New Concept:

So to give a better explanation for my question; I was reading paranet papers and obviously everybody who loves wizards in dfrpg has seen the Mental Toughness power chain. Looking at it I became dissatisfied with the obvious progression, sure you have more spells via the longer stress track but unless you have a means you wont necessarily be able to take advantage of the increase in shifts of power. Your #10 box provides 9 more shifts of power than your #1 box, and reaching Conviction + 9 in control isn't necessarily easy to do.

So the obvious thing, something that has been holding conviction based spell-casters back is the lack of fallout and/or backlash mitigation. This compounds the fact that discipline is superior since excess shifts equal excess damage anyway .

Reading more of Paranet Papers, this seems to obviously be the kind of thing the soulfire stress track looks good for. For example 6 refresh in Soulfire and Inhuman Mental Toughness lets you perfectly absorb backlash for your entire mental stress track (5 mental stress boxes call for absorbing backlash, and you have 5 boxes of soulfire stress)

So now I'm thinking a "Channelling Tattoos" sponsored magic which works similarly. Something like:

Channelling Tattoos
You have tattoos covering your body which have been designed to safely channel the backlash from summoning large amounts of magical energy. Furthermore, if you are skilled in their application, you can make use of this excess energy to power magical tattoos which function as enchanted items.
Musts:  You must have both the Evocation and Thaumaturgy powers, and at least one crafting specialization. You must change one of your aspects to represent your new magical paradigm.
Skils Effected: Conviction, Discipline, Lore
Cost Varies, at least -3. Since Channelling tattoos require evocation and thaumaturgy there is no discount for having either.
Effects:
Magical Tattoos. You can craft magical tattoos as enchanted items. You gain 4 enchanted item slots, and you gain +1 Strength and +1 Uses per day, stacking with any specializations you may currently have. While magical tattoos can not easily be removed they can be damaged, either through mundane means (burning, slashing, etc) or by channelling more backlash than you can control.
The Tattoo Stress Track. The tattoo stress track defaults to two boxes, like most stress tracks. You can opt to increase its size by taking more refresh in the Channelling Tattoos power, -1 per box. The track can only take self-inflicted stress for the purposes of absorbing backlash—no one can attack this stress track, and you can’t use it to absorb stress from any other source. You must choose to use it to absorb backlash from your spell-casting. You also get a single mild consequence slot to reflect the impact of channelling backlash or having your tattoos damaged though mundane means. Proper aspects would describe burnout or physical damage of your magical tattoo enchantments, making them less effective, unreliable and possibly fatal to use.

Original Post:

What do you all think of Inhuman Toughness or greater that only protected against backlash damage? Perhaps via tattoos of some sort that channel the excess magic in a safer way.

So this is an extension of an idea I've had for a while. Magic flows through bloodlines, and it seems practical (for many reasons, such as longevity) that wizards prefer to marry other wizards. It seems that there should be, if not common, a tradition of intermarriage between wizard families.

Taking the intermarriage between wizard families to an extreme, a family might try to improve their position by "marrying well".

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House Haydon
House Haydon is a well connected, well monied house with a huge propensity for magical talent. So much so in fact that those without the talent for magic are (discreetly) looked down upon. Family obligation is first in foremost in the thoughts of most members. Nepotism runs rampant in family businesses, and scions of the house are expected to make advantageous marriages, bringing in more talented blood.

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Greatest Mother
High Concept: Ghostly Matron of House Haydon
Trouble: Long Dead, But Not Forgotten
Other Aspects: Bound to the Family Estate; Mother to Them All; Centuries of Magical Experience; Managing The Bloodline; Family Matchmaker

Skills
Lore (Fantastic, +6)
Conviction (Superb, +5)
Discipline (Superb, +5)
Alertness (Great, +4)
Athletics (Great, +4)
Empathy (Great, +4)
Presence (Good, +3)
Intimidation (Good, +3)
Deceit (Good, +3)
Rapport (Fair, +3)
Most other skills default to average or mediocre.

Stunts & Powers
The Greatest Mother can be considered plot-device-powerful. She is a ghost and so has Spirit Form, and the Poltergeist upgrade, along with being a powerful sorceress or wizard with over a millennia of experience. Despite her power, she is fairly limited in her activities, only waking to provide protection and guidance to her family, and only able to directly intervene in special circumstances.

