This involves a lot of sitting around and hurting ourselves for power; I'm not terribly enthused about it on a character level. It's the sort of thing that will cause us significant trouble with anyone who cares about Molly and knows what she's doing.
I see your point on the general level, but I don't think it's getting easier from here. When fighting Denarians and high tier vampires we're going to really want that speed.
I agree that it's problematic thing to do from the roleplaying perspective. My hope is that it can be role-played as sorta soulfire, only more painful. Because soulfire works by burning parts of your soul for power. It grows back later, but that's what it does. And mechanically at least it's very good for what it does, that being a universal dice adder. It's essentially a pre-stored excellency, but for anything and everything.
Or... Huh.
@DragonParadox what sort of range restriction does Shadow Spite Curse has? And what sort of target restriction? Can organizations be targets for its use? Because the text says:
With a dismissive gesture, the Infernal befouls her tar-
get's efforts with the darkness and soul-biting chill of Kakuri.
System: Concentrating fully upon her target, the
Infernal's player makes a Willpower roll against diffi-
culty 7. If in combat, this is her action for the current
turn. For each success she rolls, her target loses one
die from whatever action they're currently attempting.
Signature Effect: While she wears her Shintai form,
the world around the Infernal is fractured into a jagged
landscape of tortured and bleeding Essence, where all
actions taken to oppose her suffer a –3 penalty.
It doesn't mention that the target has to be in line of sight, or in touch range. It also doesn't specify the target being an individual. It also doesn't cost essence. So, by rules as written, Molly could be meditating in her room, and reducing dice of, say, Nicodemius, at no essence cost, dice tapping him. At the highest level of interpretation she could be dice tapping Daedalus project of their dice as an organization trying to do stuff. But that's frankly broken. Because it's basically "make anyone fall at what they are currently doing from anywhere in the world, at no cost".
If the charm does indeed work at least somewhat like this, ie doesn't have target restrictions, we should buy it. Because it could basically shut down Nemesis, when we learn of it. Being a hiveminded single infiltrator would work against it.
Basically, as I see it, we are still very firmly in the "establish foundation" phase. We have an attention of several individuals and organizations that we would want to avoid, and we have a number of very varied stuff we need to do. So, there are two main routes for me:
[] All things Made Easy
-[] Boiling Sea Mastery, 4 XP
-[] Soul Rendering Practice, 8 XP
-[] Ox Body Technique X2, 3 XP X 2 = 6 XP
-[] Allies/ Followers (Cyberdevils), 6 XP
-[] Viridian Legend Exoskeleton, 6 XP
This is built around, as the name states, "making all things easy". BSM is a universal easily exploitable difficulty lower. A combination of two Ox Body Techniques and Soul Rending Practice gets us free dice once per day at least, if we do SRP in our bleach bath. Hopefully two Ox bodies and difficulty lowers would let us role play the pain as not being that great. Viridian Legend Exoskeleton is for combat. Allies / Followers (Cyberdevils) gives us minions and protection against mundanes, as well as, probably a source of income. It could be substituted for Demonic Primacy of Essence for social rolls against creatures of darkness, but I am content on setting the "get minions from Chicago Underground" combination (Demonic Primacy of Essence, Mercy in Servitude, Transcendent Lord of Flies) next time we purchase charms.
This sacrifices flight, which I don't see as super essential right this moment.
[] All things made hard
-[] Shadow Spite Curse, 6 XP
-[] Endless Torment Emanation, 12 XP
-[] Viridian Legend Exoskeleton, 6 XP
-[] By Rage Recast: Flight, 6 XP
This is an opposite approach. Instead of buffing ourselves and making our actions easier, we instead concentrate on making those moving against us fail. This has a lot of variation, actually. There are variations of this. We could substitute Night Swallows Secrets for Endless Torment Emanation, freeing 3 points, which could be used for an Ox Body technique or Scar-Writ Saga Shield. That would be more of a stealth build. In fact, we could go all-in on stealth.
[] Ms Nobody
-[] Night Swallows Secrets, 9 XP
-[] Theft as Release, 4 XP
-[] Larceny 2 points, 5 XP
-[] Allies/ Followers (Cyberdevils), 6 XP
-[] Viridian Legend Exoskeleton, 6 XP
This is "they don't know you are here" charm combination. I consider Night Swallows Secrets to be essential if we are going to be hacking magical FBI. Because hacking something and someone discovering that you hacked something later is far worse than just not hacking something.
Theft as Release would allow us to steal evidence as needed, and it's also a superb anti-denarian charm.
Personally, I strongly favor "all things made easy" approach, as it is quite universal.
