Harry Potter magic question

[Grey_Wolf_c]

True. It being British in origin, Quidditch is likely intended as a farcical exaggeration of cricket. There's still no good comparison to the isolated function of the Seeker in any real-world sport I can think of, though.

That's due to the nature of having three types of ball in the game. The beaters too are "doing their own thing" in that they don't participate in the primary objective of moving the red ball to the hoop. But that's why I think more of american football than anything else: there are entire reams of players who are never expected to touch the ball. Their participation is entirely to block or engage other players who likewise don't ever expect to pick up the ball but whose purpose is to sack the quarterback. Why, you could almost describe the quarterback as a second ball in an entire secondary game being played parallel to the "get the ball across the line on one end".

But on the other hand, it is the beaters that tie everything together: because they have to keep their interest in defending and attacking other players, the fact that there are two concurrent games going on makes their participation diffuse. That way, they can't gang up on just the person(s) pursuing one type of ball, because they risk their team getting beat on the other ballgame. We then see the strategical side of the game emerge, one that comes up often in the books: do the Weasley twins concentrate on defending Harry, or the rest of the team? In the regular games, they try to do both. In special occasions, they have to defend Harry (e.g. from the rogue bludger in book 2) and that means the rest of the team, left out to hang, is easy pickings, etc.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

Harry has on more than one occasion chosen to ignore the search for the snitch in order to assist the other team members - cannoning towards a groups of attackers to defend the person carrying the quaffle, for example. So they are allowed to do so. It is roughly equivalent to a football goalkeeper running upfield to participate in, say, a corner kick.

Is "vegetable strategy" a term I don't recognize, or a really weird auto-correct error?

Grey Wolf

[Kantaki]

Does the seeker need to be isolated, though? Can they not ignore the snitch, which itself is very hard to find, let alone capture, and play with the object of helping the rest of the team at a one player advantage? How well this would work as a vegetable strategy is up in the air, since it gives the other seeker a significant advantage of being unopposed.

I would expect an rules patch after the first time someone tries (tried?) this.
I mean there's a explicit rule that forbids wielding a battle-axe, so there's precedent.
So either it has been done and was subsequently forbidden, or it isn't forbidden but no wizard has thought about it.
The latter wouldn't surprise me.
HP-wizards usually compare unfavourably to rocks when it comes to thinky stuff.
There's a reason Snape expected his puzzle to protect the Stone after all.

Also, „vegetable strategy” ...
Now I'm picturing Sayans playing Quidditch.

[warty goblin]

Note also that quidditch is very much structured in terms of seasons or years, and how much you win by matters at least as much as who actually wins. So that opens up a substantial realm of defensive snitch play as well; which, while still isolated from the rest of the game to a high extent, does add quite a bit of strategy.

[Aeson]

I would expect an rules patch after the first time someone tries (tried?) this.
I mean there's a explicit rule that forbids wielding a battle-axe, so there's precedent.
So either it has been done and was subsequently forbidden, or it isn't forbidden but no wizard has thought about it.
The latter wouldn't surprise me.
HP-wizards usually compare unfavourably to rocks when it comes to thinky stuff.
There's a reason Snape expected his puzzle to protect the Stone after all.

Also, „vegetable strategy” ...
Now I'm picturing Sayans playing Quidditch.

One, the Seeker helping out other players on the team is something that Harry is shown to do in several matches at Hogwarts.

Two, the 'standard' hockey team in play is three offense, three defense, one goalie. There is nothing in the rules, however, that says that the team has to be three offense, three defense, and a goalie, and there are occasions when real-world professional hockey teams will pull the goalie and put an extra forward into play. If I recall correctly, a similar thing is done in professional football/soccer games, when the keeper goes forward to lend a hand to the offense. It hasn't resulted in a "rules patch" in the real world, because it is a risky strategy - by pulling your goalie or sending your keeper up the field, you lend your offense a hand but compromise your defense. Sending the Seeker to help the Chasers out is a similarly risky strategy, because it prevents the Seeker from focusing on catching the Snitch, which ends the game.

