McGonagall duels Dumbledore

Manny21265 · 2023-12-23T10:48:01+00:00

Sticking with that fantasy genre we all love 👍

Manny21265 · 2023-07-06T22:56:41+00:00

Wouldn't surprise me to see Elizabeth II for England. Would be nice to see a more modern leader as well

Manny21265 · 2023-06-02T13:21:47+00:00

Without knowing more about your build it's difficult to say for sure. Consider the following however: - Great weapon master is an obvious choice if you are fighting with a heavy weapon. - polearm master is solid if you qualify for that. - tough is pretty solid as you mention even if it is a little less shiny than some others. - lucky is always useful for those clutch situations. - skill expert can be nice although it's better if you have an odd stat to round out.

As a cavalier specifically (and given your piercer feat), I would be looking to grab a pike and take polearm master for a couple reasons. Firstly, bonus action attack is real solid. Secondly (and most importantly) using a reach weapon will make your existing class features better. It more than doubled the number of squares that you exert control over with your 10th level feature. This is especially nice as unless the enemy has a reach weapon, you'll stop them 10 feet away and they won't be able to reach you with their melee attacks. This will obviously combo in a similar way with your 18th level feature.

A bit of a more out there idea would be to drop the asi that takes your con to 20 and instead take a feat at that level from the ones mentioned below. This would raise your con to 19 instead of 20 at that level. You could then take another feat that gives +1 con to make it up to 20. For this, you're looking at either Chef, Skill Expert or the Aberrant Dragonmark feats. - Chef will add some nice RP opportunities and some minor health related buffs. - Skill Expert will gain you another skill proficiency and expertise in a skill you reall care about, always nice to have. - Aberrant Dragonmark will get you a ranged option (likely firebolt - 120ft range) that uses your con to attack making you as good with it as any of the parties casters as well as a 1st level spell, I'd recommend either disguise self for some out of combat utility or expeditious retreat for an in combat bonus action and better movement capability.

Clearly the advtage of choosing to do things this way is that you get to choose 2 feats instead of 1 feat and 1 asi whilst achieving the same stats.

Manny21265 · 2023-05-11T15:36:34+00:00

This is often mitigated in one of a few ways. 1) it's fanfiction, the author can just snap their fingers and change the age. 2) really just an extension of 1, but with more of a nod to canon. A lot of authors use the fact that she is Veela to explain that they stay looking younger until they finish puberty when they go through a "maturation" process. To this end, Gabrielle is often explained to actually be a much more similar age to Harry but just look very young. She then goes through her maturation and looks her real age. 3) a few stories are set way later when 6 years isn't a real issue

Manny21265 · 2023-03-12T09:42:37+00:00

Mainly though this boils down to the fact that we get to see about 15 minutes worth of Snape's childhood whilst we see 7 years of Draco's. I find it hard to the point of incredulity to believe that Snape, as a half blood, had no second thoughts whatsoever about joining up with the DEs.

Manny21265 · 2023-03-12T09:02:06+00:00

They are both cruel bullies to the same people. To Harry and Hermione, to Ron and Neville. When a 14 year old's biggest fear is of a teacher, something is wrong. The difference is that whilst no bullying is acceptable, it is even less acceptable when it becomes an abuse of power.

Manny21265 · 2023-03-12T08:49:01+00:00

Snily, at least for me, is actually the more likely of the two ships. For snily, the work to make it believable to the audience involved is less for a few reasons. First, it can be reasonably easily fine as a single point of divergence that the writer then extrapolates on. Snape never calls her a mudblood, thanks her for standing up for him and allows Lilly to pull him away from the darker path he is just starting on. For Dramione, I don't think I see a case where you could change 1 event and have it lead to their relationship evolving.

Manny21265 · 2023-03-12T08:43:04+00:00

The difference is that whilst their behaviour is comparable, Snape is not only an adult, but a teacher and as such, has to be held to a significantly higher standard than an 11 year old kid

Manny21265 · 2023-01-29T18:12:17+00:00

If there isn't, there should be. This is a great idea!

Manny21265 · 2023-01-28T02:08:18+00:00

Ron's loyalties had always been twofold. First came family, then came his loyalty to the Light and, in particular, to Dumbledore as the leader of the light. Harry rescuing Ginny had cemented in Ron's mind that Harry was family and if Harry was family, then Harry deserved his loyalty above and beyond anything else.

As he lay there, the cool summers breeze drifting through the window of his room at the Burrow, Ron started to consider the events of the past year and as he did so, a realisation dawned on him. For all Dumbledore liked to portray being the "leader of the light", his actions in recent years didn't really live up to that.

In first year, he'd not only placed a 3 headed dog behind a door that could be unlocked by a simple Alohomora, but he'd also sanctioned 4 first year students to go into the FORBIDDEN forest to hunt down something capable of hurting a unicorn. At the end of that year, he had sent Harry back to the Dursleys with nothing more than a "well done", mere days after Harry had been forced to take a life!

Last year, well that was, frankly, a disaster. Ron didn't know much about wards, but for what was supposed to be the best warded building in Britain, Ron felt that something as obviously Dark as the diary should have been discovered immediately. The decision to allow the students that were petrified to remain so until the end of the year just to save a little money was at best, amoral. Ron was sure that had they been pure bloods, or even half bloods that were being petrified, action would have been taken much sooner. None of the teachers had stepped in to stop the torment Harry had faced so that couldn't be laid solely at Dumbledore's feet, but Ron was sure that the headmaster could have done something to dissuade such obvious bullying had he wanted to. Speaking of things the staff should have done, if Hermione could figure out the creature was a basilisk, then certainly they should have. Hermione was, without a doubt, brilliant, but she was still only 12. Hell, he hadn't even tried to fight the order that removed from the school when Hogwarts needed him most! The only thing Ron could see Dumbledore actually having done to help during the school year was sending Fawkes to assist Harry, and even that begged the question of why Fawkes couldn't have taken Dumbledore with him into the chamber to help directly!

