Throughout most of the series and even in the game books, The Dresden Files makes a big deal about how scary and dangerous humans are when they all band together and go after something they see as a threat.

However, the game itself never really gives you much of a way to reproduce that kind of effect, as the focus is usually on a small group of PCs running around and solving problems mostly single-handedly.

Is there any way to properly emulate the kind of resource that mortal infrastructure and social networks offer? My current thought is to rewrite Thaumaturgy using Contacts for Complexity, Resources for drawing power and Presence for controlling power and rewriting the functions of Thaumaturgy (summoning and binding, conjuration, etc) to be more based on conventional means. But this smacks in to the problem of using Contacts and Resources excessively, which I see as a little boring, but perhaps that's unavoidable.

Some faith powers I've cooked up. Do note that I do not have the greatest mechanical chops with this system, so consider these powers to be a rough draft. Critique is more than welcome in order to get them in to a place thats balanced in the game and represents the idea that I'm going for.


The goals in mind with these powers were

1: To give True Believers a set of powers that would grow stronger with the character, letting them continue to operate alongside Casters and Shapeshifters (the two most common player types, I've found) and their continuing applications of Refinement of adding on more creature features.

2: Find some way to mechanically emulate the effects we see or hear about in the books, but aren't really possible at the moment with the current powerset (Murphy carving her way through a sea of vampires in Changes, Michael facing down a dragon and winning)

3: Find a way to produce the former two while keeping in mind how faith powers are usually represented in the books: "Coincidence is on my side", as commented on several times by Harry and seen a few times. "Subtle but very powerful", we rarely see very many flashy displays of holy power, but we see a lot of True Faith people doing a lot of crazy awesome stuff. "works best against the supernatural", it's been a general theme that faith powers are really meant as a force multiplier against non-mortal forces, and his largely important against people with free will.



Providence tries to invoke the feelings of "Coincidence is on my side" and "subtle put powerful".  It's also meant to work alongside the Righteousness and Holy Touch powers, letting you spend Fate Points on things that you really want to spend them on, rather than things you have to spend them on in order to get the most out of your powers.

Providence -X
Description:
Your choices and beliefs have a profound impact, granting you favor above and beyond simple chance.
Musts: The character must have taken Righteousness and Holy Touch.
Skills affected: Varies
Effects:
The world abides the believer
Belief has a powerful effect on the world. For every 2 points of refresh spent on this power, you may gain 1 free expenditure of a Fate Point per scene.
Walking my chosen path -1
Focusing on your goal, you find it a much easier road to walk. Whenever you make a roll that is affected by Righteousness, you may make an additional roll to place a Conviction aspect on the scene that is somehow related to what you are doing to be used on your next turn.





Grace Against the Dark likewise tries to invoke the feeling of "subtle but powerful" but with a much greater focus on "works best against the supernatural". It's intentionally very powerful, but completely useless against regular mortals.

Grace Against the Dark [-5]
Description:
Mortals who leave the safety of their homes may find themselves buoyed by the knowledge that a strong spirit can make all the difference when facing the unknown terrors of the world.
Musts: You must have taken Righteousness and Holy Touch.
Skills affected: Varies
Effects:
The Darkness Yields
Though the workings of the wicked may conspire against you, your faith will see you through. When faced with supernatural forces opposing your path chosen by Righteousness, you may add half your Conviction (round down) to your dice rolls.

In an attempt to get my brother interested in playing the DFRPG with me, I helped him write up a build for his favorite fictional character for a game using the Baltimore setting. We fluffed it as Jack being sent to investigate something involving Vampires and coordinating with the local Warden (we weren't really paying much attention to the plot, just rolling dice and making stuff up as we went along for fun.) He seemed to enjoy it, even if he did get stomped by Gilgamesh at the end (Self-compel: My way or the highway against Gilgamesh = not smart).  Given how we were both fairly new at the system, I'm reasonably sure we did a few things wrong putting this build together for him, but I thought I would share it nonetheless.

NAME: Jack  Bauer
HIGH CONCEPT: CTU Agent (Pure Mortal)
TROUBLE: Doesn't take orders well
ASPECTS:
Ex-Navy Seal;
I Gave My Word;
Tough As Nails;
My Way Or The Highway;
Family Man.

SKILLS:
+5 Endurance
+4 Guns, Alertness, Athletics
+3 Fists, Discipline, Intimidation
+2 Stealth, Investigation, Rapport
+1Presence, Driving, Empathy


STRESS: P: OOOO (1/2)/  M: OOOO  S: OOO
CONSEQUENCES: Mild, Moderate, Severe, Extreme


STUNTS:
Answer the Question!: Jack may use Intimidation instead of Empathy when Interrogating someone
Expert Marksmen: +1 to Guns when using handguns
Twitch Response: +2 to Alertness when establishing Initiative
Iron Eats Me for Breakfast: When outnumbered and outgunned in a physical conflict, Jack gains two mild Physical Consequences
Will of Steel: Jack uses Discipline instead of Conviction when determining Mental Stress


REFRESH/FATE POINTS: 5 / 7

A game type I've been kicking around in my head for a while now is where the characters are not the Wizards and True Believers and Mortals, but Godlike entities like Mab and Odin, He Who Walks Behind and The Fallen in their true form.

