Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse

[OrigamiGuyII]

On "Wizards do bounce," yes I would grant that witches and wizards are slightly tougher than baseline humans. However, they are also just more cavalier about physical safety because they have magic healing and physical damage is so much simpler for them to fix. Bludgers break bones And Belatrix tortured people with knives. I'll grant them a Brute one or two, no more than that. Anyone trying to tell me bullets can't kill them is going to be pointed at the exit because I'm not buying it.

On personal protection against projectiles. This is a more plausible argument. We know the twins could enchant articles of clothing to be resistant to spells up to a certain point. We never see them in action and we have no idea what kind of longevity they may or may not have and more critically in my mind we don't know if they fail under massed fire. I would bet they do even if the massed fore isn't something beyond their ability to block.

So how does that translate to projectiles? First point the twins are geniuses and managed to get supposedly full body coverage with just a hat. But they are geniuses and I'm not giving most enchanters that much credit. So first rule of most enchanted clothing for me is that it protects what it covers. And only what it covers. Second rule is they can only stop so much force. And I most definitely mean force. Wizards used to coexist with muggles way back when so you better believe at some point they shared a battlefield and had to worry about arrows. Arrows hit with anything in the range of 25 to 65 ft lbs of force. a 9mm hits with 409 ft lbs of force at the muzzle. Now lets go ahead and assume our theoretical anti projectile enchantment was being improved on at least up until the statue of secrecy went into effect then likely became less and less popular or prevalent as the statue seemed to work. I would give such a charm good odds against a small caliber handguns and should it fail I would say they bullet would lose a significant amount of force. I'd also say it would totally fail against repeated small caliber fire, larger caliber weapons, and shotguns. That's for enchanting cloth or maybe leather. If they can get their hands on Bullet resistant vest and then use those same enchantments it would not strengthen the enchantments but it would up their odds of survival after the enchantment fails. They will not do this because it would mean using muggle things. They might try something more old school and wear mediaeval style breastplates to… well, lesser results, but not terrible ones. Applying unbreakable charms to armor is an idea. I'm leery of it because despite running across that charm a lot in fanon I don't really remember it seeing any, and especially not any intelligent use, in canon. That leaves me guessing that it has a limited energy pool and can be worn down with repeated damage. Or that it just doesn't hold long term. Still potentially life saving for short fights so long as no one aims for the head.

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I'd say closer to brute 0 than brute 1, since they'd still die to getting shanked.

As for personal defence, force reduction, force deflection or force absorption are your three standard defenses. the first would probably short out quickly, the second would be less costly, yet endangers those around you, and the third would be self charging. i could totally see the twins coming up with the third.

as to the unbreakable charm, it may make your robes impossible to damage, but you're still getting hit in the chest by powerful impacts. without clothing designed to take a hit, padding, armoured plates, and force dispersal mechanisms (think about the intentional crumple zones in a car bonnet) cloth, even unbreakable cloth isn't a good defence against small objects with high momentum and velocity.

you could totally make useful armour with canon spells, procure dragonhide, transfigure it into the desired shape, probably something like a bullet resistant vest, transfigure ceramic plates, then spell them feather-light. unbreakable charm to avoid damaging it, impervious charm to make thinks slide off it, imperturbable charm to make an invisible barrier around an object.

also, if you go for questionably canon spells from the video games, arania exumai is efficient against spiders.

 

[Cerevox]

I feel like magic shield spells, as written in lore, would no-sell pretty much all hand held guns in a direct head to head match. Wizards seem really dumb though, just in general, so firing before the shield goes up or from ambush or from an unexpected angle would still get them. Using gear should also make it trivial. Flashbang and storm should make it easy enough to clear a room no matter how skilled the wizards.

Magic has the advantage in the narrow head to head matchup, but given taylor's ability to gather tactical information that should basically never happen. I would bet on a swat team over an auror team any day, a parahuman of taylor's level should be just totally beyond them.

