narrative, and it should, but you don't have to have thousands of aspects at the ready to do so.

If, for example, you have 100 aspects and your opponent has 99 aspects, that would be the same as you having 1 aspect and your opponent having 0 aspects.

Bingo! Something like the sheer force that the Lords of Outer Night could bring to the table in a conflict is much more simply reflect as establishing a scene Aspect "Dominion of Outer Night" and compelling characters to be unable to fight back. Keeps things simple, and the players get Fate Points out of it.

[toturi]

The higher the Refresh, the more power (both in terms of mechanics and in-game) the character is able to wield without losing his free will.

As far as the game mechanics are concerned, higher numbers do make for more powerful beings.

With respect to the single scene Aspect versus a whole lot of them to represent the sheer force of higher end entities can bring to the table, I'd rather the whole lot. Each time the character is Compelled he gets a Fate Point, so instead of 1 Fate Point, the player gets very much more.

[Wordmaker]

Why would you compel a number of aspects to do the same thing that one can?

If you compel "Dominion of Outer Night" to prevent a character from acting, that has the exact same effect as compelling "Red Court Stronghold", "Mental Warfare", "Untold Horrors", "Will of the Red King", and "Sacrifice of the Innocent" all at the same time to prevent a character from acting, only the character gets 5 Fate Points instead of one.

Go to the extremes being described here, with say 100 Aspects ready to go in the big showdown, and the GM can either give each character 100 Fate Points for an effect that could be achieved with just one, or have the Red King hit them and tag the aspects for up to +200 shifts. Assume an average group of 5 PCs, and he can smack each PC with +40 shifts of stress in short order.

Those kind of extreme numbers reduce the conflict to a single choice: Does the GM want the players to win, or to be utterly destroyed? Because with 100 Fate points each, there is no way the players are losing, but with a pool of 200 extra shifts to draw from, there's no way the villains are losing.

I'd much rather have the the lower amount of aspects and see the ebb and flow of a fight that was undecided.

Of course strictly speaking, there is no way presented in the rules to get more than 2 Fate Points from a single compel, which you could expand to mean that except when the GM is upping the ante like that, there is no way to compel more than one aspect at once, so having multiple aspects on a scene has no added benefit in that regard.

[Taran]

Except you don't get a FP at all when an aspect is tagged - even if it's tagged to invoke.  Only when a FP is expended on the aspect...or the GM decides to randomly compel.  So if you set up 100+ thaumatugic aspects on a person and tag them to prevent the person from acting, they'd get 0 FP.

Unless I'm reading it wrong...but I don't think I am.

Edit:
YS: 106

Tags, even if they are to a character’s detriment,
do not award a fate point like a normal
invocation would. If no fate point was spent,
there’s no fate point to pass around.
Example: Harry Dresden has just used
his wizard’s senses to discover that the
Shadowman, a dark sorcerer who sent a toad
demon to eat him and his date, is observing
events from nearby using a sorcerous scrying
spell. This knowledge is the result of a skill roll
that revealed that the aspect Shadowman
Watching was (secretly) on the scene. Harry
decides to send a spell back up the link by way
of saying hello, and since he just discovered
(“assessed,” page 115) the aspect, he is due a tag.
When he casts the spell, he uses the tag to add
2 to his roll. This is clearly to the Shadowman’s
detriment, but since the tag was free for Harry,
the Shadowman doesn’t get a fate point.

[Wordmaker]

You're not reading the rules wrong, just my post 

I'm saying that if you have 100 aspects ready to be tagged, the GM has two choices, either try to compel them all at once (giving the players 100 Fate Points each) or have the villain tag them in turn, hitting the players with massive shift bonuses to the stress they take.

Edit: Also re-reading YS, I was wrong, you can in fact compel as many aspects as your group agrees are appropriate if you wish, so yes, compelling 100 aspects at once nets a character 100 Fate Points. But the key point is that each aspect has to add a complication of its own, so good luck finding 100 different ways to complicate matters for your players.

[Taran]

Those kind of extreme numbers reduce the conflict to a single choice: Does the GM want the players to win, or to be utterly destroyed? Because with 100 Fate points each, there is no way the players are losing, but with a pool of 200 extra shifts to draw from, there's no way the villains are losing.

Consider the 100FP's get awarded after the scene.  The PC's can't use them to defend against the massive spell that's about to hit them.

[Wordmaker]

Are you sure of that? Looking at YS pg 100:

Once the terms are set, you have a
choice: spend a fate point and ignore the aspect,
or accept the complications and limitations on
your character’s choices and receive a fate point.
When you accept the fate point, the aspect is
officially compelled.

All of the play examples describe the GM handing the Fate Point to the player at the moment of the compel, often right before they decide how to act on it.

[Taran]

@Wordmaker.  In that quote you use, they're just talking that you're owed a FP.  The deal has been struck. 

What I'm talking about is mentionned in a few places in the book, but I'll continue the quote I put up before:

Later, Harry sends another spell up the
link to shut it down. This time, Harry has
to spend a fate point for his +2. Because the
invocation here is to Shadowman’s detriment
and this time Harry has spent a fate point,
Shadowman will receive a fate point at the end
of the scene. The GM makes a note of that, and
saves that point up for Shadowman to use in
the big confrontation a few scenes later.

@...uh...whoever: I think these numbers are ridiculous, actually.

PC's are never going to hit them.  I'd let a Wizard PC start with Wards, probably double their Lore to start.  If they want to start investing time creating "power circles" and stuff, and more powerful wards,they can do that in-game and it's going to take time...lots and lots of time.

You're right that doing this stuff takes decades.  Most adventures run days and weeks.  I'd allow some upgrades between sessions, but there's no way you'd hit those numbers in the course of a campaign unless that campaign ran the course of decades.  And that assumes that nobody noticed the supreme build up of power and came to wreck it all.