Bunkering down under a sufficiently armored cover is a perfectly viable strategy. Certainly no less viable than engaging in melee. Get into cover, summon minions, provide covering fire with the charm we bought.use brawl and dexterity to avoid being pinned down completely when needed. Rely on murderbeast mceatface as your meatshield.
No it isn't.
You dont have to close into CQC range and engage in melee; neither Dresden nor the other wizards do.
You DO need to stay light on your feet, and keep moving.
Exhibit A.
This is the scene from the short story
Its My Birthday, Too, in the anthology
Side Jobs, featuring Constance Bushnell, Black Court vampire.
Its My Birthday Too said:
There was a round of halfhearted protests at that, but Thomas quelled them with a look. It wasn't an angry or threatening look. It was simply a steady gaze.
Everyone shut up.
I headed out with Molly and Sarah in tow, and as we stepped out of the bistro, there was an enormous crashing sound, and a car came flying sideways through the glass wall of the entranceway about eight feet off the ground. It hit the ground, broken glass and steel foaming around it like crashing surf, bounced with a shockingly loud crunch, and tumbled ponderously toward us, heralded by a rush of freezing air.
Molly was already moving, but Sarah only stood there staring incredulously as the car came toward us. I grabbed her around the waist and all but hauled her off her feet, dragging her away. I ran straight away from the oncoming missile, which was not the smartest way to go—but since a little perfume kiosk was blocking my path, it was the only way.
I was fast, and we got a little bit lucky. I pulled Sarah past the kiosk just as the car hit it. The vehicle's momentum was almost gone by the time it hit, and the car crashed to a halt, a small wave of safety glass washing past our shoes. Sarah wobbled and nearly fell. I caught her and kept going. She started to scream or shout or ask a question—but I clapped my hand over her mouth and hissed, "Quiet!"
I didn't stop until we were around the corner and the crashing racket was coming to a halt. Then I stopped with my back against the wall and got Sarah's attention.
I didn't speak. I raised one finger to my lips with as much physical emphasis as I could manage. Sarah, trembling violently, nodded at me. I turned to give the same signal to Molly, who looked pale but in control of herself. She nodded as well, and we turned and slipped away from that arm of the mall.
I listened as hard as I could, which was actually quite hard. It's a talent I seem to have developed, maybe because I'm a wizard, and maybe just because some people can hear really well. It was difficult to make out anything at all, much less any kind of detail, but I was sure I heard one thing—footsteps, coming in the crushed door of the mall, crunching on broken glass and debris.
Something fast enough to snap a man's neck with the whiplash of its passage and strong enough to throw that car through a wall of glass had just walked into the mall behind us. I figured it was a very, very good idea not to let it know we were there and sneaking away.
TL DR
Constance, by her own reckoning, counted that day as her one year anniversary as a vampire.
A one year old Black Court vampire picked up and threw a whole-ass car, weighing in the 1.5 to 2.5 metric ton range, through the glass front of a building.
And neophyte Black Court vampires are way down the list of threats in this town and this setting.
She certainly isn't unique; we've seen Dresden do much the same thing in Dead Beat, when he picked up and dropped a car on Cowl in a magic duel.
I assure you that you dont want to stand in one place as a combat strategy in this universe.
Immobility is death.
For my part I've been thinking about doing it the other way around.
Get a good sniper, preferably one with magic on their side like Olivia could be, then have them setup somewhere. Park Lydia on top of them, and have the sniper start shooting.
The target would have to make a choice; stay away and eat damage dice nearly equal to getting punched in the face by an exalt, or try and take their position and literally be punched in the face by an exalt.
Not really workable.
Snipers require prep time and clear sightlines, and those are not really things you can structure a combat build around in an urban combat arena.
My two cents.
-30th of October. 1 day before Halloween.
-Fantastic construction scene here. And a potent humblebrag of what Molly is capable of.
Looks increasingly like we might not bother buying our parents or Dresden new cars, and might just build them instead.
At worst we buy cars that have been written off so we can use its VIN number to register it at the DMV.
-Daddy bonding time was nice as well. Need to find time to spend with the family soon.
-They called Michael on his cell after the Black Rider auction to warn him, so its entirely predictable they have Molly's number.
Its not really difficult to pay someone in the local phone company a few thousand dollars or so to pull up the phone bills and associated numbers for the Carpenter family. In fact, I expect the Whites have had all our numbers ever since Michael and Dresden became friends; Lara is dangerously competent.
Given they're sex vampires, they might even have gotten the information for free.
-That said, why is Ms Romany calling Molly? Its been several weeks since we murdered the fuck out of the akuma, and I rather doubt that the movement of a war party of Einherjar in and out of Chicago passed unnoticed.
She's definitely had time to get her hands on Murphy's CPD report, and to sniff around the site.
It shouldn't be an Isabella thing, because she's Skavis not Raith, and we met Leinth.
And Thomas is both an adult and supposed to be an outcast at this point in the timeline, at least officially. And he shouldn't be calling us with his sister's phone. Neither should his girlfriend.
So whatever she's calling us about, it should not be any of them.
Now Im curious.
15 successes for the car. 17 successes for the mirror.
Okay, that's just hilarious amounts of flexing. If this was a project with several months of prep time it would still be a very impressive; that its something she threw together in a couple days is just Exalted Bullshit.
And this might not be Lara. I could see Inari Raith calling us using Lara's phone, depending on how Thomas being under MiS affected the family dynamics.
Inari Raith moved out of Chicago after the events of Blood Rites, two years ago.
And if she had trouble, she'd call her brother Thomas, who would call us. Or she'd call Harry.
Not Molly, who she's never met or heard of.