 

[OPPenguin]

On guns, again, the witch hunts would have been taking place in the days of muzzle loaders. Yes I'd agree if you can get a shield charm between the magical and the gun, they can tank a single shot with only a bit more difficulty than the average spell. In the days of muzzle loaders this buys you all the time needed to then fire back multiple times before the gun can be reloaded. Flash forward to the modern era of firearms. Unload a full auto assault rifle into a shield charm and as far as I'm concerned only those on the level of Dumbledore or Voldemort could stand up to a thirty round mag without their shield breaking. Especially if it's a large caliber round.

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If it helps, my personal headcanon is that the Statute of Secrecy had fuck-all to do with the witch hunts, and was entirely about the Wizarding World collectively NOPING out of the Nine Years' War. The War started in late 1688, the Statute was passed in 1689 and went into full effect by 1692. The magicals just don't like to remember the origin of the Statute of "that time we NOPED out of a muggle war", and are kind of hand-wavy about what exactly triggered it.

 

[Foxxin]

In response I say this; we only have the US Government's word the moon is not cheese. Also, you are correct that Mage does rely on collective belief, but several other universes use it for their magic systems too. Honestly, I totally didn't think of Mage when I brought it up. I was connecting it more to Kabbalah and some of the more fluid magic systems that exist. The Inheritance Cycle's magic system is collective belief forced into a language by the first people to use it.

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The franchise I happened to think of when reading your conversation wasn't Mage or Kabbalah, rather it was the Fate series idea of a Human Order. The collective belief stuff doesn't affect conceptual weight of the vast majority of magical effects in Fate (except with the really high tier shit becoming "crystalized into legend"), but rather collective human belief conceptually affects the environment of the earth itself and gives it order according to humanities zeitgeist, and the use of magical energy is able to temporarily overturn that Order.

 

[CastleTrime]

I personally agree that a trained prepared wizard can handily win against a muggle even one with a gun. But what about a child? Or if your asleep / fumble your wand? Those wouldn't be able to defend themselves when the neighbours come for you. Remember many of the witch hunts were panic sudden incidents rather than something planned so the wizard could easily be caught off guard.

Plus even you can defend yourself 24/7 you need to relax to sleep or get food. Trading with the village is difficult if there trying to kill you. Maybe you can go to another village or other wizards but at that point why bother interacting with the locals. Or revealing you have magic since it might prompt another incident.

The same thing would also stop them come to beg you for aid. Something that probably go tiring especially if they kept demanding things the wizard couldn't do and complaining when they told them at. Attacks might have easily been sparked by such refusals just as much as bad luck.

Honestly that's probably what started the whole hiding away. Heck it probably started with individual wizards hiding away because of this. Then when most wizards were already hidden became enshrined in law hence why it was so effective.

 

[kklusmeier]

I personally agree that a trained prepared wizard can handily win against a muggle even one with a gun.

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I'm almost sure this is not true for the majority of wizards. Most 'fully trained' wizards are incompetents who can barely cast a shield charm even after they get out of Hogwarts and who would therefore be incapable of casting a shield quickly enough to outdraw a competently trained shooter (Pro-te-go is way too fucking long if both parties are aware of one another and hunting one another in an urban environment, and in a rural environment the gun-user will badly outrange the wizard).

I'd say an easy 70% of the 'trained' wizarding populace dies the instant they go up against a guy with a gun due to being mentally or physically slower, being unable to cast a powerful enough spell fast enough, or being arrogant enough to think that a 'fireleg' can't hurt them because it's a muggle thing even if they were outright warned about it ahead of time.

IMO guns hard-counter wizards unless they have a lot of useful off-screen/off-page combat abilities we have not been told about; such as, for example, sustaining a personal shield spell long-term (and thus countering the relatively longer casting time than pulling a trigger).

