Stress and Weapon Ratings are not linear.

Weapon 3 is a big sword.
Weapon 4+ is the territory of 'battlefield weaponry'.  Grenades (these things leave people in pieces), anti-material rifles (these things put holes in armoured vehicles), and things even nastier.

Assign a weapon rating, tag/invoke some aspects, and make your roll.

The scope and preparation for the ritual (as represented by the shifts needed) suggest how in-depth the story needs to be.  You're going to be getting rare materials, artifacts, using certain locations and celestial conjunctions to get all that down (plausibly, at least).

For big, powerful thaumaturgy, the story is in the ritual.  In the method I proposed, the ritual is just where the story begins.  This isn't a case for worrying about Shifts of Complexity.  This is a case for the Dark Powers' Help.

Depending on the specificity requirements of your 'esque' description, a moderate demon summoning should be able to fulfill your needs.  Of course, there might be additional costs beyond those inherent to vampirism.

Characters can only GAIN such consequences in the appropriate forms.  They don't have to lose them when they change back/out (though the nature of the consequence might need to adapt to remain appropriate to the new form).

Do you have a link for that WoJ?  I don't think I've seen it before.

I dislike the very idea of Soulfire as having an external sponsor, as presented in YS.
To me, Soulfire is the absolute epitome of 'Self-Sponsored' magic.
The fuel for Soulfire is the practitioner's own soul.

'Jake's' involvement in Harry's access to Soulfire was a one-time event.  None of their further interactions actually facilitated his continued use of the power.  This is not the relationship between Sponsor and Sponsored Practitioner.

A max strength of double lore is only in place for Enchanted Items.  Other Thaumaturgy is not affected by that limit.

You're ignoring part of the text that you yourself have quoted:

When you create
a block, the block has to be specific and clear in
two ways: who it’s intended to affect, and what
types of action (attack, block, maneuver, move)
it’s trying to prevent.

(bolding added)

These are the types of action that a block can normally affect.
Each of them has some sort of roll defined by the rules as being involved in enacting them (be that in some cases, as with movement, or in all cases, as with the others).
(veils add 'perception' to the list of things that can be blocked, but that too has a roll defined in the rules).

(ninja'd by Taran)




Beyond that, the more important point I've actually been addressing for most of my involvement in this thread is your insistence that only certain skills might be appropriate to overcome a particular block, while implying that those rolls might not line up directly with the rolls the block itself affects.
Again, if you have any rules basis for this position, please present it.

I'll go with reduction to absurdity here.

If we're going to only allow blocks on those four actions you are saying there is no way to prevent an opponent from screaming for help

maneuver + invoke-for-effect