A couple of very general questions.

[sinker]

It occurs to me that there was something in the books (novels not RPG) about the white council missing a decent number of practitioners lately due to the war.

In addition (and I'm not totally sure where I got this idea) I seem to recall the difference between wizards and focused practitioners/minor talents is actually power, not training.

[Tedronai]

More debatable is how many people with wizard-level talent get missed.  I think Victor Sells was probably a wizard-level talent (he just didn't seem to have the sight, but I assume that could be trained).  Harry doesn't really run into anyone else with that level of talent in all the books, as best I remember.

Demon-summoning Warlock in events leading up to Grave Peril
Young kid warlock at the start of...Proven Guilty, is it?

[Drachasor]

In addition (and I'm not totally sure where I got this idea) I seem to recall the difference between wizards and focused practitioners/minor talents is actually power, not training.

Binder seems to have plenty of power, but doesn't seem to be able to do more than one trick with it.  Doesn't seem like it is an issue of training from how people talk about him.  They do talk here and there about how most people with talent only have a knack for a specific thing.

Demon-summoning Warlock in events leading up to Grave Peril
Young kid warlock at the start of...Proven Guilty, is it?

Ahh, yes, possibly the demon-summoning warlock.  Though, it is hard to say whether he could do more than summon demons and some thaumaturgy.  Kid Warlock at the start of proven guilty?  The guy could manipulate minds, but there's no reason to think that somehow means he could be a full-fledged wizard.  Like Harry says, even a focused practitioner can be deadly.  Honestly we can't tell if these guys are much more advanced than someone like Binder, who while deadly can't be a full wizard.

[Tedronai]

Ahh, yes, possibly the demon-summoning warlock.  Though, it is hard to say whether he could do more than summon demons and some thaumaturgy.  Kid Warlock at the start of proven guilty?  The guy could manipulate minds, but there's no reason to think that somehow means he could be a full-fledged wizard.  Like Harry says, even a focused practitioner can be deadly.  Honestly we can't tell if these guys are much more advanced than someone like Binder, who while deadly can't be a full wizard.

The demon-summoner was described as a Sorcerer in Harry's little dream-reenactment, good at the flashy-destructive magic far more than anything else.  That's why Harry's job was to lock him down.  So we have evidence of him pulling off substantially complex thaumaturgy, and being capable of pulling off substantially potent evocation.  I think that's sufficient to say that he likely could have been a wizard with the proper training (and early intervention)

as for the kid, we have very little evidence of what he was capable of, but enough, I think, to list him as having been a potential candidate, had he received training (and intervention) in time

[Drachasor]

The demon-summoner was described as a Sorcerer in Harry's little dream-reenactment, good at the flashy-destructive magic far more than anything else.  That's why Harry's job was to lock him down.  So we have evidence of him pulling off substantially complex thaumaturgy, and being capable of pulling off substantially potent evocation.  I think that's sufficient to say that he likely could have been a wizard with the proper training (and early intervention)

as for the kid, we have very little evidence of what he was capable of, but enough, I think, to list him as having been a potential candidate, had he received training (and intervention) in time

I'll grant the Sorcerer, but the kid we only have him as a one-talent wonder.  No reason to think he's any better than Binder, especially when Harry says most people that have some supernatural ability can't be wizards (but that doesn't mean they are pushovers).

[Tedronai]

The kid is far from a definitive example of a potential wizard, but remember, that's essentially all the talent that

(click to show/hide)

Molly

exhibited before her training
An entirely untrained one-trick wonder can quite reasonably be assumed to have greater potential if they were to receive meaningful training

again, I'd list him as a potential candidate, a 'maybe'

[Drachasor]

The kid is far from a definitive example of a potential wizard, but remember, that's essentially all the talent that

(click to show/hide)

Molly

exhibited before her training
An entirely untrained one-trick wonder can quite reasonably be assumed to have greater potential if they were to receive meaningful training

again, I'd list him as a potential candidate, a 'maybe'

You don't have to point spoiler tags there (just saying).

Anyhow, I guess we are arguing over semantics.  Point is, wizard-like power that isn't connected to the Council is pretty rare to come across.  Dresden encounters it no more than 3 times over the course of a decade or more, possibly only twice -- Elaine and the Black Council don't count in this regard, as they've been connected to the White Council is some form.

[Tedronai]

I tend to use spoiler tags or the like any time I make anything like a definitive revelation regarding a significant, book-spanning character, regardless of what book it's from.  It's mostly just a courtesy.

Wizard-like power is relatively rare to notice when you're not particularly looking for it.  But then, the Council as a whole doesn't do much to search these people out, even in the best of times, unless they're causing trouble, and Harry isn't a whole lot better (yeah, sure, he has pamphlets in his office, and he's in the yellowpages, and he makes himself known in the community, but he doesn't do a whole lot actually to search them out until the Paranet gets set up to help do that for the Council)

Dresden, without expending any particular effort to find such individuals, encounters them possibly FOUR times (

(click to show/hide)

Molly

really should count here, and possibly even

(click to show/hide)

Charity

, since we have no clues as to how powerful she actually was) over about a decade

[Bruce Coulson]

There's as many Wizards as you need for your campaign.

