Author Topic: The venatori  (Read 3013 times)

Offline rickayelm

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The venatori
« on: December 26, 2009, 10:30:49 AM »
I just read the spoiler about the white council allies and had a question about the venatori, it says that the venatori are capable of basic occult countermeasures but they lack powerfull spellcasters. Does this mean that they only have minor talents? What is the cutoff for a powerfull spellcaster, is it sorceror or focussed practitioner?

Offline TheMouse

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Re: The venatori
« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2009, 04:03:05 PM »
The following is my personal interpretation:

In general, my cut off for "powerful spell casters" falls between focussed practitioner and sorcerer. Sorcerers can be quite powerful, after all. What they lack is the education that would make them flexible and controlled. After all, we see through the series a couple of sorcerers who make Harry's life really problematic.

Some focussed practitioners could probably be considered the be powerful spell casters, sure. As a category, though, other spell casters seem to mostly look down at them as weak. At best most of them would be considered weak but useful in one circumstance.

That's my take.

Offline iago

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Re: The venatori
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2009, 01:41:59 AM »
Yeah, that's a pretty good take. But I'd encourage people looking to use the venatori in their games to stay away from drawing hard, mechanics-defined lines of distinction.
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Offline LCDarkwood

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Re: The venatori
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2010, 09:07:23 PM »
Keep in mind, too, that there are different ways of defining "powerful" when you're talking about spellcasting - there's "does one thing extremely well" powerful, there's "can level buildings with fire blasts" powerful, there's "bargains with demons for power" powerful, there's Ebenezer "What A Big Stick You Carry" McCoy, etc etc.

I imagine that what usually happens is that because the Venatori are allied with the White Council, anyone who shows significant enough magical ability gets referred to the Council and trained there. As an organization, the Venatori probably aren't equipped to deal with the potential dangers presented by having an individual that powerful in their ranks. However, I'm often fond of saying, especially about roleplaying game settings, that any info presented can automatically be read with a "as far as anyone knows" in front of it... the idea of the Venatori keeping their own cadre of wizards in secret is a compelling idea, especially if one of them starts getting ideas about what should be done with the organization's vast store of knowledge.


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