Author Topic: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.  (Read 33166 times)

Offline Sully

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #45 on: July 19, 2017, 05:56:10 AM »
But anyway, the real reason I'm against all this is because I don't want to pick up a Dresden book and have to skip paragraphs of gun porn.

Offline groinkick

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #46 on: July 19, 2017, 06:00:27 AM »
I don't mind seeing firepower from wizards.  I think Jim has a pretty good balance throughout the books.  I could maybe see Harry meeting a special ops group who specialize in guns because their role is to target creatures where guns are actually a preferred weapon to magic.  Some sort of close quarters combat where speed is preferred to magic.

Kincaid has shown that guns are effective, even if not as "powerful" as magic.
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Offline Shift8

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #47 on: July 19, 2017, 08:15:25 AM »
I don't really agree-people who learn multiple skills to a professional or elite level are exceedingly rare.

In the US military, you probably not going to be pursuing an engineering degree while serving in a combat unit.  If you're in med school as active duty-THAT is your job, not preparing for/fighting war.

Some NBA players pursue degrees in summer, but not during the season. And being in the playoffs wouldn't allow summer classes either. For NCAA players in major sports, actually getting a good education is an aberration, not the norm.

Sure a bit of versatility is always welcome. But your average wizard is likely better served by becoming a better wizard, rather than worrying about 'muggle' skills.

I'll offer a real world example as a rebuttal: the minimum salary in the NBA is over $400000.  Is an NBA player better served by finishing that accounting degree, or becoming a better basketball player and chasing a max contract(20 million+ a season).
Ill counter with my own real world example.

Its not really rare at all. I dont know the exact percentage, but a large portion of military members pursue degrees in STEM fields while also being in combat units. When it comes to officers, this is actually the norm, since they must have a college degree in almost all cases. Officers with combat MOS specialties have degrees in just about everything. It is pretty common if not the majority case that Army officer's degrees have nothing to do with their military job. I myself am a Combat Engineer and I am currently pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Many many military personnel in combat jobs pursue college degrees, often in difficult fields. An Infantryman I knew on deployment had a PhD, another was a Lawyer. An officer I knew who ran our Operations section (planning and controlling all our missions) was a Navy helicopter pilot who had a degree in Mechanical engineering. Hows that for multi-specialty?  Its fairly common.

The wizards we are talking about live for centuries, and have money out the wazoo. They pretty much have nothing but time and cash to blow. They have many times the capacity of a normal mortal to obtain many different skills.

Not to mention that acquiring low level tactical competency is not that difficult, especially since most of the people you will ever go up against will also be in that category of skill. And given all the time the wizards have, not to mention all the combat experience, they could/should be operator as all get out.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2017, 12:10:58 PM by Quantus »

Offline Quantus

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #48 on: July 19, 2017, 12:01:25 PM »
Ill counter with my own real world example.

Its not really rare at all. I dont know the exact percentage, but a large portion of military members pursue degrees in STEM fields while also being in combat units. When it comes to officers, this is actually the norm, since they must have a college degree in almost all cases. Officers with combat MOS specialties have degrees in just about everything. It is pretty common if not the majority case that Army officer's degrees have nothing to do with their military job. I myself am a Combat Engineer and I am currently pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Many many military personnel in combat jobs pursue college degrees, often in difficult fields. An Infantryman I knew on deployment had a PhD, another was a Lawyer. An officer I knew who ran our Operations section (planning and controlling all our missions) was a Navy helicopter pilot who had a degree in Mechanical engineering. Hows that for multi-specialty?  Its fairly common.

The wizards we are talking about live for centuries, and have money out the wazoo. They pretty much have nothing but time and cash to blow. They have many times the capacity of a normal mortal to obtain many different skills.

Not to mention that acquiring low level tactical competency is not that difficult, especially since most of the people you will ever go up against will also be in that category of skill. And given all the time the wizards have, not to mention all the combat experience, they could/should be operator as all get out.
Thank you!  I /felt/ like this should be the case, but I dont have enough personal exposure to actual military life (or anything reasonably comparable) enough to articulate it. 



