Enchanting

While enchanters are powerful, I'm not really convinced that they are overpowered.   While they are very strong on the defense, their inability to get bonuses to hit like evocators can limit their offensive ability, and their limited uses clamps down on thier non-combat utility some too.

While it's possible to build an evocation offense, enchanted item defense character it actually takes a lot of your character focus to get there, meaning you can't do some other interesting stuff.

I agree, and I think the Enchanteding house rules either need to be tweaked or thrown out entirely.  I know there was some concern about crafters, even considering their lack of to-hit bonuses, and I wanted to make Specialization more useful, since it lost its connection to Thaumaturgy (which is another potential problem).

Since all elements are 'equal' wouldn't a good justification let you apply your already useful evocation specialty to power up whatever enchanted item you want?

I suspect there would be a few enchanted items where that just wouldn't make sense.  Could you create a tracking item using any of the elements?  I could describe the effect as something elemental (a candle flame flickers in the direction of your target, etc.) but I don't know how being "good" at Fire would make me better at tracking.  The same goes for conjuration, summoning, transformation, etc.

For defensive and offensive enchanted items, definitely.  But in that case I think it makes sense.

Thaumaturgy:
Some of your complaints sound a bit like complaining about the contacts skill: 

You never roll it in combat, and it's always some guy who tells you stuff.

The 'interesting' parts of thaumaturgy are whatever zany stuff you do to get enough complexity to cast the spell, not the actual ritual itself.  If works the same way in the books, almost all of the page count in thaumaturgy is spent on the declarations (blue play-doh, ring of barbed wire, long cleansing shower, and do on).  That's the interesting part.

I think I agree with you (unless I've missed something), but that was the reason for these house rules in the first place.  There are complex rules for gathering the power to cast a spell (after the zany preparation stuff has already been done).  But once you reach +5 Control, those rules never get used.  And there's no real difference between a Wizard with +7 Divination Control and a Wizard with +5 Divination Control.

To put it a different way, under the current rules, there's no real reason to build something like "Little Chicago" to help with Divination spells.

The house rules still require all the zany prep work if you want to cast something more complicated than your Lore+4, or if you want to cast something more complex than Lore-4 without risking backlash or fallout.  But once you've done all the interesting prep work, you just roll (or don't bother, if you've already got enough shifts) and you're done.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

Was it your intention to remove the 'split' in specializations and just have them effect the power of the spell?  And only focus items effect the control/to hit roll?

Yes, that was intentional.  I wanted to distinguish between Specialization and Focus Items a bit more, and it prevents doubling up Specializations and Focus Items into one unstoppable Targetting roll.

What exactly does adding duration to a maneuver get you, since maneuvers applied with a skill last for the scene unless an action is taken to remove them.

It does the same thing adding duration currently does for a maneuver spell, but I admit that's never been 100% clear.  My take is that a sticky Aspect is enforced by the spell for its duration, and afterwards its difficulty to remove becomes Mediocre (+0)

Let's say I want to blind you with a bright light.
I've got discipline 5, conviction 5, and a +1 (control?) focus item.  I do the flashy thing.  You try to resist with your alertness with the justification that. while you might be momentarily blinded, you can still sense where things are. 
I roll (+, -, _, _) on the fudge dice for at attack total of 6.  Do you compare your alertness with the attack/control roll (6) or against the power of the spell (5)?

Let's assume you fail in your defense and are blinded

Then, your action rolls around, you decide to "rub your eyes to get the spots out of them" and roll alertness again.  Is the target number supposed to be 5 (the strength of the spell)?

- You would defend against the Attack/Control roll (6) to avoid getting the Aspect/Free Tag in the first place.  This represents the difficulty to avoid getting blinded in the first place (or grabbed by vines, choked by smoke, etc.)
- For the duration of the spell (typically one exchange), the target to remove the Aspect would be the strength of the spell (5).  This represents the difficulty to escape the blindness (or vines, etc.) once it has affected you.
- After the spell expires, the target to remove the Aspect would be Mediocre (0).

I think that's the same way that Evocation maneuvers works under the normal rules (at least, that's how I intepret them), but I admit it's never been crystal clear to me.

So it's your intention to remove 'power' from block and instead have the block based on the 'control' roll?  This is sort of a bad idea, as it makes control an even better proposition. 

To be honest, the new rules for Blocking were the ones I was the least comfortable with.  I couldn't figure out a good way to combine Control and Spell Power.  So ultimately I just made the Evocation Block skill work the same as any other Block skill in the game.  But I'd be open to other suggestions.

Right now, control is great on the attack, but you need both control and power on the block.  This makes a character built for something like control 7, power 4 not ideal on the defense.  Whereas, in your rule change, control 7, power 4 guy is still great at defending.

Could you give a quick example of how a Control 7, Power 4 character is worse at Blocking than a Control 4, Power 7 character?  Wouldn't the Power focused character still need Control in order to cast a powerful Block?

Also a Wizard would still want a high Conviction in order to (a) have enough stress slots to cast spells and (b) cast larger, zone-wide spells.  And they would still want to Specialize in order to create more powerful Defensive enchanted items.

And while I think your compel for fallout or backlash rule looks alright, I think your previous rules make it much less likely for wizards to miss than the regular rules.

