http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar

Link above for those who have *real* occupations - you know, things that don't involve poking keys to make nonsense sigils that cause bits to flip sign :)

While playing around with the Sorcerer rules for my own dark purposes, I found that the part that proved a dripping tap for my sensibilities were the Abilities. For my usage, in any case. The translation of what was in my head to Abilities proved clunky, and it often seemed to be simply a matter of expression. i.e. I could make it do what I wanted if I attached a short paragraph to the Ability or pair of Abilities explaining what I meant. But that's inelegant.

So, for example, I ended up doing this:

- Confer [Ability] is a new Ability that doesn't count towards Lore, always modifies another ability, and shows that the Sorcerer is the User.
- [Ability] Sorcerer is a new Ability that doesn't count towards Lore, always modifies another ability, and shows that the Sorcerer is the only allowed Target.
- Ranged is now a free Ability, not counting towards Lore
- Reach (describe this) is a new ability that describes an aspect of Ranged for all the demon's abilities (e.g. how far, how much, how many).

Which results in more or less the same number of Abilities counting towards Lore, doing the same thing I intended, but the descriptions look nicer to me whilst still retaining the form that is compact and open to interpretation. e.g.:

Confer Cover (Mild Mannered Archivist)
Reach (Earshot)
Ranged Special Damage, Non-Lethal (Boredom Beyond Measure)
Taint Sorcerer (Love of Dusty Records)

I'd be interested to see what other people have done along these lines.