Agreed, it could get boring if overused, but it would either be pretty simple-minded or else really complex, and either way much easier to destroy than to rebuild.

Doing it abstractly as you suggest is certainly easier, but also has big holes. For example: You send it out to find something, the person it's looking for notices it and tries to ambush it to keep it from following. How hard was it to spot? Can it resist being blown away? How likely is it to escape?

If it were an npc sending a construct to spy on a pc(or a pc keeping an eye on another pc) then all those things(and more) would be highly relevant. Granted that when the target is an npc a fair bit of hand-waving can be used, but the spell should be fully useable regardless of "PC-light" status.

Sanctafrax; Thanks, I'll check that out. Do you think PP makes it to easy or to hard?

Paranet Papers gives good guidelines for creating undead, but fails to address the question of Constructs(eg. Golums, Animated Statues etc. It seems like the same basic parameters should apply, but it must be more difficult or no one would turn to Necromancy. So for those who want numbers to work with I suggest the following:

Calculate the complexity of construct creation thaumaturgy with a +3 to create the 'aspect' of the corporeal form and give it a base duration of 'scene'(15 minutes on the time chart) instead of 'sunrise'(afternoon).

That's effectively +11 complexity over a necromantic animation, giving plenty of temptation to start down the dark path, but gives 'law-abiding' minion-builders a decent baseline to work from.

Of course if you're animating an existing body the 'it is what it is' principle may provide a few 'free' benefits(eg. a stone statue would have some 'intrinsic' toughness), but anything exotic will require some pretty good explanations(and likely in character work which could require help from the other characters and possibly be a session in itself).

Mechanically, there's a slight difference.  Most of what you are describing are skill replacement rituals

Tracking Spell = Investigation or Survival skill replacement
Summoning Toot-Toot = Contacts skill replacement
Scrying = Investigation/contacts/alertness - probably a bunch of skills rolled into one big ritual in order gain lots of aspects/information.

Acquiring powers through rituals is different.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf using Thaumaturgy in one session, then GM should let you do it, given the proper prep.  If you are going to turn yourself into a wolf every session, then you should buy the powers with refresh - with thaumaturgy as the justification for said powers.

Also, welcome.

If it's something that he's going to be doing routinely then he'll probably want to, but I wouldn't say he must. Though if I were GM and he was really over-using it I'd find ways to make it bite him sometimes.

As for re-using preparations, there's precedent for that too. Harry has a permanent Circle in his basement and a wide variety of components stored in his lab. Arguably that could be said to be the source fore the "lore" bonus that rituals get, but that applies anytime, not just in a characters home lab.

In this case preps #1, #2, #5 look like they should last. In game terms maybe allow an increased difficulty on the initial declaration to make appropriate preparations re-useable?

Thanks.