You lost me here... I believe a Wizard's targetting roll can be maxed out more under the old rules than these house rules (since Specialization and Focus Items could stack).  Why is missing less likely than the regular rules?

Evocation and Thaumaturgy cost a whopping total of -6 refresh and require high skills. They are supposed to be powerful. But the changes you're attempting to make are gimping casters in comparison to everything else. Let's compare a same-cost configuration for a mortal (supposedly the weakest) and see what happens;

True Mortal assassin, -6 refresh for 8 stunts:
Way of the Gunslinger (+1 rolls to handguns of american make), Shot on the Run, Guns Akimbo (as off-hand weapon training), rapid reload, shoot and move, Occultist (Magical Countermeasures), Lethal Accuracy (ignore up to 2 armor), Stalk the Supernatural (+2 stealth vs nonhuman, nonmortal enemies). He's wielding dual Desert Eagles and has prepared special ammunition (silver, cold iron, incendiaries, hollowpoints full of ghost dust or holy oil) which he can rapid reload. He has guns 5, Stealth 5, Lore 4.
Attacks: rolls at +6, weapon 5, armor piercing 2, can be tailored to satisfy catch of lycanthropes, fey, fire-weak undead, ghosts and demons. All defense rolls at +6. Plus really good stealth and mobility.

First of all, that's a pretty solid build.  Nicely done!  And, honestly, I don't have any problem with combat-focused mortals being deadly, even to Wizards.

On the other hand, Thaumaturgy isn't really a combat skill, so if we're going to do a combat skill comparison, I think it makes more sense to only use Evocation.  Here's a quick build:

Pure Evoker, -6 refresh for Evocation and 3 Refinements:
Evocation (+1 Earth Magic, +1 Earth Focus Item), Refinement 1 (+1 Fire Magic, +1 Earth Magic), Refinement 2 (+2 Earth Focus), Refinement 3 (+7 Stealth Item, +7 Defensive Item)
He has Discipline 5, Conviction 4, Lore 4.  Final Specialization: +2 Earth, +1 Fire.  Final Focus Item: +3 Earth
Attacks: Earth Magic: rolls at +8, weapon 6. Can cast a Block at +8 or use +7 Defense 1/session (or reduce strength for more uses).  +7 Stealth Item 1/session (or reduce strength for more uses).  He still rolls at +5 without his focus item, and his weapons can't be hexed.

They're both pretty deadly, and they legitimately have different skill sets.  But I still don't think the Wizard is gimped in comparison.

Are there any other thoughts about these House Rules?

It seems like some of the most common complaints on this board are about:
- How overpowered Wizards are compared to other characters
- How overpowered Crafters are compared to other characters
- How thaumaturgy is boring mechanically (i.e. it can't be used in combat, and it never gets rolled outside of combat) or
- How thaumaturgy makes most other skills redundant (since you can replicate them with a spell)

I think these changes would fix all of those issues, while still leaving Magic as a powerful, versatile, and dramatic aspect of the game.  But I'm not sure if they need tweaking or not.

On the other hand, if you think these rules would be totally boring and you'd never use them, I'd be interested in hearing why you think they're boring!

One thing that I noticed right away is that Fallout does not seem to equal backlash. Seems to me that backlash is almost guaranteed to take a caster out, since (even though we aren't adding shifts) we're still dealing with weapon 4-6 attacks.

I forgot to add the caveat that a Wizard can limit the strength of their Attack spells.

It's true, if you're throwing around Weapon:6 spells and you absolutely can't afford Fallout (for example, there are innocent Mortals around) then you may have to take a moderate consequence and eat the backlash.  Otherwise, you can either (a) pay a Fate point to buy out of the compel, (b) cast weaker spells so you can survive the backlash, or (c) make sure you don't miss.

I admit, I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug.

Thaumaturgy

Stress
All thaumatrugy actions cost 1 Mental Stress.

• Difficulty:
    Calculate difficulty for a spell using the same guidelines as before.
  
• Casting The Spell:
    Roll Lore + Focus Item
    Target = Difficulty of Spell
  
• Timing:
    Casting a thaumaturgical spell takes one exchange.  On the other hand, tagging/invoking enough Aspects to cast the spell successfully may take a bit longer.
  

Alternate Rule: The player can take a consequence to add that many shifts to the Casting roll.


Fallout/Backlash:
If you miss the Target, the GM can choose to Compel your High Aspect to cause Fallout or Backlash.

• Fallout effects are up to the GM, and should be influenced by the spell strength.  (The spell hits bystanders nearby. The spell adds a Scene aspect. etc.)
• Backlash means you take physical or mental stress equal to the Difficulty of the spell.

Alternate Rule: If Compelled by the GM, the player can choose whether they want Fallout or Backlash.

Note that "Thaumaturgy at the Speed of Evocation" is redundant under these rules.

Philosophy
I discovered, while playing, that Thaumaturgy just wasn't that interesting to me.  Once my Discipline roll was over +5, there was never a good reason to actually roll when casting a spell.  And once the +5 limit was reached, there was never any reason to improve beyond that.  Under these rules, even someone with Superb (+5) Lore can only cast a +1 Difficulty spell reliably.  So creating focus items (i.e. "Little Chicago", etc.) and doing ritual prep work (maneuvering/declaring Aspects) is necessary in order to cast a spell safely.

This also means that a Wizard can't just casually build up power for a 100-shift "Make me a God" spell.