I've come to notice that, well magic duels and fights seem to be letting me down lately, even the ones i used to really like. I think i may have spotted the potential reason behind this, within the genre i read.

Generally i like independent or AU's where Harry trains and studies alot to be powerful. But behind all the power the same strategy is almost always put into play: Fire off as many deadley cureses as you can, and in the case that you dont know deadley curses shoot off lots of stunners and such. So at the end of the day the victor either A: Lucked out and was able to block spells using his environment (hiding behind tables and such), B: Had a better vocabulary of shields, or C: Had more power to Hold said shields longer.

So in every case it comes down to who screwed up their shield first.

So i was I was wondering what type of dueling techniques would you guys like to see used? Personally i like the idea of transfiguration fighting the best. and using spells that effect the environment to your advantage.

I think we all know the advantage of transfiguration, litterally everything can become your weapon, and you can attack on mulitple fronts. Second though, using spells that effect your surroundings instead of your opponent directly would be cool. Forcing the target to shield more than you by narrowing down his paths of escape by making ditches around him, or trying to freeze part of the ground around him without him notcing so he slips or something giving you that second to catch him off guard.

Another thing that gets my however is how theres practically a universal shield for everything. Someone fires a bonebreaker, "protegro"!, a slashing curse, "Protegro"!, a super powerful slashing curse cast by voldemort, "Protegro Maximus"! I dont see the point in having Harry learn all these cool dark arts spells and things that mutilate the opponent when theres practically no chance they'll get through the "protegro" to begin with.
So I'de personally like to see some more thought out spell work in this regard if the duels do stay how they are (bombardment with tons of nasty curses). Maybe have certain shields to certain spells, so you have to put in the same work blocking as the attacker does attacking. Maybe have instant efect curses that cant be blocked, but have to be countered while they effect you. Stuff like that could get me into a duel.

 

Well yes ill agree that generally the fics DLP turns out have pretty good fight scenes, that just seems to be the nature of fics here.

But i usually do alot of searching on FF.net and i see it alot. For instance, i recall reading a fic a couple days ago that was pretty good but Voldemorts spell chain to get to Lilly was something along the lines of

Reducto! Accio broom! Avada Kedavra! Sectumsempra! Casumsempra! Dispello! Iactumsempra!"


I see ZERO strategy in the line up of spells. And i wasn't aware that Casumsempra and Iactumsempra were even spells.... Just useless garbage the author tosses in the fill up some space.

And its not really just a complaint to badly written fics, i happen to see stuff like this in many fics above average in quality. Battle scenes to me seems to be diminishing in quality across the board, especially since the recent invasion of fangirls and boys doing indi fics with manipulative dumbeldore. Just hoping to get some ideas moving to spice things up a bit.

EDIT: Another thing that crossed my mind was the supreme overuse of Reducto. Im sure everyones seen the scenes where seperate sides hide behind walls an DE's send AK's while the order and other lighties send Reducto's.
Why AK and reducto? Why not summon and explosive gas, blow it to em and light it up. Why not some kind of blazing fire to flush them out of their hiding spot. Why not a mass attempt of evenasco or something similar to vanish the wall there behind?

 

I would like to see flurries of spells that correlate with each other.

Like first a cutting spell to make a wound. Then maybe like an acid spell of some type so he can't fix the wound. After that, make a blood thinning spell so it won't stop bleeding, etc.. Not just random spells. Also, I think that these spells would go out pretty fast.. so not every spell could be blocked. The spell would hit him/her before they could produce a shield. and not every battle would be that long winded. Not everyone has superb reflexes or completely knows the environment in which they are fighting in. They will mess up.

 

I absolutely HATE the Sectumsempra spell nowadays in a lot of these fics. I mean, it goes from being a pretty cool schoolboy cutting curse that Snape created/found somewhere and wrote it down, into Voldemort's chosen spell. After 40 years of dark arts training, you'd think he'd have found some more interesting/powerful spells then that. Not to mention the fact that he always seems to have to shout it out in some of these fics, with no silent casting. Reducto is stupid too, I mean, Harry learned that spell in what? Fourth year? And suddenly it causes people to explode on contact? Jeez.

 

Well, it did reduce a chair to dust in OOTP, so it can't be all that bad.

I dislike making new spells for the sake of originality in the first place. It seems incredibly corny.

 

making up new spells can be a pain in the ass. Especially when you use so many that the reader has NO IDEA what your even casting. However I see no reason why we shouldn't expect an expert duelist to use modified versions of spells, or better more complicated versions. The idea that magical education stops at the seventh year of Hogwarts is lame.

I personally would be very let down if these ultra feared wizards such as Voldemort were mostly limited to Canon based spells. What would there be to fear?

Besides that point, not every spell cast has to be spelled out for the reader. Telling the ready you vanished the wall is plenty, no need to go looking cool new spells to explain that.

 

^-- wouldn't be a problem if we had more spells to work with. SO far we have the unforgivables, Snapes spells, And the tri wizard spells... not an amazing list.

 

Reducto is the most powerful destroying spell in canon, thats why its used so much. Cazten could you tell me what the two variations of the sectumsempra curse do? Because if it has got a latin/greek/whatever etymology then I could consider them viable spells. After all, if an incantation works for a spell, its should be able to change slightly for different effects. Its a spell hierarchy I'm working on for my next fic.

On the dueling scene, yeah battle scenes are going down the drain but its bloody difficult to do one realistically and canon spells are very lacking in the incantation department, and even non-verbal spells need enunciating in the mind. So you either have to use english words and translate them, which doesn't always make sense in a normal latin phrase (though I tend to use pig-Latin which is better), or find some good magical phrases in foreign languages. Abracadabra is widely held to be Aramaic for "to create as I speak" (though it could be derived from other things).

