Hi, I have recently been working on a character based loosely on the Gunslingers from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (I will try to avoid any major plot spoilers, but I may talk about about the background of the world for flavor, so if you don't want to see that stop reading now).

In the books the Gunslingers are servants of the White, and they seem to be guided by this strange sense of direction and purpose called Ka. They also seem to be able to pull off amazing feats by sheer force of will sometimes. This seemed to fit fairly well with the DFRPG true faith powers. Which leads to the meat of my question:

The character I built has Righteousness, and 5 (Superb) conviction. He has Guns and Athletics at 4 (Great), along with what is basically True Aim on his gun Item of Power and Inhuman speed. While Potent Prayer is active, what do I use as his effective skill level for Guns and Athletics? I am inclined to say 6, Conviction complements the 4 to a 5, and then he get the bonus from True Aim or Speed. This interpretation seems good to me since powers are supposed to be allowed to stack. However, one could easily argue that the bonus applies first, and then the skill is the same level as his conviction, so it doesn't complement. What do you guys think?

For reference here is the full write-up on the resources board. This may have slightly more spoilers about the world of the Dark Tower series.

Hi, I am making a white court virgin character for a Up To Your Waist game. I expect (hope?) that this game will run for a long time and over the course of playing I will get into sticky situations eventually leading slipping more towards my Vampire side (done by buying more and more powers from the vampire list, and hopefully not going to 0 refresh). A fundamental assumption I am making here (which may be contested but I am not really asking for input on) is that the reason the Dresden Files books say that WCv's transform fully the first time they have sex is that they have been kept in the dark and do not know how to/that they have to control themselves. Due to special circumstances, and a helpful teacher this character learned that control, so sex will not transform him, only killing (which may happen during sex, and will likely be compelled at some point) will.

As you are probably aware the rules for Incite Emotion combined with Emotional Vampire are fairly unclear. I ran a search on these boards (and the web at large) and combined what I learned into a clarification/rules-y explanation for what happens.

Incite Emotion + Emotional Vampire:
You roll a maneuver at an additional +2 bonus (from Incite) to place an aspect on the target (ie. Lustful). You may immediately tag this aspect in order to attack the target with a mental attack at whatever mental weapons rating you have (from Lasting/Potent Emotion), at no bonus to the roll. Effectively the Emotional Vampire allows you to tag an aspect you created for effect in order to take another action in specific circumstances (ie. you used Incite to place an aspect on a target). I feel this is a fair interpretation of the RAW, you are not really getting a free second action (one way the RAW could be interpreted), since you have to use the main benefit of the first action (the tag) in order to use it. I also understand messing with action economy is dangerous, and would not take this as an invitation to justify invokes for effect for more actions (in general). This is meant to be an interpretation of how the extra action clearly mentioned in the RAW under Emotional Vampire works.

In subsequent rounds, if the target still has the aspect (ie. it was sticky, meaning you beat their defense against the maneuver and got at least one shift) you can attack at +1 (from Emotional Vampire's RAW), additionally since the target has an aspect you can invoke it with a fate point for re-roll/+2, and of course you have any weapon rating from Lasting/Potent Emotion.   

Further, you could choose not to tag the aspect to attack in the first round, in which case you can tag it for free (effectively +3, +1 from Emotional Vampire, and +2 from tagging) next round, regardless of whether it was sticky or fragile (since fragile are only used up when tagged).

Feeding Dependency:
Hunger checks are made as in the rules as written (discipline vs refresh used), except that even on a success, a minimum 1-stress hit is inflicted.  Stress taken can be bought down as normal by opting to take hunger consequences; the player can also buy down the stress by disabling powers (-1 stress per refresh worth of powers 'lost').  Marking off boxes on the hunger stress track has no additional effect, though the hunger stress track is not automatically cleared as normal at the end of scenes, nor does winning the hunger check clear the stress.  Stress that overflows the stress track causes the character to be taken out.

You can feed in order to offset hunger effects.  Any time a consequence is inflicted by feeding, any one lesser hunger consequence or any one hunger stress box is cleared.  For example, feeding that inflicts a severe consequence allows a mild or moderate hunger consequence, or any one hunger stress box to be cleared.  Powers can be recovered in place of a consequence (mild consequence = 2 refresh, moderate = 4 refresh, etc).  (If you are allowing partial downgrades, then powers can be partially recovered, too.)

You can also opt out of a scene to feed (you may also feed when there is enough downtime, if you have the night off you may go clubbing and feed as described here, if you have a week off assume you fed and cleared all your problems assuming access to parties or whatever). Describe an appropriate mini-scene and roll an appropriate skill against a difficulty determined by the GM.  For example, A WCV that opts out of a scene in order to feed at a rave might test with Presence or Deceit (or Rapport in my case) against a mediocre difficulty, whereas a RCV who finds his reserves depleted in the middle of a wilderness might have a much harder time of it.  If this check is successful, then shifts can be used to recover powers (one refresh per shift) and/or clear hunger consequences (shift for shift) and/or clear stress boxes (any one box per shift).

