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[DFA] Focused Practitioners!

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Troy:
I really love Focused Practitioners and I'd like to help contribute to their vast variety and lore. This is something I've been doing Reddit so I thought I'd bring it her because this community has always been so helpful and informative.

Each week I'm going to post a Focused Practitioner in the style of the Dresden Files Accelerated Mantle. I can confine them all to a single, easy to reference thread (I hope). Is there a type of Focused Practitioner you'd like to see and you're not sure how to stat it out? Maybe I can help. Please let me know Without further ado, I present to you...

Ectomancy
Ghost Whisperer: You can see and hear ghosts and they can see and hear you. Use Focus to create advantages when you gather information in this way. At the GM’s discretion your ectomancy operates at supernatural scale.

Summon and Banish: Mark Exhausted. You can summon spirits and ward against them with but a moment’s thought. When you summon, you may make yourself a beacon to all ghosts in your area or you may call out to a specific kind of spirit (Joey Ramone or murder victims or deceased accountants). The ghosts that respond to your call will carry out a single task that you give them (search the city, defend my home, answer this question) to the best of their ability. When you banish ghosts, they are expelled from your zone and cannot re-enter until sunrise or sunset, whichever comes first. If there is opposition to your summoning or banishing, you get +2 to Intellect to overcome.

Possession: Mark Burned Out. In the tradition of those who allow the loa to ride their bodies for a short time, you invite ghostly possession. Sometimes you do this in repayment of a debt to a spirit that has performed a favor to you; nothing is quite as good to a shade than the simplest pleasures of the earthly flesh. Most times, however, you do this in order to possess the knowledge and skills of the spirit invited to possess you. When you do this, you gain the aspect Possessed by [the High Concept of the spirit]  and temporarily change one of your aspects to also reflect the ghost. Switch the rating of any two approaches to reflect the ghost who has possessed you. You also gain the benefit of scale when performing actions in keeping with skills or knowledge of the spirit inhabiting your body. The possession lasts until sunrise or sunset, whichever comes first.

Stunt Suggestions
The Sixth Sense: You can perceive disturbances in the veil between the living world and the spiritual world. Such disturbances include possessions, hauntings, “thin” places where the spirit world crosses over with the material, and stranger things.

Spirit Contacts: The information you gather from the spirit world can be taken to the bank! You get +2 to Focus when you create advantages based on the gossip, rumors, and “eyewitness” testimony of ghosts.

Helping Hand: Either out of fear or respect, invisible spirits watch out for your well-being. You get +2 to defend using Haste in physical conflicts because they cause impossible coincidences to occur which protect you from harm.

Troy:
Pyromancy

Pyromancer: You can generate flames just by thinking about it. You may use Flair to attack by causing flames to erupt (from your hands, mouth, eyes, or just out of nowhere) and strike a target within your line of sight. Your pyromancy operates at Supernatural Scale.

Stoke the Fire: Mark Exhausted. Use Focus to create advantages using heat or fire. You can shape flames to your will, command them to move in any direction, or dismiss them entirely. You can cause the temperature to drop or increase to uncomfortable levels by transferring energy from one place or thing to another within your line of sight. You can even draw all the heat from something, causing it to freeze solid. You can do this for the rest of the scene.

The Salamander’s Legacy: Mark Burned Out. The ultimate expression of your pyromancy, like the salamanders of old, you are a being of fire! You gain the aspect Living Flame for the rest of the scene. In this form you are immune to conventional forms of physical harm, except those which can extinguish fires; defend normally by whatever means you have at your disposal. You can take whatever form or shape you choose, spilling across rooms or through doors; gain +2 to Haste to overcome physical barriers. The downside, of course, everything with which you come into contact risks igniting and gaining the infamous aspect On Fire!

Stunt Suggestions

Blazing Within: Whenever someone successfully attacks you in melee combat, they mark 1 stress box due to the sheer heat pouring off you.

Flamekissed: Either by force of your own will or some other, stranger blessing, you are immune to damage from intense heat and flames. You or your clothing cannot burn and you suffer no ill effect no matter how hot or cold your environment.

Purify: Fire exists not only to destroy, but to purge and restore. You can harness a flame within to burn away contaminants. With this magic you can destroy infection or poison and remove impurities or toxins from food and water. This is an overcome action using Intellect with opposition as determined by the GM.

Notes
This is a pyromancer in the vein of Hannah Asher from the novels. I wanted to create a power that could easily do what it appears Hannah easily does while at the same time have something that would be seemingly impossible for a Wizard to do without a lot of training, knowledge, or specialization. So, Harry's a good pyromancer, but he's got nothing on this pyromancer.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? And, as always, thanks for your time!

Troy:
Arcane Artisan

Ars Technica: You carry with you a couple of signature items of your own construction. Choose two different combinations of action and approach, then name the items associated with them. An overcome action with Guile might be a "skeleton key" which unlocks any lock, or a defend action using Force might be "ring of protection." The magic in these items will work only for you and by your will alone, and you cannot perform magic without them. Use of these items gain the benefit of Supernatural Scale at the GM's discretion.

