Making a Magical Bunker

[Silverblaze]

I forgot liquid nitrogen (hard to get though).  Also, if they are using lawbreakers to create the wards, I can use lawbreakers to kill him.  I 'll go back in time and kill them.  Or better yet, go back in time and create a paradox making it so they never existed...maybe me too...but...

[Sanctaphrax]

The ward would block the truck bomb.

It isn't complicated. The ward just reflects all force that hits it. And a truck bomb definitely qualifies as force.

Unless, of course, you were dumb enough not to put your wards around the whole building. If you've only warded your office, you may be in trouble when the building falls.

Time travel would work.

Another thing that might work is a very large fire outside the wards. The effects of wards on heat and light are not clear. So you might be able to roast someone without ever breaching their defenses.

But probably not. And even if this would work, it'd just be another layer for the defender to add.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Show me one place where it says that wards (or thresholds) protect the mundane parts of a house (doors, walls, windows) and I'll stop harping on this, but I can't recall anything like that in the books or the RAW.

Changes, when the FBI and Rudolph came to his place;  he sent Bob to deactivate his wards so he wouldn't have dead FBI guys on his stoop.  Dead Beat where the zombies set off his land mines.  Dead Beat when he warned Butters not to open the door so he wouldn't get caught in any backblast.  Turn Coat where Morgan knew that Lucio had an amulet for his wards (or was it that she knew how to deactivate them?).  Proven Guilty when he warned Molly not to use the door without him there until he had an amulet made for her.

A person walking in is a mundane threat.  A bomb getting thrown through a window is a mundane threat too but he likely just got caught with his wards down then.

As for the fire, unless your attack roll exceeds the ward's strength with that fire hose, the Ward is going to reflect the fire back at you. And no human can get attack rolls high enough to overcome that reflection for a major ward without equally powerful magic.

That's fine, you don't have to actually attack the ward;  close is good enough.  Flaming liquids are nifty like that.  Or just a whopping lot of smoke;  that's usually what people die of in fires anyway, smoke inhalation.

Sarin, chlorine, or mustard gas would be all kinds of fun too since I assume your wards don't keep the air out.

One way to penetrate normal wards is to use Mordite, which drains all mortal magic.

Where exactly did you get this?  I seem to remember mortal magic containing mordite just fine in the speaking room, granted at a senior council level.

I'm done debating this though.  It's starting to look like you think your wizard is smarter than the rest of the world put together and it's just pointless to argue against hubris that overwhelming.

[Silverblaze]

The ward would block the truck bomb.

It isn't complicated. The ward just reflects all force that hits it. And a truck bomb definitely qualifies as force.

Unless, of course, you were dumb enough not to put your wards around the whole building. If you've only warded your office, you may be in trouble when the building falls.

Time travel would work.

Another thing that might work is a very large fire outside the wards. The effects of wards on heat and light are not clear. So you might be able to roast someone without ever breaching their defenses.

But probably not. And even if this would work, it'd just be another layer for the defender to add.

Dresden had shitty wards then.  Zombies beat the door down.  Magic is pretty OP I get that.  I just hate the idea that anything is absolute.

Another idea:  Dig underneath the bunker?  Doubt they;d ward the floor...maybe hte outside of the brick/wood/mortar...sounds difficult enough to make GM's cranky though.

Ebenezar response:

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Volcnao under it!  Sattelite dropped on it.  PWND!

[Silverblaze]

Buzzard  and I think too much alike.  I mentioned anhydrous ammonia earlier

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Buzzard  and I think too much alike.  I mentioned anhydrous ammonia earlier

Saw that.  Four new posts while I was replying... yeesh!

[Sanctaphrax]

Hey, Buzzard. There's absolutely no need for insults. Belial has been perfectly civil.

Gas might work or might not. It's a grey area. I'd be inclined to say it did.

Though I'm pretty sure the character in question here isn't a wizard and doesn't need to breathe...

Let's get away from the specific example. It's not terribly important.

It's not possible to be perfectly safe. But with effort, one can get asymptotically close. The thread here has a number of good suggestions.