 

[Windborne]

Just need to point out that Wizards and Witches in the Potterverse didn't hide from the rest of the world for fear of being caught by an angry mob of Muggles. Nope, the Statute of Secrecy was enacted to stop people from fucking with the Muggles by fucking up their witch burnings because it was getting annoying having to constantly mind wipe said mobs when the actual Wizards and Witches were being burned at the stake and it was doing absolutely nothing to them.

Protego does protect from bullets, but it's not an easy spell and most Wizards and Witches don't know how to cast it for extended periods of time longer than a few seconds. So for the average person who didn't bother to learn because of whatever reason then they're likely fucked if they're being targeted by multiple people or surprised or whatever. More elite casters, of which the DA may count and certainly the inner ring of Death Eaters do count, can do so and protect themselves just fine if they aren't killed instantly. But it's not a perfect defense, it requires active casting for almost everyone but the most skilled masters possibly of which Dumbledore, Voldemort and Flitwick count. It's also likely to be air permeable so gases and smokescreens are an effective counter. And yeah Flitwick is probably the most overall dangerous professor at Hogwarts, he was a professional duelist and was likely very, very good given his relatively undamaged state.

 

[Euphemism]

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, whatever an author wants to do with regards to gun vs shield is up to them. If it's going to play an important role in the story, it should be showcased in an earlier chapter (either in training or in a low stakes fight) before showing up later. If guns > shields, Voldemort being able to overcome that limitation is fine too. Same goes for Dumbledore in the unlikely chance that this matchup occurs.

I don't think there's enough shown in the books to say that there's anything canonical in this, and I'm fine with ignoring any sources outside of the books.

 

[MKS002]

Just chiming in here, so here is my 2 cents on this looking at the guns vs magic (and the overall Muggle vs Wizard) issue here is my take on it after looking back at the situation. We had a similar discussion on Discord.

A wizard caught by suprise might go down if they are killed instantly. Otherwise they teleport away, heal themselves up, and cast a bunch of protection spells then come back and destroy the gunman.

Another thing most people don't realize is that while a gun has limited ammo by its very nature. Magic has no such limit. And I think V said it best in V for Vendetta and I think it applies very much in this discussion.

Creedy:"..We have guns-"
V: "No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I'll no longer be standing, because if I am you'll all be dead before you've reloaded."

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And in this discussion, if wizards become aware of how firearms work (which is extremely likely due to the presence of Half-bloods and Muggleborn) after the intial suprise attack (if it manages to suceed at all as seen above), then guns become useless lumps of metal once wizards simply vanish the bullets out of the guns or vanish both the guns and the bullets leaving the muggles in question helpless against any follow up magic. Same thing applies to missiles and bombs being dropped just vanish the explosives, the missile, or the bomb.

And that's not even going into simply transfiguring said weapons into something harmless or turn it into something that turns on the user. Charms to prevent gunpowder/explosives from igniting, removing bullets momentum, etc. No need to shield at all.

And thats if Wizards even went with convential military tactics. I imagine a war with them would be far far more complicated as they probably could avoid direct warfare with muggles and focus on asymetrical and unconvential warfare tactics.

Another thing to take into account is that Wizarding Medicine is vastly superior to our own. Unless you kill a Wizard in the first blow, they can be back in action in less than an hour to upwards of a day depending on the severity of the injury but unless the wounds inflicted have dark magic, they can fix any physical injuries near instantly or within a signifigant fraction of the time it would take such injuries to heal ordinarily.

Not to mention in Fantastic Beasts, Newt explains that Muggles and Wizards have subtle differences in physiology that would make what would be dangerous for a muggle a mere inconvience for a Wizard. Muggles are much more prone to injury or death from physical harm - even as young children wizards often find themselves unknowingly 'magicking' themselves out of dangerous (but non-magical) situations.

Neville for example, was dropped out of a window by his great uncle, and bounced around the garden. Harry, when chased by Dudley and his bullies, somehow found himself on the roof of his school, out of harm's way. Remember also Hagrid's outrage at the very idea that Lily and James Potter could have been killed in a car crash.