More than that, though, sending the Seeker to help the Chasers out is probably even more risky a strategy than pulling the goalie in hockey or sending the keeper forward in football/soccer, because any goal in hockey or football/soccer is worth just as much as any other goal and does not deny the other team any points (except inasmuch as there is only one puck/ball in play and the puck/ball cannot simultaneously be at both ends of the rink/field). Catching the Snitch, though, not only scores 150 points for your team but also denies the other team 150 points and additionally prevents any future goals from being scored, because the game ends as soon as (it is recognized that) the Snitch is caught. Catching the Snitch is thus, essentially, a 30-goal swing at the end of the game; pulling your Seeker off Seeker-duty to help your Chasers out would thus be extremely risky unless you're at least 16 goals ahead or more than 14-15 goals behind, and if you're more than 16 goals ahead then your Chasers probably don't need the help anyways and if you wanted to manipulate things to rack up point totals you'd probably be better off leaving your Seeker on Seeker-duty with priority on preventing the other Seeker from catching the Snitch than pulling him or her off Seeker-duty to help the Chasers. I can't really see any good reason for anyone to implement a "rules patch" to prevent the Seeker from assisting other parts of the team. I could see someone implementing a "mercy" rule such that the game ends when one team is more than X goals ahead of the other team regardless of whether or not the Snitch has been caught, both because there is a point beyond which the team which is behind ceases to have a realistic chance of recovering and because it would prevent a dominant team from dragging out games to manipulate season point totals (assuming that that matters, which is suggested to be the case for the Hogwarts Cup matches in some of the later books).

[keybounce]

I was definitely under the impression from the original books that Quiddich made sense if you looked at total points scored over the year rather than individual games won.

If the two tops teams are both at 1 loss, then both teams have had the same amount of seeker points, and the winner is the better team, not the better seeker.

[Fyraltari]

The role of the seeker never bothered me as much as the fact that Quidditch is a game played by moving at dozens of kmh while up in the air on a broomstick while other players throw homing missiles (non-explosive ones but still) at you with baseball bats without (to my memory) any protecting gear!

How are the casualty rates that low?

[Kantaki]

The role of the seeker never bothered me as much as the fact that Quidditch is a game played by moving at dozens of kmh while up in the air on a broomstick while other players throw homing missiles (non-explosive ones but still) at you with baseball bats without (to my memory) any protecting gear!

How are the casualty rates that low?

Wizard are friggin tough and have very good healthcare.

[Fyraltari]

Wizard are friggin tough and have very good healthcare.

The fact that said healthcare is not good enough to bring the dead back to life is kind of a plot point though.

[Gnoman]

It is canon that wizards in the HP-verse are much more durable than normal humans, probably through some sort of instinctive magic use. Neville's first bit of magic was bouncing down the street after being dropped out of a second-story window, and Harry suffers nothing more than a broken arm from a very long fall in book 2.


It is established in book 1 that Quidditch players very rarely die.

[Yuki Akuma]

Wizards spontaneously perform wild magic when in sufficient danger - it's, as stated, how Neville was even recognised as a wizard and not a squib in the first place. It's more often seen in young children but there's nothing that states it stops happening after you start learning formalised spells.

[deuterio12]

It is canon that wizards in the HP-verse are much more durable than normal humans, probably through some sort of instinctive magic use. Neville's first bit of magic was bouncing down the street after being dropped out of a second-story window, and Harry suffers nothing more than a broken arm from a very long fall in book 2.


It is established in book 1 that Quidditch players very rarely die.

Yep, wizards follow cartoon rules that simple falls/blunt force trauma is basically nonlethal.

[Peelee]

Harry has on more than one occasion chosen to ignore the search for the snitch in order to assist the other team members - cannoning towards a groups of attackers to defend the person carrying the quaffle, for example. So they are allowed to do so. It is roughly equivalent to a football goalkeeper running upfield to participate in, say, a corner kick.

Is "vegetable strategy" a term I don't recognize, or a really weird auto-correct error?

