I'm considering introducing some magical stunts into my game (mostly with NPCs to add some surprise to the encounters).  Please critique.  I've included the page numbers of relevant rules for my own sake (copy and pasted from the Scrivener document I use for the game).  Each would cost a single refresh.  Ideally, I wanted to create options worth a refresh to a practitioner that weren't simply numerical bonuses and could make their casting a bit more unique (with the exception of mental compartmentalization, which is simply there so my players have an option when they go looking for stunts to give them more spells per scene).

Reactive Counterspell:
You may do a counterspell in place of a defense roll, making your Lore assessment as a free action.  Otherwise, treat the counterspell normally including taking mental stress.  (YS253) [Notes: This give the caster more options and is particularly against high control, low power practitioners]

Mental Compartmentalization:
You may take an additional minor mental consequence related to spellcasting.

Rapid Extension:
By inflicting a 1-stress mental hit on yourself, you may prolong a spell for a single exchange as a supplemental action.  (YS259) [Notes: This is trading 1-4 shifts depending on Conviction for the ability to do so as a supplemental action]

Shaped Effect:
You may ignore a target as part of a zone wide evocation attack.  Because you must control the energy around the target, the spell requires an additional shift of power for each target ignored. (YS251) [Notes: The power essentially represents it being more difficult to control and more stressful to cast, rather than actual power]

Reactive Block:
You may perform an evocation block in place of a defense roll.  Otherwise treat the block normally, including taking mental stress and rolling to control the effect.  Optionally, you may instead have the effect work as armor on a failed defense roll, taking mental stress and rolling control as normal.  (YS252) [Notes: This is less powerful than an enchanted item, but gives the option.  It can also be prolonged, where an enchanted item can't]

Rapid Thaumaturgy:
Choose a single type of thaumaturgy.  You may perform this with evocation’s methods and speed.  (YS288) [Notes: I don't like this costing 1 refresh for flavor reasons, but can't find a reason to justify increasing the cost.  Not sure if I'd allow it for thematic types]

Enhanced Item:
You may prolong an enchanted item effect as you would an evocation effect.  (YS259) [Notes: This could make evocation blocks useless for some casters, not sure if I like that]

EDIT:  It looks like something very much like Reactive Block is already on the stunt list.  Actually, I'm pretty sure I've seen a mental consequence adding stunt somewhere on the boards too.

I'm considering removing the requirement to take the Lawbreaker power when a character breaks one of the Laws in game for a couple reasons and would like to know if anyone sees any unintended consequences.

How Lawbreaking will work:

If a mortal character breaks one of the Laws of Magic (whether they be Pure Mortal*, a Practitioner, or a Sponsored Mortal), they must change one of their seven permanent aspects to reflect the transgression. 

Once a character has broken one of the Laws of Magic, they may take the Lawbreaker power.  Additional violations allow the stunt to be taken multiple times.

Obviously, the Wardens will be just as interested in hunting down Lawbreakers.

*Seventh Law possibility, or through the use of a borrowed enchanted item.

Basically, I don't like the idea of having to take a power but don't want to lose any of the narrative weight. 

So, I've got a house rule that I'm considering and wanted vetting. 

Counterspelling may be done in place of a defense roll by any practitioner with evocation or channeling.  Roll Lore, take stress, etc. as normal.

Background:  After reading the short stories and thinking about the books, there are a number of instances where non-magical characters have a single use magic item on hand.  Three-eye was effectively a potion.  Marcone has a few ().  The Warrior has with an amulet.  They are minor instances.  They throw things off here and there, but they are very useful.  So I started trying to find a way to do this.

