It seems extremely narrow for a -3 power. While it is very strong in the situations where it is useful, the fact that it will come up fairly rarely would make me say this should not cost more than 2. Also, any magic user who figures out this power will just not use magical defenses anymore, and while this is pretty much equivalent to bypassing them, it does make the last part weaker. Why does it cost a fate point each time you activate it? It is certainly no more powerful than ACaEBG which (as far as I can tell) costs 3, and it is a hell of a lot more narrow.

Also, you said that it only works on spells "(costing mental stress)" does this mean it does not work for enchanted item's that provide magical defenses?

I pretty much agree with everything Mr. Death said there.

To answer your other points:

1) I think it is fairly safe to say that a zone of vertical distance is about a floor of a building which is about 10 feet. So each zone you fall is about 5 stress.

3) Falls in combat are certainly included in the result of an attack. I think it says something like this in that section. you can't push someone 50ft off a cliff unless you take them out. If you push them down a small hole (1 zone down) the 5 stress that would cause is likely part of your attack.

5) True, but if you use 1 zone=1 floor=10 ft=3 meters you can get around this.

I think the amount of stress is fine, I think you should be able to reduce it as a strait athletics roll, or magic block, or whatever (I know this is a house rule). I also think Mr. Death is right, if you jump the first 10 ft should be free, or at least a 10 foot down is free, and a 20 ft. down is 5 stress, farther than that I think you are SOL.

If the average person (3 stress boxes from average endurance, and average athletics skill) can jump off a 10 foot high roof without breaking anything (and I will be generous and say not taking a consequence, since you could take consequences and not break anything), how much stress should this inflict?

Well they get 0 armor from their athletics of 1, and have 3 stress boxes, so such a fall could deal 3 stress and have the desired result. However, according to this post falling from a height of 10 feet carries a 41% chance of limb fracture (Since it is a rock climbing forum, I think they are talking about all types of falls, not just ones where you have your legs under you). So, looking at this, 5 stress is pretty tame.

Looking further the point where we see a 50% chance of death is 60 ft, which is not far off of the 50 ft (or 25 stress, assuming you take all your consequences and had 3 stress boxes) you would need to kill someone in DFRPG.

It looks to me like the unmodified falling damage is fairly reasonable. I think the main problem with the system is the assumption that the athletics roll only provides armor at 1/2 shifts (and the furtherance of this onto magic). In my opinion, someone with a Superb athletics check and Average endurance should be able to walk away from a 20 foot fall with only a Mild consequence and stress(2+3+5=10, seems good). We can see that people who practice this thing (it is an extreme "sport") can throw themselves form 2nd or 3rd story windows with no serious ill effects.

In short, 5 stress per 10 feet seems reasonable, allowing the full athletics roll/block strength to reduce it, also reasonable IMO.

That looks like a reasonable "item of power," though I think that you payed for the boosted range 2 times (once with remote control and once with far-sight), the vision part of far sight may well be costed like a Strange Sense (-1). So your total cost seems right (-3), though the powers you listed would make it (-4).

The point here is that you have payed a refresh to be able to use your fists skill at range (through your hawk) and another point to allow you to see things from a different position. I would allow a character who could justify such things to take those powers, and this is a reasonable justification.

I would not allow attacking with fists in a different zone unless you payed for it.

I also agree that the familiar may not be tied to your zone all the time from a narrative stand point. But during combat, it should mechanically be treated as a part of you (as if it were actually an item) for balance purposes, unless you have payed to allow it to attack at range. I would still not allow *attacks* targeting the familiar, but I would allow maneuvers (similar to Disarmed) to capture it (potentially from characters not in your zone, if that is where you say your familiar is).

I agree it is an over generalization. But it is true if you lets the monsters have combat skills equal to the apex skills of your PC's (high if there are less of them than PCs), or just slightly lower (for mooks). Also, the refresh you count should only be the refresh you are actually going to get use out of.