Aekiel

 

No i dont know what those two variations of sectumsempra do. I do agree they could possibly be turned into spells. The problem in that we the audience have ZERO idea at what it was. There was no introdution to the spells. There was know small explanation of what the effect was when it hit. And seing how every other spell that was thrown in that line had no strategy or meaning of order, I concluded that it was useless filler to make the dark lord sound cool.

Making new spells and using them can be cool. On the spot making of useless spells to fill space is not.

But like i was saying earlier, an author doesn't need to pronounce every word out loud or in the characters head to show that a spell was cast.

You can simply say

Harry conjured a sheet of ice
Harry cast a slashing hex at his oponent.
Harry blasted a hole at his opponents feet.
Ect.

Im personally not really a fan of writing specific spell names unless it has special meaning to do so, and im sure the audience is aware of what the spells does. So that would probably include maybe some specific curses and stuff that I have Harry like to use, maybe some specialized shields and other tactics Harry uses.

I have no need to tell the readers that Harry used a reducto to blow up a wall when i can just explain he blew it up. But i might show he used a reducto on the wall if by some magical feat it was absorbed by a swirling black cloud, and i wanted the readers to start seing that particular branches of magic were useless against the swirling clouds. Get what I mean?

But anyway i think i've strayed off topic a bit heh.

 

But otherwise, we have Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters using the same shitty spells (unforgivables, Sectumsempra, and the infamous Reducto! curse) over and over. They are dark wizards; they should have a spell repertoire different to that of Hogwarts' students.

I like the idea of using your surroundings in a fight- animating nearby objects, changing the terrain around your opponents feet, that kind of thing. Much better than the standard Avada Kedavra! Stupefy! (dodge) Crucio! Protego! Stupefy! type duels.

 

I'm making a concerted effort to adress this in my next few battle scenes. It's one thing I can never do right.

I like duels that focus more on repetoire or creativity. Why only use those few spells learned in Defense? Use the entire curriculum. Cojure then banish stuff, Transfigure nearby objects into animals to attack, animate the furniture, summon things behind your opponent, cast cheering charms to make them overconfident, etc...

There is so much you can do with canon magic that we rarely see. After all, what is the point of transfiguration as a subject? Who will ever need to turn a guinea pig into a guinea fowl? Or a pincushion into a hedgehog? Unless you get off on torturing animals, those are only useful as building up to human trans/animagus or in duels.


Imagine the scene, a home break in by DE's. The housewife was never great with deadly spells, but she remembers that pincushion/hedgehog/porcupine trick and engorgement charms pretty well. In a flash she has a six foot tall spiny armored watchdog to fight off the invaders. A chihuahua can become a rotwieller, a BIG rotwieller! Anyone who can animate her kitchen knives to prepare food (as we've seen Mrs Weasley do) can sic them on invaders just as well.

 

Shield spells are used as a get out clause for people that cant be bothered to think on counter curses.

I always got the impression from canon that each curse, jynx or hex had a counter curse. That is why I like Harry learning the dark arts, not just so he can use them, but so he can recognise a spell and defend himself appropriatly.

 

Yeah, and canon has what? 8 dueling spells? Get real, there is no way that in the entire world of magic that a fourth year spell is the most powerful explosive curse/hex. There has to be TONS of others and better ones, otherwise Voldemort wouldn't have bothered travelling the world learning magic after Hogwarts. Plus, having every dueling spell out there widely known by every wizard in Britain through Hogwarts is just lazy and stupid.

 

It all comes down to Rowling, she never really gave a long list of spells to work with. During the whole duel with Voldemort in the 5th book, we never read about any incantation being said by Dumbeldore or Voldemort. I think she does not have the talent to make up any new spells. There is nothing for authors to work with. The only book with a number of spells in it was goblet of fire after that, the books went downhill.

 

If I remember right Harry learnt the reducto spell for the Tri wizard. Him Ron and Hermione learnt a bunch of special spells from books in the library. SO not everyone at hogwarts would know it. Maybe he taught the DA maybe not we don't know. It could be a rather good spell that they learnt well befroe they shoudl since it was extra work. But I do doubt it is the be all and end all of explosion spells.

 

I have to admit to making up new spells, not necessarily in battle, but overall.

The trick to any expansion is moderation. I'm more turned off by someone shouting a string of 10 new curses that I have no clue about. For someone to flick their wand, say an incantation, and then show me the effects - now that, I like. Sometimes I don't even require an incantation. Why should Harry have to tell us what the curse is? As long as it's demonstrated, I don't have a problem.

I wrote my first dueling scene a while back, and I was quite proud of it. I would definitely love to see more use of terrain in duels - so many times people just fire spells. When was the last time someone tripped on a rock?

 

Making up new spells is as fine as A) Their not like "Snufflufugus And the effect is that it makes the persons intestines light on fire B) You give some insight into the spell "Acror-Testae" The vicous spell struck Harry on the shoulder, the breaking sounds of bones audible to all around, Harry tried to raise his wand arm to return fire but he only managed to inflict more damage to his already mangled body.

Something like that but actually well done, then you're doing something new but also not just confusing the fuck out of your readers.

C) This is basically the same as B but with household charms and the like a description is generally given anyway, because authors explain what they've cleaned fixed etc.

D) You actually see the spell being learnt, so if Harry learns the spell, a description is usually given by the person teaching the spell.

 

He learned it in Fourth Year. It was what he used on the maze bushes when Cedric was being tortured. As far as I can tell it was one of the spells Hermione looked up for him to use. I have no idea how it is classified.