No, that isn't problem. You have problem with idiot ball. If these scenarios were possible and Voldemort could double his winning chances by spending ten minutes of preparation then you get AU where everybody prepares for battles. If this is possible yet Voldemort doesn't spend extra ten minutes to prepare then he is very big idiot. So if he is smart that only way he didn't prepared in canon is that there are rules that make these impossible.

As you try to argue that mass vanishment is possble then that makes Voldemort even bigger idiot as that contradicts his battles with Dumbedore. If that was possible Voldemort would simply vanish Dumbledore's water or stones that he uses to intercept AK and it would make basically any transfiguration in combat useless. Also don't forget to vanish fire whip.

That also leads to another idiot ball problem, why doesn't everybody carry around ten bludgers that would intercept any spell that goes past shield.

Thats quite flawed, while ability matters what matters more is minimal wage of somebody with minimum OWL requirements (And Weasleys should be more skilled). If transfiguration/gemino would be actual change and permanent then one could make fortune just by using match to needle transfiguration to wooden logs into big needles that he would sell as scrap iron. If it was temporary but kept physical properties one could do similar trick by transforming dirt into coal that would be burned in power plant before it would transform back. One could do similar things with charms, like creating perpetum mobile by attaching broom to alternator and ordering it to go. Or fanfic cliche of getting car wrecks and casting reparo. You would need to forbid everything that would give caster profit of ten cents or more as it would at rate spell per ten seconds give caster 36$ per hour.

They were tame compared to choice of citiy burning or needing to employ most aurors to put them down. With need of obliviation it would overwhelm everybody per ministry which was purpose. If Voldemort wanted to actually harm muggles as objective it would be easiest done by spending that night to get army under imperius and order them to kill rest of the muggles.

Then you need to deal with vast AU when characters will abuse what you added to canon wizards.

And you seriously think that it would help? When opponent could defend versus one direct hit spell then same tactic should apply for any other direct hit spell so its also pointless to switch these unless it provides advantage. HP combat tactics is about creating diversions with conjuration etc. When fighting DE then being hit by anything that could stun you for few seconds should be deadly by follow-up AK. There are differences in rate of fire and how it could penetrate shield but choice should be obvious, fastest spell that could deal with shield randomly mixed with AK to force opponent to dodge everything. If opponent could handle that he could also handle any alternative slower spells that you try to launch to him to make fight look more fancy.

 

Preparation

Your points apply equally to a world with magical exhaustion as a world without, so are somewhat off topic. Yes, there are many ways to use magic to give yourself an edge via preparation with HP magic, and a lot of wizards fail to do so. We can only assume that this is either because the preparation is not quite as useful as it would at first appear (more on this below) or because unless you're planning an ambush it's rare that you'll know in advance that you're going into combat.

The argument you present, I admit, baffles me. You're keen to show that if wizards can come to combat prepared with extensive magical attacks and defences, then they would always win said combat because of their advantage. Since we don't see this in canon, you say it must be that preparation for combat is not possible. What I'm failing to see is how this helps your argument in favour of magical cores/exhaustion.

If anything it works against you. In a world with magical exhaustion, preparation is more useful than in a world without it. That's because if I come to combat prepared with a load of magical tricks which I can use without expending my limited mana points, I have the advantage: my opponent has to use their mana points to defende themselves against said tricks, meaning I'm running down their reserves without expending my own. In contrast, preparation has less utility in a world without magical exhaustion, because my opponent may be distracted by my tricks, but they are not exhausted from defending against them.

So if you want to say that wizards' lack of canonical pre-combat preparation is indicative of anything, it would surely be the opposite to what you propose: it indicates that magical exhaustion is not a factor in combat, otherwise wizards would use preparation tactics more.

To finish off I'd like to invoke an example of combat preparation: the Battle of Hogwarts. Pre-battle, Flitwick and McGonagall both cast spells over the entirety of Hogwarts: Flitwick's defensive enchantments and McGonagall's animation of the statutes. In Flitwick's case he casts a pretty large number of pretty impressive spells, given that they're covering the entire grounds.

Nonetheless, we see both of them fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts apparently unexhausted.

Get rich quick schemes

Again, mostly off-topic as the schemes you propose (transfiguring commodities and selling them, repairing items for money) are equally possible in a world with magical exhaustion. So at best you've pointed out a plot hole in the world building of canon, not any argument to support magical exhaustion.

But in any case I disagree that these are valid schemes. They seem to be on the face of it contrary to the Statute of Secrecy and thus illegal. On top of that, you're vastly overestimating how easy it is to sell commodities. I can't just transfigure myself a few hundred tons of aluminium and find someone to buy it.

