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I finally got a copy of the new Dresden RPG book The Paranet Papers. It's from Billy, Karrin, and Waldo's perspectives after Changes but before Ghost Story. Despite that, it sill has a lot to add about how magic really works and at least a little on how Harry is unique. I haven't read the whole book yet but let me drop my biggest revelation so far on you. Harry is uniquely hard on tech. All wizards have that quality, but for no understood reason Harry has it at an unusually strong level. Three members of the council in close proximity don't match his inadvertent effect on technology. "Review of the casefiles shows that, among wizards, Harry seems especially prone to the hexing effect, even compared to wizards who are far older and far more experienced. Several members of the Senior Council interact with technology that they shouldn’t, if we use Harry’s standard as a rubric. Despite being centuries old, Ebenezar McCoy drives a 1931 Model A Ford truck, and rode on a motorboat to reach Demonreach with Listens to Wind and Ancient Mai without encountering any problems." Dr. MonkeyThunder fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 01:55
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Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:I finally got a copy of the new Dresden RPG book The Paranet Papers. It's from a perspective in between Changes and Ghost Story, but still has a lot to add about how magic really works and at least a little on how Harry is unique. I haven't read the whole book yet but let me drop my biggest revelation so far on you. Isn't this something that Harry specifically acknowledges and comments on at least once in the books?
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Oct 20, 2015 03:25
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Slanderer posted:Isn't this something that Harry specifically acknowledges and comments on at least once in the books? Yeah he has specifically said If there is a wizard harder on technology than me, I haven't met him
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Oct 20, 2015 03:31
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I'm guessing it's because Harry has an enormous amount of power under his belt (don't they say at one point that he has like senior council grade firepower and just doesn't know how to use it well yet?) and little control over it. Dude's probably constantly just unknowingly emitting magic and frying technology with it.
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Oct 20, 2015 03:55
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He's basically Naruto  Undisciplined and sloppy, but with a near inexhaustible power source (likely gained by being tied to a darker power at birth) that allows him to outlast and overwhelm his opponents.
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Oct 20, 2015 05:03
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Magres posted:I'm guessing it's because Harry has an enormous amount of power under his belt (don't they say at one point that he has like senior council grade firepower and just doesn't know how to use it well yet?) and little control over it. Dude's probably constantly just unknowingly emitting magic and frying technology with it. This makes the most sense. It has indeed been mentioned a few times that Harry is at or just below members of the Senior Council in terms of raw power. We also know that wizards have a greater effect on tech the more power they happen to be dumping. Those two things, together with Dresden's lack of experience and self-control, probably make him hell on machines compared to any other wizard alive. Klungar posted:He's basically Naruto I dunno about power gained at birth. He's got the silly Star-Child thing that he and Elaine have going, but I don't think that's directly linked to the level of magical muscle he's got. It's more that he just has some natural talent he has been honing it since he was in short pants. From Dumorne, to Leanansidhe and McCoy his entire childhood was spent in the none to gentle instruction of some of the most powerful practitioners the world had to offer. After that, he was thrown into a nearly endless series of fights, battles, and contests will that have continued to the current day. He's less like a chosen one, and more like a prize fighter who was born with a talent and started training early. He's good at it because that's what he's spent his whole life doing. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 05:10
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I always thought the star-child crap was just that he's uniquely able to gently caress up Outsiders because ~plot~
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Oct 20, 2015 05:20
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That's all the plot has revealed it to be, yeah. There's never been any indication that it contributed to Dresden's raw aptitude. Hell, Elaine supposedly has the same gift and while she's no slouch, she can't come close to throwing punches on the scale Dresden can. The only non-Senior Council folks we've seen who can match him in the gloves off fight-wizarding department are Cowl, Morgan, and probably Luccio before she lost her first body.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:30
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Everything you see Luccio do is very tightly controlled; I always got the impression that Dresden was stronger but Luccio was better.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:36
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Maybe, probably, though we never got to see everything she could do in her old body before it got capped. If we're talking not just combat wizardry, but raw "how much can you bench" magical muscle I'm not sure we've seen anyone other than McCoy, the Merlin and Cowl who can arguably outdo Dearden. Dude is wicked strong, but that only counts for so much in practical terms. Plenty of the people Dresden's killed were stronger than him at the time he bumped up against them, and it didn't do them much good in the end.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:50
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Dresden is like top twenty in term of raw power.
