Being a perpetual re-reader of the books, I made a list of playable characters present in each book as a sort roster to choose from.
I listed them separated into "Significant Ally" and "Present", as some are definitely less helpful than others, even sometimes more of a hindrance than a help (such as Murphy prior to Summer Knight, really).

The distinction between Ally and Present is of course pretty much arbitrary, and debatable in several cases, but here goes:
(Note: I refer to the character "Billy & Georgia" as "Alphas" below)

Storm Front
Significant Ally: None, actually!
Otherwise Present: Murphy, Susan

Full Moon
Significant Ally: Susan (almost put her as Present here too)
Otherwise Present: Murphy, Alphas (the Alphas don't actually accomplish terribly much in this book, Murphy is an obstacle really)

Grave Peril*
Significant Ally: Michael
Otherwise Present: Susan, Thomas, Murphy (Murphy's out for a lot of the book, Susan & Thomas are as much complicating as helping)

Summer Knight
Significant Ally: Murphy, Alphas
Otherwise Present: In a "know your lore or you'd never know" we actually have both Ramirez and Luccio on screen for about a line each, unnamed.

Death Masks
Significant Ally: Michael, Sanya, Susan ("upgraded")
Otherwise Present: Murphy (might well fit above), Butters, Molly (technically)

Blood Rites
Significant Ally: Murphy, Thomas
Otherwise Present: Mouse (Origin Story! )

Dead Beat* (So many, several are on the border between Ally and Present)
Significant Ally: Butters, Ramirez, Mouse
Otherwise Present: Thomas, Luccio, Alphas

Proven Guilty*
Significant Ally: Murphy, Thomas, Mouse
Otherwise Present: Molly

White Night*
Significant Ally: Molly, Thomas, Mouse, Ramirez
Otherwise Present: Murphy, Butters

Small Favor (as with Dead Beat, distinction is fuzzier than usual)
Significant Ally: Michael, Sanya, Thomas, Murphy
Otherwise Present: Mouse, Luccio, Molly

Turn Coat
Significant Ally: Thomas, Molly, Mouse
Otherwise Present: Murphy, Luccio, Butters, Alphas

*A Variant Card for Harry is fitting.

And to relist the sources of the characters:
Butters and Thomas is in Expansion 1
Sanya and Molly are in Expansion 2
Luccio and Ramirez are in Expansion 3
Mouse is in the Evil Hat exclusive "Mouse & Variants" mini-pack

A throwaway scene in a book I read gave me the idea for a story. I'm not entirely sure which way to take the story, so I figured I'd share the idea and get some input while maybe giving someone else a cool story pitch.

The genesis of this was a three-faced porcelaine doll of Little Red Riding Hood / Grandma / Wolf; twist the head to switch the face.

The idea is that the doll is used to control a werewolf (most likely a young woman, to fit LRRR). The werewolf does not know her condition, instead experienceing fugue states. She contacts the players after waking up from her latest (or latest few) blackouts with large amounts of blood. She needs help finding out what happens to her! The blackouts does not follow any set pattern - various times of day, time of month, different moods, places etc.

I have two directions I'm thinking of taking the story.
Option A) The straight-forward version - a sorcerer has for some reason cursed her, probably by binding some kind of wolf-spirit to her, and uses the doll as a trigger to let the spirit take control of her.

or
Option B) She's actually a Lycanthrope, but the wolf-spirit within her was bound into the doll at an early age by a parent/caretaker, seeking to ease her burden. Now someone else has gotten hold of the doll, and when the spirit is temporarily released it has enough unspent rage and energy to actually force a shapechange on her.

In either option the person who controls the doll is using her as a Manchurian Candidate-like "assassin", engineering situation where the werewolf and the target will run into each other, and then from a safe distance trigger her change and trust the following carnage to kill or maim the target.


Now, things I haven't decided yet:
The three faces - of course LRRR is "default", regular human; and the Wolf is shapechanged (basically a Hexenwulf, but just as uncontrolled as the Loup-garou), but what should Grandma do? I'm currently thinking "fall asleep" to assist in placing/removing her, or making sure she doesn't connect her blackouts with specific times, but it feels a bit... weak...

And second: I need a rationale for option B to even have the switch to release the spirit. I like the possibility that the doll is actually a help rather than a curse, but it seems to me that building in a switch that can undo it all (and actually worse than before) is a stupid risk to take if you're going to bind a spirit, so what could have made it necessary?

I hope you enjoy the story idea, and appreciate any input - most of all about the two things above!

How do you go about deciding on the complexity of thaumaturgy of those harder-to-pin-down things?

My character is about to perform a ritual to suffuse an entire (smallish) house with sunlight, metaphysically. It's not going to be actually illuminated, but for the purposes of beings affected by sunlight (primarily the Red Court etc) the house is going to be filled with sunlight 24/7. This is the culmination of middling length scenario, centered around creating this effect to settle a debt.

To accomplish this we've had a couple sessions in the Nevernever hunting down a rare type of crystal inspired by those Harry see illuminating the Ostentatiatory in Edinburgh. A couple failed attempt to find and acquire it has led to my character being appropriately banged up, and finally actually made a deal with a Sidhe providing the crystal as the sugar on top of a deal. (Yes, I'm aiming to get the poor guy in deep trouble )

Now, I'm not sure how to go about handling it mechanically. The plan is to have the actual ritual be performed under some amount of pressure for time, but it will of course be balanced around how big the ritual needs to be.

How would you suggest?

Hi all

What sort of guidelines do you use for balancing the opposition when there's a marked discrepancy in numbers?

When there's a 2:1 ratio of baddies to PCs, how much weaker do they have to be to not completely overwhelm, but still be a challenge?

