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[Bluecho]

I would argue that owning part of a person's soul is better, in infernal politics, than having no specific ownership at all. The nature of damnation is left intentionally vague (maybe the Demon books have more to say about it; I wouldn't know). Presumably the demon gets something out of the deal, even if they don't own the whole thing. Like having prestige among other demons. To a certain extent the specifics don't matter.

I would agree that having some of the mortal's soul grants the demon access to the mortal whenever the demon wants. They have an "in", so to speak. While...

[Bluecho]

The -3 limit to reductions applies to ALL difficulty reductions. Moreover, difficulty reductions cancel out difficulty increases. The ability to spend 4 or 5 Quintessence is good for when you're trying to both make up for lots of factors working against you, AND push the difficulty even lower. Like, if you're operating at a difficulty +3, you need to spend 3 Quintessence to get the Effect down to normal, and a further 2 Quint to get it down to -2.

For high level Effects, you really want to get your difficulty as low as possible, just to offset the naturally high base difficulty of...