Wizards and Oceans

[Da_Gut]

Sorry, but where do you get that wizards pissed something big off back in the day and now water grounds out magic?

Based on magic in many worlds, its a fairly plausible reason. Doesn't mean its accurate here. Though, I do find it difficult to believe that wizards have such problems in rainstorms, or on the oceans. Or lakes.

[ballplayer72]

Based on magic in many worlds, its a fairly plausible reason. Doesn't mean its accurate here. Though, I do find it difficult to believe that wizards have such problems in rainstorms, or on the oceans. Or lakes.

As i understand it, its more a physical law than it is a restriction placed upon the entirety of the universe by a single pissed off entity. (denarians can't cast well on water either SMF) 

The running water erodes magical constructs and makes it difficult to impossible to draw in any power from the environment (which is how wizards operate) depending on the specific circumstances.   For instance, in DM harry is completely neutralized by the water.  He is covered head to foot in running water and thus cannot draw any power in from the environment as it all gets washed away or grounded out (whatever term works for you) as he pulls it in.
On the boat anyone who uses magic is going to be limited in what they can do because they are on a giant body of running water (it circulates) that is in effect grounding out the surrounding area.   Hence not really alot of available power to use.

In the rain in SF harry has a hard time casting any magic because the Rain is running water and it erodes his magic.   Note that its not impossible in a rainstorm, merely extremely difficult, tricky, and taxing.   Hence why harry taps the storm for a little bump, subsidizing his power by tapping into a prevailent natural source: lightning.   



However, remember that running water shorts out not only wizard magic, but  dark magic as well.   Kravos has problems when harry shoves his head in a running puddle.  And he's a necromantically charged up super ghost, not a wizard. I see no reason to think that running water grounding out magic or erroding a construct is anything other than a natural progression of the scientific (esque) approach to magic we've seen in the rest of the series rather than a "a wizard did it" sort of explanation. just my $0.02

[Drachasor]

Yeah, but not because of anything magical. Myrk is a physical thing (made of Ectoplasm) and the sprinklers cut through it like they would smoke, not for any mystical reason. That's how Harry explained it anyway.

Harry made a metaphor, don't take it literally.  Here's a paragraph on his thinking:

"An empowered circle could cut the power to the spell from the other side of the equation, isolating the
hobs from the flow of energy outside the circle. But the circle would need to encompass the entire
freaking building. I doubted the hobs would be considerate enough to let me run outside and sprint
around an entire Chicago city block to fire up a circle. Besides, I didn’t have that much chalk. Running
water can ground out a spell if there’s enough of it, but given that we were inside a building, that wasn’t in
the cards. So how the hell was I supposed to cut off this stupid spell, given the pathetic resources I had?
It isn’t like there are a whole lot of ways to rob a widespread working of its power.

My nose throbbed harder, and I leaned my head back, turning my face upward. Sometimes doing that
seemed to reduce the pressure and ease the pain a little. I stared up at the office ceiling, which had been
installed at a height of ten or eleven feet, rather than leaving the place open to the cavernous reaches of
the old station, and beat my head against the proverbial wall. The ceiling was one of those drop-down
setups, a metal framework supporting dreary yet cost-effective rectangles of acoustic material,
interrupted every few yards by the ugly little cowboy spur of an automatic firefighting sprinkler."

The sprinklers ALSO erode his own magic (before the Murk, actually).