If Mythic level attributes aren't going to be allowed normally, I don't see why they'd be fair game for Modular Abilities.  You're still buying them, just for temporary use.

New session.

Social combat worked better.  Some maneuvers/assessments actually stuck, so people could deliver useful attacks.  Not using Disciple against Rapport also helped.  However, it was still considerably less decisive than a physical combat.   Another thing that helped in the social conflict was that we were doing a better job of playing to our strengths, instead of making an appropriate sounding but mechanically terrible Intimidate at +0 or something.

OTOH, I think we still needed to do a better job setting stakes for the social conflict.  The voodoo practitioner (now a Freeholding Lord thanks to the White Council, Red Court, and unknown faction) was trying to make a big reveal of telling us that a seriously powerful mortal wizard was behind a hurricane.  It was somewhat unclear what we had to gain or lose since he was going to tell us anyway.  However, I did discover two of Aspects ("Knows where the bodies are buried", and "the Laws hold us back" or something like that) and lead him to think he could divide us.  Mr. Nice Guy warden gave him a guilty conscience consequence, taking only stress in return.  I guess if he lost, then the White Council would have looked guilty or stupid in front of everyone in the neutral ground.

Also, in Whitfield's report to Morgan, he made up some gossip about Harry Dresden so he wouldn't look so bad in comparison after restarting the Vampire War - "Now I have TWO Wardens working for vampires..."  But Morgan is always angry, right?

In the end, we let the vampire writer get away because we decided to focus on the badly wounded spellcaster they had kidnapped (the girl who threw the entropy curse).  We would have had a chance at doing both if some moron had kept his mouth shut, because they would have been confident in holding the exit.  I might have able to demolish the wall facing the sun if they weren't chasing us down. 

When the vampires used a poor addict as cannon fodder when they moved out, they also kept the wizard from nuking 4+ vamps in the zone with lightning.  It really sucks when the bad guys use the laws of magic against you.

And the session ended with an ominous threat against Temper from Maya: her 'friends' have been called in...  If only she had the Lore to understand the true nature of the threat.   

But I raised Scholarship instead - both its first aid and information gathering abilities have come up.  It seemed to help open up more things than Might, the other Average skill I was thinking of bumping up.  I want to raise Athletics to Great, so I need to increase a bunch of other skills to create that opening in my skill triangle.    Not the best character design for quick growth, except to raise a Great to Superb (which I will need to do as part of increasing Athletics instead).  That's probably something I'd take into consideration in future characters.  Whitfield increased his Scholarship as well - now he has Average and can speak Latin like he should have been able to do in the first place. 

One thing to consider is that Control is used as your attack roll anyway on Weapon spells anyway.  If you would flub the discipline check, you could be missing anyway and achieving nothing even with a rote.  And Weapon attacks already reward Control more than power.

Not as overpowered as the first (incorrect) version, but not bad...
And the Power comes mainly from the Foci not from the Lawbreaker.

Yeah, any Channeler with tons of refinement is going to be pretty brutal.  I mean, you spent all of your refresh AND 2 Superbs +1 Great skill on one trick (granted Spirit is pretty broad).  You could achieve a similar effect by dropping lawbreaker and either buying more Refinement (for Defensive Control, so you can have a full effect Rote and Offensive Power) or just taking some more Fate Points.  The FP route lets you create a maneuver with your spells, and then spend your points to Compel that new aspect.  So you make an enemy dish out some 'friendly fire' instead of just tagging for a bonus.

You could do a lot with Veils without going directly into somebody's mind, after all.  Or with kinetics/fields to use the other side of spirit.

It's not really Evocation methods if you're dodging the mental stress that's part of the evocation method.  It would just be at evocation speed.

Warding is a notable exception, but 5 shift Wards, while cool, are hardly unbeatable.

Yeah, they don't have to be unbeatable.  They just have to be lots better than a normal block.  Since they don't spend shifts for duration - pretty essential IMO if you want to do anything besides maintain the shield - a 5 power Ward is more equivalent to 7 power block that gets 2 extra exchanges.  Plus it comes with the reflecting bonus.  And it shouldn't take stress to do it?

No Pain, No Gain: You can take a bunch of punishment before it starts to add up. You may take one additional mild physical consequence (page 203).

(This is a rare case of a broadly applicable stunt, but consequences by their nature are expendable, which is where the justification for going broad comes from. But yes, we've cut it down from two milds to one because of that broad application.)

Doesn't that seem a bit weak?  I can see weakening Resilient Self Image, since casters can use their Mild Mentals as ammo pretty often - other characters tend not to take so much self inflicted damage.  However, it seems like most stunts (except attack boosters like Target Rich Environment) provide a situational bonus roughly equivalent to +2 - which cleverly works out to be the same that provided situationally by invoking an Aspect with a Fate Point.  So the stunt becomes worth the refresh when you can use it often, as opposed to just using the Fate point once per session.  Stunts that a character isn't going to use more than once per session aren't worth the refresh in most cases.