The first place I looked was in the SotC SRD (actually, it was in the DFRPG, but that was a bust).  They have cool rules for Gadgets and Gizmos.  While they don't limit characters to hard numbers, the equipment goes away after a single adventure unless payed for with refresh (as Personal Equipment).  I liked this in a lot of ways.  In that game, tinkerers are meant to be at least a little rare.  Extrapolating from and adapting those rules got me Option 1:

1.  To purchase a Magic Item, you must first know or get a hold of a practitioner capable of making it and willing to sell.  This requires a Contacts roll, restricted by Lore (you must know some supernatural channels).  The difficulty of this roll should be the Strength of the Item, or number of shifts required to make it.  Typically, this takes a day to do, although you may push this up the time chart by adding additional shifts to the difficulty.  Most wizards will not sell anything more than a potion or simple single use enchanted item.  Once you are able to get in touch with a seller, the cost of the item is equal to the strength of the item.  Typically, magic items will have to be made to order.  This means that it takes a few hours to make a potion or a few weeks to make an enchanted item (which is why potions are the only ones available for sale).  Because of the time required and cost involved, characters should be restricted to one magic item per session at most (often only one per scenario).   You may not make declarations related to having magic items because of their rarity and difficulty to obtain.

Now, this seemed clunky and over complicated.  It meant that three skills had their hands in the pot.  I figured the contacts roll wouldn't have to be modified by Lore.  So in Option 2, I stripped this out.  Otherwise, it is exactly the same as Option 1.

Still, I want things like this as simple as possible.  The less rolls the better.  So, in this case I considered just allowing Resources to be restricted by Contacts.  

3.  Buying magic items is possible, but costly.  The cost of the potion or simple enchanted item is equal to the item's strength.  Typically, it takes a day to contact the seller and a few hours at minimum to produce a potion (enchanted items can take much longer, up to a few weeks).  The time can be decreased by increasing the difficulty for each step up on the time chart, but never to less than an afternoon. Roll Resources, restricted by your Contacts skill.  Most practitioners, even those willing to sell, are not willing to sell anything more than a potion or simple single use item.  Because of the time required and cost involved, characters should be restricted to one magic item per session at most (often only one per scenario).  You may not make declarations related to having magic items because of their rarity and difficulty to obtain.

Now, some would say that this is a new trapping to the Resources skill and thus would require a stunt.  Hence Option 4.

Speaking of stunts, I was kicking around a couple and came up with these related to this idea.

Collector of Arcane Goods [-1]
Once per scene, for a fate point, you may declare that you have a potion or other single use magical trinket on hand.  It’s strength is equal to your Resources skill.

Arcane Connoisseur [-1]
Your Resources skill is treated as two steps higher when purchasing enchanted items or potions.

Thoughts, criticisms, and praise are welcome (especially criticisms).

So we have a character in our party who has Thaumaturgy and Evocation, but his Evocation is tied to an Item of Power (it allows him to cast when wielding, the focus items from Evocation are part of the item of power).  Our GM allowed it because the player isn't really very savy and felt that a boost in power would make us more equal (since our GM considers me a bit more savy and felt that I was hogging the effectiveness spotlight a bit).  

Well, our regular GM couldn't make it the other night.  I stepped in as a Guest GM.  It was fun, but an interesting situation came up.  The group had to go into a hospital.  The one wizard in the group (an apprentice Warden) used ritual to help control his hexing (until combat, where I ruled he couldn't control the energy if he was actively casting).  The player in question (with the IoP) was compelled to leave his staff in the car so his power was more limited (I gave him a fate point, which he then used to resist a hexing compel later).  It worked out pretty well.

However, then combat started.  The player felt a bit useless (he had some enchanted items which he could use) because he couldn't cast combat spells and wondered if he could cast thaumaturgy during combat.  I didn't know.  I gave him another fate point (because I felt bad for him for not foreseeing the consequences of the compel I placed earlier and not having an answer to a question I should have seen coming) which he spent for a temporary power (Refinement for focus items, then spent on more enchanted items) for the scene justifying it as anticipating going to a hospital and preparing some useful items to use in lieu of his staff.

Everything went well, and I'm okay with my off the cuff handling of everything (not exactly RAW but it kept things moving without referencing rulebooks, slowing the game down, or leaving a player feeling left out of a game).  

However, it got me thinking about using Thaumaturgy in combat.  It says that Thaumaturgy can create evocation like effects, but I wouldn't let it work like evocation because that would devalue the power.  I came up with a way to handle it and am wondering what the board thinks.

