I am dissatisfied with 'Focused Practitioners', particularly Mortimer (spoilers)

[Melendwyr]

I realize that the RPG was written pre-Turn Coat, and so had a limited amount of canonical material to work with.  The game's authors aren't psychic, able to know what Mr. Butcher intended.  And of course any game system will have limitations.

But as much as I like the game overall, I find myself unhappy with the way that magical practitioners with a specialized focus are address in the mechanics.  Hannah Ascher isn't an ideal example because her talents were being influenced.  However, it's notable that we never see or hear of her casting a spell that isn't directly connected with flame.  'Aristedes' actually has more capabilities than the game rules would permit.  But later-book Mortimer is a fantastic example of how the rules don't adequately represent what the characters can do.

Mortimer is 'only' an ectomancer.  He doesn't seem to have any abilities beyond that - not even Wizard Biology or the Sight, although I would argue that he has the innate ability to sense spirits without consciously enacting magic.  Yet he's described as being, in some ways, more powerful than Dresden - who is one of the top forty wizards on Earth.  Mortimer doesn't use focus items or ritual paraphernalia to any great degree, yet can enact spells that we're told make some of Dresden's look pretty crude.  And he can perform effects that would seem to be associated with Thaumaturgy (which is a slow method explicitly not suitable for combat) on the fly and so rapidly that they do actually impact combats.  One example of this involves temporarily 'imbuing' himself with the skills and powers of specific ghosts - effectively spirit possession in reverse.  And this at a moment's notice, while a madman tries to kill him.  Another is his improvisation of the wraith-firehose, which he constructed as a weapon with only about a minute's preparation.  And again, he managed to draw Butters' spirit back into his empty body quickly enough that CPR was able to keep the body alive.  Without any ingredients, ritual preparation, etc.

The rules for the 'Focused Practitioner' template aren't compatible with that.  It seems designed to represent untrained dabbling in magic, disallowing the options for improvement and specialization that wizards get.  There's really no way to represent a practitioner of magic who is obligatorily focused on a single aspect of the art.

[Haru]

If you stick to the template, I agree. But those templates are best used as starting points or general inspiration, rather than law.

Then, there are quite a few things you can do. Ignore the specialization rules, for example, and just grow in power as a focused practitioner.

One solution I've often proposed is to have themed evocation. So instead of taking evocation with the usual 5 elements, you take evocation where all the elements (4-5 total) are different applications of your specialized magic. That way, you can skill per the normal rules, while staying with one element/specialization.

In addition, you could take powers that reflect spells you've come to master. For example, an aeromancer could be so good at speeding himself up, that it gives him the inhuman speed power. Or even the wing power, if he is able to manipulate the air around him with such ease, that he can fly. There's also the custom power list, if the available powers aren't covering what you are looking for.

There are a lot of options, even if they might not be obvious at first glance.

[bobjob]

As Haru explains, some of the best ways to accomplish your goals are to ignore some of the restrictions and house rule it or use custom powers contributed by members of these boards. You said it best, the game designers aren't psychic and there hasn't been an update in years (where as we've had several new books by Jim expanding the flavor of magic). Just have to find a way to bridge the gap until Evil Hat can do it.

[Melendwyr]

It's not enough to ignore restrictions.  It's necessary to make entirely new rules.  People who have special skill in types of magic don't have any mechanical advantages over generic wizards at all.  Even if you totally disregard the limits on how power can be increased, they can't be any better at what they do than anyone else.

[Haru]

They won't be any better if the other person has spent the same amount of refresh on the same powers, true. But why should they?

Though I'm not sure I understand 100%, could you give an in depth example of what you mean?

[Melendwyr]

Because the generic wizard hasn't actually specialized to the degree that a true specialist has, yet can be just as good as the specialist, even though the specialist spends all of their training time and effort on a particular narrow branch of the art.

Mortimer, the book character, is a master of magics dealing with ghosts and spirits.  He doesn't use any of the trappings for his wizard spells - trappings that Harry tells us aren't technically needed but are aids - because he doesn't actually need them.  Harry doesn't even understand how Mortimer accomplishes all the things he does.