Hands of the Svartálfar: Mark Exhausted. Inexplicably, your magic extends to even the mundane items you handle. When you repair, modify, or build a mundane device it always functions as intended and is flawless in its performance. Furthermore, you can do these things with even the most primitive tools, if you even need tools at all -- your own two hands and your belief in yourself are all you truly require. In game terms, you create an aspect relating to the work you've done and you gain two free invokes. At the GM's discretion, you gain the benefit of Scale when using such devices.

Uncanny Invention: Mark Burned Out. You may combine materials in impossible ways, giving one the attribute of another. You may make paper with the strength of steel, or steel with the weight of paper. You can distill sunlight into a liquid or weave shadows into fabric. You may create a set of clothing that's fireproof, waterproof, and bullet proof -- you just need materials with the proper attributes and time in your arcane workspace. Consult with the GM and design any stunts or conditions these new creations may confer upon their user, subject to the normal restrictions. Permanent additions to any character must be paid for normally during a major milestone, otherwise each use of the item beyond the scene in which it was introduced costs a fate point.

Stunt Suggestions

Alchemist’s Constitution: You are immune to the deleterious effects of working with hazardous materials in dangerous conditions. The heat of the forge doesn’t bother you, neither does smoke and other noxious fumes; handling things like cinnabar, phosphorus, or lead is without risk. Without an alchemist’s constitution, it would be impossible to achieve the pinnacle of your craft. Of course, it also comes in handy if you’ve been trapped in a burning building or been exposed to a gas leak.

Craftsman's Eye: You have an intuitive understanding of mystic artifacts. Just by seeing an item, you can tell what it does, at least in general, and are capable of activating and deactivating it. Furthermore, if you are separate from the signature items granted by your Ars Technica Talent, you are mystically aware of their location at all times and can find them no matter where they are hidden from you.

Glitch: Your rapport with inanimate objects means you can “hex” technology at will, causing it to break down, malfunction, or stop working completely. This is a create advantage action using Focus; you get +2 to these rolls. It is easy to hex complex machines and electronics and more difficult to affect very simple mechanical processes. The GM determines your opposition and you may get the benefit of Scale.

Notes
This one was inspired by an inquiry on these very forums. Someone had a character who was a crafter focused practitioner and their game was converting to accelerated and they wanted to know how they could do that. Without knowing anything about the character's preferences or expertise, I came up with this. This is the sort of person I would play, inspired by something like a Knocker from Changeling: the Dreaming or even Tony Stark or something.

The first tier ability is an modified version of the Rune Magic possessed by Valkyries in DFA. It allows for two types of magical spells to be used with the Talent but provides for the drawback that this magic is dependent upon items or objects made and used by the caster. So, while the Ectomancer can use her singular Talent reliably all the time, the Arcane Artisan can be robbed of his tools (Disarmed) which prevents him from doing his magic.

The 2nd tier ability might actually be a little weak. You mark your condition to automatically create an aspect representing the work you did and you get two free invokes on that aspect. The saving grace might be that uses of your device gain the benefit of scale, which can be very useful. You also are using something similar to the stunt Always Making Useful Things (FC:103). Also, nothing prevents the work you do, i.e. the aspect you create, from being a permanent alteration to your device. For example, I've heard that some dwarves made lightbulbs for Molly Carpenter which won't be destroyed by using magic. Doing something like that would be cool for marking a sticky condition.

The 3rd tier ability lets you do the stuff of legend and maybe create something that can permanently alter the world in your game. I got this from the Fate System Toolkit with the Six Viziers. One of the magical abilities let them do something like that and I expanded to include other impossible things someone could make using real and powerful magic. I think it's also a great impetus for storytelling. Maybe you need dragon's fire in order to forge a weapon to beat the Big Bad, the tears of a repentant man, or the laughter of a woman in love. You can do lots of cool stuff.

The Stunts are just things that I thought would be cool for an Arcane Artisan to have access to. I imagine that when you first discover your Talent, it manifests as one, or maybe all three, of these stunts before you get proper training as a full-fledged Focused Practitioner.

Questions? Comments? Critiques?

Thanks for your time!

Sanctaphrax:
I don't know enough about DFA to provide useful input, so I'll just say that these are pretty cool.

Troy:

--- Quote from: Sanctaphrax on August 24, 2020, 09:45:16 PM ---I don't know enough about DFA to provide useful input, so I'll just say that these are pretty cool.

--- End quote ---

If you have any questions about anything, just ask.

In DFA, wizards and full fledged magical practitioners have access to the follow Stunts/Powers by their very nature: Evocation and Thaumaturgy. Thaumatury handles your ritual magic and uses story focused, streamlined rules as compared to DFRPG. And Evocation is simplified to this: You can use any of the Fate actions, using any of the Accelerated style approaches (Flair, Focus, Haste, Force, Intellect, and Guile). You can attack with a bolt of flame using Flair! Or you can defend with a shield of ice using Haste! Stuff like that...

Focused Practitioners have a different method for determining their powers, which you've seen in the way I've detailed these mantles. They have 3 tiers of ability. A basic Talent that is, for all intents and purposes, free to use. And then, they can mark Conditions to access more powerful abilities, pushing themselves to the limit to do these freaky things. This is where Focused Practitioners shine because you can write "new" rules to do something more complicated or colorful than a "Defend using Force." Stuff like that. In this way you're able to make true the idea that Focused Practitioners can do things that Harry would have trouble pulling off as long as they are doing it in their area of expertise.

Does that make sense?

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