But there's a limit to how often you get to use an extra Consequence slot, since it can take a few scenes for even mild damage to recover (without fancy powers).  If you're not using it more than once a session, the stunt is roughly equivalent to just spending a Fate point on a defense roll.  A full +2 there will at worst knock off 2 levels of damage (the same as minor consequence), and may turn an attack into a full miss (which can prevent a lot more damage with high Weapon values).  Granted, Fate point spending may be less efficient since you might already be invoking your useful aspect.  On the other hand, taking a consequence gives your opponent a free tag on it, so it can be less useful than simply taking 2 less damage.

Moreover, the stunt is already somewhat situational in that most characters don't choose to take lots of damage (I already mentioned the exception of spellcasters, who do take damage to fuel their stuff).  Stuff that works in a situation you control or initiate tends to be more useful than something that depends on the other guy.  Especially if it depends on the other guy kicking your ass.    It's generally a good idea to avoid that sort of thing.

While the extra consequence stunts are broadly desirable in that most characters could potentially use greater resilience, they don't really seem like must haves.  It doesn't seem like a huge problem if there were some mortal stunts that everyone wished they had, as opposed to a bunch of "well, if that's your thing..." abilities.

Even a 2 consequence No Pain, No Gain, seems more than 1 refresh worse than Inhuman Toughness, the closest supernatural competition. 

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Personally, I feel like there's a huge a difference in utility between a stunt giving a situational bonus to one of a character's best skills - especially a skill at the cap level! - and the same situational bonus to a weaker skill.  If you picked something as Great or Superb, you probably plan on using it quite a bit already.  So that's more chances to pick up your situational bonus.  Also, if something is already maxed out, then it's more understandable that additional bonuses are going to come more dearly than before.  If you're normally only allowed 5 Guns, getting 6 some of time with a stunt is like cheating, you know? 

On the other hand, unless a character concept is specifically calling for a limited application of a skill, then stunts on weaker skills seem a little disappointing.  They're not "look at this awesome trick I have" and are instead "I wish I had more skill points to buy a higher normal value."

Yeah, powers are supposed to be better than stunts, but if you make normal stunts too weak, people interested in playing pure mortals are going to wonder why they bothered taking them.  And supernaturals will be less likely to round themselves out by supplementing their powers with vanilla tricks.  Sure, powers are limited by High Concept.  However, a stunt not used more than once per session is generally not worth the loss of a refresh compared to just spending the FP.  So it's not like they benefit a lot by picking up stuff willy nilly and ignoring their main concept either.  And having a high concept tied to most of your powers makes it really easy to invoke at least one aspect when using them.

Subduing someone magically then killing them can't be a Lawbreaker because that's how Warden's operate.

A lot of the social attacks were Intimidate, where Discipline is listed as a basic defense.  Moreover, the interactions generally involved only a few people, so avoiding an emotional reaction so you don't give something away seemed like a decent defense.  As opposed to a situation with an audience, where having the witty comeback prevents you from looking bad in front of the other people.

I don't know about the NPCs, but our maneuvers and assessments we did try also failed most of the time.  We ended up using a maneuver with magic because we had trouble succeeding at them normally.  Also, being able to take a flexible approach in conversation takes a lot of skills.  There were several times when the conversation gambit that seemed to make the most sense didn't correspond with our best social attack skill.

Whitfield could have made better use of his 3 Presence to compliment other skills or generate maneuvers.  We forgot that it could do things besides give him 4 stress boxes.

But overall, the social combat was pretty disappointing.  In physical combat, we each only have 2 Guns, but my character was still able to dish out the hurt to some vampires in a pair of fights with only mundane attacks and she avoided serious injury with 3 Athletics.  On the other hand, 2 Empathy and 3 Deceit didn't seem effective at all for me in social situations.  

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Temper was the one thrown down the stairs, not John.  I'm not sure why we bother attacking people.  Finding ways to make them fall seems like it'd do much more damage. 

Some of those vampires would have been screwed even if they were taking consequences.  IIRC, we had a few hits dealing around 10 damage.  And John's Chain Lightning was overloaded for +2 power, hitting for Weapon 5 on 2 targets - once of which flubbed the defense roll and was especially fried.

Supernatural Toughness was amazing.  Normally a Red Court guy hitting Temperance by 1 dealt out 4 damage, so she'd have to take a minor consequence (I could only spare an average Endurance).  Transformed, that was only 2 damage on a stress track going up 7, so she could take 6 such hits (starting fresh) before exhausting her stress track.  Potentially, she'll be fine even from the explosion.  OTOH, I expect that she might have to run around in a burning building for a bit to check for other people.