Okay, the title might have been a bit misleading, but here's the sort-of-short version- i'm putting together a Variable Abilities (it's on the Custom Powers master list and is super cool, go look at it) list that's basically someone who can channel the various Animal Gods like Tiger, Spider/Anansi, Crocodile, Shark, Wolf, Bear, Bird, Snake, all the good stuff. The basic idea behind it is that each god grants a different sub-list according to that animal's physical, mythical, and metaphorical abilities. I need help with some of them. The long version is ahead.

This is the "blank-slate" list, that's basically one-size-fits-all.

Animal
-Up to two levels of Strength.
-Up to two levels of Speed.
-Up to two levels of Toughness.
-Up to two levels of Recovery.
-Natural Weaponry, with or without Potent, Venomous, and Ranged upgrades.
-Diminutive, Hulking or Titanic Size.
-Spider Walk [-1].
-Wings [-1].
-Aquatic [-1].
-Any Echoes of the Beast
-Spiritual Co-Pilot (Animal)
-Marked by Power (Animal)
-(Animal) Shifting

-On top of this, each animal has some unique stuff appropriate to it- Octopus would have Extra Appendages, Shark and Crocodile have Aquatic, Tiger has Cloak of Shadows, so on and so forth.
-Along with the physical stuff, each animal also has Incite Effect regarding one "element" that it can control. Tiger is a tenebrokinetic (shadows), Crocodile and Shark are hydrokinetics (water), Bear is a terrakinetic (earth), Lion is a photokinetic (light), and so on and so forth.
-Each animal has it's own agenda, influence, and ideas. It's basically Lash with a shamanic flavor- a voice in your head that grants you power, but also tries to influence you.

For example, here are the writeups for Tiger and Snake. If some of the powers seemingly don't make sense, it's because i'm basically making up the lore for this. There's no established reason, for example, for Snake to grant toxikinesis. But it makes sense to me.

Tiger
Tiger is the spirit of all predatory big cats. He’s a stealthy, brutal, cruel, vicious, and an incredibly intelligent and extremely cunning hunter. The only thing that matters to him is the hot blood of worthy prey. Things like social mores and due process of the law bore him. Most binders prefer not to even try with Tiger- he’s one of the more powerful of the ancient gods, but also one of the most difficult to control. Compels regarding his influence generally involve stealth, predation, and cruelty.
-Up to three levels of Strength.
-Up to two levels of Speed.
-Up to two levels of Toughness.
-Up to two levels of Recovery.
-Spider Walk [-1]
-Natural Weaponry (Potent, Ranged)
-Familial Shifting (Predatory Felines) [-4]
-Echoes of the Beast (Tiger, provides +1 to Stealth while barefoot) [-1]
-Cloak of Shadows [-1]
-Blood Drinker [-1]
-Superhuman Acrobatics [-1]
-Marked by Power (Tiger) [-1]
-Might over Magic (Enhanced) [-2/4]
-Supernatural Sense [-2] (Enhanced animal senses. Able to detect magical and psychic residue via scent. Alertness.)
-Incite Effect (Tenebrokinesis, with Discipline) (Any Upgrades. Mental upgrades incite fear.)
-Spiritual Co-Pilot (Tiger) [-1]
-Swarm Body [-3] (Represented as a shadow form.)
-Immunity (All physical stress, while standing in darkness.) [-7]
-Shadow Stalker (Stealth): You can use Stealth to defend against physical attacks. In addition, after a successful dodge using this stunt, you can spend a Fate Point to make an immediate ambush attempt against the attacker.
-Rapid Teleportation, with the Limitation of only being able to teleport through shadows [-2]

The inspiration behind Tiger is part Shere Khan, part Mr. Blonde of Reservoir Dogs, part Tiger of Anansi Boys, and all killer.
Snake
Snake is the spirit of most legless reptiles. He's sneaky, clever, and flips between idiotically agressive and comically cowardly at the drop of a hat. Snake wants to come out ahead. No matter what. His use of exotic poisons and extremely powerful hypnosis is indicative of his mindset- if you can't beat em, enslave em'. Compels regarding Snake's influence generally involve being aggressive in situations where that is a terrible idea, immediately fleeing a situation as soon as it starts to go badly for you, use of poison, and the creation of thralls.
-Up to two levels of Strength.
-Up to three levels of Speed.
-Up to two levels of Toughness.
-Up to three levels of Recovery.
-Natural Weaponry (Potent, Venomous)
-Snakefangs (Fists): You roll to place the POISONED aspect on your enemies at +2.
-Virulent Venom (Fists): The attacks from your poison are Weapon:2.
-Incite Effect (Toxikinesis, with Discipline) (Any Upgrades. Mental upgrades incite Confusion.)
-Enthrallment (Superior)
-Immunity (All toxins, venoms, and poisons.) [-2]
-Familial Shifting (Serpentes) [-4]
-Superior Hold [-2]
-Amorphous Form [-1]
-Echoes of the Beast (Snake) [-1] (Provides +1 to escape or maintain a grapple, use the thermoreception of certain viper species)
-Spiritual Co-Pilot (Snake) [-1]
-Marked by Power (Snake) [-1]
The inspiration behind Snake is part Kaa, part Steve Buscemi as Mister Pink, part Magellan of One Piece, and part two-bit con-artist.