So this magic running through the veins of witches and wizards gives them subtle differences in their physiology, making them more resilient to some things while more vulnerable to others like magical diseases like Dragon Pox.

 

[Darth Bayes]

Unload a full auto assault rifle into a shield charm and as far as I'm concerned only those on the level of Dumbledore or Voldemort could stand up to a thirty round mag without their shield breaking. Especially if it's a large caliber round.

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If this is true, my first instinct is that you're using the wrong spell.
My favorite idea for countering physical force is making a block of air behave like water. A few feet of water will stop most bullets, stop a charging werewolf or knife, stop magically-created nonmagical projectiles, probably detonate many spells early....

In Deathly Hallows, Hermione stops a waterfall (the Thieves' Downfall) with a shield spell, so I don't think repeated impact or a whole lot of total force is really a weakness for it.

I don't think the "wizards don't care about physical projectiles so they didn't bother to make a good anti-physical shield" holds water; not only do you have centaurs and goblins using (possibly enchanted) projectiles, you also have spells (probably used in dueling circuits for coverage) that make physical projectiles, and thrown weapons or charges by werewolves, vampires, and yes, muggle mounted knights. Crossbows and longbows too, potentially including in volley. England was the home of the longbow, which beat out state-of-the-art rifles (especially in rate of fire) for a long time, only being replaced by guns due to ease of use.

I agree that conceptual magic tends to get really sketchy, but I think that getting specific enough that you can reason about what exactly is happening and what could get around it ameliorates most of the issues with conceptual-looking magic. I would also be more inclined to call this specific case "absolute" instead, which I think is even less problematic.

I would say that shooting a wizard in the front while they're holding a shield up against you is too much like fighting fair to be the right decision, and that Taylor would agree. Meaning that whether a shield charm works against bullets would be irrelevant.
Another counter to a shield charm might be a light-paper-on-fire-tier laser in their eyes (they flinch and drop the shield), because the shield charm is see-through and therefore lets light through. Flashbangs would work too (as mentioned), as would just shooting them in the back thanks to good positioning.

(Also, the specific example of the charging knight has him falling "backwards," and the horse too, which isn't what a flat barrier would result in. More likely to cause that would be the horse noticing the shield and balking, rearing and then falling over backwards. That would imply that at least in that case, the shield didn't need to take the full force of the charging knight.)

 

[OPPenguin]

Just adding my two cents on guns vs wizards. I'm pretty sure that given a similar amount of training the end result is going to be more or less luck of the draw.

The vast majority of wizards/shooters have zero combat experience or actual training in using their wand/gun in an actual fight. For wizards, it will mostly be whatever spells they know for daily use plus a few handy ones they keep around, and maybe an offensive spell or two, "just in case". On the muggle side, the vast majority of shooters may have a good idea how to operate their firearm, but in most cases the most stress they've ever been under while doing so is trying to line up a shot on a game animal. They don't know anything about room clearing, or situational awareness, or any of those supplementary skills that are essential for actual combat.

At the professional level, you've got magicals that are specifically trained to be able to shield fast, make use of cover, tactical apparition when it's appropriate, and a wide variety of offensive and defensive spells to draw upon.

On the other hand, if a muggle professional with a firearm gets the drop on them, it'll be all kinds of day ruining event for the magical.

So, yeah. I'm personally of the opinion that the outcome would be very much a function of the situation and individuals involved, rather than one having an automatic advantage over the other.

Of course, Skitter has a natural advantage over basically everybody, so there's that.

 

[Cookiesndip]

I mean, you're welcome to decide that, but there is no indication in canon that a Shield Charm cannot withstand an infinite number of bullets.

Keep in mind that Potterverse magic is magical, it does not obey normal rules of physics in the slightest, especially not anything regarding energy and mass conservation. We never see a Shield Charm broken by physical force, and a 'strong' Shield Charm supposedly not only blocked the charge of an armored knight with lance, but sent said knight flying backwards along with his horse. (Which fell on him and "squashed him flat in his armor.") And a charging knight on a horse has substantially more kinetic energy than anything short of a gun like a GAU-8.