I know there can't be a hard and fast rule, as each character is different and more importantly, each player approaches combat differently and can be more or less adept at tactics, but a general guideline maybe?

Yeah, I've still not worked out how I want to handle the issue with hunger/powers/etc for a Red Court Infected, but now it's actually going to happen in my game, so I guess it's time to sort it out.

Not being able to pin down what mechanic to use to handle it between Feeding Dependency (either book or wiki version), Limitation or some use of Sponsor Debt, I decided to first back up and look at what I want to be able to do with it narratively and ask you peoples advice on how to get that through mechanically. The Catch for Thougness and Recovery got mixed into these thoughts as well, so here goes:

Hunger and Power use for a Red Court Infected:

• Using Vampiric powers makes the RCI hungry for blood. This hunger can cause distractions and at the extreme end a loss of control bad enough to kill and thus turn completely.
  
  • While the hunger can be quenched with blood without killing (like Susan in Changes) this is both incredibly risky (the RCI him/herself will not be in control) and will make it easier to fall to the hunger again. The hunger does however diminish with time of not using Powers, meditating etc, but most effectively by spending time in sunlight.
  • Tattoos given by the Fellowship of St Giles can help here, both raising the bar for when the hunger is problematic and giving clearer signals to the RCI of how close they are to loosing it.
• Direct sunlight completely prevents use of vampiric powers.*
• Holy items (and weapons empowered by Faith) burns them and ignore the vampiric resilience and healing

_{*Not clear in the novels, but seems appropriate that the reason the hunger can be controlled by spending time in sunlight would also block any power use. This is probably not terribly important, so ignore if you think it unnecessary.}

Also - I'm leaning towards not requiring the player to take either Addictive Saliva or Blood Drinker. In my mind, the narcotic venom of an RCI is so weak that it'll only come into play during mucous-membrane contact (essentially, kissing) and in those cases only be a hindrance or complication - thus a compel. Blood Drinker is so incredibly fringe as to be practically useless - drinking any blood at all is going to be very, very rare and a strong downward slope to killing; killing means NPC-dom; and hunger-related compels can be made anyway.

So, how would you go about doing this mechanically?
Option 1: Sponsor Debt has been discussed - exactly how would it be used? Invoking relevant rolls for debt instead of actually having Inhuman St/Sp/To/Re? Paying debt for Temporary Powers? How to handle the hunger being reduced without actually feeding - Spending X time in the sun can reduce debt by 1?

Option 2: Rebate powers - How would this be valued as a Limitation? I like the "losing access to powers" part of Feeding Dependency, but how do I handle the not-usable-in-sunlight part? Just a compel on sunlit scenes? What is a Catch of "just" Holy/Faith-empowered Items worth (it's fairly uncommon after all) - 1 or 0?

Thankful for input on merits and drawbacks of either options, and opinions on what will be simple yet still cover the various limits on power use.

What refresh cost would you give this effect? It is specifically a retooling of one of the effects of Inhuman Recovery.

Second Wind
Once per scene you may clear away a Mild Physical or Mental consequence resulting from Spellcasting (including Backlash) or Fatigue/Exhaustion as a supplemental action.

Would this be -1 or -2 just on its own? Should it be rounded out with additional effects to be a proper power? Is it at all "balanceable"?

Background:
A couple of different lines of though came together in my head recently. Firstly thinking of a way to handle an item for my wizard storing life force for concentrated use at a later point (think Harry's bear-shaped belt buckle, or his energy rings only with life force instead of kinetic energy); later there was a discussion here about Recovery powers and Backlash.

When these two ideas met in my head, I started looking at a retooling of Recovery - a "clone" to specifically work on these things. Since I'm not yet planning on having continual access to the power I didn't really look into the other parts of Recovery (since they are all longer-term effects), but they should really be easy enough to add in if you want to round it out a bit. It's meant to be more restrictive in what physical effects it can shrug off, but in exchange be able to clear a common but still specific type of mental consequences as well. So, no clearing out consequences caused by attacks done to you, whether physical or mental.

A couple of questions regarding duration and prolonging spells, mostly blocks but can apply to other stuff aswell.

Exchange 1 - My wizard casts a Air evocation block, described as a column of super-turbulent air that throws off any incoming attacks. I assign no shifts to Duration however.
Exchange 2 - As long as nothing broke through the block, I can prolong it now, right?

Or, If I instead assign one shift to Duration in the first exchange it can go:
Exchange 1: Block, 1 shift to duration
Exchange 2: Attack/Maneuver/whatever
Exchange 3: Prolong the block, assuming nothing broke through

Is that right?
And the above is regardless of if it's a Rote or "normal" Evocation, correct?

For Redirecting spells (like Ramirez Shield-to-Attack) - it needs "unspent" shifts of duration to work, right? So in my second example above, I could redirect the energy in Exchange 2 but not 3?

In designing Enchanted Items for my Junior Warden, I've been thinking about skill-replacement effects. Searching the forum, I haven't managed to figure them out to my satisfaction, but I tend to not get along very well with forum search engines... Is it correct that the complexity is just "desired shift value of effect"? If I want to lift something like I have Superb (+5) Might it's a Complexity 5 ritual?

Enchanted Items can store Thaum Effects (though Strength=Complexity means it's usually the fairly small stuff). This means they can do skill replacements, right?

So what happens if I make a sword an Enchanted Item, but I don't really need it to hit harder, I really need it to hit - my actual Weapons skill... leaves something to be desired My base Item Strength is Great (+4), significantly higher than my Average (+1) Weapons.
If I store an effect to replace my Weapons skill for one attack with the sword, will that mean I just treat the attack as if the attack roll had resulted in a Great (+4) attack; or do I activate the item and then roll as if my Weapons was Great?