Stress: M OOOO (Extra Mild Consequence), P OOOO, S OOOO

The Greatest Mother is the eldest "surviving" member of what became House Haydon. Sometime in the early second century she enacted a ritual which would allow her to protect her family as a ghost, and has continued to do that throughout the centuries. She is present, in spirit if not manifest, during any family celebration, ceremony or ritual held on the family estate.

Refresh: Probably in the 30s.

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Binding The Blood
A voluntary ritual which binds a person to a particular bloodline, usually highly ritualized as part of a wedding or adoption. This ritual requires at least two other family members, who will act as surrogate parents for the target and assist in the ritual, and possibly a fourth family member to act as the potential spouse. The ritual has specific requirements to succeed, each of the main participants must feel genuine affection and love for eachother, without that bond to build on the ritual will invariably fail resulting in the death of the target.
Type: Thaumaturgy
Complexity: 36
Opposed By: Target’s Endurance
Effect: All family ties are cut from the target, and he or she is then bound by those same frayed ends to his or her surrogate parents, and possible spouse. Each participant is flooded with a true sense of the others, similar to the effect of a soulgaze. Any bonds of affection are strengthened, surrogate parents will feel the joy of a new child, the target will feel the love of his new family, and spouses will feel the love they feel for each other. This ritual creates an enduring bond between each participant, represented by a change in aspect which may be compelled to alert members to danger, or invoked to aid each other. If the family has a Bloodline Magic sponsor then the new family member can (with practice) gain access to that source of power.

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Bloodline Magic [-4]
Your magical pedigree is beyond reproach, and has been carefully cultivated for generations, which wizardly speaking, is a long time. As part of this cultivation, a well of magical energy has been created to empower scions of your family in times of deepest need.
Musts: You must have an aspect that signifies your familial connection to the Sponsor.
Benefits: Standard sponsored magic benefits (page 288), with an agenda to further family status, power, wealth and safety.
In addition by drawing on the generations of power and experience within your family you can use Bloodline Magic to supercharge any element that you've already specialized in, though it can't be used as an element in it's own right.
For use in thaumaturgy Bloodline Magic provides a +1 bonus to the ritual leader for each other practitioner who is a family member who is participating, up to a maximum of +3, to be divided as desired between control and complexity.

So I'm digging more and more into some of the thematic thaumaturgy types, and self-targeted psychomancy just pinged on my radar, and I think you can probably pull off some really cool things with it.

Examples:

A mechanism by which you can completely turn off emotion = The Logic Obsessed Wizard. This would be useful for a few reasons:

• White Court Vampires should be Very Afraid.
• Gets rid of issues with accidental Hexing.

Any other ideas for uses of internal psychomancy?

How far can you go before you can be considered "inhuman"?

I can even see this as a legitimate way to (and I hesitate to use this word since it implies powergaming) justify "Inhuman Resolve" types of abilities (longer mental stress tracks).

Fateweavers

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Fateweavers are creatures who stand in opposition of the Powers That Be, they are the proverbial wrench thrown into the great machine that is Destiny. These creatures are born with the inherent ability to subtly alter the threads of the future into a shape more pleasing to their eyes. With a single sentence they can doom a man to a tragic end, or they can guide him along the path of success.

Musts: Cassandra's Tears, Proclaim Fate, Hidden Fate, Work In Progress
Options: Work in Progress
Important Skills: Conviction, Discipline
Minimum Refresh: Undetermined As Yet

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Powers
Work In Progress

Any ideas for a catch on a Dhampir's Toughness/Recovery powers that would work at +3? I'm trying to create a template with 7 refresh to spend and its tough to fit it all in there.

The problem is I dont want to stray far from general vampire or dhampir lore so it needs to make sense. So far I'm just using the Ghoul's catch at +2 (Holy Stuff).

So a White Court Vamp generally has a +0 catch of one of the big three (Hope, Love & Courage). My question is this: What if you have an Omnivore vampire, somebody who feeds on Lust, Fear and Despair, their catch would then be Hope, Love and Courage.

What sort of rebate are all three worth?

Ok, I know this is bizzarre but I came up with the idea a while ago and even wrote up a custom power for it, but never got around to fully writing out the character. Now I've picked the idea back up, and here is what I've got.