The catch is that you would be playing these character before they were the heads of their respective organizations. Mab would still be the Winter Lady as opposed to the Winter Queen, Odin would still be little more than the Son of Bor, He Who Walks Behind and The Fallen would not have the political or mystical clout that they currently enjoy.

Players would engage in celestial political maneuvers and cosmic battles for the fate of entire geographic locations, if not the whole of the Mortal World, on a regular basis. The problem is that in order to realistically represent such characters, the starting refresh level would likely have to be around 15 or so. I am only partially familiar with the system, having only recently started playing after long last, so I am unsure of how a high-refresh level game would affect things.

Alternately, instead of starting at a high refresh I start things out at Submerged, and have it so that a "Good" Roll is Good by the standards of godly entities, rather than mortals.

So, my question is twofold:

First, does a high-refresh level affect gameplay in a significant way beyond the obvious fact that you have access to higher levels of power?

Second, would simply declaring that the power level is "Good by Godly standards" feel to you, the players, like you were playing a high powered entity? Or would you need something more than that?

I like the health system in DFRPG, I like it a lot. It allows for almost any kind of conflict or fight one can come up with. Not only that, but it really does represent the series "down to earth" feel by not having injuries (at least in physical conflicts) vanish with the wave of a hand and a simple "Cure Major Wounds" spell.

However, what strikes me as a little odd is the fact that all the Consequences are lumped together. The Social Consequence "Bad Reputation" wouldn't really seem like it would have an impact on a physical confrontation. Likewise the Physical Consequence "Broken Hand" would be hard pressed to impact a Social battle.

My question is this: How badly will it hurt game balance to have different consequence tracks for each type of conflict? For example one for Mental and Physical, and one for Social? Or going full out and having one Consequence track for each type of conflict? Furthermore what might be done to mitigate any potential brokenness if the group insisted upon multiple Consequence tracks?

Looking over how many types of mythical swords there are, I noticed that there is a good amount of plotting that can be done with them, here is my idea for a plot, any GM is free to use it or simply draw inspiration from it for their own games.

We have Six Swords:

Three Swords of the Cross, two Swords of the Fairy and the Warden's Sword.

Now, gathering all this power into one place for one purpose means that some heavy mojo is going down, I'm talking Heinrich Kemmler level bad.... Or at least that was my first thought. Then I realized I could do better then just bringing a dead dude back to life, why not have the issue threaten the whole of reality?

What if the Outer Gates have simply opened too far? Outsiders were slipping through with greater and greater frequency with chaos and panic in the streets, both on the Mortal and Supernatural side of things? What do the Swords have to do with all this you might ask?

Consider what each Sword represents. Summer's Fire represents universal growth, life, the blaze of heat and warmth. Winter's Frost represents death and decay, cold and darkness. They are born of forces that consist of roughly a third of reality itself. Likewise the Swords of the Cross each represent the collective Faith, Hope and Love of all Mortalkind, while the Warden swords represents the forces of magic and the cosmic power of the universe being used for justice and duty. Pretty heavy stuff, huh?

What if, in order to close the Outer Gates once and for all, you needed to SACRIFICE these weapons? Not just a conventional "I give this up so this can happen" sacrifice, the kind of sacrifice that means that those tools can NEVER be used or even MADE again!

Think on the gravity of that for a second. The Knights of the Cross would lose one of their only weapons against the Denarians, the Fey would lose a significant amount of leverage over mortalkind with the loss of the Knights, and the Wardens would have a much rougher time dealing with Warlocks and The Circle, not to mention all the other nastiness out there.

What could possibly be the upside of that? How about the Outer Gates being closed, not just now, but Forever? No amount of knowledge and ritual can open them again, regardless of how much power you pour into it. You have saved the world, the Nevernever and the whole of creation from Outsider threat for all time.

Was it worth it?

Whenever I play a RPG of some kind, I always play one of three types of characters:

The Badass Normal: A human with absolutely no magic or supernatural (or technological, depending on the setting) powers, who relies on his own skills and wit to to save the day.

The Mage: The Human Wizard, throwing down the arcane power left and right, solving problems (and calling down fire from the sky) with the length and breadth of the arcane powers.

The Hybrid: A mix of the two, usually a fighter with some healing/buffing powers or a Wizard with some good physical skills.

That said, I always play as the human, no matter what choice of the three I pick. I simply cannot stand to play as an elf or a dwarf of some other type of race. Admittedly it's probably limiting my RP experiences to a degree, but I feel like I've grown comfortable with that style that I can adapt it fairly easily across different settings.

That said, is there a race/class combo that you prefer above all others? Or a combo that you simply cannot stand to play?

Sorry, I decided to scrap this but couldn't figure out how to delete the topic

My bad =/