Many thanks, and sorry for the slow follow-up. A couple thoughts:
(1) (a) I wasn't actually thinking of breeding hobgoblins (although now that you mention it . . .), but of (i) negotiating and/or trading with (sufficiently intelligent) hobgoblins, and/or (ii) growing and breeding goblin fruits. I think that the latter of those two, at least, is probably substantially less difficult and costly than hobgoblin breeding? Although still potentially far from cheap and easy. (The extreme version of trading with hobgoblins (going full-on goblin marketeer), on the other hand, still seems likely to be difficult and expensive . . . just for somewhat different reasons.)
(1) (b) When you describe Hedgespun weaver as being a big XP sink, are you thinking about the cost of creating each item (of > 0 dots)? (Speaking of which, am I understanding the implications of the "Hedgespun" article on the wiki correctly, that a Hedgespun created on commission can have the XP cost paid by the commissioner?) Or are you thinking more in terms of the cost of raising Wyrd, Occult, and Crafts in order to be able to craft higher-dot items. (For 5-dot, that would be. . . anywhere from 97 to 262 xp, if I've done my math right, with the lower end representing some ''serious'' specialization at character creation (with associated opportunity costs). So, fair enough. (And also arguably a strong reason to decide at character creation whether that's the road I want to go down.) But 3-dot should be doable with character creation dots alone, and only moderately heavy specialization. I think.)
(2 and 3) Definitely useful information to have. I have a tendency to optimize fairly heavily for particular abilities or goals during character creation (whatever those abilities or goals may be), and that makes it really useful to know if a deep investment in a particular area of activity is likely to lead to frustration.
(4) For whatever it's worth, I was thinking of this less in terms of Magical Realm, or even necessarily having it be a significant element in interactions with other changelings, than in terms of it being the obvious answer to the question: "Suppose I had virtually no chance of impregnating a partner or being impregnated, was unusually resilient to both physical injury (depending on kith, merits, contracts, etc.) and infection with ordinary diseases, had potential access to at least two different methods of curing even normally incurable diseases if I did pick up something nasty (one of which is pretty damn cheap, considering), and could fairly easily read someone's mind to determine one or both of what they secretly wanted and what they secretly feared . . . but also had no legal documents and no easy way of acquiring any, despite having been born in this country. Further suppose that I was disinclined to live by robbery. How, then, could I leverage my unusual advantages to make more than 'illegal immigrant field hand' levels of money (and ideally pick up some glamour while I'm at it, and have enough flexibility in my schedule to be able to pursue Court business without having to considering my leave balance), despite my unusual disadvantages?" But if there's a pattern of that sort of character element working out poorly, I can certainly take that into account in weighing whether to go with that or another possibility.
(5) That's definitely useful to know. When I mentioned some options potentially being "a good source of plot," I was mostly thinking in terms of obvious flesh for the plot-runners (whether ST or player running a PrP) to sink plot hooks into and/or tools for potentially spawning subplots off of main plots, more than opportunities to run plots myself. But it's probably still a useful caution.
Totally agree. I don't consider myself duty-bound to follow your advice, but if I didn't want to receive it, I wouldn't have asked. Information is always good.
In theory, I like this idea. In practice, I have a tendency to generate lots of fragmentary character ideas a lot more easily than I do a single, clearly defined character, and I need some way to winnow them down. And I have a tendency toward analysis paralysis. (One of the reasons I tend to end up optimizing for effectiveness at [whatever] is that it allows me to make one choice (what should that [whatever] be?) that can drive multiple decisions about character options that I would otherwise have to make individually.)
There's a decent chance I will. That set of ideas still hasn't really coalesced into a complete character yet, but it's probably closer to doing so than most of the other fragments (some of which it may, of course, end up absorbing).
Absolutely. That's a big part of my reason for asking so many questions (in addition to the winnowing element mentioned above) - I'm well aware that creating a character that wants to spend all of their time doing X, and can, does not work well if no one else cares about or is interested in doing X, no matter how cool I may think X is.