Name: Eric Camden

HC: Wizard's Soul Bound to a Ring
TR: The Lust for the Ring
OA: Born in the 1800's; A Strong Will, to Survive Alone; Tempting the Bearers; ??; ??

Skills
5 Lore
4 Conviction, Discipline, Scholarship
3 Alertness, Deceit, Presence
2 Empathy, Intimidation, Rapport
1 Endurance, Investigation, Performance

Powers & Stunts
-0 Bound Spiritual Entity
   -Called to Bearer
   -Possession
-3 Evocation
-3 Thaumaturgy
-1 Refinement
-1 The Sight
-0 Soulgaze
+1 Item of Power (You)*
-2 Sponsored Magic (You)*


Bound Spiritual Entity [+3]
Description: You are a spiritual entity imprisoned in a physical object, you have no body, and cannot act in the physical world without a bearer.
Effect:
Unbodied. You cannot take physical skills,  you cannot move yourself, and you cannot communicate verbally and other neat things.
Communicate with Bearer. You are able to telepathically speak with the bearer of the object you are tied to.
License to Possession. You may take the possession upgrade of Domination in order to possess your bearer.
Called to Bearer [-1]. You have the ability to tie yourself to the bearer of your physical prison, and you can teach them to call your prison to their hand.

Crimson Court Vampire

Description: While making an effort to do so they appear to be as human as anybody else. Perhaps a little pale but other than that, average. When they call on their supernatural abilities however, their guise of humanity falls away revealing a deadly almost alien grace with few wasted movements.

What We Know: After Harry destroyed the Red Court a few of the survivors traded what liquid assets they still had in order to "purchase" a few members of the White Court. Figuring that the White Court's methods must have had something to do with why they are the only surviving Court, they sought to adopt their positive qualities and discard some of the weaknesses of their own vampiric nature. By calling on certain Names, and getting the attention of certain Entities, they were able to accomplish their goals. Only time will tell if their gambit was successful. This new burgeoning court has decided to call itself the "Crimson Court", in homage to their former allegiance while maintaining a distinction between the old and the new.

Powers: Narcotic venom, a sensitivity to emotions, nasty fangs, and a whole mess of badness. Strong, Fast, quick to recover, they are a potent supernatural threat.

Weaknesses: Their nature is both more demonic than that of a white court vampire's and less inhuman than a red court vampire's. They are vulnerable to holy items and a person or object infused with a true emotional counter to their psychic hunger.

CRIMSON COURT VAMPIRE
High Concept: Crimson Court Vampire

Skills
Alertness: Fair (+2)
Athletics: Good (+3)
Deceit: Good (+3)
Discipline: Good (+3)
Endurance: Good (+3)
Fists: Fair (+2)
Intimidation: Fair (+2)
Might: Good (+3)
Presence: Good (+3)
Rapport: Good (+3)
Stealth: Fair (+2)
All other skills vary depending on the abilities and experience of the vampire.

Powers And Stunts
-1 Addictive Saliva
-1 Blood Drinker
-1 Emotional Vampire
-1 Incite Emotion (Lust)
-0 Human Guise
-1 -Claws (Fangs)
+1 -Feeding Dependency
-2 --Inhuman Strength
-2 --Inhuman Speed
+3 --The Catch (as WCV +Holy Stuff)
-4 ---Supernatural Recovery

Stress: M OO P OOOO S OOOO H OOOO

Notes: Often upgrade their Incite Emotion with “At Range” at least, or pick up a second emotion. Inhuman Strength and Inhuman Speed can be upgraded to Supernatural. Very strong Crimson Court Vampires may have Inhuman or Supernatural Toughness (though it is rare). Addictive Saliva and Incite Emotion can be used together, allowing the vampire to roll deceit at a +4 bonus in a consequential contest, addicting the victim to the emotional rush and their narcotic saliva at the same time. Fair attacks at Weapon: 4 with their inhuman strength and claws. Some few members of the Crimson Court exhibit an intensely powerful inner demon, as the entity is a combination of that which makes a Red Court and a White Court vampire. Those who do so may also purchase the Demonic Co-Pilot power. The Crimson Court's have mixed their Emotional Hunger and Blood Hunger into one demonic entity, thus their Hunger Track can be satisfied by either blood, emotion, or both.

Total Refresh Cost: -9