We see the setting through the eyes of a baby wizard who is still missing fundamental information about how the setting works.
See how he only discovered that the Sight has precog functions in Small Favor, when he was in his 30s.
Or how he only realized that the Outer Gates were a real, physical place, with Gatekeeper being a literal position, when he came back from the dead in Cold Days.
Im not saying such a merit, as mechanically ree
I am asserting that something similar exists, whether its an internal edict, a declaration of the White God, or even Uriel specifically paying hostile attention to factions that tread that line
I just don't see a reason for it; there are limits to the amount of ignorance we can assign to Harry. The sight is a profound and complicated ability that's difficult to practice with because every use has consequences. The Outer Gates and their guards don't exactly advertise unless it benefits them to do so.
We see IC repeatedly that the wizards have an almost unique flexibility that they use as a substitute for their lack of innate powers. They're all about being magical Batman, though usually the toolbelt changes from foci to freeform casting as they get older.
It fits dramatically better for the wizards to address problems like bad luck shaping effects the same way they deal with almost all of their problems. The first time it's encountered someone has a really shit time and the survivors/people aware of what happened science the shit out of it.
Next time someone tries it the practitioner in question pulls a trick out of their pointed hat to counter it, and if it keeps happening they all start doing it.
You can't one neat trick wizards to death because they're the champions of picking apart weird nonsense to exploit it. They'll build an item to block it, cast a spell that drains the power away to use in some esoteric project, or trade with spirits to arrange the worst day of your life before attacking from surprise. Then if all that fails they'll start getting mean about it.
They do need the help of their allies, but no more than any other faction does. There's a reason the ramps want them gone and put so much effort into fuckery to make it happen. A DF wizard isn't a baby demiurge like a WoD mage, but given some space to work with they're something special.
You were talking about casualties in the war earlier, but consider what it means that the red court with its millions of subjects* spent years at war and needed surprises attacks on hospitals to kill less than 200 people. That people with millennia of experience invested wartime resources into a strategic ritual strong enough to wipe out an entire species all across the globe as an
assassination attempt on a guy in his (late) third century.
A guy who's ranked #7 on the wizard power scale by the way**. He's "just" focused on combat stuff more than anything else.
They did manage to kill senior council members, but it was always a serious effort often requiring betrayal to even get off the ground. We don't see a lot of what the wizards get up to beyond Harry's sight, and most of what we do see happens when they're caught in the worst possible conditions for their way of doing business. If we're going to talk about offscreen implications of abilities I think it's worth accounting for what all this suggests about what it's like to play games with the concentrated abilities of the strongest mortal magic users outside of those scenarios.
I certainly wouldn't bet on beating the wizards by investing in something solvable with magical research.
* Reds, half-reds, human slaves, and subverted nations.
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