So, after all that, why did I post this? I kind of want to see what people come up with, and I just wanted to post this idea in case someone needed a character concept or something.

What are some Echoes of the Beast trappings that you've used? Like, what does Echoes of the Beast (Tiger) grant? Or the non-animal echoes, like Machinery or Plants or Shadows?

Hey! I'm putting together a Necromancer of the non-Kemmlerian sort. Don't worry, he has a custom Sponsored Magic that grants Necromancy and the like as Evothaum. The problem i'm running into is stuff to do with it beyond boring things like zombies or spectres. Binding the screaming souls of the long dead from alternate timelines into normal ghosts, turning them into desperately suicidal killing machines has proven to be cool, but i'm hitting a brick wall here. And so I come to the boards for help- what kind of cool things can be done with Necromancy, evothaum and otherwise?

I mean, really. You gain a whole bunch of new things to worry about for a 1 refresh rebate. You have to deal with a new stress track and depending on how much power you put into it, huge attacks on that stress track that force you to take consequences. Could it be given a rebate based on how many Refresh worth of powers it governs?

The idea of moving with Evocation is suggested in the book but considered very dangerous. Do rules exist in order to move someone else? Offensively? I would treat it like so-
 Joe Wizard wants to throw Bob Ghoul 3 zones away, because ghouls are gross. He calls up 8 shifts- 3 shifts to move him three zones, and five shifts for the opposed  Athletics check. Bob Ghoul defends at Fantastic, barely beating the roll. It's narrated as Bob barely dodging a blast of pure force that would have blasted him through the building.

Looking at the generic spells thread, I noted that the relevant attack rolls were listed. Because your control roll is also your attack roll in evocation, and the point of a rote is that you don't have to roll Discipline, is your attack roll also treated as a 0, the same value as your actual Discipline score?

I thought of a way to represent shapeshifting ala Listens-To-Wind as an evocation. It might require a biomancy evothaum thing(check with your gm), but more on that in a second. The amount of shifts generated for the evocation equals Modular Ability Points. You don't have to take Echoes of the Beast or even Beast Change. Narratively, this can be represented as being unfamiliar with your form or simply skimping on the senses in favor of the hurting people. For example, Listens-To-Wind, in deadmanwalking's writeup of him, can do 11 shift defensive evocations. The bus-sized bear form he took might have had Supernatural  strength, Hulking Size, Supernatural Toughness, and Beast Change.


Continuing the earlier-
Would a separate power "add-on" for Evothaum be a good idea? It'd look something like-

Evothaum [-1] Your mastery of whatevermancy has allowed you to use it far faster than most others. Gain the ability to use whatevermancy at Evocation's methods and speeds, as described in the Sponsored Magic sections (YS Page 288).

Personally I would only allow it for Ritual, citing focused practioners as being, well, focused, with full Thaumaturgy being too broad.

Thoughts? I really only posted this because I had the idea and didn't want to forget it.

Hi. Long time lurker, first time poster.

So i'm running a DFRPG game, and as a holiday thing, I run a high powered one-shot thing involving a couple of custom characters and Patrick MacGowan, the really, really dark version of the Yule Emissary (He's Santa's Helper, but Frank Miller-ized). The players loved it, and want to do a campaign based on them. So I brought out the old characters and some new stuff, and immediately ran into problems. Because it was a one shot, i played fast and loose with some of the character creation rules. I almost certainly messed up with Stunts and Refinement. Also, it was at a custom power level (30 refresh and about 50-60 skill points), which i justified with the fact that all the players were Emissaries of very, very powerful beings. So I'm posting them here to get help from more experienced character creators. Patrick can be found http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,23084.msg991664.html#msg991664 there. The others should be in the following posts. They're sans backstory- i leave that up to the players, generally. Their aspects are mostly placeholders.

The campaign starter (i'm still frantically writing the rest) is that there's a bar. It's not a popular bar, for a lot of reasons, the most notable of which is that it's where the Emissaries of Power drink. Heavily, usually. Really heavily in Patrick's case. They drink to forget the awful things they've done in the names of terrible beings, and they complain to each other about their bosses. When the following characters are drinking in the bar (Presume at least a few of them have met, we're going to hammer this out in the Guest Star phase), it's attacked by agents of a rival Sponsor, specifically a Dragon, by the name of Glauriax. His agent (Ancalagon, stats on him later) and several Fomor agents blow up the bar. While most of it's patrons are too unconscious or too dead to protest, he strips a large chunk of power off their mantles. This is Glauriax's plan- Rob immortals of their power via their Emissaries. The Emissaries (Or the Inglorious Bastards as they eventually call themselves) go after the draconic wizard, the Fomor, and, best of all, a Dragon.

Consider the fact that you capitalize the word "Dragon" for the same reason that you capitalize the word "God", and you realize why this is a high-powered campaign.