Yet in the RPG, even if we ignore the rules preventing people with the Ritual ability from improving, and even if we ignore the rule that requires specialization bonuses to be 'stacked' so that you can't have a +3 without having both a +2 and a +1,  and even if we grant them an initial specialization bonus like Thaumaturgists get, Focused Practitioners can't be better at what they do than generic Wizards who focus on the same subject - yet those Wizards can do everything the FPs can and more.

And that's not even touching the idea that focus items are really sort of 'training wheels' that compensate for magic users' limitations instead of granting true bonuses as in the game.  That's just a convention issue that I'm basically willing to accept for sake of simplicity.

FPs can't even pick up bonuses by invoking Aspects, because Wizards will have their own magic-related Aspects that will serve just as well.  The FPs aren't actually focused.  They are merely limited.

[polkaneverdies]

Ghost story heavily implied or outright stated, that mort was actually strong enough to count as a wizard. He had simply fudged his test results in the same manner as Elaine to avoid be long pulled into the War.
 So the Mort vs Harry example would seem to be a heavily specialized wizard compared to a generic wizard. A focused practitioner vs a generic wizard might play out differently.

[Haru]

You're kind of comparing apples and oranges there. Focused practitioners as the RPG template talks about them and focused practitioners as they are used in the book aren't 100% the same. To the RPG, they are defined as being weaker than wizards, because that's all we knew for a long time (the RPG goes up to Small Favor).

Ultimately, the RPG implies that once you are upgrading from being a focused practitioner, you are going to become some sort of wizard with the appropriate powers.

Now of course, that doesn't always have to be the case, but like I described above, there's a ton of possibilities to do what you want to do. You just don't get anything for free.

I see where "items are training wheels" comes from. They are tools, and Harry quite often refers to them as that. And that's exactly what they do in the game.

Looking at Mort and Harry, the most important difference is that Mort is "Chicago's resident ectomancer", while Harry is "not so subtle". Their area's of expertise are totally different, and even if Harry has similar numbers, that doesn't mean he automatically gets to do everything he wants. If a character has a high craftsmanship skill and a "Carpenter" aspect, he wouldn't automatically get to be a master blacksmith as well, just because he has a high craftsmanship skill.

Is there a particular character you can't seem to build in a way you want? Maybe that'd be a better way to solve your problem than trying to argue in the abstract.

[Melendwyr]

Is there a particular character you can't seem to build in a way you want? Maybe that'd be a better way to solve your problem than trying to argue in the abstract.

A magical practitioner who doesn't have the breadth of a wizard - and who can't do anything at all outside of a very narrow theme - but who has an advantage within his specialization.  Who is better at what he does than any wizard of roughly comparable experience and training.

I don't know - I suppose the right stunt could simulate this, in the same way that stunts are used to represent how (the book's example) a heart surgeon is distinct from a doctor, or a doctor distinct from someone who merely has lots of medical knowledge.  But heart surgeons can still do generic surgeon-y things.  They are limited in their mastery, not nearly as much in their general ability.

I want to be able to make a thematically-limited mage that isn't hamstrung within that limit, but empowered.  With the existing rules, even with the restrictions taken out and ignored, that isn't possible.  Any [something]-mancer, no matter how experienced, is going to be inferior within that field to a wizard who is experienced with the subject magics.

[Haru]

Let's compare:
Evocation costs 3 refresh and grants you 3 evocation elements, 1 point of specialization and 2 focus item slots.

Channeling costs 2 refresh and grants you 2 focus item slots, but you can take 1 refresh of refinement, giving you 2 points for specialization.

So with the same amount of refresh spent, the focused practitioner has more power than the wizard, even if the wizard specializes in the same field. If you ignore the specialization stacking rules, this will never go away, if they spend the same amount of refresh on it.

But raw numbers don't mean nearly as much as what's around them. As a GM, I would allow the pyromancer a lot of different things than I would the wizard. The pyromancer is living by fire, thinking like fire. He could take "physical immunity to fire" as a power, if he likes, because his understanding of the element in question is just that good. I would hesitate to allow a regular wizard to take something like that. Or an aquamancer could take the aquatic power, something that a regular wizard would have a hard time explaining as well.