I think that the key is to make sure that nobody knows what your defenses are. Maybe gas would work, but maybe trying it would get you killed. So you don't try. An unknown defense is better than a known one.

PS: I think wards are three dimensional. And a strong enough one would just reflect a dropped satellite.

[Richard_Chilton]

Show me one place where it says that wards (or thresholds) protect the mundane parts of a house (doors, walls, windows) and I'll stop harping on this, but I can't recall anything like that in the books or the RAW.

Changes, when the FBI and Rudolph came to his place; 

Those are examples of landmine triggering - not the mundane parts of the house being protected.  The window breaking...

Well, there's one problem with discussions like this.  I cite "bomb tossed through window" and it could be Jim decided "wouldn't be awesome if a bomb got thrown through his window?" without thinking about that act would impact on the system of magic he's built up.  As a recent discussion on outsiders brought up, the game is constrained by what Jim writes - but the reverse isn't true.  If Jim thinks that something will be cool he probably wouldn't let the scene's impact on the game affect what he wants to do.

But going through the books I can't see any examples of a ward stopping physical damage to the building that it's attached to.

Edited to add this last point.  Warning, it's taken from Ghost Story - but it impacts directly on this discussion:

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If the wards protect the things they are anchored to then how were those anchors messed with? Yes, I am trying to keep this vague, but if you've read the book you know about those major wards that developed anchor problems - even when the threshold was still there.

Richard

[Silverblaze]

Nice point Richard_Chilton.

Ghost Story spoilers.

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I doubt that the magic user who created those wards was a newbie.  Anchors seem to have a large effect on wards.

[Sanctaphrax]

Have read GS, am not quite sure what you refer to.

Is graffiti involved?

[Todjaeger]

PS: I think wards are three dimensional. And a strong enough one would just reflect a dropped satellite.

It might be something which needs to be specified when setting up the Ward.  While the example in Turn Coat is not a perfect one...

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The crystal which Molly activated in the ruined cabin on Demonreach was setup as a sphere.  My understanding of the crystal was that is was effectively a one-use Ward using a potion item slot.  Ancient Mai specifically mentioned digging underneath the effect to get a Molly and Morgan when Harry regained consciousness and Harry specifically said not to, that the effect was spherical.

I think part of the issue a number of us have is that some of us get some very different numbers when sit down and work out what we consider as 'realistic' in terms of the number of shifts which a mortal wizard could raise and put into a Ward. Given what Jim has stated in various books and short stories like in Curses, which mentions a curse afflicting a certain sports team for ~60 years which if it was still the same spell, would've required enough power to survive that many sunrises to have actually cracked the crust of the planet, tends to give some a different view of the amount of power spellcasters can manage.

It all has to do with what one's group/GM will accept or allow though, to each their own.

Now, from canon, the only instance I can recall of a mundane, physical object coming into contact with Harry's apartment was the roman candle which was thrown through the window in Day Off.  Everything else which would have come into contact with the Wards,

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(the frog-demon in Storm Front, the zombie horde in Dead Beat, possibly Cowl's mental attack in White Night, for the FBI and Chicago PD in Changes)

was either a living being/creature, and/or a magical entity or construct.

So far, there hasn't been a specific example of something like a car crashing into a Warded structure and either going straight through, or bouncing off, getting blown apart by a 'landmine' or doing a bad impression of an accordian after crashing straight into the magical equivalent of a solid rock face.

In order words, absent more specific word from Jim, Fred, or someone else at Evil Hat, it depends on just how one's group interprets the RAW.

Now, regarding those who suggest some sort of gas attack against a Warded location, that would seem an effective method, and there is a suggestion within the novel Dead Beat that the Red Court has already successfully used just such a tactic, given that I would consider any White Council installation would have at least some sort of Ward to defend it against intruders.

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I'm referring to the hospital which the White Council had setup in the Congo, which the Red Court attacked using a nerve agent, most likely sarin.  The attack was estimated by Luccio to have cost the lives of several thousand people, both Council members and ordinary 'vanilla' mortals.

