1) Other people can provide aspects for magic, like through a cult
2) Potions can get around the normal "twice your lore" cap of enchanted items through use of aspects at time of creation or use
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3) A cult leader could have 25, 50, 100, 500, ect strength potions. Actually, through normal spell prep, any thaumaturge could have 20+ shifts bottled up pretty easily, to be released as needed.

So what keeps players from doing this?

As a GM, we want you to uncover the story. We planned it that way, we spend time making the story, and not telling it to you means we wasted our time.  

 I'm running a group playing a mystery-based campaign, with private eyes and scholars in the group. Unfortunately, we're all new to FATE, and the players' experience with mysteries appears to be limited to the DF books.  (No CSI fans here, evidently).

So I thought it might be cool to make a resource thread on what you, as a player, can do if you are stuck in a mystery.

In this first post, I'll give some typical mysteries, dead ends, and so on, and then some basic ways to solve them.  If other people want to add some, please do!
 For mysteries, just make them as typical as possible, and describe the dead end where players might get stumped. For solutions, please give us useful spells (rough descriptions are fine, tell us if someone had just channeling or ritual what type of magic they might use there). For skills, give us questions to assess scene aspects with that skill, or types of declarations that could be made. it would also be cool to get how you might approach a problem as a pure mortal, a werewolf, ect rather than just using magic.


Typical mysteries.

-Someone or something is missing. You try a basic tracking spell, but the connection is quickly severed, indicating that another magic user on the other end.
-Someone is dead. Your trail to the murderer leads to a dead murderer.

Typical skills to find solutions
Contacts, followed by social skills
investigation
scholarship

example of type of solution:
If the people that hired you or you have interviewed know nothing about a possible reason that the missing person or thing might go missing, you can try rolling Contacts.  

With a successful contacts roll, you could declare that you happened to have a link with the police, someone in the person's organization or who might otherwise know the reputation of the missing person, or a mutual friend. For an item, this could include knowing a scholar who might be able to give more information on the item's history, or knowing someone in import/exports, an auctioneer, an insurance agent, or the like who can shed light on the situation.  A good roll like this, with a good declaration, can convince the GM to make an additional source of information (because we probably already have one planned, but aren't sure how to get you to them) available to you.

You could also assess with contacts, and this is basically saying "well I want to ask around and see who this guy knew, or who was interested in this item".  A successful roll here should probably be enough to get you to what the GM has planned.

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You can, of course, roll investigation.  A successful roll here on an assessment should reveal whatever clues the GM has planned. But honestly, a lot of times the dead ends get hit because someone, well, botches that investigation roll.  This means that BEFORE you roll investigation, it's a good time to make some maneuvers with other skills to bump up your investigations roll.  Here's some examples:
use resources to put a maneuver of "Understanding of the wealth of the missing person" or "value of other items in the area".
use scholarship to put a maneuver of "using my superior intellect to look for deeper meaning/information in available clues"
use lore to put a maneuver of "looking for anything magical"
use alertness to put a maneuver of "focused senses towards investigating"
use discipline to put a maneuver of "blocking out all other distractions"
 
a couple of these should bump your investigation roll up enough that when you roll it, you have a pretty good chance of getting some good details, and leads you to the movie scene of "You notice that Miss Price was well-dressed for the evening; better than she normally dressed. See, here, the tag in her trashcan for her new blouse from Saks. Compare that to this Target blouse in her laundry. This perfume is also new; you can tell by the way the scent hasn't started to decompose yet. Nothing seems out of the ordinary magically.  You suspect that she has come into some new source of money, and you should investigate that."

Compare that to "Bwah? you rolled a negative one? You find crap, holmes."

Investigation declarations let you just, really, place clues, with GM approval.  Even if you try something like "Oooh I rolled a 5, can I say that her kidnapper smoked a cigarette and left the butt in her ashtray, but I can tell the difference from the rest of her cigarette butts?"... and the GM thinks, no, that won't work, eldrich horrors don't smoke... your inventiveness usually makes us feel sympathetic enough to toss you a bone like "Well, no, but you will totally notice the slime on the ashtray now."