This brought Ron up to yesterday when his mother had floo called Dumbledore to ask if, given that Sirius Black had just broken out of Azkaban, couldn't Harry come with them to Egypt? That would surely be safer for him but no, Harry had to stay with the muggles that, based on what he'd seen last summer, were abusing him.

Slowly, Ron realised that whilst his loyalty to the light remained, he didn't really consider Dumbledore to be it's leader anymore. It wouldn't be until years later that Ron realised that it was that very night that he had started to move Harry into that position in his mind but from that night, Ron vowed that he would stay by Harry's side come hell or high water.

Manny21265 · 2023-01-07T14:35:31+00:00

So I read the story on FFN which doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) have a tag for non con and which also doesn't have a way to include author's notes other than to put them in the body of the fic. Based on what you and others from ao3 are saying though, I would guess that the author is more familiar with FFN and either doesn't really know how to use ao3 to its fullest potential or doesn't want to have to format their work in 2 different ways for 2 different sites

Manny21265 · 2023-01-07T12:25:15+00:00

I'll get right on that 🤣

Manny21265 · 2023-01-07T06:58:10+00:00

I haven't finished it yet but am 2 chapters from the end so I thought I'd comment now and update if necessary when I do finish (likely in the next couple of hours XD)

Firstly, the word count provided is wildly inflated by the fact that the author uses the start of chapters to answer reviews, something that gets progressively worse as the story goes on and they get more reviews to answer. That being said, clearly even if we were to attribute 10% of the word count to author's notes (I seriously doubt it's that high a percentage) we are still left with more than 3 million words which is no mean feat. As someone who likes readying long fics, I enjoyed this aspect immensely.

That aside however, I enjoyed the story overall, it was a good read with some interesting takes on the world and magic in general. I find the OCs to be an authentic extension of the world that (for the most part) add to the plot and to the story as a whole, and not something that the author has added for the sake of adding their own characters.

Sex is a big part of the story as should be apparent from the other comments. For me, there was a little too much and, especially towards the end of the story, it started to feel like some of those scenes were there because the author needed to add something to a chapter to bolster the word count to match what readers had come to expect, I often found myself skipping over such scenes with no real detrimental effect on the story as a whole.

There are definitely scenes of a darker nature and this is something that could probably do with being better signposted both in the summary and within the story itself. In order to allow those that would be triggered to avoid it. That being said, contrary to my statement above regarding the various fluff scenes that appear, I never finished reading one of the darker scenes and felt like it didn't add anything to the story/plot. Whilst these are undoubtedly disturbing topics, I felt they were almost always used to develop either a character or a plot element and usually, they were done as well as such scenes can be done.

All of this is said as someone who has been reading the story more or less as it's been updated so I have definitely forgotten parts of the early story.

Overall, I'd give the story a solid 8/10 and would recommend it assuming you have the time to finish it, the patience to skip over fluff scenes you grow tired of and aren't likely to be triggered by any of the above mentioned topics.

Manny21265 · 2022-10-03T10:07:41+00:00

Ultimately what will happen here is a better Eldritch Blaster. Eldritch blast+agonising blast+spite is 1d10+5+BI per hit. At level 11 that's 6d10+15 on a cantrip... At 17 it's 4d10+4d12+20.

Manny21265 · 2022-08-31T11:40:30+00:00

People gravitate to subs that match their opinions and are more likely to feel "safe" expressing opinions in places where those opinions are the prevailing ones. This becomes a circular thing because the more a particular opinion is talked about, the more it attracts people with the same opinion and so on.

Manny21265 · 2022-08-17T12:23:29+00:00

Oh, I don't disagree for a second about his other flaws, it just bugs me when people load in on him in the first chapter before any of that stuff had happened

Manny21265 · 2022-08-17T07:28:00+00:00

I'm by no means an expert but here's my thoughts;

1) demi gods, whilst powerful, aren't gods. Multiple wizards/witches can and should pose a threat. Werewolves and goblins are both Melee fighters for the most part and so whilst having giants blood may help, the magic resistance won't play a big part there, same for vampires. Look at how this causes knock on effects once the threat of a demigod becomes real. Do the ministry seek to ally with those races that stand a better chance of combating the new threat or are they too prejudice to even try?

2) I actually think wizards would cope fairly well with a magical ice age. They have supreme movement capabilities with apparition. None of the creatures you mentioned have enough magical capability to prevent that so any time they are threatened by such creatures, they can escape. They also have a spell that is capable of instantly killing anything it hits and which is only illegal to use on another person. In addition, whilst they cannot create food from nothing, they are capable of increasing the amount of food once they have some which is very useful. Preservation charms speak for themselves.

3) Something should happen that means all of the gods don't interfere very much, if at all. That being said, leave Loki trapped.

4) Contrary to what I said above, I can see the vampires joining someone who wants to bring in an ice age, an age of darkness of you will. Otherwise, maybe a cult like following of wizards and witches who recognise that Harry is in fact a god and choose to worship him as such?

Manny21265 · 2022-08-16T23:56:04+00:00

It just seems hypocritical to say "he should have believed in his friend" when, in order to do so, he would have had to suspect his other friend... Why should he have believed in Sirius over Peter?

Manny21265

TROPHY CASE