I would expect that the RCV would beat up the Ghoul if it got to make good use of it's Cloak of Shadows for an ambush round and also got some/one aspect form it's narcotic saliva before the fight began.

(and really think the enchanted item slots and stuff are going in the wrong direction)

My comment about enchanted items was supposed to be specific to spell casters that already have slots (not others buying them in order to use holy objects or whatever). Mostly, that is how Harry's "Sunshine in a Handkerchief" should be modeled (as a "potion"). In the rules people can leave enchanted item/potion slots open to fill up with declarations later.

An iron sword is an iron sword. And as such that character likely will always be able to satisfy the catch of the fae. But most fae are not innately hostile, they like to talk to mortals and bargain/trade favors. However, they are less likely to be friendly when a PC walks up to them carrying "the bane." Use this to your advantage. Maybe he had to leave his sword at the door when he went to meet with the Sidhe (or face other consequences). A Blessed sword or Blessed bullets on the other hand probably won't stay blessed forever. Magical effects (and I would assume faith based effects as well) that are not anchored to a threshold generally dissipate with sunrise. If your character actually wants to have a permanently blessed sword (as an extension of his own faith powers) consider having him take something like the Holy Touch power in the book (maybe better modeled like the Holy trapping of the Sword of the Cross, which I assume costs around 1 refresh). I would not require FP to use a weapon that is something the character always carries around, but I would if they wanted to declare that they had it blessed today (without already having had an appropriate preparation scene).


Also, I agree entirely with Mr. Death.

Toughness grants extra stress boxes, so a character with 3 endurance (4 base physical boxes) and Inhuman Toughness (2 extra boxes? don't have my book on me) would have 6 physical stress boxes, and natural armor of 1. The way the character sheets are normally presented these extra stress boxes come in parenthesis. The Catch says that such attack completely bypass the toughness power. So, it seems pretty clear that if such a character was attacked by some means that satisfied his catch, he would not be able to use the 5th or 6th stress box (pretend they don't exist, they are in parenthesis for this reason), and the attack would bypass his armor.

So basically, lets say this character is a fae and has the standard iron catch, and is attacked with a steel sword with weapon: 3(this should satisfy the catch, as we see in the books). He rolls athletics of 3 to dodge, and the attacker gets 4 weapons. So he takes 4 stress (4-3=1, 1+3=4, note that this ignored his armor as well). This fills up his 4th stress box. If next round he were to take a 5 stress hit from the same enemy (say weapons 4 against his bad roll of athletics 2) then he would not be able to use his 5th stress box (since it came from toughness), and he would be forced to take a consequence (which his recovery powers would not be able to help him with).

About handling PC's with catch satisfying items. It is pretty clear from the books that when one is prepared for a fight against a supernatural enemy, they have a good chance of winning, even if they are just a mortal and are otherwise outmatched. I think Harry mentions this several times. This is also pretty much how it goes in the game. When you know beforehand that you are going to be fighting RCVs/BCVs and bring tons of holy water/blessed bullets/garlic, then you are in good shape (this is how the Black Court was mostly wiped out) and the fights will be fairly easy.

In many of my games (and in the Dresden files), the characters do not know what the enemy is until they see it for the first time. This makes it much more difficult to be prepared. Sometimes the murderer was a vampire, sometimes it was a troll, and you dont know before you get there (note that the catch of the fae is fairly trivial to satisfy for any character using Weapons to attack, as most weapons are made of steel, but most guns do not handle iron/steel ammunition well, ans will break if you try it).

If the characters are prepared, and the monsters are not, it will be easy and feel like a slaughter, and it should, because the PC's got the drop on them. But a lot of the time, especially with the Red Court, the enemy is prepared as well. A good challenge for PCs is a group of about equal number with about equal refresh spent. If the PCs are ALL toting the catch, dont count that refresh, upgrade the Lieutenants and Bosses to more strength/speed (the goons should probably still be fairly normal). Make it feel like "Ya, you were prepared for this, but they knew you were coming and called in the heavy hitters to defend themselves/fortified their position."