PS Am I the only one seeing a huge block of empty space at the end of your post?
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Offline Shift8

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #49 on: July 19, 2017, 12:09:16 PM »
Thank you!  I /felt/ like this should be the case, but I dont have enough personal exposure to actual military life (or anything reasonably comparable) enough to articulate it. 



PS Am I the only one seeing a huge block of empty space at the end of your post?

np, and yeah I was wondering about that too. No idea what happened. I did lose internet connection while I was typing that so maybe that did it.

Offline Zaphodess

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #50 on: July 19, 2017, 12:21:27 PM »
Harry's Winchester could be crafted and enchanted to function as a modified blasting rod, for instance—I don't see why it couldn't. Though likely a bull-pup design would work better, with a magazine in the stock to keep it farther away from the heat.
If that could be done, then you'd see more wizards carrying firearms as a first choice. It's probably not easy crafting metall into a useful focus for versatile magic. Staffs, Harry's blasting rod, Molly's wands seem to be made of wood, sometimes with the addition of crystals.

Luccio's swords were extremely special in that respect. I suppose the younger wardens might not carry swords any more because a sword isn't that useful either without being a powerful focus at the same time.

Each wizard spends a lot of time thinking about his gear and maintaining it. We've seen Harry crafting new stuff, sometimes he keeps them, sometimes dismisses them later. I'm sure a lot of wizards have experimented with firearms too. So far there wasn't an enchanted gun in the books. But we might see one at some time.

Offline Quantus

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #51 on: July 19, 2017, 12:31:09 PM »
If that could be done, then you'd see more wizards carrying firearms as a first choice. It's probably not easy crafting metall into a useful focus for versatile magic. Staffs, Harry's blasting rod, Molly's wands seem to be made of wood, sometimes with the addition of crystals.
Nah, Harry did a lot of work in Metal (force rings, shield bracelet, bear belt buckle, svartalf Summoning circle, lighting chain).  He even laments in SG that he'd not yet had the time or money to rebuild his metalcrafting capabilities, which is why he moved some of his standard enchantments to his staff.  But have you ever tried to carry around a 2"x6' staff made of steel?  Or even a 1"x18" rod?  Not going to be winning any footraces carrying those.  Wood is traditional, is far easier to work in general, and makes a far lighter final product.  Also, if a wooden blasting rod explodes from being overloaded (like in Changes) its going to do less damage to it's wielder than a metal rod exploding (with or without molten shrapnel).

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Offline Shift8

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #52 on: July 19, 2017, 12:36:55 PM »
If that could be done, then you'd see more wizards carrying firearms as a first choice. It's probably not easy crafting metall into a useful focus for versatile magic. Staffs, Harry's blasting rod, Molly's wands seem to be made of wood, sometimes with the addition of crystals.

Luccio's swords were extremely special in that respect. I suppose the younger wardens might not carry swords any more because a sword isn't that useful either without being a powerful focus at the same time.

Each wizard spends a lot of time thinking about his gear and maintaining it. We've seen Harry crafting new stuff, sometimes he keeps them, sometimes dismisses them later. I'm sure a lot of wizards have experimented with firearms too. So far there wasn't an enchanted gun in the books. But we might see one at some time.

Easy fix. Under-barrel blasting rod.

Offline Quantus

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #53 on: July 19, 2017, 12:52:26 PM »
Id have to assume putting the actual enchantments on the gun itself would severely intensify any murphionic effects that might screw it up at the worst possible moment, a lot more than just being operated near active magic. 
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Offline Zaphodess

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #54 on: July 19, 2017, 01:36:34 PM »
Nah, Harry did a lot of work in Metal (force rings, shield bracelet, bear belt buckle, svartalf Summoning circle, lighting chain).  He even laments in SG that he'd not yet had the time or money to rebuild his metalcrafting capabilities, which is why he moved some of his standard enchantments to his staff.  But have you ever tried to carry around a 2"x6' staff made of steel?  Or even a 1"x18" rod?  Not going to be winning any footraces carrying those.  Wood is traditional, is far easier to work in general, and makes a far lighter final product.  Also, if a wooden blasting rod explodes from being overloaded (like in Changes) its going to do less damage to it's wielder than a metal rod exploding (with or without molten shrapnel).
These are all very special tools, the more versatile foci are wooden. At least those we've seen. Elaine has come closest to a versatile metall focus with her lightning chain. Which Harry promptly copied and taught the Warden trainees about.

