The drawback is that they're both explicitly on the same conditional. If you're in armor no debuff.
No, they arent.
I can see why you might argue that, but thats not what the sentence construction suggests.
I quote:
Signature Effect: When the Infernal dons her Shintai form, it comes into the world accompanied by a blinding, choking sandstorm. Anyone caught in the storm without sufficient protection (such as motorcycle leathers, a werewolf's thick fur, or some form of protective magic) suffers one level of bashing damage per minute, alongside a –2 penalty to all rolls.
The two effects arent linked.
If the author had meant to imply that they were, he would have said:
Signature Effect: When the Infernal dons her Shintai form, it comes into the world accompanied by a blinding, choking sandstorm. Anyone caught in the storm without sufficient protection (such as motorcycle leathers, a werewolf's thick fur, or some form of protective magic) suffers one level of bashing damage per minute and –2 penalty to all rolls.
That comma and the <alongside> would not be necessary if this was a single condition.
Its only there because those are independent clauses specifying independent effects.
Which makes logical sense.
Simple armor will save you from taking bashing damage from a sandstorm. It doesnt save you from the perception debuff, or the choking sensation of breathing the air in a sandstorm and how it affects everything else.
And its in line with the effects of other 5 dot Signature Effects like The King and the Kingdom: The Thousand and First Hell, which both imposes a shaping effect on the world around the Infernal and gives him a -1DC buff every time he uses it in a stunt, which is essentially all the time when you're in Shintai.
Moving members in and out of clauses based on interpretation of authorial intent can have dramatic impacts on what something actually does. That's the realm of house rules, not obvious baselines for arguments prior to them being explicitly set.
Of course it can. But thats always been the truth of TTRPGs.
Thats why errata comes out for professionally published works months and even years after publishing.
But this is a free fanwork.
About to? He absolutely did, we've just corked the bottle with our finger. Which might not really be obvious from the outside beyond the potential radiant emissions of like 7 motes betting spent in less than a minute by an infernal anointed in the blood of a vampire princeling.
Really from the outside the most encouraging sign is that the two exploding flavors of horrible are currently clashing instead of going full Reese's Cup.
Fair enough
The thing is he has summoned/possessed by an outsider.
The moment he dies, it is free and the real fight begins.
Saving motes for that is essential because this is just the first phase of a boss fight.
[x] You are going to kill this thing, but if it's feeling chatty who are you to complain?
-[x] How long has it been since you last saw a Prince of the Earth?
Not how it has worked in the Dresdenverse to date in canon.
When Dresden killed/destroyed the body of He Who Walks Behind when he was 16, the Outsider was banished, and didnt get to pull a This Isnt My Final Form. When Madge fumbled her summoning in Blood Rites and He Who Walks Behind returned, he killed her but didnt get to reincorporate and start another fight.
When Vito Malvora was presumably killed when the Raith Deeps were blown up, the possessing Outsider didnt get to pull a second stage boss fight either. We kill this body, its gone.
However.
In this situation, we have to keep in mind that Vittorio Malvora is still alive, and is either touched or possessed by an Outsider.
So we cant really afford to run ourselves out of power because we might still have to deal with him tonight.