Editing The Dresden Files RPG (section)

====Thaumaturgy====
Thaumaturgy is mostly ritual based, you can use it to create links between things and use those links to transfer energy. A lot of thaumaturgy can be accomplished without rituals though, rituals just help by providing symbolic form to the connections you are making, a "dotted line" for you to trace the flow of the energy. You can do some of the below on the fly, but it generally requires more mental effort on the part of the caster, you have to substitute rituals and their required materials by mentally making the connections and links.

*Summoning: Calling living beings, be they natural or supernatural)

*Conjuration: Different from summoning as it is about the object rather than an entity. SEMANTICS HO!

*Necromancy: Using magic to directly manipulate life, death, and the soul. Naturally has a ton of overlap with biomancy, healing, and ectomancy. Can do everything from raising the dead to saving lives by binding their souls to their body so they ''can't'' die. Can become '''crazy overpowered''' in the right hands (read: Kemmler).

*Ectomancy: the council-approved version of Necromancy, more about communicating with or binding ghosts than controlling them. Can also pull ghosts into yourself to see their memories and use their skills.

*Probability magic: Using magic to influence probability. Duh.
**Entropomancy/Fortunamancy: The of mucking about with probability to influence luck. Can cause anything from slipping on a crack to finding a 20 on the sidewalk to suddenly having an improbable number of electrons flying free from the  atoms that make up your body, turning you into a cloud of radioactive dust. Theoretically this should be '''absolutely, horrifyingly, incomprehensibly complicated''', because there's really no way to quantify as a force what is good or bad for you. Entropy is easy, stasis is easy, but reversing entropy or trying to quantify good and bad outcomes relative to probability? How the fuck do you write an equation for good or bad outcomes? We never see it used in a beneficial manner in the series, and I'd guess that's because the second law of thermodynamics is a hard thing to argue with.
**Hexing: Mortal practitioners have an effect on the world around them which has changed throughout the ages, in the current day Wizard's have a deletrious effect on nearby technology. Hexing is the magic of specifically using this tech-bane to a much greater degree. Can quite literally make computers explode or cause cars to tear themselves apart. This magic isn't so much straight up entropomancy as it is a natural ability of all wizards rather than a particular style of magic. There are plenty of theories about why it happens in universe, but none of them have proof. Oh, and wizards are always doing this to a certain extent. They can ramp it up if they want, or target a specific thing, but machines will always fail faster around a wizard. 

*Divination: Using magic to attempt looking at the future, past, or some other location in the present. Comes in many flavors.
**Anthropomancy: The art of divining the future in the entrails of a corpse, often fresh. Unsurprisingly illegal as it involves murder.
**Sympathetic Tracking: Using a piece of somebody (fresh hair, blood, toe nail clippings) or something (Paint chips, metal shards, a paired ring) to track them. One of the most common methods of divination, and easy enough that even non-practitioners can do it with a lot of patience and a good teacher.
**Resonant Divination: Much more like a magical telephone than anything else, this is the magical version of Quantum Entanglement, which allows for simple, long distance communication.

*Holomancy: Manipulating light to create 'solid' illusions. Distinguished from veils in that they are a physical effect on the environment, not just an image projected into your mind. Presumably you could take a picture of a holomancy imagine, but not a veil. 

*Biomancy: Healing and shapeshifting, can also be used to supercharge the physical body, but doing so comes with great risk. Just because you pump enough energy into your muscles to throw your fridge through a wall doesn't mean your ligaments or bones can take that weight, so people who do this without '''extensive''' practice and preparation tend to tear their bodies apart to a greater or lesser degree.

