What's the number have to do with the point I was making? It's a broad and deep ability that causes serious harm to the opposition in a way that causes them to respond with greater force at different angles. Iku is here with his army because of SCE.
You didn't address my point on Mab either. This sort of ability isn't unprecedented or particularly unfair, it just has different limits.
Maybe with the vampires, I wound need to check again, but it doesn't really change much. Garden variety vampires using only their native powers aren't exactly supposed to be peers to the exalted. An elder who's learned nothing else in their very long life is an idiot anyway.
We paid enough for two ancient sorcery spells, a hell customization point, and our signature choice for this. You can credibly threaten to end the planet with stuff like CCG, so I don't see this as out of line. Other solaroids get always active effects that break fundamental parts of the system for less. Which, as you've pointed out, we won't be able to avoid interacting with forever.
It's also limited use. We can only rely on it once an arc, and squishies make maximum nonsense hard to arrange.
This incidentally should sound familiar, because it's describing the same fundamental dynamic as mote tapping and alternative challenges presented on the topic of exalts being really hard to kill:
Broad ability, not an armykiller as far as Im aware.
Iku Turso (his initials are IT. Huh) is here because apparently he was dumb enough to believe a proposal by Outsiders. Nemesis and his faction apparently talked him into this because their agents/puppets were outed and captured; SCE does not have anything to do with it because Titania could still have them all killed to eliminate the threat.
Their victims are important, but once outed they are much less capable of doing harm as agents of influence, and none of them are critical the way a Queen was. And its not like the previous Summer Lady wasnt killed some four or five years ago because of a Nemesis infection; the Court soldiered on.
===
Mab can twist time in the heart of her power. So can Maeve.
The Mothers are even more powerful, as we see in Cold Days where Dresden's entire trip to the Mothers' cottage and then the Outer Gates happened literally between seconds in the real world, even though to him it took much longer.
But Mab cannot do that in the middle of Summer, or even in normal reality.
Her environmental control powers are similarly vast, but neither absolute or instant.
When Arctis Tor came under attack in Proven Guilty, she didnt simply show up and freeze all the attacking soldiers in their tracks, or trap them in a time warp.
And this translates to other high-tier Sidhe.
The Leanansidhe couldnt walk into Chitchen Itza and simply freeze all the mooks.
Summer Lady Lily couldnt passively wipe out an army of Red Court vampires in Proven Guilty by changing the environment either, or trapping them in time until the sun came up. Neither Summer Lady Sarissa nor Winter Lady Molly could simply drop a shaping effect on the Fomorian armies in Battle Grounds either.
===
In the Dresden Files, mooks and minor combatants are supposed to be relevant.
If you slip, if you are careless, if you are unlucky, they WILL kill or cripple you. Or distract you enough that a seriousface threat gets the drop on you. Two Summer Ladies and one Winter Lady, and the previous Winter Knight all learned this the hard way.
Winter Knight Dresden almost had to learn this the hard way himself at the hands of a pixie.
===
We got other benefits for all those choices.
Its not like reality warping is the base and only benefit from this.
===
Its not as limited as you believe.
The first shintai activation is automatic, but we get at least 4 extra bites at that apple in a story arc as the DC scales up to 9.
And as far as Im aware, you can spend Willpower for an autosuccess on an Essence roll; significantly raising your costs yes, but its still an option.
This is an ExWoD crossover with the Dresden Files.
It doesn't trivialize the setting because other people don't have to fight us in a white room and we have to pick when we're going to burn it. This situation is about optimal for expressing our hell, but we're not going to have a free range setup every time we want to do so, or be able to afford to use it at every opportunity that presents itself.
I don't really understand your argument about other charms either; we have something like four that make bakemono and most of them only have variations in function. RVD steals teleporting from BME. Our various difficulty reducers do the same thing at different costs and under different conditions, but stack on each other.
The kit isn't designed to have one optimal tool for each individual application, but variations that have different flavors to them to pick from and play against one another in your build.
It should also be highlighted that this isn't undefeatable even faced head on. Unlike many supernal effects you can block what we're doing or survive it by other means.
For example; the FCF doesn't have geological activity. It's a hemisphere with impossible metal pillars jutting through it, not a normal planet. We can't do volcanoes or anything not in theme with what we built.
People like Mab and her elite Winter monsters wouldn't give a shit about the stunt I'm proposing, and many other things we could pull, as a result.
We could use the lightning ring, but we also can't survive that without using TLF ourselves*.
This is where the other AoEs could come in. For use when Shintai is exhausted, when we're fighting someone immune to what we're capable of apply, or to double down if we really need the damage. Which would be a lot, but maximum power would require a cumulative 47+ exp and various build slots to pull once an arc if we wanted to go that way.
*Which is really another hidden cost of this tactic: environmental protection charms. It's not like we're immune to the thing by RaW after all.
WHWH is the buy in for passive protection against cold, which requires concessions in the hell build to leverage, and anything else is TLF.
Bringing the buy in to 27 exp, design considerations in our hell including a customization point, and our signature slot.
I cant really agree.
We are essentially invalidating an entire category of threat vectors. And removing a significant tool from the arsenal of our opponents. They all have to consider that minor combatants are ineffective against Molly whenever she kicks it up a notch.
That means that Denarians cant bring cultists or ghouls with them.
That Fae cant bring pixies or hobgoblins, that necromancers cant bring zombies, Cowl cant bring superghouls, Rampires cant use blood slaves, and Blampires cant wield Renfields, darkhounds or even lesser Blacks.
===
Drop that hurricane of iron sand from our Hell among the Fae and see how that turns out.
The only people among the Fae who canonically have anything even vaguely resembling environmental defenses are at the very tip-top of the power scale. As you'll recall from Small Favor, there's even some Fae who will die in light.
We already have TLF for this, and we bought it for other purposes.
Ditto with Without Honor.
