Author Topic: Wards, notes about what they can do  (Read 2944 times)

Offline crusher_bob

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Wards, notes about what they can do
« on: May 28, 2010, 03:39:17 PM »
Have moved on to thinking about wards.  A surprising amount of "stuff" here, have had to suspend expanding ward rules to making notes about what we see wards actually do in the books.

Note: sections contains minor spoilers for many of the books, relating to the functions of wards.
Here's my note collection about the stuff we see wards do in the books.  Does anyone have anything to add to this section?  Or have anything they disagree with?

Offline Mal_Luck

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2010, 04:50:23 PM »
I don't think Mister, Mouse, and Bob have protection from the Wards. Mister always hides under a car or something until Harry gets home, Bob always uses Mister as a taxi-cat and paws at the door until Harry lets him in, Mouse only comes and goes when he's with someone (how would our opposable thumb challenged friend open a door?)

Bob's encounter with the Wards around Marcone's showed that Wards could be a serious and deadly threat to pure spirit beings.

One thing I didn't see mentioned was the sphere defense Harry had Molly activate to protect herself and Morgan. It seemed to be something brand new that Ancient Mai and McCoy hadn't seen before (although McCoy knew he was attempting a Ward defense that could destroy everything except what the ward was protecting for several cities blocks).

The only people with a "magic key" are Murphy and Thomas, Molly had one before Harry was able to teach her to bypass the Wards.
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Offline crusher_bob

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #2 on: May 28, 2010, 04:59:37 PM »
When I use the term "magic key", I mean something more along the lines of "abracadabra" or some minor spell like effect.  Some action the is explicitly magical, as opposed to a physical object.  The wizards with the "magical key" to get into Harry's can do so without any physical object at all.

Offline Mal_Luck

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #3 on: May 28, 2010, 05:17:03 PM »
Mister, Mouse, and Bob still need someone to let them inside the Wards. So my point is still valid as they don't have "magic keys".

Whereas Murphy and Thomas have literal magic keys in the forms of talismans that allow them past Harry's Wards.

Elaine was also familiar enough with Harry's magic to slip past his wards without knowing how (as with Molly) or a talisman (as with Murphy), I would hazard to McCoy could also slip past them if he desired.
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Offline Crion

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2010, 08:26:40 PM »
I don't think it is as much about a magic key as it is about knowing the wards and being home. By all rights, Mouse and Mister count the place as "home," so they don't have to worry about the Threshold (which can be argued is tied to the wards). The wards themselves keep people from opening or assaulting the door (the latter as seen in Dead Beat, the former in The Warrior and referenced in Changes). Bob is "riding shotgun" when it comes to Mister, but Harry's place doesn't have a threshold to worry about anyway.

But the more important thing is this: whenever someone is welcomed in, or walks in, it is clear that Harry takes down the wards. You see him mention it, and he trained Molly to do the same. In Summer Knight,
(click to show/hide)
The Talisman he made for Thomas and Murphy does a similar thing; think of it more like a keycard with a modern security systems if you need to relate it to anything in the first place.

As for the "sphere defense," I think it was one part shock over the power and one part shock over the fact it came from Harry. It seems to be a tough idea that is tinkered with but hadn't had a practical use. I could be wrong, of course, but this does seem to be sound logic to me.

Just thinking aloud, feel free to ignore it if need be.
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Offline Aluman

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2010, 09:37:54 PM »
Just as a general comment about why Harry doesn't/hasn't put veils with his wards (whether or not other wizards do): Harry wasn't good at setting up a veil until after he started tutoring Molly and knew she was good with them so taught himself how to use them better to better teach her.

Offline crusher_bob

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #6 on: May 29, 2010, 12:15:25 AM »
The defense crystal in Trun Coat that Molly uses could be modeled as a potion. 

Assuming Harry has a base potion strength of 5 in Turn Coat and he "sells" duration down two steps on the wards, from "a day" down to "a few hours", then that would give him a power 7 ward in a can that would last a few hours.  If  he spends his other potion slot in making the crystal more powerful, and invokes an aspect, that would give him power 10.  So he could have something like a force 5 ward with a power 3, area 1 land mine effect, for example.  Possibly not as powerful as the whole thing was implied to be in the book, but still something useful to have.

Are there any instances of Mister coming and going out of the window, for example?  I know that Harry usually opens the door and, we can assume, takes down the wards, to let him in.  I sorta remember Mister coming into or out of the window at least once though.  Does anyone remember where (or if) this occurs in the books?

Does anyone have an opinion on how casting magic out through the wards works? 
Or how they think the zombie assault in Dead Beat would be modeled in the rules? 
There are a few possibilities:
1
Each zombie attack was sufficient in power to breach the wards.
The "land mine" was going off each time the wards were breached
The wards were falling quickly because there were enough zombies around to beat down the wards, despite the casualties
The 'enhanced protection mode' version of the wards would have been too powerful for the zombies to breach with an attack, so the zombies would have been unable to beat their way through the wards.

