I have only ever played this game once, however it has been for many years, and I have played a rich wizard, with an emphasis on rich. Since the beginning of the game I've had 5 resources and filthy lucre. I have learned that being able to easily bribe the chief of police 50 million dollars is useful. I have learned that having a immense fortified mansion kitted out with well trained soldiers is useful. I have learned that paying 10 million dollars for the best sword made in modern times is cool (not exactly useful for me but cool). I once killed a denarian (Magog) purchased a Russian rocket and satellite put the coin in the rocket and fired it into orbit.

The long and short of this is that this would have been much more difficult to do (in the case of the mansion impossible as that is a lifestyle thing not a roll) with even one less in resources. I present to you noble roleplayers that the next time you need to make a character, make him rich. Really really rich. It's fun.

What do you need to have in a character (powers) and what kind of template do you need to have in order to death curse? Also assuming you are an NPC do you get all the consequences you have or all those you should have if you were a PC (like most npc's don't have an extreme).

Like right now my group is fighting black court master after black court master, and when the death curse is 25 shifts baseline it's a pain to compensate for. Our GM rules that anything that has non-sponsored magic (like evocation) regardless of their template can death curse. I don't think I can change his mind regardless of what is official (unless it is clearly like really clearly stated in the 16th book) but I would still like to know what is official.

So I entered into a pact with a fire spirit. I've crafted (had crafted) a manequin made to be super durable, cast spells on it etc so that the spirit can inhabit it a la bob's skull and move around with it. Now his job is more or less to be my ever disposable bodyguard, as if the mannequin is ever destroyed I can always replace it, and he can just escape into the nevernever (that's sort of the deal). The manequin has two stress boxes, and a mild and moderate consequences, and three armor, so it's durable, but not invincible. However the spirit has combat stats at 5, so when blocking incoming attacks, he's good (well technically he's superb).

In any case that gives you a concept of services rendered. This is sort of an ongoing gig. Once a year however I need to take a torch and take it around the world a la the Olympics. It has to be 'known' to have happened, who knows it not specified. Now I could take the long way around, our down times are usually 3ish months at a time, however I have other stuff to do. So I wanted to solve this via thalmaturgy, maybe giving myself mythic speed for a certain durration, and then trying to cross the Atlantic by just running really really fast before sunset. In general we have decided that if you want magic to give you a power you can do it, it just costs double the cost of the power in shifts, and the more powerful a power the more restrictions will come up. We haven't really discussed how this will get done and considering it is nine months away from the deadline I'm not pressed for time. However I'd like to have a plan sooner rather than later.

Ideas?

Alright I have a focus item question. The game states that if you make a focus item dedicated to just one spell you get one free upgrade point. Considering how limited focus items are in some ways, this could be very useful. However when they say 'one spell' how restricted are we talking? Are we talking the same as a rote, or is there some amount of flexibility?