*Mind Magic
**Neuromancy: Magic that directly interacts with the brain or nervous system. This is the sort of magic that allows you to overclock your brain to amp up reaction speeds or thinking processes, but the backlash is unbelievable. You can also activate people's pain receptors in combat, making them feel like you did when you broke you leg.
**Psychomancy: Magic that interacts with the mind, soul, psyche, or memories. Very illegal, do not do this at home, or in public, or anywhere. As a note it is not illegal to use psychomancy on non-humans, but because of the way that non-human entities minds work enjoy your never-ending acid trip from the comfort of your new padded room with the fancy white jacket. Psychomancy differs from other types of mind magic in that you're altering the psyche on a long term basis. Removing/creating memories, turning people into thralls, reading unwilling minds. There's a healthy amount of leeway when it comes to healing psychic trauma though, especially if it was inflicted by magic, so ironically there are actually plenty competent psychomancers in the White Council, including the Gatekeeper and Listens to Wind.
***Thralls: humans who have had their Free Will subverted by psychomancy
****Fine Thralls: think "manchurian candidate", a fine thrall's mind has been tampered with in such a way that the thrall is left unaware of the tampering. Either their behavior is altered without them knowing it, or they perform certain actions when triggers activate their programming. The condition is curable.
****Rough Thralls: Rough Thralls just stand around awaiting orders. They can perform basic tasks and follow orders, but they have no initiative or true awareness of their situation. A Rough Thrall will carry out orders and think of absolutely nothing else, that means that it can't think creatively or critically when faced with an unexpected problem. The condition is curable in some cases but can be permanently damaging.
****Renfields: Black Court's special thralls created through overpowering mortal minds with sheer power and torture. Basically dead men walking. They're not good for anything other than excessive violence or very simple tasks. Incurable without exceptions, a Renfield will commit suicide after a few months of being created.
**Veils/Illusions: Making it so that people receive false sensory input or suggestions, so they either see nothing or don't notice you. Typically doesn't break the Laws.
**Oneiromancy: Dream Magic, this breed of magic blends with Psychomancy to a rather uncomfortable degree, when used to implant nightmares, or other subliminal commands, however it is also used for communication. Arguably Harry himself uses it subconsciously himself when talking to Id-Harry as he only talks to Id-Harry when asleep..

*Worldwalking: Opening portals to the Nevernever. The Nevernever sits under/above/around/inside our world, and you can enter it at any point in our world by tearing a hole or a portal between the material world and the Nevernever. It's incredibly difficult to create a portal directly to your desired destination but it can be done if you're a real badass (note that the only people we see do this are an Archangel, a Faery Queen, and a god). Theoretically, because it be done, you could also create such a portal just barely inside another portal, thus creating a portal that connects two places within the mortal world, or two places within the Nevernever, but we've yet to see this done. Most of the time, people just open a hole to the Nevernever in a specific location in the real world, take a trip through a relatively stable part of it (usually through Faerie), open up a portal to the material world, and end up at a specific location. Think "Webway"

*Wards: A blanket term for all defensive magics, which can be anything from straight up walls of kinetic energy to evocation-in-a-box style landmines to crazy psychomancy "I'm now terrified of that door I was about to kick down" stuff. 

*Item Crafting: The making of Foci, Enchanted Items, Charms, that kind of thing. Every wizard knows how to do this to some extent.
**Brewing(?): Making potions. Thaumaturgy in a bottle. Usually involves cooking (metaphorically or literally) ritual or symbolic items with an investment of energy to activate them. Every potion made has to have eight ingredients. A Base, one ingredient for each physical sense (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste), and an ingredient for the mind and soul. An additional fact is that potions do not have to be fluid, Ghost Dust and "Sunshine in a Handkerchief" are both technically examples of non-fluid potions according to the RPG books.
**Alchemy: Altering substances based on their psychic/metaphysical properties. Has a ton of overlap with chemistry.

*The True Magic: Kemmler's magic system/discipline. Never completely defined, but denies the distinction between Black and White magic, and seems to lean heavily on necromancy, psychomancy, entropomancy, and the removal of energy from things. Kemmler's students also tend to use direct will and kinetic force as evocation, and Kemmler himself didn't concern himself much over being alive or dead, so it's likely the discipline focused on the mastery of Will over life and death.

A Note: The game handles the way a player may handle their Thaumaturgy focus in one of two ways. They can either choose to specialise really heavily in one particular type of thaumaturgy (such as divination) or they may choose a thematic specialization (such as Photomancy where they can do Holomancy, divination, viels, teleportation, or anything else so long as there is a LIGHT aspect to what they're trying to do). Thaumaturgy is an inherently flexible and complex style of magic use and trying to lock it down the way other games might would be damaging to the DFRPG games narrative. Play fast and loose with it when you can.