I agree with your point about the weight. It's definitely a factor wizards consider when they are preparing their weapons.

Easy fix. Under-barrel blasting rod.
If it were easy and/or practical, we'd have seen it by now. Look, you keep arguing that the older wizards are somehow being stupid about all that modern stuff. Not in those words, maybe, but in essence, because being hidebound and arrogant is a dumb way of being stupid when your life is on the line.

That can't be it imo, because being prepared is what wizards are supposed to be good at. It just doesn't make sense that the more experienced ones would simply ignore the possibilities of firearms. Especially not the Wardens, who have full-time jobs as fighters/police. They see their younger colleagues using them. They put a lot of time and effort into deciding what they carry into a fight and into maintaining their gear. They make choices about what they carry and what they leave behind. Their life depends on those choices. And the life of the people they protect. They literally can't afford to ignore a good idea when it comes to weapons.

btw: Older Wizards do use guns too. Here are just two examples:

Ebenezar has a rifle in his car in Blood Rites and he shot at Kincaid with it. Last sentence in chapter 29: "And then both of them went for their guns." First sentence in Chapter 30: "Kincaid was faster." It goes on with Ebenezar rending Kincaid's weapons useless with magic.

Morgan shot Peabody in the end and his shots were very precise and spot on. Seems to me that he was a good marksman, which suggests training. He just doesn't use guns as his preferred weapon in a fight. As he's dead now, we'll probably never know his reasons for this, but he was considered one of the best fighters the WC had. That's sort of connected I think.

Imo, it comes down to this: Each wizard decides carefully which stuff is worth the effort in both creating and maintaining it and when it comes to the action, carrying the weight around that might slow them down. So we have evidence that some wizards - apparently the younger ones - prefer guns, grenades and such things, while others aren't seen using them. (They might still have a gun somewhere in their inner pockets). Now imagine you were the one who's going to fight them. Are you really assuming your opponents are just being stupid or are you planning for a fight that might kill you? ;)

Consider this too: There are some comments from younger wizards or fighters (Sanya for example) about how progressive they are being by also using guns and such. There is none from an older wizard (or from Michael, who used to be in the army so he must have had basic training with weapons) about how stupid those kids are to rely on them. Despite the fact that most of them apparently have decided at some point in their career that they'd rather bother with something else. The conclusion I'm drawing is that they have their reasons and they respect the choices of the kids because they might know from experience that their alternatives might not yet be available or really better for the kids.

Offline Quantus

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #55 on: July 19, 2017, 03:20:31 PM »
These are all very special tools, the more versatile foci are wooden. At least those we've seen. Elaine has come closest to a versatile metall focus with her lightning chain. Which Harry promptly copied and taught the Warden trainees about.

I agree with your point about the weight. It's definitely a factor wizards consider when they are preparing their weapons.
I suppose it's always possible that the material plays a role in what sort of enchantments it can take.  We know Rubies, Silver, and Iron all have specific effects, for example. I guess I always got the impression that the two sort of went together: the more specific/specialized the application, the more specific and/or specialized the requirements of construction, and thus the more general the application (ie a staff as the extreme) the /less/ specialized the requirements. 