Grey Wolf

Was supposed to be "viable strategy" before my phone decided otherwise, but now I really want to make vegetable strategy a thing.

[warty goblin]

Was supposed to be "viable strategy" before my phone decided otherwise, but now I really want to make vegetable strategy a thing.

"Sir! The left flank! We're being overrun by - tomatoes!"

Message Runner just before the XVII Potato Infantry Corps broke at the Third Battle of French Fry Pass

[Peelee]

I would expect an rules patch after the first time someone tries (tried?) this.
I mean there's a explicit rule that forbids wielding a battle-axe, so there's precedent.
So either it has been done and was subsequently forbidden, or it isn't forbidden but no wizard has thought about it.
The latter wouldn't surprise me.
HP-wizards usually compare unfavourably to rocks when it comes to thinky stuff.

That's the Air Bud fallacy; just because there's not an explicit rule against something doesn't mean such thing is allowed. Or, it didn't matter that the rules don't say a dog can't play basketball.

[Traab]

Was supposed to be "viable strategy" before my phone decided otherwise, but now I really want to make vegetable strategy a thing.

I figured it was a reference to a "squash" match strategy. Ie, a way to run the score up to absurd levels by having too many players grinding out shots on the opponent goal to be blocked. Yeah it IS a gamble to pull the seeker off the snitch hunt, but it is completely and utterly random when the snitch will appear. Could be 5 minutes, could be 5 hours, could be 5 days before it shows up and is spotted. Basically pray its not 5 minutes as 4 chasers swarming the enemy keeper is going to rack up a lot of points unless there is a great disparity in team skills. In a fanfic I read, one where harry goes to america to finish his education, the weasley twins tag along to finish their last year and they end up working together as chasers to utterly obliterate the local quidditch team. Turns out there is a mercy rule, its 500-0, and they hit it without touching the snitch once. I doubt bringing in the opposing seeker to act as a 4th chaser would have helped much.

[Peelee]

I figured it was a reference to a "squash" match strategy. Ie, a way to run the score up to absurd levels by having too many players grinding out shots on the opponent goal to be blocked.

This is now the definition of "vegetable strategy."

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That's the Air Bud fallacy; just because there's not an explicit rule against something doesn't mean such thing is allowed. Or, it didn't matter that the rules don't say a dog can't play basketball.

Your think so, but...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=89o7PIjDyFI

Grey Wolf

[Kantaki]

That's the Air Bud fallacy; just because there's not an explicit rule against something doesn't mean such thing is allowed. Or, it didn't matter that the rules don't say a dog can't play basketball.

If we go by the Quidditch history book this kind of holes in the rules were/are exploited several times.
And subsequently patched of course.

So you could have a owl playing as Seeker-
or as I originally interpreted the discussion your Seeker as a additional Chaser -but there would be a rules-change to stop it sooner or later.
Then you'll have to use a raven instead.

As I said, they have a rule against wielding axes, so there's precedent.

[Peelee]

Your think so, but...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=89o7PIjDyFI

Grey Wolf

If we go by the Quidditch history book this kind of holes in the rules were/are exploited several times.
And subsequently patched of course.

So you could have a owl playing as Seeker-
or as I originally interpreted the discussion your Seeker as a additional Chaser -but there would be a rules-change to stop it sooner or later.
Then you'll have to use a raven instead.

As I said, they have a rule against wielding axes, so there's precedent.

Easy fix, one rule: referee may suspend play at any time over unusual circumstance.

As for the quidditch axe, that's quidditch's fault entirely for not specifying the standard equipment players are to use. Which, for an organized sport, is more than a little silly. There's a bit difference between bat width and a freaking axe, after all.

Also, i love QI.

[Keltest]

Easy fix, one rule: referee may suspend play at any time over unusual circumstance.

As for the quidditch axe, that's quidditch's fault entirely for not specifying the standard equipment players are to use. Which, for an organized sport, is more than a little silly. There's a bit difference between bat width and a freaking axe, after all.

Also, i love QI.

