Need advice on a fire-based defense

[Douglas]

I'm working on a pyromancer and am having trouble thinking of any defensive applications for his powers.  I thought of something similar to Ramirez's shielding, but using fire to pump energy into objects and shatter them rather than using water to disrupt them.  The other possibility I've thought of is using fire's purifying aspect to create an effect similar to hyperawareness (YS Pg. 294).  Beyond that I'm stumped.

[troubles third son]

Ideas for a fire base defense:

• wall/sphere/shield of fire that consumes all that comes at you
• Smoke and shadows to conceal & distract, kind of like a veil defense against awareness
• small fiery demons/spirits that swirl about meeting each incoming attack with distruction
• Haze about your body that lites up with fire when attacked to consume its force (more of an armor idea than shield)
• Heat wave shimmer that distorts thing away from you

Fire is big on the consumption and refinement, so consume/redirect the attacks energy to fire, could also give you some interesting way to say you are consuming the attacker energy and throwing back at them

hope that helps

[Mal_Luck]

When I think fire, I don't normally think shatter... I think melting. But if someone shoots at you, melting their bullets might still hurt you. That is unless it burns hot enough to completely destroy said incoming object, either way if something living runs into it... should be interesting.

Another thought might be to suck the heat out of the air, creating Ice to block incoming attacks. But that might not be what your wanting. Fire has always been tricking in my mind on how to use defensively (apart from making ice or melting).

[crusher_bob]

You could also do things with fire manipulating the other elements. 
You superheat the area around you causing a wind vortex that deflects attacks
 or
the area around your feet is mostly melted, and pseudopods of molten material reach up and deflect attacks aimed at you

[JosephKell]

Your heat shield could vaporize the front of incoming stuff such that it "explosively repels" the back end.  [/logical stretch]

I like Troubles Third Son's idea of the heat shimmer causing them to aim at where you seem to be (but aren't).

What about having the heat cause an "updraft" which knocks incoming attacks off target?

[paul_Harkonen]

Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy.  If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.

If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense.  And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).

[Mal_Luck]

Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy.  If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.

If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense.  And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).

Then you could tag the Hot Air to draw upon it's heat for fueling your fire attacks, or at least you could in my mind. 

[Saedar]

Then you could tag the Hot Air to draw upon it's heat for fueling your fire attacks, or at least you could in my mind. 

I'd allow it. Plus, the imagery is pretty cool. You could tie it in with a fire breath kinda thing. Like, make it seem that you breath in the generated heat and torch everything in the zone. 

[Deadmanwalking]

The Fire mage I came up with summons up a dozen white hot motes of flame that hover around him and intercept attacks in bouts of mutual annihalation.

There are really as many ways to do it as any other element.

[neko128]

I'd go with a "reactive flame wall" - a veil of fire and heat that reacts to attacks by pushing fire/heat/force towards them to try and destroy them.

Fire isn't immensely defensey. 

[Lanodantheon]

My brother Arandmoor's character, The Archivist, has a fire shield rote. His take on it relates to his aspect, My Deep-Dark Secret.
His Fire Shield uses the Cleansing Power of Fire to cleanse away negative possible outcomes. it's an area of very³ Grey magic, but it relates to  My Deep-Dark Secret

[PapaBear]

My brother Arandmoor's character, The Archivist, has a fire shield rote. His take on it relates to his aspect, My Deep-Dark Secret.
His Fire Shield uses the Cleansing Power of Fire to cleanse away negative possible outcomes. it's an area of very³ Grey magic, but it relates to  My Deep-Dark Secret

Sorry, my head isn't wrapping around this shield all that well. So its essentially a probability spell that uses fire magic to affect the probability of negative outcomes? That has a Scarlet Witch vibe to it, which is neat.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, I'm betting his secret is Chronomancy.

[PapaBear]

Yeah, I'm betting his secret is Chronomancy.

Heh. Ooh! A chronomantic shield would be fun. A disk of energy that sends objects that pass through it several seconds into the future. You'd have to move out of the way every time something went through, but it'd be neat. But if you add in some wind or force magic to displace space as well as time, it would be pretty damn effective. And probably really costly, energy wise.


On a more on topic note:

Depending on how you (or more precisely your character) views the source of their pyromancy.  If it's simply and ability to control fire, then the wall of fire, or a glaring light, or things of that nature make sense.

If, on the other hand, it has more to do with converting things to heat (at it's core fire is just transfering one kind of energy into heat) then a shield that converts the kinetic energy of bullets into heating the air (either by stopping them while the air heats up, or by vaporizing them) makes perfect sense.  And it would be really cool, the bullets simply stop and the air around you heats up making you even more frightening (to them).

You could also take the heat you generate and dump it into the shield. So a) you stop the projectiles movements, and b) you burn up the projectiles, rendering them useless for future use.

[crusher_bob]

For anyone interested in monitoring how much heat it actually takes to stop stuff here's some math:

We'll use as our point of comparison, a coke can full of water (250 mL).
Since you have been holding it in your hand for a long time, the water is at body temperature (37 C)

The specific heat of water is 4.186 J/g per C, so it would take around 1046.5 Joules to heat up your can of water 1 C.

So how much energy is ~1000 Joules you ask?

A 9mm pistol bullet is around 500J, a big pistol bullet (~.44 magnum) is around 1000 joules, a rifle bullet (7.62 Soviet) is around 2000 joules.

So if our heat based shield is based off taking the energy out of the bullets (so they come to a complete stop in mid-air) and just fall down) and transferring that energy into our coke can.

So assuming our heat shield is 100% efficient, and some bad buy empties all 30 rounds of his AK into our heat shield, your coke can full of water goes to ~97 C, not even boiling yet.  But certainly hot enough to burn you if you holding it.  (Somewhere around 45-50 C is hot enough to scald your skin).  A magazine full of fire from a pistol (15 rounds of 9mm) is only enough to raise the temp of our coke can is barely enough heat to raise it from body temperature to hot enough to scald you.

So what do we learn from this?  Enchanted cans of Coke that provide you a fire based defensive shield that stops bullets can totally be tapped from cool and refreshing drink afterwards, as long as you don't get shot too much.