Has anyone played a Saga where a (player) character manages to get a Confidence score to 3, or higher?
Was the ability to add +9 to any roll unbalancing?
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I currently obtained confidence 3 in a home game as a Tytalus, after successfully marching my Tormenting Master. It can be powerful, but in limited doses. Funnily enough, the bests uses I've had were with Twilight-related checks. The limitation is that a high confidence score doesn't necessarily mean more confidence pts per game.
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My current maga has reached a Confidence of 3 at 101 years post gauntlet, though she's probably due for a fourth soon if her sinister machinations come to fruition. So far it hasn't caused any problems in our expectations of power yet.
As @temprobe said, just because you can spend 3 points on a roll doesn't mean you necessarily have enough to do it very often. A threatening, high-stakes situation can have a lot of rolls involved, and I definitely don't want to undersell how nice it is to blow a triumphant wad of confidence into one of those problems, but it won't help with the others.
This is even with a house rule that causes confidence points to have a slow regen over downtime (up to max of Confidence Score + 2).
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My group uses a pair of HR that between them cause the Confidence of characters to grow over time and allows a fair amount of points to be available to use during adventures. We also limit spending points to actively played scenes, no boosting you skimmed over time. The highest is currently 5 and he can have up to 11 points in his pool, with the other Magi in the 3 or 4 range.
While he has the ability to add up to +15 to a roll, this has been rarely done and is normally only ever seen in situations where only one roll is required. Considering he is an Autumn aged Flambeau who is one of the most powerful and dangerous Magus alive (in terms of raw destructive capability), being able to ride roughshod over a situation occasionally fits him. Max expenditure on a single roll however is rarely seen since it uses nearly half of someones total pool. How they are normally used is to prevent low rolls or botches in situations where there are a lot of rolls happening, such as combat.
We wanted the characters to be the heroes of the story and having access to a regenerating pool of Confidence means they are much more willing to engage in activities in which lots of rolls, with more potential botches, happen. It softens the curve of 1 in ever 10 rolls being a potential botch (and 1 in ever 20~100 depending on situation being botch). Our Magi are more willing to engage in these activities than in other games we have played simply because we have the Confidence Points to spend to avoid at least some of the bad dice rolls.
With all that, bad botches still can and do happen. Consider for example my Magi botch/twilight event that happen which resulted in gaining 11 warping even though he had Confidence 3, 7 points at the start, and Flawless Magic. He did do as @temprobe suggested and used points for the Twilight understanding roll.
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You must be using some other House Rule, though, as Confidence expenditure does nothing to avert a botch. It just adds to the total rolled, but a natural 0 in the die (not the total) still means you have to check for botches in a normal way.
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True, we do. We allow spending points "on a 1 for 1 rate" to remove potential botch dice, though points spent this way are part of your total max for a single roll which means even if you totally offset the possibility of a botch by removing all of potential dice you will not be able to increase the roll total much.
Didn't help me much when I had a roll happen with 7 potential dice and could only offset 3 of them. Burning a hand full of Vis and "let 'er rip!" is something my Magus has never done since.
My Tytalus has gained True Faith, which stacks with confidence, and knows where to lay his hands on the local abbey's relics. I could abuse it, but I rarely do except when things are going very badly for the covenant.
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Abusing True Faith tends to have consequences, too. 
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