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I dunno if this might a case of it being Harry's personal thoughts and not actual canon, but I'm going through the series again right now, and in book 4:

(click to show/hide)

The WalMart is filled with a mind-fog that simply stuns everybody and makes them stand still without causing harm, and Harry says it's still a "clear violation of the laws", if I recall correctly.

The third law is cut and dry.  Dresden is talking about the fourth law here.  Enthrallment is a pretty big area, which is why it's harî to arbitrate mental stress.  I'm taking the extreme side - mental stress = lawbreaking - mainly for debate, to see what people come up with in response, because personally I see that line as so... undefined... that anything could be argued.  And while as an ST, where that lawbreaker line is fuzzy to me, I don't think it's so fuzzy for the greycloaks.

As for the soap:  I'll actually argue against "just intention".  There's intention TO kill, and then there's carelessness. Dresden time and time again avoids using magic in a way that could be potentially deadly as a side-effect, despite his regular burning of buildings.  While examples of where his magic might have hurt mortals accidentally can surely be brought up, it's clear that he tries to avoid this.  Thus, while the soap person would probably get off free (who the crap expects someone to die of bubbles, even accidentally), the guy who ices the stairs of the library to slow down his pursuers certainly does get hammered if one of his pursuers breaks a neck in the fall, as does the guy who magically burns down the warehouse going "is anyone in there? oh i don't care." While the guy who has been told/ has checked and thinks that warehouse is empty would be okay.  Now, these may be situations where the council will set the DOOM! if given a good reason to, but still.. some swordy mcswordertons might think even Mr. Bubbles needs a lesson.   Slippery Slope is kind of a warden thing.... the whole torture a puppy as a child, become a serial killer later on bit? Their response is often "off the kid."

I can't seem to find the rules in YS or a thread relevant here that tells me exactly how a block stored on a magic item is activated.

So, Tony the Sniper and his twin Timmy get the drop on you; you have no idea they are there.  They fire simultaneously, both rolling 5's to attack; the sound of their guns will reach you after the bullets do. Surprised, your athletics is treated as 0.  You have an enchanted duster with a block of 10, but it only has one use. What happens?

Most of the forums seem to say that because you've got this block ready, both bullets will bounce of the block, making it a great defensive item as it stops this sneak attack cold.

Everyone agree?

But, what happens next? Did it activate automatically, or does it cost you your action this exchange?  When can you act?  Should the sneak attacks be considered part of a previous exchange, and initiative called for after the shots hit?

The only answer that I rule out immediately is that you put a condition into the spell that says "if I get attacked by surprise", because all other parts of the book (in particular, the part on wards) indicate that magic can't be that discerning.

As the storyteller, choosing the Sponsor's agenda for soulfire is my job (with player input, of course).   What are everyone's thoughts on the possible agenda?

I know for sure that I will be including redemption for any mortal, maintaining the balance between summer and winter, maintaining the strength of the veil between worlds, and resisting outsiders.   Outsiders, demons, and BCVs are all considered "unholy" for my campaign.

One of my players has a devout character with Soulfire. This is his only magic, at -5 refresh.  We're new to this and are still trying to suss out what all of the rules and powers mean, but his understanding of soulfire makes it sort of... overpowered.

Because soulfire essentially says "all the spells of thaumaturgy" and every other sponsored magic (minus hellfire) includes "with evocation's speed" clauses, he believes that in essence he can do any thaumaturgical effect that the Good Lord wants him to have at the speed of evocation, which essentially negates the entire speed penalty on thaumaturgy (when would his spells NOT fit the Lord's will, if he stays in character?) So at -5 refresh, he's gotten full thaumaturgy, faster than normal, channeling, plus all of the soulfire benefits vs toughness, at the cost of having to be in alignment with god's will, which he pretty much always will be. 

I'm kind of at a loss, how is this not better than buying regular thaumaturgy plus channeling for the same -5 refresh?  In exchange for having to -essentially - stay in character, he gets a big boost versus any toughness plus ignores the primary limitation of thaumaturgy (the speed)?   The only thing I can see is that Soulfire doesn't explicitly say "at evocation's speed" . So does that just not apply here?