Killing while feeding has the same benefit as in RAW: you can immediately regain all of your lost abilities (hunger stress and consequences as well as loss of powers). Note that killing could trigger investigation by police, potentially leading to a conflict (or social consequence involving reputation for being a prime suspect).

Further, since this version adds significant gameplay requirements by mandating hunger stress for power use and requiring infliction of consequences (a slippery slope via compels to killing) or sitting out scenes I feel it should come with an increased rebate (depending on the amount of powers attached). This depends entirely on how the campaign will be run. If the character is a full White Court Vampire, with no problem with killing, and never faces the consequences of this killing, then [+1] is fine no matter how many powers he puts on it. However, if the character won't kill, can't kill (ie. is a Virgin), or will face severe repercussions from killing (at least some of the time), it may be worth up to [+1] per 2-3 refresh attached. 

For our purposes I suggest [+1] for up to 5 refresh of attached powers, this bonus increases to [+2] at 6 refresh and [+3] at 10 refresh.

This is largely adapted form a suggestion Becq made a while back (I found it with search) and the increased rebate scheme coes from Sanct's rewrite of the power. I like the fact that this version gives explicit rules for feeding on screen and does not allow you to power game out of hunger stress by alternating using all your powers and using 2 or less refresh worth of powers.

Supernatural Good Looks [-1]
Description:
- You are supernaturally good looking. Folks attracted to people of your gender cannot help but notice you, and those not attracted to your gender may reconsider their sexuality. You turn heads when you enter a room. You gain a +2 bonus to any Rapport roll related to seduction and you may use Rapport instead of Deceit to mount a Distraction {YS pg. 126} when you play up your sex appeal (you may face circumstantial penalties when attempting to seduce or distract an entity that is not attracted to you). Further you may call in Rapport to complement Presence when your looks would give you an advantage; this will generally only apply when using Charisma to turn heads for a first impression, or when Commanding those attracted to you.

Note: Luke uses Rapport instead of Deceit for his Incite Emotion power. His Supernatural Good Looks power does not grant a bonus to Rapport when used in this fashion.

I took a stab at this in another thread, and got some great feedback, here is my rework. The power-level of this power was balanced with Fleshmask's Idealized Appearance trapping in mind. I figured hiding your nature and being able to conceal small motions (which i take to be able to make aiming maneuvers with a pistol before the start of a physical conflict) have at least some positive value, so the Idealized Appearance trapping has an upper bounded cost of [-1] refresh. The I took into account the fact that this power does not give +2 to chit-chat, +2 to most uses of Presence (substituting an effective +1 for some uses), +2 to many forms of deceit (if they are staring at your boobs or ass or whatever they aren't reading your face), and even +2 to some intimidate, contacts and resources rolls. I made up for this with the fact that you get 1 trapping change and generally don't have to worry about getting your flesh mask pierced (though if that happened you were done with social conflict anyway). I would love peoples opinions on this.

 [I also remembered the discussion of pairing down the Inhuman Spped power that is still on the front page and noted that some people thought that 2-2.5 weakish stunts could be a 1 refresh power. In my mind this is 1 good stunt (the Sex Appeal part), one fairly weak stunt (the trapping), and 1 half stunt (the +1 to presence sometimes)].

Anyway what do you think? If you want to you can find the stats (and previous incarnations of the Good Looks power) http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,22322.msg1502052.html#msg1502052 there (reply 174).

With all that said I would love any help to make this character more cool and would welcome any thoughts on how to improve the clarifications/home-brew I created. I would also love to see any comments on balance for these interpretations/powers.  I have not started the game yet (so haven't tested this and don't know how focused the game will be on social combat as opposed to other things, which could impact the cost for the power). The other characters are an Aeromancer Librarian, a Chronomancer (focused on making little areas of faster or slower time, not moving through time, kind of like Wayne from Brandon Sanderson's Alloy of Law of you have read it), a Mused Endowed Super-heroine (In a magical girl/power-ranger sense), a Buddhist proto-knight of the cross, a Priest with a item of power gun (it has a selfless purpose like one of the swords, true aim, a thing that enhances covering fire to protect people, and the complement half of righteousness but only for gun rolls), and a Were-Dragon themed around Tony Stark (High concept of Playboy-Genius-Billionaire-Philanthropist Were-Dragon). I throw that in there so you get a sense of what character I am playing with, but if you want I may be able to get sheets for them up at some point.

Thanks for all the help I have gotten here already,

Centarion