I know. That 3 rounds is what I am really against. It costs too much especially since any enemy worth the salt can evaporate the water forcing us out AND cancelling the shintai in the process.
It takes too much set up that can be disrupted to rely on it.
Not particularly.
1) Dispersal works on any body of fluid, and has no restrictions on whether the container is open or not.
Puddle on the floor. Bottle of water in your backpack. Soda can in a vending machine. Teacup on a table. Shotglass of vodka. Bottle of liquid detergent or bleach. And so on.
And you cant sense them mundanely.
If your occult Perception is not on point, as soon as a person breaks line of sight, they're gone and you have nine seconds to find them before they evolve from Magikarp to Gyourados.
couple things how is someone on senior council being unable to use combat magic effectively a plot hole? She has guards, she has powers shes not defenseless she made what are basically murder golems in at least some numbers, shes just not good at stuff like fireballs. Magic is not a uniform thing its heavily personalized and literally no two people do the same thing even if affects are consequentially the same.
Also should note for numbers jim butcher said wizards full talents this doesn't include minor talents this is people who would qualify for the council there are far more warlocks out there than that.
1)
Because she wouldnt have lived long enough to make it to the Senior Council.
Some vampire or sidhe or other gribbly would have nommed her for clout, or just on a whim. The White Council protects wizards from organized military attack, not from day to day encounters or personal vendettas.
See Dresden's mother Maggie LeFay and how she died from Lord Raith.
Or the multiple times Dresden almost died before the Vampire War broke out. He may be atypical, but thats potentially what every wizard has to worry about.
Mai(and Martha Liberty for that matter) doesnt have to be an evocation master like Ebenezar, or a combat shapeshifter like Listens to Wind, or a master of wards like the Merlin. They may not like combat, and thats fine. Specializations are fine too. Magical HITMarks are great. But you dont have them on you all the time, and in the Dresdenverse concealed carry is mandatory.
I dont see any living senior wizard in the Dresdenverse that isnt a monster at short notice. Thats like basic requirement for survival.
They have to be capable at it
because they are targets in a death world.
2)There have always been a lot more lesser talents than full wizards, but they werent swamped then.
And they are called lesser talents for a reason; they were only so much of a threat because they didnt have the capability to be more
Unless the ratios have suddenly changed, that wouldnt be more of a problem now.
Getting swamped only makes sense if there are a lot more wizard-level talents by ratio than there used to be.
And one in a million would only mean like 8000 wizards globally.
Not to mention that canonically he gives us a total number for all the Wardens that comes to 200 globally.
200 for a combined police and army and security force for locations and HVTs.
Butcher is just bad at math.
3)The Laws of Magic only make sense for the people who have the power to break them.
Makes perfect since the population has exploded since the 1900s, while at the same time getting viable information about magic to use it has never been easier.
I dont buy it.
The sidhe, and various spirits and entities, have always been willing to offer deals to people with potential, and a lot of people were generally poor or wretched or desperate enough to take it. See Harry making a deal with Lea at 16.
If anything, getting viable information about magic is more difficult because of the general skepticism of its existence in large sections of society.
Worthless Charred sinner renewal is the only signature worth taking, as the acid rain it calls forth trigger the -1 difficulty to all rolls of Boiling Sea Mastery.
Not going to argue this right now, but vehemently disagree.