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Oct 20, 2015 06:52
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Tunicate posted:Dresden is like top twenty in term of raw power.
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Oct 20, 2015 12:36
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Mars4523 posted:I thought it was "...in his generation". Michael Jordan was better than LeBron is. 
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Oct 20, 2015 14:07
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One of the references to it around midseries is him thinking he's 'in the top thirty or forty wizards alive in terms of magical horsepower' and probably the strongest wizard in his generation, top five at worst. Not all of those wizards would be Wardens though.
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Oct 20, 2015 15:43
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I think it is mentioned at one point that harry will be one of the top 2-3 wizards in the world in terms of power once he fully matures.
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Oct 20, 2015 16:48
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I finished The Rhesus Chart and it was good by the end. But a lot of it felt pretty perfunctory. I feel like Stross spent too much time on the pseudo-prologue (more like pro-slog, amirite?) and shifted gears too drastically after that. Not as good as The Fuller Memorandum or The Apocalypse Codex, but not bad or anything; just not as good as I feel it could or should have been.  I suppose there's The Annihilation Score next, but I would like to have the paperback, which I don't believe is out yet. In the meantime, I have a Neil Gaiman short story collection to read. So that will hopefully be fun. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 18:56
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Wheat Loaf posted:In the meantime, I have a Neil Gaiman short story collection to read. So that will hopefully be fun. Which one?
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Oct 20, 2015 20:04
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Fragile Things.
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Oct 20, 2015 20:08
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Khizan posted:Everything you see Luccio do is very tightly controlled; I always got the impression that Dresden was stronger but Luccio was better. Yeah, Butcher points out multiple times that Luccio is able to make much better use of the power she has by flinging around super thin death rays instead of huge dumb columns of fire. I think there are other mentions throughout the series of how sloppy and inefficient Harry's spells are, because he is strong enough to just throw raw power at a problem, even if most of it is wasted.
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Oct 20, 2015 22:16
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Exactly. Harry's so strong that he's never had to learn proper technique, because he's always been able to just brute force the problem. It's one of the reasons he was such a lovely teacher for Molly.
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Oct 20, 2015 23:32
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I don't think it's a case of him never having to learn proper technique and more just never really had the opportunity. He's just been fortunate enough to have the kind of muscle needed to get by without doing so. Especially since he's expressed some desire to do so via creating his various focusing trinkets.
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Oct 20, 2015 23:41
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There's also that Harry is like, in his late 30s at this point? All of the wizards we're contrasting him with are centuries old. It's like comparing a fresh hire to the dude who's been working at your company for 35 years and going "jeez this kid is useless and knows nothing" But yeah Harry's control still isn't good, even after accounting for his relative youth compared to most wizards. He's gotten better though! Magres fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 23:45
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Wheat Loaf posted:Fragile Things. It will be. I listen to the audiobook from time to time and it's always fun 
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Oct 20, 2015 23:47
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Vicissitude posted:It will be. I listen to the audiobook from time to time and it's always fun Neil is a pretty good narrator, no doubt.
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Oct 21, 2015 02:24
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Slanderer posted:Yeah, Butcher points out multiple times that Luccio is able to make much better use of the power she has by flinging around super thin death rays instead of huge dumb columns of fire. I think there are other mentions throughout the series of how sloppy and inefficient Harry's spells are, because he is strong enough to just throw raw power at a problem, even if most of it is wasted. Harry himself points it out in one of the earlier books, that he just shoves enough power into a spell to make it work. There is another part where he says he is terrible at evocation but very skilled at thaumaturgy which explains why he can make great foci like little chicago and the bear belt we never saw again.
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Oct 21, 2015 04:16
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Skippy McPants posted:I dunno about power gained at birth. He's got the silly Star-Child thing that he and Elaine have going, but I don't think that's directly linked to the level of magical muscle he's got. It's more that he just has some natural talent he has been honing it since he was in short pants. From Dumorne, to Leanansidhe and McCoy his entire childhood was spent in the none to gentle instruction of some of the most powerful practitioners the world had to offer. After that, he was thrown into a nearly endless series of fights, battles, and contests will that have continued to the current day. He's less like a chosen one, and more like a prize fighter who was born with a talent and started training early. He's good at it because that's what he's spent his whole life doing. I thought there was still some unresolved piece of backstory about Mag LaFey unexpectedly leaving Raith and picking out some (seemingly) normal dude to have a kid with for what people speculate are ~-~-reasons-~-~?