It's also likely that it's not a Pass/Fail sort of situation, but rather that different materials have different pro's and con's.  We know, for example, that at a certain point only Blood is capable of carrying large amounts of Power in a ritual (per SmF iicr), or when Harry worried in SG that he'd miscalculated his new staff and might overload the limits of what the physical material could hold (risking an explosion of kinetic force), and at the absolute end there's supposed to be a hard limit on the amount of magic that can be crammed into a given physical object (a limit DR breaks).  All this to say that materials certainly play a role on the descision matrix, but might not be hard and fast by spell application. 
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Offline khadgar4606

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #56 on: July 19, 2017, 04:05:23 PM »
well if harry gonna cast magic via revolver i think jim would made him a cowboy instead but there is a way to harry to get some real good gun and funnily its from monoc securities and it must be custom made to just for him like Mjölnir for thor. only person can buy him a major boom stick is molly via request to odin and the only time she can buy is accidentally where harry can bust a cap on mabs ass aka Halloween and i dont think mab will like that.

Offline Sully

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #57 on: July 19, 2017, 04:58:48 PM »
Most pilots have STEM degrees going in.  For AF it's pretty much impossible to become a pilot otherwise.

I'd double check on the people getting graduate degrees. By brother and most of his friends have their masters in engineering management. They're not actual practicing the discipline.  Yes, there are schools that cater to the military and accommodate a military schedule. My brother and his friends chuckle at the quality of education vs the schools that were actually trying to prepare them to be practice a discipline. Compared to checking a box for promotional boards.  My brother has also laughed about needing to go back retake his entire bachelors if he wanted to engineer. Yeah he has two degrees in it, and they helped inform his piloting reflexes.  But he hasn't done any engineering in his entire career as a pilot, nor will he.

Yeah I have a marine friend getting a phd, but he's a linguist & teaches at the...DLI? So it's in his discipline.

Offline Independent George

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #58 on: July 19, 2017, 09:32:24 PM »
More than just training for wizards, the real force multiplier for the White Council would be to form and maintain a dedicated team of soldiers who train alongside the wardens using combined arms tactics. A wizard firing a rifle isn't putting up a shield or launching fireballs; there's an opportunity cost to it. What they really need is a minion with a machine gun laying down suppressing fire so that the wizard can line up the big 'boom' - basically, dungeons & dragons tactics with a SAW instead of a broadsword.

Heck, this is more or less exactly what Harry does with his squads - everybody has a dedicated role that they support each other with. The wardens would be much more effective if they used the same tactics instead of just sending wizards off by themselves.

The problems is that while this would physically be a world-beating force, it is wholly dependent on trusting in the loyalty of a bunch of vanilla mortals who would suddenly gain insights into the strengths and vulnerabilities of the wizards (of which there are many). That's already hard enough with wizards who have a vested interest in banding together - a regular mortal who develops a grudge against the warden has a lot less binding them to the council than any wizard would.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2017, 09:38:51 PM by Independent George »

Offline Shift8

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Re: Better Guns for Dresden and Co.
« Reply #59 on: July 20, 2017, 01:29:00 AM »
Most pilots have STEM degrees going in.  For AF it's pretty much impossible to become a pilot otherwise.

I'd double check on the people getting graduate degrees. By brother and most of his friends have their masters in engineering management. They're not actual practicing the discipline.  Yes, there are schools that cater to the military and accommodate a military schedule. My brother and his friends chuckle at the quality of education vs the schools that were actually trying to prepare them to be practice a discipline. Compared to checking a box for promotional boards.  My brother has also laughed about needing to go back retake his entire bachelors if he wanted to engineer. Yeah he has two degrees in it, and they helped inform his piloting reflexes.  But he hasn't done any engineering in his entire career as a pilot, nor will he.

Yeah I have a marine friend getting a phd, but he's a linguist & teaches at the...DLI? So it's in his discipline.

Whether or not its a practicing discipline is utterly irrelevant. Having the time to do two separate jobs at the same time is not the same thing as having a level of competence in more than one thing. A wizard does not have to be a Navy Seal in order to be usefully competent with a weapon. Clearly this is the case, because Dresden spends basically no time perfecting his skills but finds guns highly useful. The notion that someone could not be an expert in more than one thing, especially with a lifespan in centuries, is self-evidently absurd. Were not even talking about leaning entire professions here, but rather simply additional skills. I'm sorry but this line of reasoning is as abjectly ridiculous as saying a Doctor could not take a martial arts course. Or that Murphy could not learn martial arts on the side of her police job.