I'm not trying to do anything. And I don't understand why the half motes committed rule for spells screws you so much.
Ok, lets say you've got a Willpower of five, no extra dots in virtues, and an Essence of 3 (which you need to get sorcery).
Your personal pool is (E*3+W) = 3*3 + 5, or 14 points.
Your peripheral pool is (E*7+W+sum of Vs) = 3*7 + 5 + 9, or 35 points.
If you've got WDC and ISoB active, your peripheral pool is going to drop down to 20 points, which is still going to be higher the essence 2 Dawn with an artifact weapon and an artifact armor. Yes, you still have to pay for your artifacts, but you really getting a big benefit.
Can you please explain to me why this screws you so much? I don't understand.
In this situation, I cannot start with artifacts and I use up three charm slots at start. One of these charms does nothing. The other two aren't even charms and so cannot be placed in combos. They also impose sizable penalties when used in combat and they are subject to interuption. These charms take the place of two artifacts. I also miss out on skills and a hearthstone in this scenario, and my weapons and armor can be destroyed by another sorcerer with absolute ease. Sorcerers are common among the dragon-blooded and abyssal exalted (necromancers?), and spirits can use sorcery at all levels, so I can expect this sort of thing to happen as often as you feel like doing it. The
only way my character can prevent this is with his own countermagic, which costs at least 10 motes; he does not get to resist.
Here is the breakdown:
1) Creation cost: 3 charm slots + 7 BP vs. 0 charm slots + 5 background dots (5 BP). My character gets 3 more charms by using artifacts, and then 2 more BP to spend on skills or a specialty. The trade-off here is that he won't be able to learn the Monarch's Rain of Butterfly Terror if he ever wanted to do so.
2) My character's weapons and armor
will be instantly destroyed from range by any semi-competent spirits or exalted. Destroying these weapons and armor causes them to blow up in my character's face, which probably hurts.
3) (New Rule) The total effective essence attunement cost for ISB and WDC is greater than it would be for artifacts (orichalcum ones, at least) that provided similar effects. Artifacts that apparently won't get taken away all the time.
4) Sorcery spells do not lead to more fun and interesting spells, like charm cascades do. Each effectively spell ends its own tree. This is a disadvantage.
5) When my character is surprised, he must dump most of his essence pool into spells to survive because he doesn't typically run around all day with trees for hands and metal for skin. He gets to appear normal, except when he goes iconic from dumping 30m into becoming Edward Woodhands.
6) The eventual demon summoning will probably not be worth it; you haven't said anything about it, but an obvious conclusion is that each demon will require a 10m commitment to keep around. Even the stupid ones.
7) You apparently have to start with sorcery in order to ever get it.
