Just to be clear, I would never say that Harry should be an Inspector Gadget kind of wizard.
Several points here:
- That's the strange part. Dresden is a nerd. A geek. He loves reading fantasy adventure books ffs!
- Another thing: On one hand we hear Harry talk about being prepared almost as often as if he was one of the advisors for Soviet children camps [ the motto was: "Ready at all times!". We don't really know what they were supposed to be ready for. A war, most likely ], we read about him researching magic, because he really loves doing magic... We even read about his attempts to make a flying broomstick.
It really bums me out when I'm reading about a character who's supposed to be smart, yet they keep acting dumb or at the very least, not acting smart. Sure, Dresden doesn't think highly of himself.
But consider how Thomas or Murphy describe him.
Plenty of fairly smart people don't actually consider themselves smart, they only realize that, for some weird reason, other people don't understand some fairly elementary ideas...
And you are right about healing- It seems to be something very difficult in the Dresden verse and I think that only some minor injuries should be feasible (unless you want to risk giving someone a cancer) . But still, Harry seems to be unable to cure even a hit point ( 
) and that seems to be quite extreme.
Let me put it this way: If Billy and the Werewolves can figure out closing surface wounds just like that [ admittedly, Billy's got an engineering degree or something similar IIRC, but he's younger than Dresden and Dresden is basically a kid compared to other wizards ], how come Listens-to-Wind, a shapeshifter, a shaman, a doctor with a LIST of university degrees, with centuries of experience never even considered that? [ I'm expecting some kind of retconning here in the future ]
That's not "difficult healing in the Dresdenverse", that's a worldbuilding/character design flaw. Either Billy and the Werewolves never should have been able to figure it out or Listens-to-Wind is nerfed beyond a bad patch of World of Warcraft levels.
I think Harry would have a lot of trouble with crafting healing items. I don't know how they could be made to function reliably, with predictable (identical, repeatable) results.
Ok, let's start:
Magic does business with physics. Or to quote an expert "Fire, summoned with magic, is still fire! Murph."
Dresden can use magic to manipulate energy. Yes, he calls them "Fire magic","Air magic","Earth magic","Water magic", etc. But once he declares that he's basically just handling physics, it's simply a different application of what he already knows. And I'd imagine it should be hell of a lot simpler to use the magic to guide the energies than it is to conjure up fire. [ and yes, if you're wondering by now, I did study STEM >.> ]
Therefore once Dresden starts understanding magic well enough to craft his 2nd bracelet, he's pretty much also capable to create the same effect as an MRI machine. And since he's receiving a direct feedback via magic, the "resolution" or in other words "the amount of data", shouldn't be an issue. He's literally feeling the magic, how it responds to fluctuations and similar.
The only one who we've met who is confirmed to be capable of anything like it is Listens-to-Wind, but (evidently) it can't do things like mend broken bones (Luccio certainly should have been healed, right?)
Nah, Billy stops bleeding from a knife wound after Marcone throws said knife at him in the "Aftermath". He gets a scar, but the wound does close up. Billy doesn't have much magical power and definitely doesn't have much experience to "feel" the difference the way Dresden does.
The Leanansidhe heals Harry in Blood Moon. Mab repairs Harry's broken back. There are possibly a few more instances when a character is affected in this manner, but they are there.
Even a necromancer, a wizard-level talent with power over life and death, was only able to prevent a dying man from dying. She was able to anchor his life to his body, right?
Yup. Necromancy can't be used for healing. But it is great for making sure the patient doesn't die until he gets healed.
Cuz you can't see inside someone's body, right? Imagine if Harry tried to close up an internal wound with magic. He'd probably end up ripping more holes open.
You're thinking about using magic like using a hammer or an axe, possibly tweezers and similar. Yet we by now know very well that Dresden doesn't require line of sight to cast a spell and depending on the spell, he also receives feedback on whether the spell landed or not [ Proven Guilty, tracking spell on where Harry sent the fetches after knowing that the spell has hit the target over a fairly large distance ]. Therefore applying magic to redirect moving energies, including receiving proper feedback [ magic is the Power of Life, after all ], there's basically 0 likelihood that Dresden would cause cancer. Whether he rips something apart or not depends solely on his level of fine control. And while we know that Dresden keeps saying that he doesn't have very fine control, we're not talking about editing DNA. We're talking about "fusing back together parts that were originally one", so I'm pretty sure that Thaumaturgy would cover a lot on this topic, one way or the other.
How about an extra enchantment on his duster that worked like his force rings, except they channeled the energy into a kinetic shield instead?
Well... this is not nearly as simple as you're making it sound.
What you're talking about is a combination of several spells into a single enchantement with at least two active components:
- a radar-like spell to constantly monitor close surroundings for signs of approaching energies
- a Friend-or-Foe recognition spell that can recognize incoming energy as non-malevolent.
Therefore Dresden would get pretty much worn out after wearing it for some length of time.
But the idea might be pretty sound for training to increase his magic capacity.
Or toss around those Mind Fog dealies (which is apparently not a violation of the Laws of Magic if Butters does it?)
Butters is not a member of the White Council and I'm pretty sure that the laws of magic don't apply to him. Especially since he's not using his own magic, however he's fueling his gadgets. And the laws say that you're not supposed to use magic to do those things. In pure theory, if we got a Doctor Who x Dresden crossover and Dresden would travel in time via TARDIS, he didn't break the laws of magic.
And: Yeah, by now you'd think that Dresden turned his Silver bear charm into a bunch of tiny magic grenades. I mean: The guy was fighting in a war. He's a nerd with a serious hatred towards the Red court. You don't get more Ka-boom than that.
Hell! A whole arsenal of weapons would be more accurate. People living in peaceful parts of the world don't understand that people who live in conflict really start appreciating simple things in life.
LIKE SURVIVING!!! And they also tend to err on the side of caution and arm up. Really, really, REALLY arm themselves to the teeth.
He has a limited market for magical items. And anything he can make so can any other wizard. And most of them don't have a full time gig saving the world.
Oh, I'm not suggesting he sells the magic items for profit. I'm saying: craft more tools to make your life easier. You know? Pragmatic approach to life? Something you'd expect from someone who went through the foster system and had to learn to rely on himself first and foremost?
Although, I'm pretty certain that he could be making and selling some protective charms to ward off ghosts and stuff like that.
..whew. Now there's a wall of text.
I apologize for having worn out your eyeballs this much. I promise that after tonight I'm staying away from the forum for some time again