There are two main buyers in commodities markets: speculators and trade buyers. Speculators on commodities markets don't have any interest in buying physical commodities, because they're trading in futures, and in any case, to access such markets you'd need a level of presence in the Muggle world that wizards generally lack. Trade buyers who do want the physical commodity generally don't buy one-off stocks of commodities either. They negotiate long term supply contracts with suppliers as well as using futures contracts to hedge against price fluctuations. So they won't be very interested in your pile of aluminium either, even if you knew where to find them in the first place and were able to get an introduction to them.

General rebuttal

Now we come to the actual on-topic arguments you make. They have a common theme so I'm going to focus on that. The general theme is the failure to understand that quality matters much more than quantity in the wizarding world.

This is revealed several times in your post. Your belief that fiendfyre would be a superior spell for Voldemort to use in a duel, for example. Yes, fiendfyre is "big". But if Voldemort's fighting Dumbledore, burning down half of the Ministry in the process isn't going to help him overcome Dumbledore's defences. The size of the fiendfyre doesn't really make a difference to whether he can beat Dumbledore or not. If Dumbledore can defend against the fiendfyre, which seems likely, then more fiendfyre is just going to meet the same fate whenever it comes near him.

High level duelling in HP is more like chess than a physical fight. They use forks, pins, etc. Voldemort's aim is not to outpower Dumbledore but to outsmart him. I encourage you to reread their OotP duel again. The structure of the duel is essentially each of them trying to maneouver into a position where they can finish the fight with a single spell. It's all about casting a spell from one location, apparating, then attempting to deliver a second attack from another angle while the opponent is still dealing with the first. Equally, defending isn't about dispelling attacks but rather turning them around so that they form the next part of your counter. Why vanish a fire whip when you can transfigure it into a snake which forms an attack?

The only real time in the duel where one of them tries to simply overpower the other is Dumbledore's spell which Voldemort uses a silver shield against because he expected the Killing Curse.

This is, I propose, the main reason why preparation is not as useful as it would first appear. It gives you more quantity of magic, but it doesn't make you a better wizard. The quality of your attacks and defences will remain the same, which means a wizard of superior or equivalent quality will still be able to break them with ease. The quantity of magic you have marshalled won't do you much good.

Just look at the different ways Bellatrix and Voldemort coped with Dumbledore's animated guardians. When Dumbledore sent one of them after Bellatrix, she sent innumerable spells to try to destroy it but could not. Whenever one of Voldemort's spells impacted the guardians, they were instantly destroyed. Voldemort is of equivalent quality to Dumbledore, Bellatrix is not. So to return to the preparation issue, consider if Dumbledore had arrived at the fight with another 20 guardians. What would be different? Nothing. Bellatrix still wouldn't be able to overcome them, Voldemort would still be able to blast them apart with ease.

Dumbledore definitely acts in accordance with this, since he never attempts to use the guardians to attack Voldemort like he sent them after Bellatrix. He knows that would be futile. Against Voldemort, he uses them purely defensively.

 

Snapdragon

There doesn't need to be a difference in "power" to create disparity between wizards. A difference of intelligence, predispositions is enough. Smarter wizards can be better at magic. At the same time, someone can be less smart, but be naturally predisposed to be better at magic. You can play around with character of wizards: a witch like Luna, who seems to be high most of the time and a wizard like Neville who, much like Harry, draws his strength from determination, but both are capable at magic.

Inventing magical cores for the purpose of creating different "tiers" of wizards is awfully unromantic in my opinion. And while Taure proposes the skill&knowledge interpretation, one has to remember that skill and knowledge aren't so shallow as to only be the function of how much you study, because then Hermione would be the most powerful witch at Hogwarts after the staff. There's a lot to work with that's already there and that's why I find no reason to include magical cores at all.

 

Thats false, with ME you couldn't prepare much or you couldn't even cast lumos in battle. As ambush situations that cover all larger DE battles where they had days to plan and prepare, and certainly couldn't animate hundred statues to help each person.

You need to answer why preparing isn't possible. It surely isn't because wizgamot law 432e5.

Doesn't work for simple reason that you already spend your mp so you wont save anything. Also it focus on wrong factor, one uses preparation to overwhelm opponent defenses, ie Dumbledore sends 101 statues at Voldemort which kills him as he could only cast 100 spells to destroy them. Also it effectively doubles prepared casters spell rate as he doesn't have to cast defensive spells and decreases opponents as he would need to defend.

Again that doesn't quite work as Voldemort could also tell his DE to animate trees which would outmatch McGonagall. Also this begs a question how did wizards lost first war? She with Dumbledore could protect everybody in MoM, DA, Hogsmeade, Godrick's Hollow versus raids by recasting animation to keep 1000 statues armies at all these locations. There is more probable alternate explanation why this aren't widespread defenses is that these were defensive mechanisms that absorbed mana for centuries and what McG and Flitwick did wasn't more taxing than just pressing a button to activate them.

