Thaumaturgy and Wards

[Mr. Death]

Part of it comes from:
"My hair. The man had cut off my hair. It could be used in almost any kind of magic, any kind of deadly spell, and there wouldn't be a damned thing I could do to stop it."

Which isn't the same as:
"My hair. The man had cut off my hair. It could be used in almost any kind of magic, any kind of deadly spell, so I should spend the afternoon increasing the power of my ward."

"Not a damn thing I could do to stop it" doesn't mean it is literally impossible to stop. It means that Harry can't do anything to stop the spell before Victor casts it.

Wards are another type of thaumaturgy--which means they take a long, long time to cast if you want them to be at significant strength, in addition to power.

It's the same as saying, "I was tied up and he put a gun to my head. I was going to die and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it." He's saying it's the circumstances that make it impossible to defend against, not that there is literally nothing that could ever possibly stop it.

[Bernd]

After some days of thought, here’s how I see it:

I don’t think that thaumaturgic spells based on conflicts are something like a 26-shift attack. The “based on conflict” notion is about determining the complexity, not the rules per se. I’d like to demonstrate my thought with an example (based on the one I used in my game):

A Warlock tries to inflict a mental extreme consequence (WORKS FOR THE RCV AND DOESN’T EVEN KNOW IT) on his victim (a chemist who produces drug for the mafia; the RCV want him to spy). The Victim has a Discipline of +2 and a Conviction of +1, so the spell needs 17 shifts of complexity to work (+2 Discipline, +4 maximum dice roll, 3 Shifts of stress and 8 shifts for the extreme consequence). Now if this was a simple attack (as per the rules of attacking), two strange things would occur:

1. The victim would actually have to roll his Discipline. So the Victim would most likely (because he probably wouldn’t really roll a +4) take another consequence, instead of only the extreme consequence. Or to put it in another way: to create an extreme consequence actually needs less than 17 shifts of power (probably only about 13).

2. If this would be just an attack, like described under Conflicts, the victim were to choose the consequences. He could choose to take a severe and a mild consequence instead of an extreme. He could even choose the wording of the aspect that comes with these consequences, instead of taking the aspect the warlock wants.

But in my opinion, those 2 “occurrences” are false. That’s not how I read the rules. I think this is not how the rules are intended.

This brings me to another example on the question if the spell works at all, if the complexity is not high enough. Let’s consider a tracking spell. Would you say that if the complexity is, say, 2 too low (8 shifts would be needed, but I come only up with 6 during my ritual), the spell would partially work (maybe something like “the person we seek is somewhere in this block), or would it simply not work?

To use my other example from above: Would the victim have to take a severe consequence, instead of an extreme consequence, if he sits behind a ward with a strength of 2? Or would the spell fail?

This is where I'm still unsure. I think I can recall something about Victor Sell’s spell cast on Harry during Storm Front, but I don’t have my book at the moment, so I cannot check.

Thing is, if the heart-exploding spell would work even if it has to be cast beyond a ward, without taking the ward into account when determining the complexity, it is so really, really hard to protect against such a spell at all. It would need a ward with a strength of about 36. But such wards would be virtually indestructible. The rules tell me that a ward with a strength of 8 is pretty high, and it is: it needs 16 shifts to destroy it (to bring it to a strength of +0). So wards are pretty useless against strong thaumaturgy, or they are pretty indestructible using anything else short of thaumaturgy. The scaling is odd, in my eyes.

Opinions?

[GryMor]

Thing is, if the heart-exploding spell would work even if it has to be cast beyond a ward, without taking the ward into account when determining the complexity, it is so really, really hard to protect against such a spell at all. It would need a ward with a strength of about 36. But such wards would be virtually indestructible. The rules tell me that a ward with a strength of 8 is pretty high, and it is: it needs 16 shifts to destroy it (to bring it to a strength of +0). So wards are pretty useless against strong thaumaturgy, or they are pretty indestructible using anything else short of thaumaturgy. The scaling is odd, in my eyes.

The heart exploding spell had sufficient shifts that hitting a 4 shift ward (which, if you recall, is just a block, so it doesn't stack with defense) would still leave it as deadly to most, (-24 from consequences and best stress box still leave you with 6 more shifts to deal with, possible if you have toughness high enough). Change that to a 12 shift ward and things are looking quite a bit better, though you'll still come out of it gravely injured, and that only if you had a full compliment of consequences available.

Remember in general that wards are blocks which are just a fixed defense 'roll'. Most spells are constructed with a moderately high assumed defense and with extra power in things like duration or the like. If any power gets through, it's going to do something, it just may not be enough to buy the full impact of the intended spell.

[Bernd]

The heart exploding spell had sufficient shifts that hitting a 4 shift ward (which, if you recall, is just a block, so it doesn't stack with defense) would still leave it as deadly to most, (-24 from consequences and best stress box still leave you with 6 more shifts to deal with, possible if you have toughness high enough). Change that to a 12 shift ward and things are looking quite a bit better, though you'll still come out of it gravely injured, and that only if you had a full compliment of consequences available.

That’s exactly my point. Even with a considerable strong ward, high complexity spells have no problem cutting through it. If I remember correctly from the books, sitting behind a ward is pretty safe. On page 301 in Your Story it says about the Heart-Exploding spell “[…] aim for a complexity in the 40s to make sure it overcomes magical defenses”. Sounds a bit like: It won’t work if someone sits behind a ward.

Remember in general that wards are blocks which are just a fixed defense 'roll'. Most spells are constructed with a moderately high assumed defense and with extra power in things like duration or the like. If any power gets through, it's going to do something, it just may not be enough to buy the full impact of the intended spell.

This is another of my points: This isn’t really an attack, as in “attack as a mechanism during conflicts”. Thaumaturgy has the same result like an attack, but it skips right to the effect, without everything in between (like a defense roll). The ”based on conflict”-part is to determine the needed complexity, not that the mechanics are the same as attacks in conflicts (but the effect is the same, only the mechanics behind it are not). If you look at the Extended Divination spell, it at page 297, it specifically says to add to the needed complexity in addition to the +4 of the dice, if the target sits behind a ward or threshold, not that the ward or threshold replaces the +4 of the dice when determining complexity.

[Lamech]

The heart exploding spell had sufficient shifts that hitting a 4 shift ward (which, if you recall, is just a block, so it doesn't stack with defense) would still leave it as deadly to most, (-24 from consequences and best stress box still leave you with 6 more shifts to deal with, possible if you have toughness high enough). Change that to a 12 shift ward and things are looking quite a bit better, though you'll still come out of it gravely injured, and that only if you had a full compliment of consequences available.

Also don't forget something that should be spectacularly lethal, say a powerful explosive (weapon: 10) that lands right at your feet, (6 roll) that you don't try to dodge (-4 defense), only does 20 shifts. So 20 shifts of damage something Dresden would expect to splatter him. So eating 20 shifts of damage from the kill spell is something expected to kill you. A full health character will miraculously survive either, but it is still a miracle.

[Tedronai]

A full health character will miraculously survive either, but it is still a miracle.

Because there is no 'health' mechanic in DFRPG.  There are only varying forms of 'plot armour', some of which happen to scale with attributes that are expected to themselves correlate to a measure of health (characters get more stress and consequences to absorb physical attacks when they have high Endurance, but neither stress nor consequences are 'health').