Random idea that had occured to me that I don't recall being covered anywhere: can wards be 'stacked' by layering them? In other words, or, as an example, could you ward a room aat say force 6, then a safe at force 7, and place something inside said safe, and expect it to be harder to find than if it was just in the force 7 ward in the safe? Or is it treated like armor spells where only the strongest one takes effect?

Going by the rules, wards seem to be 3d shells with predefined boundries. There is nothing to prevent you from putting the boundries of one shell within the boundries of the other. For example, you could ward a building and then also ward a secure area in that building. For the purposes of astral tracking and such, I'd only treat consider the most powerful ward and I would never force a character to go into conflist with two or more wards at once, however (exceptional circumstances excpted).

You'd have to break 'em down consecutively, though, which would be a pain in the rear.

My ruling would be the same as hyzmarca's.

You can create a ward inside a ward, and it is the highest rating that applies to things like astral tracking TN. Under normal circumstances you have to defeat the wards consecutively.

One thing I'd like to mention is that (at least in my games) wards have *three* dimensions, and you can't stack them too close to each other. I'm NOT letting a mage place two wards on one wall.

Oh, and there's the problems you get into when you try to carry one ward through another, especially if they've been created by two different mages...

Ahhh. but you can place 1 ward on the plaster on the wall, another on the concrete, another on the undercoat of paint, another on...

I agree with noname, i think there should be some appreciable distance between wards, prehaps only a meter or two between sections, but, standing room, atleast.

I'm pretty easy going with wards. Wards within wards, overlapping wards, etc., all that is fine. The thing is, it just gets expensive to maintain. Supporting a more powerful ward within a larger, weaker one makes economic sense though, especially if you're worried about outages or sometimes the mages can't be called back in time to reinforce regularly.

I'd allow wards within wards, but I'd probably not allow them to be placed right on top of each other. I keep thinking of some industrious individual putting a masking ward immediately on top of a standard ward. Any astral form or dual natured critter moving through it a decent speed goes kersplat and probably wont see it coming.

Wards within wards, I've used them. The cost is not so bad when you have a "loyal" (read brainwashed) corps of mages funded by a paranoid government (You go fix the wards, or it's off to see Dr Zanaczeck at the "education centre").