That isn't off topic as you commented that with unlimited spellcasting there isn't easy spell that would bring ten cent profit or more. That would equal to 250 dollars per day. With ME one could cast same spell maybe 30 times and get whooping three dollars.

I didn't wrote this as get rich quick scheme but as a sweatshop. If wizards trade with muggles these would be minimal wage jobs so anything other should pay more. Real get rich quick schemes are passing borders under notice-me-not charm with kilograms of heroin or stock exchange trade with time turners/memory charm rich elders to make you heir.

No, thats mostly your belief based on writing fights by the rule of cool instead actually thinking what would happen. While quality matter it could be defeated by sufficient quantity. Without only limitation being speed of casting that quantity is relatively easy to produce given enough preparation. That is unless you go in way like: Dumbledore has magical core size 1353. His protego deflect every spell of everybody with core less than 1253. That doesn't work without creating super-Dumbledore that could cast 100 spells per second to handle 100 different threats.

My first argument was using 100 conjured snakes, 100 animated statues, 100 bludgers aimed at Dumbledore preferably at same time by Voldemort.

You countered that by saying that Dumbledore could easily avoid that. But you didn't explain exactly how without allowing other wizards to do same. You added his vanish-all spell that apparently could be used only by him and takes fraction second not to slow him much versus stream of enchanted objects. Otherwise Bellatrix could easily undo any of his transfigurations fraction of second. He couldn't apparate near to Voldemort as bludgers form a grid so he would get near of one and got hit.

Except that I never said that. As it was in content of muggle/wizard affairs it reffered to his attacks at mugges/wizard homes. There fiendifre would quickly destroy homes of all his opponents and aurors couldn't react and cast countercurses in many locations in time.

Thats your interpretation, mine is that it was mainly written to look cool. For moment forget about obvious plothole that if apparating in MoM is possible why they fought in first place instead of side-alonging Harry+co into safety. This sequence shows that Bellatrix could be defeated by physical attack which with allowing apparating trivializes combat and means that Voldemort should be quickly defeated in first place.

With this dominant strategy would be train wizard pairs trained for one person stabbing with sword/fires from crossbow with basilisk venom arrows while second side-alongs him next to target to stab him into the neck exact moment they appear. Then Voldemort wouldn't have time to react and clashes with apparation would quickly turned into bloodbath with DD and VM quickly assasinated.

But you didn't provide any arguments why. So instead of just claiming what you believe could you provide answer why these scenarios won't work? Also could you answer v2 version why it wouln't help if Voldemort provides conjured snakes... to everybody or Dumbledore provides invicible animated statues to support OOTP.

Facepalm. Even with guardians 50m away at rate two spells per second Voldemort needs 10s to destroy them all while he is being hit by fire whip or dodging DD stunners and if guardians start to run they will reach him before that. If he could do that significantly faster then he should use that machine-gun spell as it would be practically undodgeable.

 

Wow. We have a Trump in the thread, guys!

 

Nah, too eloquent. Besides, he isn't wrong about the apparition thing or even the get rich schemes from a logical standpoint, but there wouldn't be much of a story if a random guy goes and kills Voldemort from behind. The rest, though...

 

Wow. I know Taure is god-emperor of canon but comparing him to Trump's delusions of being god-emperor of America is really rude.

 

~snip

To sum up my answer for you. Magical core is not necessary because while there is a problem of unlimited casting, there's also the problem of the quality of spells.

As Fake-Moody said in GoF, they may cast AK on them all day long but all they will have to show for it will be nose-bleeds and not the actual effect of the spell.

Therefore, a good writer will take advantage of this limitation instead of using the "magical core" crutch.

Magic in HP isn't merely saying "abra-cadabra" and getting the best result of the spell. Spells require focus, intent, emotions, understanding etc. etc.

Simply put, in your video game terms, a lvl. 1 Fireball skill will never beat a lvl. 10 Fireball. It's all about understanding of one-self and the spell you're gonna use in HP. Not only that, wizards are also limited by their knowledge of spell-work, wand-movements and incantations as Taure has said.

tl;dr
Magical core is a crutch and no self-respecting good author would use it if they have a very good understanding of HPverse.

 

As soon as I saw the Thread Title, I was expecting a copious compendium of Taure, and I was not disappointed.

 

I'm not sure who misunderstood whom, but it's not Taure I was ridiculing, it was thonez. Because, in case you missed it, he was spouting some amazingly stupid stuff.

 

Scott, Embro is joking.

 

Kinda, I mean Taure is god emperor of all things canon.

 

Yeah, my bad. I was sure there was miscommunication, wasn't sure on whose part. Turns out it was me.

 

No worries I know I'm not that funny, I need to work on that.