The problem is, "empowered" is a very broad phrase, and I don't really know what you mean by it, if I haven't covered it already. There's a million ways to address specific issues, but it's hard to do that if the issue is as vague as you are describing it.

So "I want to create a pyromancer that has an edge over a wizard in a firefight" is something that can be addressed, but "focused practitioners need to be empowered" isn't something I can work with.

I'm not trying to mock you or anything, far be it from me, I'm just trying to get to the core of your issue.

[Sanctaphrax]

Even under bog-standard canon rules, Mort's a better ectomancer than Harry. His skills might be a point or two lower since Harry's a much higher-Refresh character, but unlike Harry Mort has relevant focus bonuses.

But yeah, once a bunch of Refinements come into play full spellcasting is just better than Channelling/Ritual. So a dedicated focused practitioner should generally have Sponsored Magic or some kind of custom Power or just strongly-focused Evocation/Thaumaturgy.

I've known PCs with Evocation who never cast outside their favourite element, so it can definitely work.

[Melendwyr]

Let's compare:
Evocation costs 3 refresh and grants you 3 evocation elements, 1 point of specialization and 2 focus item slots.

Channeling costs 2 refresh and grants you 2 focus item slots, but you can take 1 refresh of refinement, giving you 2 points for specialization.

 

No, Channeling doesn't permit taking Refinement for specialization.  It can only get you more focused item slots (or enchanted item slots if you trade them in).

By the numbers, a FP can be better than a wizard who doesn't pay any attention to that field (at least with Evocation, Thaumaturgy grants you access to all kinds of ritual magic) but can never be better than a wizard whose bonuses are placed in that field.  If I've understood the rules correctly, granted.

[Melendwyr]

Even under bog-standard canon rules, Mort's a better ectomancer than Harry. His skills might be a point or two lower since Harry's a much higher-Refresh character, but unlike Harry Mort has relevant focus bonuses.

Oh?  What focus items does Mort have?

[Sanctaphrax]

Honestly, I don't know. But he has the focus slots, he must have used them on something.

Assuming we're talking game Mort rather than novel Mort, of course. Novel Mort might not even use foci - the books seem to emphasize them a bit less than the game, in my experience.

PS: You might want to look in the canon character thread on the Resources board, there are some Mort stats there.

[Haru]

No, Channeling doesn't permit taking Refinement for specialization.  It can only get you more focused item slots (or enchanted item slots if you trade them in).

I thought we'd agreed to hang those rules.

By the numbers, a FP can be better than a wizard who doesn't pay any attention to that field (at least with Evocation, Thaumaturgy grants you access to all kinds of ritual magic) but can never be better than a wizard whose bonuses are placed in that field.  If I've understood the rules correctly, granted.

Like I said, the rules are assuming that a focused practitioner is not just a wizard who is specialized in one field, but someone with less overall magic, so if they were to spread it out, it would too little overall to actually do any magic, that's why they are specialized like that. Wizards just have a larger reservoir of magic to draw from, so even if they do a sloppy spell, there's more than enough to make it happen. But even if you keep to the specialization rules, you can have a lot of bonuses on items, which will be more than enough in most cases.

And then, of course, there are aspects. I touched on it before, but maybe let's take an example. We have a wizard who is specialized in fire magic, a warden maybe, with 3 points in fire specializations and maybe 2 points in items, so overall, not a newbie. And then we've got a fire dancer, with 6 points in items, just to make them equal in refresh spent.

Now when it comes to slinging around fire, the warden is probably going to be better, granted. That's his job, after all. But lets look at more subtle usages. Like going into a burning building and getting out a group of kids. The warden would have to use brute force to will  the fire away, and I would have the fire resist him at a skill of 5 or 6. But the fire dancer is so used to playing with the flames, that for him, this is a whole lot easier, maybe a roll of 3 or 4. Instead of forcing the fire away, he dances with the flames, lulls them in, calms them down, etc., and so he creates a path for the kids to escape.


But ultimately, if you want to create a character like the one you are looking for, you'll have to do a bit of work on tweaking things, because the focused practitioner from Your Story just isn't the same as the kind of character you have in mind. You could look at the custom power list, especially the "incite effect" section, it might be the power you're looking for.