1) To make a golem, there are several ways. The easiest is to summon ectoplasmic matter and have it powered by a spirit of the Nevernever. The hardest is to make a body of real, natural material and make a spell construct moving around the body like a puppet, guided by a magical A.I.


2) The easy golems are basically summoning;
A: Get a being's Name or other sympathetic link so you can work magic on it.
B: Put enough shifts into your ritual to mentally take it out and force it under your control. That's the control part of the spell.
C: Put enough shifts into your ritual to bring it from the Nevernever to the world. That's the calling part of the spell and is usually a bit easier than control.
D: Cast your spell and simply declare that your new servant appears.

2b) Summoning is costly so it could also be done in three separate spells;
A: Get a being's Name or other sympathetic link so you can work magic on it.
B: Cast a binding (a Ward turned inwards) strong enough to hold your intended target.
C: Cast a calling ritual to have the creature appear inside the binding.
D: While the creature is still inside the binding, cast the control spell on it.
While this version requires three spells, it allows you to summon bigger things because you break up the total shifts of the calling + control into two separate spells, each half as big as the single spell needed to do it all at once.

I have to admit I'm confused by your critique.

With my version, you get as powerful an ability as you pay for in character creation. With your version, in one scene the ability might not work at all if you're out of FP, in another it might reduce rolls by a bit for a single FP, and in another it might make the most powerful supernaturals into effectively pure mortals because you got a lot of FP to spend on it. Worse than the fluctuating power is that the ability does not scale. It will be exactly as powerful in a feet in the water game as it will be for a 20-refresh game. And those two problems together make for bad ability design IMHO. Other issues below;

How would it interact with range? For example, both wizards and superstrong enemies could pick up a car and throw it at a house and not be affected by a threshold normally because they are attacking at range and indirectly. Ditto, a superfast enemy standing outside a building wouldn't gain any penalties to defense against gunners from inside the building because they'd not be standing within the house's threshold.

Does it follow the standard threshold rules? A supernatural entering a threshold doesn't actually take any penalties to rolls or whatnot. It has to set aside an amount of powers costing in refresh equal to the threshold. I.e. a 2-shift threshold means a vampire would either have to reduce their supernatural strength to inhuman, or reduce their supernatural toughness to inhuman, or reduce their inhuman speed to no benefit. The exception being wizards, who take penalties to power and control instead.
Do note that the supernatural being picks which power to leave behind when entering a threshold. They could well set aside the least useful ability for their given situation and retain those that would benefit them most.


Last but not least, a "penalty to rolls" mechanic causes issues. Strength powers and things like Claws or Breath Weapon don't give any bonus to rolls at all (weapon rating isn't rolled). Speed powers do. Toughness powers don't. Senses don't. Shapechanging doesn't - not directly. Living Dead doesn't. Flying doesn't. And so on and so forth - not only various powers exist that don't give roll bonuses at all but those that do give bonuses don't give them at the same rate. For example, Speed powers give +1 athletics per 2 refresh, True Aim gives +1 weapons per 1 refresh, Cloak of Shadows gives +2 Stealth per 1 refresh.
So if you use a "penalty to rolls" mechanic, not all powers will be as affected by the ability. (hence why normal Thresholds subtract a set amount of refresh instead)

It's just Channeling: Spirit with the following 3 rotes;

Celerity: 5 shifts of either movement or block (using high speed as defense)
Lightning Barrage: weapon 5 attack +7 spell, requires tagging an "available weapon" aspect. (+5 attack without tag)
Persuasion: 5-shift mental attack; conditions and takeout are loyalty-related.

I'm assuming this guy has Great (+4) Conviction and Discipline, plus his focus bonuses.

Wouldn't that be Aramaic? Hebrew is a rather modern language.

The first time a Sword of the Cross was used to do something contrary to its purpose by their own wielder - such as slaying an innocent - they'd be destroyed.

I usually use Sumerian or Aramaic. For one thing I know them a lot better than I know Latin so when one of my mages says LACHAM she's both declaring her intent to defeat you and uses a spell to devour you - literally. Plus, nobody else knows words in them at a moment's notice.

Actually, it's still pretty easy for roleplaying to penalize character ability. Prime example is the early Harry Dresden; his high conviction but low discipline coupled with his total lack of diplomacy amounted for 90% of all problems in his early carreer. All his problems that this caused were very entertaining to read in a book, in which they were part of the plot. They would have been far less entertaining and more frustrating to play in a game though.

Think of it this way; a purely roleplaying drawback in the game warrants a Fate Point every time it comes up. Having poor discipline so that your spells are only Power/Control 4 whereas a different build would have given you Power/Control 7-8 doesn't warrant a Fate Point - even though the skill choice in the first place was a roleplaying issue.

That's why mechanical equivalence of choices in character creation must exist.