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Oct 21, 2015 07:56
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Not all the holes in that part of the backstory are filled in, but the big benefit to being a "star-child" is that Dresden's magic is much more effective against outsiders than that of other wizards.
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Oct 21, 2015 10:19
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If you're born when the stars are right Cthulhu is your god brother, it's not complicated guys.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:37
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Didn't Harry eat some of the Nightmare's power in Grave Peril? Have not read it in ages.
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Oct 21, 2015 14:56
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I think the Nightmare ate his power and he ate it back. I'm not sure if he got some extra?
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Oct 21, 2015 15:19
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Yeah, he ate the Nightmare all up, restoring his power and granting him the Nightmare's powers. However the extra power gets burned up in the escape with Susan and Justine. Seemed to be a one time deal.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:32
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It was sort of a mini Darkhallow. Call up powerful spirit(s), eat them. It's come up several times in the series, even if it wasn't directly named as such.
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Oct 21, 2015 15:55
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Skippy McPants posted:Not all the holes in that part of the backstory are filled in, but the big benefit to being a "star-child" is that Dresden's magic is much more effective against outsiders than that of other wizards. Source on this?
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Oct 21, 2015 17:12
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Pretty sure the repercussions of eating the Nightmare are the bits of "Darkness" that Grevaine and a few others reference before Bob tries to kill him. Oh hey. That will be the choice that goes different for Mirror Mirror Harry; he stopped eating the Nightmare when he got back what was his. The twist will be that Mirror Mirror Harry is a better person than the Harry we have been reading about and he manages to just all around be better at everything because he reconciles with the Council, gets proper training and everything.
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Oct 21, 2015 17:12
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My guess on the mirror, mirror decision is the decision to use Michael's sword for bad reasons near the start of book 3. Without that the vampire war doesn't happen in anything like the same way, the world is better off, but Harry doesn't learn the lessons he has learned and falls into evil in a more serious way later (say, taking the coin).
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Oct 21, 2015 17:17
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I don't think the choice is going to be anything like "Harry actively chooses to do wrong/right" because Harry already knows that he could be a monster if he chose to be one. "I decided to be evil and holy poo poo I'm a villain" or "I didn't do something that was wrong and I ended up better for it!" aren't exactly the kinds of things that will have a big effect on Harry, because those are things that Harry already knows. I think the change is going to be something of smaller scale and I think it will be something fairly innocent and innocuous that had consequences that no reasonable person could ever have predicted, because I think that's more likely to give Harry troubles by making him take a closer look at just how close he's come to the dark side without ever realizing it. Personally, I think that he'll decide to invite Susan to the ball instead of Michael. As an official guest, Susan will have guest rights, so she won't be kidnapped and Harry won't start the war. This means that the Red Court will get to fully prepare before they kick off the war and the White Council will be in a much worse position when it does go down. I think that Mirror Harry turns to the dark side when that puts him into a situation where he has to resort to black magic to save himself or, more likely, to save Susan.
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Oct 21, 2015 18:56
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My friends and I have talked about Mirror, Mirror Harry and I think the choice he's going to make will be not telling (Book 3 spoilers) Susan, "I love you". Susan eats Justine, Thomas and Harry are never pals, things spiral from there. E: I replaced spoiler with quote because I'm suuuper dumb.
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Oct 22, 2015 04:47
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Source on this? Lash tells Harry at the very end of the battle in the Deeps in White Night. http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Starborn
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Oct 22, 2015 05:08
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I loved that exchange to.Harry Dresden posted:Man that is interesting, I thought. Not at all relevant, but very interesting.
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Oct 22, 2015 05:52
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Oroborus posted:Harry himself points it out in one of the earlier books, that he just shoves enough power into a spell to make it work. He's terrible at controlling his evocation, which is why he builds things like his staff and blasting rod. His training with Mab, teaching Molly (which is really the best way to improve your knowledge of a subject) and just more experience have really given him a lot more control though. Even his little "hair dryer" spell he uses is really the same wind spell he always used, just more tightly controlled so Molly would have had the power to use it. When he goes all out with that to battle some LIttle Folk after getting the winter mantle he can do a lot of damage with it, plus run it for a lot longer than his usual "Ventas Servitas" spell. Several times members of the Council and even Bob have remarked that his control is terrible when he's younger, but like any other wizard he's going to get a lot better with time. It's just surviving long enough to get to that point that's the problem.
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Oct 22, 2015 07:19
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