That said, Fred and George realized that most adult wizards, even those employed by the Ministry, could not actually produce a functional Shield Charm, as the spell is relatively complicated and not something that the average civilian is ever likely to need to use. So even if Shield Charms are functionally immune to man-portable weapons, the majority of magicals can't actually cast one in the first place.

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Personally, I find the distinction functionally pointless. Anyone using a protego can't attack, so it's roughly equivalent to hiding behind sandbags for a soldier, and they're not surviving a grenade toss no matter what sort of protego they throw up unless they toss it back with leviosa or some shit. Plus, you know, they have to actually cast the spell, which is by default, slower than a gun. Gunning them down with a sniper rifle is quite easy too, and they can't do jack shit from long range. Explosives too, plant C4 and bait them, no way they're surviving that.

Remember, the greatest advantage is that they know jack shit about modern muggle weaponry and tactics, even moreso for Moldy Shorts' forces who look down on muggles.

Enchantments focus on magical protection, for obvious reasons. There's just so little physical attacking going on by anyone in wizard society, combine that with disdain for muggle methods, so really only XXXXX creatures are an issue. Thus, I wouldn't be surprised if the auror wear was far worse than thin kevlar, and a pistol could penetrate it.

 

[SlickRCBD]

Going to need a lore check on the whole bouncing an armored knight thing man because we never even see a shield charm used against a physical attack in canon. So to me that's sounding like Rowling throwing lore at the wall after the fact. And honestly I think that's the kind of lore I'd disregard anyway unless it was a specialized shield meant for physical attacks, and not just the most generic shield in the series. And even then the idea that blocking that much force isn't energy intensive would… irk me I guess.

What I mean is don't stand out in the open like the terminator just shooting and shooting while also being a big stationary target.

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The Arresto Momentum spell indicates it's possible to bring incoming bullets to a safe velocity.

 

[Nombies]

Beyond the one moment of levity where Taylor swarms the dumb fuck bragging from behind an Impenetrable shield playing into the whole magic always wins argument feels like agreeing with the villains of the story and frankly fuck that. So yes magic is a ridiculously flexible advantage but it's not going to be an insta win button in a straight fight.

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Well, even if you go with canon magic limitations and say the shield charm really does stop physical attacks forever, there's something to be said for the fact that it's not everyone who can cast it at all. Even further that the one who can may not perform it as well in high stress situations. That whole bit with Harry and the D.A. in OOtP started on the basis that Umbridge stated knowing the theory was enough, and a large portion of the student body strongly disagreed.

Just knowing how to cast the spell isn't enough to make it an instant win button. You gotta know when to cast it, how to cast it quickly, how to leverage it to either escape or fight back, and then quickly do one or the other before you either get tired from holding up the shield or your opponent manages to get around it and flank you. I'm sure there's wizards who can do all that, but there would be a lot more who couldn't. Hogwarts teaches magic, they don't really teach high stress problem solving though. Or quick thinking.

Not everybody is Dumbledore, after all.

(This is also all ignoring that the shield charm doesn't stop someone from sneaking up on you from behind, and that you're not really doing much else while you're holding it up. A lot of the shield charm's value against guns or other physical attacks probably stems from people having never seen it before and not knowing what to do about the big glowy circle.)

 

[Tactical Tunic]

Canonically, 'enchantments' do not actually exist in the Potterverse. The canon equivalent is charms, and a charmed object is 'bewitched', not enchanted.

Someone could certainly charm a gun with all those functions; a gemino charm would do infinite ammo for example, but no magical would ever bother to do so because guns just aren't something that magicals see as a legitimate weapon.

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But taylor would, and might convince Hermione to 'charm' a gun 'provided by' mundungus fletcher, a canonical member of the order of the phoenix.

