Editing The Dresden Files RPG (section)

=====Focus Items=====
To any sort of practitioner focus items are the tools of their trade. A White CouncilWizard has his staff, a True Believer has his symbol, a Renegade Warlock has dagger carved out of volcanic obsidian he bought at some sort of mexican tourist trap.

The fact is that all practitioners, regardless of source or power level, have at least one focus item, and those that don't are often considered to be headstrong idiots who insist on doing everything by hand, regardless of its complexity.

;In Setting
In the setting of the Dresden Files Focus Items are, as above, considered multi-purpose tools that aid practitioners in their spell-slinging. As vocal invocations are Oven-Gloves to help the caster avoid frying their brains with the power they're manipulating; a Focus Item acts like a Crowbar or a piece of rope and a pulley or a knife, it aids the caster by taking out the amount of effort they need to put in, or by focusing the power they're slinging about.

The more multi-purpose a Focus is, the longer it takes to make, and the more effort it carries over from the caster the larger it is. Examples of this in motion would be Harry's Staff, Blasting rod, and Little Chicago.

Harry often doesn't even try to cast anything overly complex without his Staff, he's got the power in spades, but the Staff allows him to weave it more completely and in a wide variety of patterns, as a tool it could be compared to a firefighter's Halligan Bar that took him several months to make the first time around, and he is very cagey about potentially losing it. Compare/contrast to his Blasting Rod which doesn't help with the complexity of his spells, but instead helps him focus the power he does throw around, but only in Fire, Air, and Force evocation. His staff can help with those spells but the Rod is designed to help with those spells, and only those spells making it more of a magical Combat Knife, a weapon with some utility outside of stabbing things, that can be replaced rather quickly, compared to his more versatile staff Harry has replaced his Blasting rod several times over, each time only taking a couple of weeks worth of work.

;In Game
In game Focus Items are a little more limited, but also better defined.

Every Practitioner who takes either Channeling ([-2 REFRESH] 2FP) or Ritual ([-2 REFRESH] 2FP), or their more powerful variants Evocation ([-3 REFRESH] 2FP) and Thaumaturgy ([-3 REFRESH] 2FP) gets at least 2 Focus item slots to a maximum of 4 (you can't stack the slots from Channeling to Evocation, or Ritual to Thaumaturgy). You can however gain more Focus Item slots by grabbing the Refinement power [-1 REFRESH], which is stackable, and can give 2 extra Item slots each time it is taken.

So a Practitioner who has only taken Channeling has two Focus Item slots. How do they use them?

By investing Slots into a single item the Player can gain a boost to either the power or control of their spells of a certain type, so a Wizard who puts 1 slot into an Evocation focus would gain something that looks like this '''+1 Power, (Air)''' or '''+1 Control, (Air)''', whereas if he put in 2 slots he could have an item that boosted both power and control by +1 at the same time '''+1 Power/+1 Control, (Air)''', or something that boosted the power of two seperate elements such as '''+1 Power, (Air, Earth)'''. However if a player wants to do something like this '''+1 Power, (Air), +1 Control (Fire)''' it costs '''4''' slots, because the number of slots used is equal to Number of Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Spirit) multiplied by the number of Types (Offensive Control/Power, Defensive Control/Power).

This means in game, it's usually better to make a wide variety of specialised Focus Items until you have the Refresh to blow on Refinement, because trying to stack everything into one item means it is going to cost a lot more for a single item, which can, and most likely will, get busted at some point even if your DM is a nice guy. It just happens to everyone. I would recommend haggling for FATE points slightly less than the number of slots that item cost when it does get broken, though.

It's also possible to gain an extra Slot for a single item by tying the item to a single specific spell, but if you're going to do that, then make sure it's a spell you are going to use ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME.