Just make two stunts. A Few Seconds Ahead defends physical with Lore. Rhyme-and-Riddle Games defends social with Lore so long as you at least throw in a nonsense koan you made up. "Does a stone answer the sky?" would be fine.

-1 to -2 and now it's perfectly in line with everything. Yes, the default is too powerful because it's literally just double stunts for -1, but tying two defenses to one non-defense skill is not too powerful EVER. You just need to pay a little more for that competency.

Cloak of Shadows is the same but Cloak of Shadows deals all with one subsystem. It's incredibly strong for a stealth character, but it doesn't make stealth characters incredibly strong at everything.

Ah, well. I'll say we've reached the very limits of what could be discussed, with our current knowledge of the DV, so I'll concede this argument. That said, a magical ritual to increase your magical power feels kinds screwy to me.

Not your magical power. Something like drawing off a leyline to saturate the local geomancy, ensuring pregnancies carried to term locally have a higher natural affinity.

How do you account for the fact that magical potential is determined by bloodline?

I dunno, dude, some stuff is determined by bloodline.

Burn your mortal bridges. No one else is saying it, so I will: what makes people special, unique, amazing? It's magic. True magic, the power to transcend mere mortality, the power not to lose your human nature but to redefine it.

Look, everything out there wants to put you in a box. Power source. Food. Toy. And they'll succeed, because where you can scrape the sky, they can rip down the stars around you. That's the hard truth. That's human destiny. Struggle, persevere...get something's attention, die.

Or is that the truth?

Being a wizard doesn't make you less. It makes you more. And the core of that, the core of all that power, is not fire or water or even thaumaturgy. It's self-definition. A wizard isn't some mystic alien that happens to look like a regular person at first. A wizard is a human being who says, human beings are mighty. You're not a power source, you're not food, you're not a toy, and you have the phenomenal cosmic power to back it up. You're right and your brother is wrong: you won't be the little girl who shone like a star rising against a supernatural night.

You will be a woman, a transcendent human being, a queen with a soul in bloom, and you will burn like the sun.

possibly demonic copilot for evocation control, though I'm not sure about the balance of that.

The amount of work and Refresh that needs to be spent avoiding this being a death sentence (or at least an NPC-sentence) is really quite colossal. Demonic Copilot is not something you want to attach to Evocation, no.

If a player wants a "pooled" magic item, I let them spend shifts to add default-strength effects that share the use pool. So if they have Lore 5, they could make an enchanted item with a Weapon:4 and a Block:4 effect that has one use pool. You end up with less uses and less power then if you just made separate items, but spending shifts instead of slots gets you much better versatility. I also houserule Warden Swords to work on this system, using the character's Lore rather then being a default package - in other words, if you want a Sword, you make it yourself.

I have a different opinion from you.  Giving a contrary opinion is not misleading people, it is expressing an opinion that you disagree with.

Come on, dude, we have like a thousand pages of this. You can probably type this next part FOR me. This isn't blue vs. green, this is pawns move four spaces vs. no, they move one or two spaces depending on context. Telling people a false thing is true is misleading, whether or not you believe in the false thing. That's the definition of deception. Your intentions don't enter into it, it is what it is.

So.... the answer to this thread is basically ...

"Well, like; that's your opinion dude."

No, that's the answer one side wishes to reduce it to in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It's a little bit like saying "a physical attack causes stress" and a 20-page debate on whether or not that's true for no apparent reason.

I have been consistent in my replies throughout this discussion.  I do not obfuscate my point of view - I proclaim it to the world.

Your view is not obfuscating, your responses are.

Combined, the two rulebooks have enough info about the DV to run a game

And 100% of the RAW.

Let's just walk away from this issue.

I think we've reached a core of the discussion where it is impossible for you to continue to make arguments that assert that the greater Dresdenverse is necessary canon to the game. To be clear, if you stop responding, I have no need to reply, but there will not be a point when I feel that such false assertions should go unchallenged. Want to drop it? Fine. But every time it comes back up, expect exactly the same repetition of what DFRPG encompasses vs. what Richard_Chilton's homebrew DFRPG encompasses. As I've noted previously, I feel it's important that anyone who comes here looking to understand the game not be misled.