So model 1:
Harry's wards were somewhere between force 6 and 8.  The zombies, with inhuman strength and good fists, can, with a good fists roll, hit hard enough to cause a breach in the wards.
This sets off the landmine.  Since the landmine can blast a zombie in one go, it's somewhere between a power 7 and maybe power 13 effect.
The enhanced protection mode would raise the ward power by around 4-6 points, meaning that the zombies would no longer be able to cause a breach in the wards.
So it would take between 6 to 8 ward breaches to bring the wards down, which would cause an equal number of land mine detonations.

2
Each zombie attack was not sufficient to cause a breach in the wards.
However, the "land mine" was set to go off every time the wards were hit "hard" and each zombie attack was hard enough to set off the land mine
Each time the land mine went off, it drew power out of the wards and that's why the wards would fail quickly
The enhanced protection mode of the wards would have provided enough extra power to them that the land mine would have had enough shots to bury the stairwell in a pile of dead zombies, so the zombies would not have been able to drain the wards by setting off the landmine barring the most exception circumstances.

Model 2:
Harry's wards are something like power 8+
The land mine goes off when they are hit by a power 5+ attack
The land mine is around power 7 to 13
However, each time the land mine goes off, the wards are drained. 
(Maybe the wards are moved down in duration 1 shift on the chart every time the land mine went off?  So if the base duration of Harry's wards was one month, it would take around 10 land mine detonations and a few minutes for the wards to go down.)

I'm not sure exactly how the enhanced protection mode in this model would help.  But if it provides another 6-8 shifts of power, that would be another 6-8 land mine detonations.  And 15-20 bodies is probably more that enough to pack the stairwell full.

Offline Ihadris

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #7 on: May 29, 2010, 01:49:14 AM »
Two things I thought of when reading through-
-Harry being attacked in White Night is similar to both Viktor Sells and Lydia. Harry attacks Viktor via his scrying shadow by "Sending the magic back up the link" and Lydia allows entrance to Harry's house, bypassing the wards, through her dreaming. So it would seem that Harry's wards protected against physical entrance. Afterall (Changes):
(click to show/hide)

-Wouldnt the "trap" put on the locker containing the blood samples in Small Favour by Ms. Gard count as a ward with a landmine effect?

Offline crusher_bob

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2010, 03:46:04 AM »
I had sorta assumed that wards would offer protection both from long range thaumaturgy and from people stepping over from the nevernever,  Does that seem like a valid interpretation of how wards should work, or do they really only protect against physical incursions?

Situation 1:
You are sitting on your couch.  Some guy who picked up one of your hairs tries to make your heart explode with thaumaturgy.  Do your wards provide any protection?

Situation 2:
You are sitting on your couch, some wizard drives by and tries to blow up up with evocation, since they can see your couch through your window.

Situation 3:
[...] couch, and someone drives by and tries shooting you (and your couch) full of bullets [...]

Situation 4:
[...] couch.  Some guy in the nevernever (and his pack of attack dogs) have finally found a place that corresponds to the inside of your house.  He opens a way and sends the attack dogs through to tear you to bits.

Situation 5:
[...] nevernever (and his pack bound demons) have finally found a place that corresponds to the inside of your house.  He opens a way and sends the demons through to tear you to bits.

Situation 6:
[...] nevernever (and his WW2 style briefcase bomb) [...]



Offline Rel Fexive

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Re: Wards, notes about what they can do
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2010, 10:23:02 AM »
Wards (which are described as offering physical and magical protection) and Thresholds (use the highest if both exist in the target area, I imagine) block spells trying to hit something inside them.  Usually that just means adding more Complexity to your Thaumaturgy spell to overcome it; otherwise you don't have enough power in the spell to hit your target.  Also consider that Wards reflect attacks - including spells - that don't pierce them right back at the attacker.  So if you didn't get enough Discipline shifts with your Evocation to overcome the Ward's block, watch out.  Same goes for a drive-by or bomb-throw, I imagine.  But as standard Wards do not seem to prevent entry from the Nevernever - although there's no reason why you couldn't set one up to do that, either as an additional function or a separate Ward - then you could just have a Ward that specifically blocks that but (I would say) does not stop anything else.

So...

Situation 1: If he doesn't account for the strength of your ward, he doesn't have enough power to affect you.

Situation 2: If he doesn't beat the block from your ward, he'd better duck!

Situation 3: See above!

Situation 4: Unless you've warded against this, expect to have unwelcome guests.  Otherwise they need to overcome the strength (block) against crossing over.

Situation 5: See above.

Situation 6: See above.
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