Given that part of the point of quidditch seems to be generating unusual circumstances (theyre wizards after all), I rather suspect that any ref who tried to actually use that rule for anything short of an attack by a hostile power would not be allowed to continue in that position.

[The Glyphstone]

Not to mention one of the major themes of the entire series, as denoted by the existence of MoR, is that wizards suffer from a severe lack of common sense. A highly generalized rule to prevent weird corner cases would go directly against that trend.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Also, i love QI.

No no no. The correct statement is “Also, I hate sports”.

Seriously, where would we be, if we can’t even stick to our age-old forum traditions?

Grey Wolf

[pendell]

Was supposed to be "viable strategy" before my phone decided otherwise, but now I really want to make vegetable strategy a thing.

As do I. Now I want to write a presentation for work entitled "Applying the vegetable pattern in chaos engineering: Principles, Practices, and Examples" .

Tongue-in-cheek,

Brian P.

[Frozen_Feet]

Not to mention one of the major themes of the entire series, as denoted by the existence of MoR, is that wizards suffer from a severe lack of common sense. A highly generalized rule to prevent weird corner cases would go directly against that trend.

Highly generalized rules to prevent corner cases were rare in old Anglo-Saxon common law, which worked (in some cases, still works) via precedence more than top-down general rules. This sort of "lack of common sense" was usual for all kinds of laws and rule systems untill relatively recently.

So especially when talking about history of Quidditch, or, well, any sport, this kind of weirdly specific "all is fair untill declared otherwise" is not at all odd.

EDIT: or to put it differently: the reason why we nowadays make laws and rules top-down from general principles is because we tried the alternative and it didn't work.

[Sapphire Guard]

Notably, in the two highest stakes Quidditch games we see (Hogwarts Cup and World Cup Final) The Snitch by itself isn't the decisive factor.

Seems to run on points, if your Seeker catches early every match you can win all your games but lose out to higher scoring teams.

[Tyndmyr]

Meh, that's weaksauce when it comes to magical terrorism. House elf bombings are where it's at. Extreme range, instant delivery, and apparently capable of penetrating every form of magical defense. House elf apparates in, drops a present filled with high explosives and ball bearings on a 2 second timer, then apparates out.

I think he'd have ethical problems with that, seeing house elves as sort of equivalent to human and what not. Though I dunno where the line is drawn with magical creatures. What is sentient and what's not? It's a non-trivial problem given that apparently even paintings are in the running.

In any case I agree that in a world with teleportation, etc, full on wizard vs wizard war is going to look rather less like a traditional war, and more like something out of an optimization fever dream. I think avoiding that fate is a lot of what the prophecy is about, because both sides are pretty obviously able to escalate there if they need to.

Chaos Legion, get it? I guess this Harry has WH40K miniatures back in his room.

There's quite a few gaming references sprinkled throughout. This seems to be one of the things that irked the critique writer, as he eventually catches onto the munchkin comparison and dislikes it(and even, curiously, seems to think it's an unaware similarity), but...I thought that was up front pretty early, and was amusing. The idea that a book loving sort is also into games seems reasonable, and it's good characterization.

American football is nothing except players with their own objectives while the game happens around them. The kicker, who sometimes never actually plays. The escorts, whose job doesn't seem to involve the ball game at all. The Quarterback, who have one job, and everyone else's best option is to take them down as brutally and efficiently as possible.

American football is particularly odd. I'm not surprised that soccer became much more popular round the world. It's far easier to understand, requires fairly little equipment, and mostly, everyone's playing all the time.

Stupidity does exist in the real world, sure. But people lambasting things as stupid exist in the real world too. I'm not surprised that the super-nerd finds reasons to bash sports. And the position of Seeker is particularly odd. The rest of the game makes a good deal more sense as a sport. Toss out the seeker and use a game clock, and you do have a fairly reasonable sport.

The role of the seeker never bothered me as much as the fact that Quidditch is a game played by moving at dozens of kmh while up in the air on a broomstick while other players throw homing missiles (non-explosive ones but still) at you with baseball bats without (to my memory) any protecting gear!