 

[Fencer]

Alright enough. I try very hard to stand by the audience participation tag because I damn well mean it, but I have had a very long day trying to get my stainless welding qualifications (I haven't failed yet but it's definitely not coming easy) and the vagaries of the HP magic system and where the canon truth lies between the book series, the movies, and lore books which attribute even more nonsense are about enough to have me reaching for a beer, which I am out of.

So let me see if I can boil this down at all, and that is not an invitation to continue this afterwords. I cannot remember any scene in the books in which shield spells are used to stop physical attacks. I vaguely remember Neville killing the snake with the sword while it was in a shield bubble (lore check on that one please). But ok JK wants to attribute shield charms with the ability to stop a one man cavalry charge because every time an author introduces an obscure bit of lore it's done for the express purpose of annoying the fuck out of fanfic writers who had never heard of it before. The shield charm is, according to this lore so versatile that it can basically stop all but three spells in direct confrontation and laughs at physical force, and you too can have this mobile bunker at the cost of ohh 12 hours or less of focused training assuming one is already sufficiently advanced in your studies. and despite a war happening just 14 years prior and knowing round two is breaking out most civilians don't bother to learn it….

*deep breath*

I have problems with this. On several levels. I am not going down that rabbit hole right now.

Fanon at least says the shield charm can be broken by sustained fire or spells of sufficient magnitude and that the casters power and proficiency play a role in how much damage the damn thing can soak up but that's mostly fanon because god forbid JK explain anything clearly.

Magic being ridiculously versatile and breaking every law of physics could be used to stop, redirect, or slow bullets however that is all theoretical and we have no indication anyone bothered to twist existing knowledge to this purpose at this time.

Further spell research and enchanting (laying charms on an object, whichever) are poorly explained and poorly understood. So while the basis for spells that might be used as anti bullet measures exist twisting them to suit the newly required purpose is a process that might take awhile.

If anyone tries to convince me that a wizard can take a bullet to the chest and then safely apparate Away before coming right back ready to fight I will point at them and laugh. Emergency portkey evac I would buy though I doubt it would be good for existing wounds. And if you want them to come back in fighting shape I'm going to estimate anywhere from ten minutes for a flesh wound to multiple hours for organ damage.

I do not have any final answer on how much physical force a shield can take before failing given what you all have said. If you want to make the argument that a competent magical could hold one against automatic rifle fire until their arm got tired then I'm telling you flat out I find that idea to be ridiculous and annoying, see my earlier comment. If you want to make it about intent and conceptual bullshit I'll point out the intent behind the shooter is to kill the asshole behind the shield, and if we're going full blown mysticism that should lend the bullets a metaphysical force, and Taylor does in fact have a bit of magic to her name. So if you wanna give me a migraine about this that's me sharing the love. Enjoy that bit of twisty logic.

In summary I hear you. You've given me a lot to think about, and a headache. Especially given it was a throwaway comment meant to reiterate I'm not going to make this unbalanced in either direction. I also can't imagine a scenario where Taylor actually chooses to stand still and empty a 30 round mag into a shield rather than disappearing into the swarm to shoot them from another angle, or jamming bugs up their nose so they loose focus, or any of a half dozen other probable responses.

 

[jjosua]

Ouch, I know that pain, stainless just loves to distort or burn on you, especially that thin sheet stuff everyone wants to use. I am soooo glad I stuck to aluminum welding, it has its own issues, and you need to know a ton of metallurgy if you want to work with a bunch of alloys, but at least it is easier to work with.

 

[Roth963]

And if you want them to come back in fighting shape I'm going to estimate anywhere from ten minutes for a flesh wound to multiple hours for organ damage.

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Probably also depends on if they are healers or have sufficiently skilled healer nearby, I imagine the theoretical Dumbledore or Voldemort of healing magic can get back from any injury in a minute or two, assuming no KO, but most are stuck using stuff like generic potions or weak spells to recover, which take time.

maybe that brings another idea, a combat medic, emergency portkey to a professional healer who can help you, even if they aren't theoretical healing Dumbledore, it could be life saving.