Thaumaturgy for Evocation Effects in Combat
Determining Complexity:  There are two parts for determining the complexity for Thaumaturgic Evocation.  First, you figure the base complexity of the Evocation.  This is the number of shifts it would take to perform the evocation.  Then you determine the targeting roll.  Unlike other Thaumaturgic contests, it is assumes that you have a target aware enough to make a roll.  Thus, you decide the number shifts you'd like to target with.  These two numbers together determine the complexity.
Example: Archibald Sinclair can't use Evocation but wants to use his Thaumaturgic talent to shoot lightening at the Troll attacking his friend Jenny.  First, he sneaks up on the troll and snags a bit of hair (a Burglary Maneuver vs. the Troll's Alertness restricted by his stealth) from it.  He also makes a Lore maneuver to draw a magic circle on the ground with his foot before settling inside it.  He knows he'll have to hit the troll with a bit of force, so he wants to use four shifts of power to make the spell a Weapon 4 attack.  The Troll.  He wants to attack at Superb (vs. the Troll's Good Athletics).  Thus the complexity of this spell is 9.  He's got Superb Lore and invokes the two aspects (from his declaration and maneuver) to push this to 9.  He uses his Great Discipline and Conviction to summon the amount of power in three rounds (3 shifts per round, rolling Good, Great, and Legendary in the rounds).  Finally he releases the spell.

In the example, total casting time amounted to 5 exchanges (one for the Lore declaration, one for the Burglary maneuver, three to draw the power).  

Typically, this would be manageable as an Evocation effect in a single exchange.  Thus, evocation is clearly valuable for a combat wizard, but Thaumaturgy is still an option.

(Of course, the most effective way to do this would be to do a weapon 2 effect to bypass the armor and inflict stress and then channel the remaining 7 shifts of power into accuracy yielding an Epic Attack which the Troll would have no chance of defending against)

What do you think?

EDIT:  Of course, this also means that a spellcaster can do Weapon 1 attacks at their Conviction score-1 for accuracy for no mental stress so long as they can make the Control roll and their Lore (or Complexity) is at least equal to their Conviction...interesting.

So, I've been statting up some of the monsters from Greek myths (primarily from Herakles' Twelve Labors) and figured I'd post them here.  This is the first one that I've finished:

Nemean Lion
High Concept: Mythic Monster
Other Aspects: Man-Eater; Fearless Predator; Scion of the Chimera
Skills: Fists+5, Endurance+4, Athletics+4, Alertness+3, Might+5, Stealth+3, Survival+3, Intimidation+3, Other skills default to Mediocre or Fair.
Powers:
Physical Immunity-8
       Stacked Catch+4 (Own Claws, Only Applies to Cutting and Piercing, Researchable)
Catch+4 (Suffocation, Easily Found, Researchable)
       Mythic Toughness-6
       Inhuman Recovery-2
Inhuman Speed-2
Supernatural Strength-4
Claws-1
Armor Rending-3 (Claws ignore all armor)
Stress:
Physical 0000(000000)
Mental 00
Social 00

Notes:
The Nemean Lion represents quite a physical challenge.  Its hide makes it immune to slashing or piercing damage (swords, knives, spears, bullets, arrows, etc) but not to other types of damage (magic, bludgeoning, etc).  Of course, this other damage still must bypass the lion's incredible toughness.  Of course, the lion still needs to breathe.

The Lion acts on Epic initiative, so it usually goes first.  It fights aggressively, allowing its incredible toughness and impenetrable hide ignore virtually any blow.  It attacks and defends at Superb (using Might when it needs to enhance its Fists roll for attacking) and effectively has Weapon 6 Claws that ignore any armor score the target has.  If you get close, it will probably rend you to shreds.  

In a grapple, the Lion is Epic and can deal three-stress hits when successful (there is a reason Herakles beat it with a club and strangled it while it was asleep).

Chimera:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,25619.msg1088733.html#msg1088733

Hydra:
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,25619.msg1088942.html#msg1088942
EDIT: Added Good Intimidation, thanks.

Okay, I've got a quick question that I wasn't able to find an answer for.  I know that if you have Sponsored Magic you may only take Refinement for Item Slots.  However, say you have Seelie Magic AND Evocation.  Now, because you have Evocation, you can obviously take Refinement for Specialization.  My question is thus: Can you, if you have Evocation, take Specialization in "Summer" as your element?