-Cheers

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Hey, Buzzard. There's absolutely no need for insults. Belial has been perfectly civil.

Wasn't really an insult from my pov but it's been pointed out to me a time or two in the past that I'm a bit blunt.  So, my bad and no offense meant if it was taken as one.

[Michael Sandy]

One thing to consider with all these powerful wards, they are likely tied to being renewed at particular times.

So if you have a ward that lasts a month, that means you are probably tied up on the new moon each month, renewing it.  I suppose you could have a spell that lasts 2 (units) that you renew each (unit), so you have SOME flexibility.

For the uber forts, consider a flying, invisible fortress.  If you can't be in the same general area of the target ward to cast your ritual, you can't summon the power to break its wards.

Or put your fort inside a volcano.  Basically, create the warded area, then do major earth magic to activate the volcano.  Someone attacking the place will have to nullify the volcano first to even get close to the wards.  This buys some amount of time, and you can disrupt the spells they use to protect themselves from the volcano.

For people who use magic to break barriers routinely, there is always the AD&D trap:  Dispel magic removes the barrier holding something nasty back.  Or a hex causes a magnetic seal to break, releasing scorpions, fuel air bomb, werewolves etc...

Also, consider the escape route.  You want your enemies forced to enter only one way, but you want to be able to get out.  And you will want to be able to get out faster than your enemies can pursue.  So have a fancy and fast escape, either magical or technological.  If pursued by mundane foes, retreat the magical route, they won't be able to follow.  If pursued by mortal wizards, the technological route simply won't work after they blow through the doors.

If pursued by non-mortal wizards, you need a route through a powerful threshold or other barrier.  So you have an escape route under the Vatican, the Wailing Wall, the Rock of Mecca, or perhaps Ayres Rock.

A wall alone simply does not make a fort.  You can slow people down, but it has to have active defenders unless the defenses are just to stop a surprise attack, to allow the inhabitant to flee to another bolthole.  Making a fort with only one entrance makes it hard for the defenders as well, as it is also hard for them to get out.

You could have a fort defended by phantoms, copies of the defenders which soak up attacks that would otherwise hurt the defenders.  You could have areas with Aspects that could be tapped by defenders who are attuned to the stored energies of the fortress.  You can have divination and communication within the structure prepared.

But absolute fortress walls that don't require attention?  That is Maginot Wall thinking.  I would imagine that there were periods in the history of wizards where defensive magic lore outstripped the lore of breaking such barriers down, or were beyond the available resources most of the time, and so independent wizards or groups of wizards had a greater ability to thumb their nose at the White Council with impugnity... for minor issues, anyway.

[UmbraLux]

One thing I found out is suppressing movement through a couple of central zones can be surprisingly effective.  Admittedly, only one of the PCs in the group has better than average athletics - but I still hadn't expected a persistent two shift movement block to slow them down and split them up as much as it did.  It gave the thaumaturgist time to complete a ritual. 
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Regarding ward duration, most are going to be set to whatever length of time the location is expected to be in use...possibly more.  The ward above was only 28 shifts but had 12 shifts dedicated to duration - lasting a mortal's lifetime.  Given the resources typically put into wards, it doesn't make sense to create something you'll have to redo every month.  Particularly since it's bound to start failing just when you need it most!  (Probably worth a compel, but even so a needless risk.)

I tend to base ward duration on the warder's expected residency.  If he's leasing a location, wards will last a year or two.  A warded hotel room may only last days but an ancestral house has wards set at a mortal lifetime - or longer.

[Sanctaphrax]

The duration of spells might be one of those areas where the game and the novels differ. They exist, they don't bother me.

Actually, I prefer not to consider the novels at all when discussing the rules. But I know better than to play soccer when everyone else is playing basketball.

IIRC, the ward in GS was erased by someone who was able to destroy the anchors from inside. Just blowing up the building wouldn't have worked, because the ward was between the anchors and the bomb.

Unless, of course, the bomb was already inside the building.

Hm. I guess that a few hundred pounds of explosives would make a good precaution against your wards being hijacked. But it would raise more risks than it solves.