If the character did not know what was up, let them spend fate points/use undeclared enchanted item slots to declare they happen to have  something to satisfy the catch, but only if it is cool or makes sense (if it is cool or fun, it does not have to make sense, since everyone will be happy with the awesomeness). If your guy with a gun says he just randomly happens to have blessed bullets (for no reason), don't let him. If he recently stopped at a church where his friend is the clued in priest, let him declare (for his fate point) that while he was there, he/the priest felt some inkling he would need these soon.

I'm putting stat against stat--3 shift veil vs. 1-rank Alertness. That is based on the player action and the book. Your method is about partial successes (set and decided by the GM) and situational modifiers (again, set and decided by the GM), and you say that my method is the one "based solely on the whims of the GM"?

First off, my interpretation has nothing to do with situational modifiers. I thought that would be an easier way to describe what I was going for, but it just caused you to say I was violating the spirit of the game. Any situational modifier can easily be modeled as a declaration with a tag for +2.

"Partial successes" are not, as it turns out, arbitrarily decided solely on the whims of the GM. The DFRPG is a collaborative game, when the player thinks he should be entitled to a "partial success" he should ask the GM about that. Note that it is not actually a partial success, it is a success, that only barely beats the difficulty, and thus only garners a bit of information, such as a general direction or area, as opposed to a success that actually beats the veil, and gets an exact position.

I have, in fact, demonstrated exactly how a 3-shift veil--stat for stat, raw number against raw number--is an effective defense. And that is not a result of "dumbing down" the opposition, or of playing favorites, but simple number-against-number calculation

The GM is letting Molly's player get away with a trick and play support for the main target of the attack. Molly and Harry are the players; the Gruffs are nameless first-level goons. This makes a big difference. High level enemies? Sure, they can and should make those assessments to make Molly's life difficult (and, indeed, by Changes Molly likely has a few more ranks in Conviction to throw at the Ick). And a player should be able to make those declarations against an NPC in a veil. But the Gruffs? They're not. They're a low-level mob in the beginning of the story, meaning the GM isn't going into kill mode with them.

It is clearly not a number vs. number calculation. You have clearly stated that in order for your method to make a 3 shift veil effective, the enemy has to be a "low-level mob" that the GM chooses not to play optimally. Not only does he have to not play optimally, he has to purposefully disregard sections of rules that say they are entitled to declarations and tags. It is also pretty clear from your statement that you see the GM as playing favorites. "Molly and Harry are the players; the Gruffs are nameless first-level goons," therefore I let Molly win/escape mostly unscathed, even though the Gruffs could easily have inflicted serious damage to Molly. That is textbook playing favorites.

In this system, anything provides fodder for declarations if you'll allow it. This whole thing is, in short, not the way magic blocks are supposed to work. A block is meant to be the block strength, not about having to make declarations.

That is true, but how willing the GM is to allow something is based on how much sense it makes, and with a veil, these declarations make a lot of sense. Further, the block strength is the block strength, the declarations are gravy. I don't know when you decided that a 3 shift block should defend you from a powerful fae with no extra narrative work work, but I do not think that is the case (the fact that the 3 shift block worked for Molly clearly means she put in that extra narrative work).

The book does not say veils are like grapples. But I like when the rules fit together, and are not disjointed. So I like that under my interpretation the veil is like a defensive version of a grapple.

No. Not at all, and you're misrepresenting my interpretation so drastically at this point it's frankly insulting.

As I quoted above I feel I am representing your point accurately. You yourself said words to the effect of "The GM should not use all of the options at his disposal, because the Gruffs are low level mobs." If he does use all his options, your system fails to model what you said it does. Therefore your system's success is contingent upon the whims of the GM.

On the other hand, I feel you have been misunderstanding/misrepresenting my points for at least 4 pages now (see the first response in this post for an example).