 

[Fencer]

Ouch, I know that pain, stainless just loves to distort or burn on you, especially that thin sheet stuff everyone wants to use. I am soooo glad I stuck to aluminum welding, it has its own issues, and you need to know a ton of metallurgy if you want to work with a bunch of alloys, but at least it is easier to work with.

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Done a little bit of aluminum but not to the point I'd say I'm proficient. Stainless? It's probably the most anal bit of metal I've ever worked with because if your angle, or speed are off….. it just isn't nearly as forgiving as flux or pulse. Tomorrow I have to figure out how to work it so it'll lay flat enough that my cover passes won't exceed 2/32" *bangs head off the side of the booth*

 

[jjosua]

Done a little bit of aluminum but not to the point I'd say I'm proficient. Stainless? It's probably the most anal bit of metal I've ever worked with because if your angle, or speed are off….. it just isn't nearly as forgiving as flux or pulse. Tomorrow I have to figure out how to work it so it'll lay flat enough that my cover passes won't exceed 2/32" *bangs head off the side of the booth*

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Like all things welding, the only advice I could offer is practice. Ugh, I hate being the one saying it after all the times I've heard it, but it's true. Luckily all of the stainless work I've done is some simple joints for some kitchen equipment. After my first few practice welds, I clamped everything down so hard that nothing could move. I have never worked with such a temperamental, annoying, and twitchy metal before, and I've done some stuff with titanium and magnesium (not fun either).

 

[Fencer]

Like all things welding, the only advice I could offer is practice. Ugh, I hate being the one saying it after all the times I've heard it, but it's true. Luckily all of the stainless work I've done is some simple joints for some kitchen equipment. After my first few practice welds, I clamped everything down so hard that nothing could move. I have never worked with such a temperamental, annoying, and twitchy metal before, and I've done some stuff with titanium and magnesium (not fun either).

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Titanium and magnesium? Hot damn that sounds like a story. Worst I'd done before this was galvanized. Which the thin stuff just wants to melt out from under you and the thick stuff throws the worst sparks but it's somehow not that bad…

And yeah I know practice practice and more practice. Eventually it'll click. Just maybe not fast enough for me to get qualified this time around… instructor is an old guy who could prolly weld a 3/16ths gap blind but ask him what you're doing wrong? "Angles off. Get that angle right."

 

[jjosua]

Titanium and magnesium? Hot damn that sounds like a story. Worst I'd done before this was galvanized. Which the thin stuff just wants to melt out from under you and the thick stuff throws the worst sparks but it's somehow not that bad…

And yeah I know practice practice and more practice. Eventually it'll click. Just maybe not fast enough for me to get qualified this time around… instructor is an old guy who could prolly weld a 3/16ths gap blind but ask him what you're doing wrong? "Angles off. Get that angle right."

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Not much of a story, just repair work mainly car parts. You have to be super careful with oxygen exposure on both of them, cause they burn like crazy with a little bit of air. I dumped them into the sandblaster booth, taped up everything I could, and pumped it full of argon.

Yeah, I've noticed that older CWIs especially are so far removed from when they were learning, that their advice is really generic. I used to spend a ton of time watching youtube videos on every type of welding I could cause some of them gave me good starting points to change things up. I also have a big stack of books on welding, metallurgy, and CWI training to go with my stack of code books. The books are mostly just useful as references, very little technique can be gleaned from them.

 

[kklusmeier]

Ouch, I know that pain, stainless just loves to distort or burn on you, especially that thin sheet stuff everyone wants to use. I am soooo glad I stuck to aluminum welding, it has its own issues, and you need to know a ton of metallurgy if you want to work with a bunch of alloys, but at least it is easier to work with.

