There is something to be said about speed and haste and the difference thereof why do you want to cut it so close to the actual ritual. She has a timeline that is going to be finished at that point why would you let your enemy dictate the timeline of the confrontation ever what is the idea behind that.
Her Crown-confirmed timeline is for 12AM. Theres a reason Molly is taking the time to do things properly.
The entire plan you are voting for consists of leaving half our specialists behind, and assaulting a fortified defended location while down on Health, Essence and troops, while an enemy's global debuff spell is still running.
Its haste, not speed.
You are literally taking every possible malus possible.
Also when we're in the tunnels we can just flare our anima outright to be able to spot literally everything. There is no magical phenomenon or physical phenomenon I'm not going to escape our site once it's up.
Not how it works.
Its a surprise negator, not a trap detector. It will prevent you personally being surprised by an attack, it wont tell you that there's an attacker beforehand, or a trap. And it wont defend any of the troops you bring with you either.
Thats where having a sensor kinda helps.
Finally Dresden is most useful making sure the ritual works. Fire near the corpse puppet Reds is a bad combo it doesn't matter if there are enemies burning your allies alive because you're wizard isn't super careful with all the fire not great also fire and enclosed spaces not great just because we can become immune for one Essence doesn't mean it's a good idea. Seriously dresden's main means of attack and defense are really not good for enclosed spaces pulses of like concrete cracking force and fire in enclosed spaces is a no-go.
Red Court vampires are not corpse puppets. Those are Blacks.
Dresden is our combat engineer. The only person here with a professional understanding of magic rituals and magic bindings, and the only Mage equivalent who can do something about it. Leaving him behind when going to deal with someone fucking around with a magic ritual and magically bound demon is literally professional malfeasance.
Fire is Dresden's favorite offensive spell. Its not his only offensive spell.
Forzare/Wind has a honored place in his repertoire as well. So does pure force. I am not worried about his use of Fire underground; he's not actually stupid.
Also what you said about the essence is just plain false we've never had a combat that required more than two Excellency uses even at the most expensive this combat can be we would still have enough to continue to fight multiple fights because our Excellency last four turns.
Thats because we have never had to fight through a fortified tunnel complex before.
All our previous fights have been straightforward slugfests in the open.
There is the potential for multiple significant engagements in here.
Lydia's is the same way by the way in combat We Roll 18 and she rolls 16 in combat stats the idea that Harry or Tiffany both of which can just be killed with regular bullets because none of their combat abilities allow them to natively block or Parry bullets. They have to use magic to defend against and with our current essence we could fight for a solid 12 rounds and still have leftovers unless we were just absolutely pissing away our Essence during a fight we can definitely do more than one.
Your math does not math.
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Lydia has maximum 7/7 Essence left right now.
She needs 2m for Steelskin + Skin of Stone to get her to maximum soak, and another 2m for Thoughts of Oak Defense(mental defense) + Flawless Hunter's Eye (Perception booster for underground fight). That leaves her with 3m of Essence for everything else, which is a maximum of 3 turns of Excellency use to fight through I dunno how many miles of tunnels.
So most of the time she's going to be rolling 6 dice of offense. Like everyone else.
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Molly currently has 10/15m Essence and 14/15 Health, with 1 unhealed Agg damage.
She needs to save 2m, 2wp for Shintai activation when its necessary.
Then she needs VLE + Steelskin = 2m for soak. All Things Betray + Hellscry Chakra = 2m for Perception boosts for fighting underground at night. 1m for single activation of EIPP against a shaping attack.
All of a sudden, you have 3m of Essence left for everything else. And your budget looks rather tight.
Which is why Molly is largely going to go without Excellency use unless actually necessary.
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My dude, Harry is the only person here who has actually been in a war.
The Summer-Winter War of a couple years ago had him and the Alphas on the battlefield, threading the needle with ranged casters and melee combat. They did fine. The events of Dead Beat had him on the same battlefield as hundreds of superzombies and spectres. He was the victor in that one too.
Hell, in this quest, we sent him and Michael into the NeverNever to break a ritual setup by the Will of Kakuri.
They both walked away from that too, uninjured.
This infantilization of the dude is strange.
Now if you're going to try and claim that Sandra is going to be tougher than a literal abomination of the last creation and God of War I'm going to have to say no.
Literally six months of preptime and the favor of her faction?
Yes.
You dont need to be personally the heaviest heavyweight of your faction if you can tag in actual heavy hitters to actually do the fighty bits for you.
Dresden may have been the planner and prime mover of events, but he wasnt the heaviest hitter of the war party that went to Chitchen Itza. His godmother was the heaviest personal hitter of the group. And under the circumstances, both Murphy and Sanya were deadlier than he was because they had Swords.
Duke Skavis literally incarnated a Walker on the spot with no preptime by cutting one throat.
Do you seriously think that someone like Sandra Marling, who has been preparing for this for months now, and actually has institutional backing among the Outsiders, to the point of being trusted by Nemesis, is less dangerous?