Being a Warden requires more than wizard-level talent and being a member of the White Council.  The impression I got was that many wizards didn't qualify to be Wardens, because they had the wrong mind-set.  Perfectly honest and capable Wizards...but not suitable to confront warlocks and other threats.  So, Wardens were a small sub-set of White Council wizards who were up to the task of enforcing the Laws.

All members of the White Council are technically required to aid and assist Wardens in the performance of their duties; but I can see Wardens giving a pass to the wizard in the small town who does potion research and whose idea of a threat is an angry bull.  He might be a nice guy; but probably would fall completely apart when confronted with a life-threatening emergency.

[deathwombat]

Assumption is the mother of all foulups

[Richard_Chilton]

In Death Beat, when Harry goes to McAnally's to warn the others that "big stuff is going tonight - get ye behind a threshold" the book mention the "sorry, you can't be on the council because you don't have enough" type folk there.

Let me see if I can paste from an ebook:
The tavern was crowded with members of the supernatural community of Chicago. They weren't wizards. Most of them had only a pocketful of ability. One dark-bearded man had enough skill at kinetomancy to alter the spin on any dice he happened to throw. An elderly woman at another table had an unusually strong rapport with animals, and was active in municipal animal shelter charities. A pair of dark-haired sisters who shared an uncanny mental bond played chess at one of the tables, which seemed kind of masturbatory, somehow. In one of the corners, five or six wizened old practitioners—not strong enough to have joined the Council, but competent enough in their own right—huddled together over mugs of ale, speaking in low tones.


Richard

[Drachasor]

In Death Beat, when Harry goes to McAnally's to warn the others that "big stuff is going tonight - get ye behind a threshold" the book mention the "sorry, you can't be on the council because you don't have enough" type folk there.

Let me see if I can paste from an ebook:
The tavern was crowded with members of the supernatural community of Chicago. They weren't wizards. Most of them had only a pocketful of ability. One dark-bearded man had enough skill at kinetomancy to alter the spin on any dice he happened to throw. An elderly woman at another table had an unusually strong rapport with animals, and was active in municipal animal shelter charities. A pair of dark-haired sisters who shared an uncanny mental bond played chess at one of the tables, which seemed kind of masturbatory, somehow. In one of the corners, five or six wizened old practitioners—not strong enough to have joined the Council, but competent enough in their own right—huddled together over mugs of ale, speaking in low tones.


Richard

Yeah, I think it is pretty safe to say there are well more than 10 times as many people who have power, but not wizard-level potential.  Seems like it might be as high as 20-50 times as many, but that's hard to call.  I think there probably isn't 100 non-wizards for every wizard though (as far as practitioners of some sort go).

[zenten]

In Death Beat, when Harry goes to McAnally's to warn the others that "big stuff is going tonight - get ye behind a threshold" the book mention the "sorry, you can't be on the council because you don't have enough" type folk there.

Let me see if I can paste from an ebook:
The tavern was crowded with members of the supernatural community of Chicago. They weren't wizards. Most of them had only a pocketful of ability. One dark-bearded man had enough skill at kinetomancy to alter the spin on any dice he happened to throw. An elderly woman at another table had an unusually strong rapport with animals, and was active in municipal animal shelter charities. A pair of dark-haired sisters who shared an uncanny mental bond played chess at one of the tables, which seemed kind of masturbatory, somehow. In one of the corners, five or six wizened old practitioners—not strong enough to have joined the Council, but competent enough in their own right—huddled together over mugs of ale, speaking in low tones.

That still doesn't answer the "nature versus nurture" debate over wizardly power though.  If those old practitioners had been taken aside as youths and apprenticed to a white council wizard instead of learning on their own would they have been able to become white council wizards themselves?

[Bruce Coulson]

There's no clear answer to that.  Again, the impression I have gotten is that it's a combination of talent and training.  Excellent training can bolster a mediocre talent to acceptable wizard levels; powerful Talent can eventually overcome an obstacle of poor (or no) training.  But no amount of training can actually provide Talent; if you lack the raw ability to handle the full range of magics, then training can't make you a wizard.

There is also an elitist strain in the White Council, which implies that there are a few wizards (in terms of talent) who are not acknowledged as such, because they've never received 'proper' training.  In general, though, minor Talents are just that.  No matter how much training they receive, they can't ever become full Wizards.

[zenten]

Oh, I agree with all of that.  I just think given how little the White Council seems to put towards finding and training potential recruits (especially outside of North America and Europe) that the majority of "potential White Council wizards" never receive enough training to get to that power level.