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I haven't ever done the welding part, but I worked further down the process for a while. Cleaning the weld stains off it to get it ready for assembly was always an adventure. We had this special acid paste that we had to apply and let dry onto the thing before scraping it off, sometimes multiple times, and even then, there were often spots that just required boatloads of elbow grease.

 

[owrtho]

Applying unbreakable charms to armor is an idea. I'm leery of it because despite running across that charm a lot in fanon I don't really remember it seeing any, and especially not any intelligent use, in canon. That leaves me guessing that it has a limited energy pool and can be worn down with repeated damage. Or that it just doesn't hold long term. Still potentially life saving for short fights so long as no one aims for the head.

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So, not going to get into the shield charm argument, but I can provide a little bit of direction to the closest thing I'm aware of regarding an unbreakable charm in canon. Specifically, it is vaguely referenced in Deathly Hollows when talking about Horcrux.

"Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being."

Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Hermione hurried on, "Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn't damage your soul at all."

"Which would be a real comfort to me, I'm sure," said Ron. Harry laughed.

"It should be, actually! But my point is that whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched," said Hermione. "But it's the other way round with a Horcrux. The fragment of soul inside it depends on its container, its enchanted body, for survival. It can't exist without it."

Click to shrink...

"No," said Ron, before Harry could answer. "So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?"

"Yes," said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if examining rotting entrails, "because it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux."

Click to shrink...

"It doesn't have to be a basilisk fang," said Hermione patiently. "It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can't repair itself. Basilisk venom only has one antidote, and it's incredibly rare—"

"— phoenix tears," said Harry, nodding.

"Exactly," said Hermione. "Our problem is that there are very few substances as destructive as basilisk venom, and they're all dangerous to carry around with you. That's a problem we're going to have to solve, though, because ripping, smashing, or crushing a Horcrux won't do the trick. You've got to put it beyond magical repair."

Click to shrink...

So, the key bits are underlined. There's some rather bad fanon I've seen that claims making something a Horcrux innately makes in nigh indestructible, but going off the actual quotes, it's noted that the creator needs to actually use separate spells to give them their noted durability. We don't get details on these spells, save that basilisk venom is one of the few things that is sure to overcome them (also presumably fiendfyre). Additionally, while they probably result in it being more durable than normal objects, it seems like they may not be unreasonably so. Rather, it sounds like they can generally be damaged but part of the enchantments is making it self repair, which is all well and good for having an unbreakable object, but isn't much comfort to a person who bought an unbreakable shirt to use as armour, only to get stabbed through it and bled out while the hole in the shirt reknit itself to pristine condition.

It's also uncertain if these enchantments (since the book canonically calls them such) can actually persist long term without maintenance on objects that don't have a piece of soul stuck in them. It could be they do, or it could be that the bit of soul provides renewable power. Clearly there's at least some reason that wizards and witches (or at least Voldemort who is known to be able to cast these on account of doing so with his horcrux) don't bother using defensive equipment with these enchantments (though I suppose it could be my previously noted speculation that they focus more on being able to repair the item than keeping it intact at all times which as noted above isn't great for armour that you need intact to keep you intact).

owrtho

 

[Frakir's brother]

In summary I hear you. You've given me a lot to think about, and a headache. Especially given it was a throwaway comment meant to reiterate I'm not going to make this unbalanced in either direction. I also can't imagine a scenario where Taylor actually chooses to stand still and empty a 30 round mag into a shield rather than disappearing into the swarm to shoot them from another angle, or jamming bugs up their nose so they loose focus, or any of a half dozen other probable responses.

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I'd like to note that rather than any of the situations mentioned, the real advantage of guns over spells and against shields is that guns are very simple, far faster than spells, and a mage can only use one spell at a time. Does it matter if a caster can block indefinite numbers of bullets with a shield charm if as soon as they try and go for another spell, the gunner only shoots then? 1v1, guns rule. In a full battle, a gunner can just pick off targets when they go for an offensive spell. And that's with just one modern weapon type.