How are the casualty rates that low?

This is a trait of Hogwarts in general. Remember, this is a world with a forbidden forest fulla wizard eating beasties just outside. Of course, one will keep teenagers from going in there with a rule saying you can't, or you'll get detention. Detention also consists of sending the teenagers into the forest.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Stupidity does exist in the real world, sure. But people lambasting things as stupid exist in the real world too. I'm not surprised that the super-nerd finds reasons to bash sports.

Sure, but there is two issues with that: first, it misses the point of why people watch sports. I should know, I have been trying to figure it out myself - but then, I don't dismiss people as morons for liking american football (I might for supporting a sport that regularly damages the brains of its racial minority players, but not for enjoying it as a sport) and I certainly don't believe myself to be superior to someone else on the basis they enjoy something I don't. At best, the conclusion we could draw is that this Harry Potter is a sociopath; now, maybe that is indeed the intended message, but given the obvious Mary Sueness of the character, I doubt it.

Second issue is that every time someone brings up how they don't understand Quidditch in general (beyond MoR), they do so as proof that the HPverse is illogical. The fact that I can point to similar illogical sports in the real world is meant to counter that particular criticism. All sports have weird quirks - I suspect its part of their charm.

And the position of Seeker is particularly odd. The rest of the game makes a good deal more sense as a sport. Toss out the seeker and use a game clock, and you do have a fairly reasonable sport.

Which funnily enough is what has happened in cricket since the publication of HP&tPS (the current 3-hour-long game is more recent than HP, I believe).

You didn't ask, but this is my headcanon for the seeker: before the seeker, teams that found themselves falling behind couldn't catch back up, making the game boring. "They're ten goals down, they don't stand a chance in the time remaining", which was felt both by the public and the teams themselves. This was not good for the game.

When the whole snitch thing happened, that was exciting and fun, and thus the Quidditch powers that be though, "heck, that might bring more public to the games, how do we add it?" and they attempted to use it to solve the issue of being a bit behind by granting fifteen goals to the one catching it - and stopping the game, so that they can't fall behind again. Great incentive to keep playing even if you are a handful of goals behind. (They also would upped the scoring value from 1 to 10, in this headcanon of mine).

The change would have come with a few unintended, but positive consequences, like reducing the impact of the beaters on the game, making the game more dynamic, and higher scoring, which also helped ameliorate the impact of catching the snitch in the first place, so they kept it, because it made the game better.

Grey Wolf

[Z3ro]

You didn't ask, but this is my headcanon for the seeker: before the seeker, teams that found themselves falling behind couldn't catch back up, making the game boring. "They're ten goals down, they don't stand a chance in the time remaining", which was felt both by the public and the teams themselves. This was not good for the game.

When the whole snitch thing happened, that was exciting and fun, and thus the Quidditch powers that be though, "heck, that might bring more public to the games, how do we add it?" and they attempted to use it to solve the issue of being a bit behind by granting fifteen goals to the one catching it - and stopping the game, so that they can't fall behind again. Great incentive to keep playing even if you are a handful of goals behind. (They also would upped the scoring value from 1 to 10, in this headcanon of mine).

The change would have come with a few unintended, but positive consequences, like reducing the impact of the beaters on the game, making the game more dynamic, and higher scoring, which also helped ameliorate the impact of catching the snitch in the first place, so they kept it, because it made the game better.

Grey Wolf

I find this unlikely (I know, headcannon) for the simple fact that the snitch actually makes the rest of the game less exciting. Think about it; you watch whatever your sport of choice is and your team is down big. But through some unimaginable set of circumstances they come back and win. Think of the build up, the emotion, the excitement, as that's going on. It's one of the funnest things about sports.

But in quidditch, you lose that. Imagine your team's down 100 points, then all of a sudden your seeker finds the snitch somewhere you can barely even see. That really robs the game of the comeback element, I would think. Sure there's times when it might get exciting, but I would imagine even more times when the game ends abruptly and leaves the audience unsatisfied.