Author Topic: Help my bad guy!  (Read 5765 times)

Offline Haru

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #15 on: July 09, 2015, 08:20:53 PM »
Can anyone think of any official examples of water magic actually manipulating water?
I think there was one spell where a wizard controlled the water inside a tree to use the tree as a puppet.

Other than that...
People underestimate water, I think. Remember when Harry threw a car on Cowl? Remember that this was considered an incredible feat that not everyone can just do like that. A car is what? 2.5 metric tons? That's 2.5m³ or 2500 liters or 660 gallons of water. That might sound like a lot at first, but look at the size of your average swimming pool and you already got a lot more (an Olympic size swimming pool has 1000 times that much water). And look at how small your average swimming pool is in comparison to a rainstorm or a river. Moving that much water with an evocation is a surefire way to fry your brain and then some.
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Offline Rossbert

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #16 on: July 09, 2015, 09:30:13 PM »
  Can anyone think of any official examples of water magic actually manipulating water?
The closest I can come up with is when Harry took a point of sponsor debt to freeze a large chunk of it in Cold Days, but you could argue it was just more fire or Unseelie Magic on its own.

Given how much earth, air and fire manipulation we've seen though (Morgan, Mallory, and Dresden, respectively), I think it is safe to assume water conjugation and manipulation are pretty basic aspects of water magic.  I would think most wizards would hit that on their way to the "higher" concepts of entropy and change.

Offline PirateJack

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #17 on: July 09, 2015, 09:45:25 PM »
Harry draws water up from underneath Demonreach when he goes to make the Sanctum Invocation.
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #18 on: July 09, 2015, 10:31:58 PM »
Harry draws water up from underneath Demonreach when he goes to make the Sanctum Invocation.
Yup, thats the only pure water manipulation I can think of, with the tree manipulation bit being second (though I dont know for sure if it was confirmed to be water based, I could see it being earth magic too).  Other than that Water magic has all been Carlos' Entropy Magic and Shapeshifting
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Offline PirateJack

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #19 on: July 09, 2015, 11:44:24 PM »
Divination magic falls under the umbrella of water magic as well, iirc. The tree manipulation was either wood element (in the Warden Yoshimo's case) or just a result of Demonreach being a genius loci. It is the island so there's a fair chance that it doesn't need to actively perform magic to dry out trees like that.
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #20 on: July 10, 2015, 02:49:09 PM »
Divination magic falls under the umbrella of water magic as well, iirc. The tree manipulation was either wood element (in the Warden Yoshimo's case) or just a result of Demonreach being a genius loci. It is the island so there's a fair chance that it doesn't need to actively perform magic to dry out trees like that.
But do you see "Wood Element" falling under Water or Earth Magic?  Or are you thinking Wood as an additional element outside of the Cpt. Planet Five that Harry references?
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Offline blackstaff67

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #21 on: July 10, 2015, 03:31:49 PM »
Wood can come under Earth or water, just as fire can come under Fire, Air (Lightning) or Earth (Lightning or Magma). 
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #22 on: July 10, 2015, 04:18:54 PM »
Getting back to the whole Black Court Crossing Water bit: I came up with what I think is a really fun way to define and/or handle it, but it would put a fairly significant spin on the Black Court as a whole.  There is, per the novels, some connection between the Black Court and Necromancy (part of why they are rotting corpses, etc).  You can take it a tiny step further, though, and say that the Black Court are, in fact, each a self-sustaining Necromantic spell effect.  They aren't vulnerable to Circle Traps and such like other spell effects because there is no link to sever as the energy source is contained within them (fueled by their bloody diets which carries magical energy like no other), but they WOULD be vulnerable to the way large bodies of water ground out active spell effects.  This would let you scale it fairly easily and much larger so that it wouldn't be easy enough to abuse for your PC's. The idea is that they are animated by an ongoing affect, but that open/running water would wash away some of the energy sustaining them, by at least the degree that a Wizard's spells are weaken.  They wouldn't have problems crossing small streams (or the sewers under the streets), but crossing large or swift-moving bodies would weaken or even destroy them.  It would give them a much larger vulnerability to heavy rain and other naturally occurring forms of Deluge, however, depending on how harsh you interpreted the water-crossing weakness before. 

This is not exactly how it is presented in the books (and I dont know Stoker well enough to say for that side) but it does not contradict anything that Im aware of, so I think it could make for an interesting twist of secret knowledge and whatnot
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Offline PirateJack

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #23 on: July 10, 2015, 09:40:52 PM »
But do you see "Wood Element" falling under Water or Earth Magic?  Or are you thinking Wood as an additional element outside of the Cpt. Planet Five that Harry references?

It's mentioned in the rulebook that other cultures use different pentagrams for the classical elements. I mistook the Japanese and Chinese pentagrams for a moment there, though, so Yoshimo probably used water or earth there rather than wood.

China, for instance, uses earth, wood, metal, fire and water while Japan goes with the 'Western' ones.
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Offline Second Aristh

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #24 on: July 13, 2015, 08:22:02 PM »
Can anyone think of any official examples of water magic actually manipulating water?
Didn't Arianna do some pretty big water evocations against Harry in the Changes duel?  It was how the battlefield got covered with steam if I remember correctly.
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #25 on: July 13, 2015, 09:21:38 PM »
Didn't Arianna do some pretty big water evocations against Harry in the Changes duel?  It was how the battlefield got covered with steam if I remember correctly.
Ah, good catch.  Yes, she summoned a Gyser of water, very similar to what Harry did.  Im not actually seeing any indication she controlled it beyond a natural geyser motion/Flow, it just shot up to intercept his fire and flashed to steam.  She did not aim it at him or manipulate a stream actively, for example.
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Offline Second Aristh

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #26 on: July 13, 2015, 09:38:48 PM »
Ah, good catch.  Yes, she summoned a Gyser of water, very similar to what Harry did.  Im not actually seeing any indication she controlled it beyond a natural geyser motion/Flow, it just shot up to intercept his fire and flashed to steam.  She did not aim it at him or manipulate a stream actively, for example.
Hmm, well sorta.  She uses water to block Harry's fire at least twice.  The first one was geyser-like, but the second one seemed to be more like floating a blob of water in the air.  It's up to interpretation on how much to count that as manipulating the water directly.

Quote from: Changes Ch.45
Meanwhile, Arianna fluttered her hands in an odd, twisting gesture and a geyser of water erupted from the soil with bone-crushing force.
Quote from: Changes Ch.45
I smashed at her with more fire, and she parried each shaft deftly, congealing water out of the air into wobbling spheres that intercepted the bolts of flame and exploded into concealing steam.
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Offline Quantus

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #27 on: July 14, 2015, 12:25:43 PM »
Hmm, well sorta.  She uses water to block Harry's fire at least twice.  The first one was geyser-like, but the second one seemed to be more like floating a blob of water in the air.  It's up to interpretation on how much to count that as manipulating the water directly.
missed the Wobbling globes, youre right.  And the "wobbling" part definitely says hydrokinesis to me
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Offline Lucidic-Understudy

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Re: Help my bad guy!
« Reply #28 on: September 01, 2015, 08:32:32 PM »
Sorry to revive this old post, but judging from Paranet Papers, it's highly probable that Aquamancers and water witches/warlocks summon their water from the Nevernever when they are not controlling an earthly source. Will also theorizes that it acts as real water until it is no longer being powered my magic, as "it dries up quick, without much of a trace."

I might rule that using it as a binding method for magic would only work if you were further empowering it with your own energy, plus maybe a portion of what it is binding? It wouldn't be energy-efficient, but it would stay within physical laws (can't get something for nothing).