Wards don't affect links. They affect spells cast through them. The spell goes from ritual to link. The link makes it affect the target. No spell through ward, no ward bonus.

Well, wards do affect links in terms of astral tracking.

As for the question concerning ritually cast spells going through wards or not, that's another issue.

Well, if you want to get technical, LOS is just another type of link. By that logic, one could say that using line of sight to cast a spell on a target on the other side of a ward provides no bonuses to the defender.

Let's look at it this way.

You're standing near a ward. Your target is a mundane standing on both sides of the ward. Does the ward protect him if you decide to fry him with a Mana Bolt?

It's exactly the same situation here. The ritual/symbolic/sympathic link is effectively part of the target. Part of the target that's not on the other side of countless wards between the ritual team and the target's main body. Part of the target that's not being dwindled down to worthlessness by the numerous background counts between the ritual team and the target.

It's as if the target were right there in front of them. Because for all intents and purposes -- the target is.

The spell doesn't travel anywhere. That's why Line of Sight isn't an issue unless using a spotter (and all the same things about being between numerous wards and backgrounds apply with the spotter so it's a moot point). They cast it, the target is affected (or with a spotter; they cast it, the spell manifests within the spotter, and LoS from the spotter to the target is applied). They don't cast it and wait for it to travel to the target, who upon getting hit by the spell has 10,000+ bonus dice to resist it due to all the wards and background counts that had to be passed to get there.

I'm sorry, but thinking otherwise is simply stupid. Doubly so if you arbitrarily -- and it would be incredibly arbitrary, just like the GM getting to pick a random number to determine how many other wards and background counts had to be blasted through -- decide that only one ward "magically" blocks the spell.

*rolls eyes and realizes he is talking to a brick wall*

Astral links are not lines of force that go from point A to point B. You can astrally track point A to point B through a link, and you can track point B to point A through a link, but you cannot track from a point in between those two to either end.

And while I acknowledge Nightmare that in previous editions ritual spells went into the Astral plane and then walked from point A to point B (in first and second edition they could be fought in kung fu battle while doing so); in SR4 they don't do that. That's legacy rules thinking.

The rules in question were removed, and the reasoning that went with them should be cast aside.

-Frank

If I might intrude, I'm not well versed in the magic rules, but I'd just like to point out that magic following the path of least resistance doesn't give it any intelligence.
Electricity and water (for example) do it without being intelligent.

(That being said, I'm not supporting the fact that magic travels... but I'm not supporting the opposite either. I just don't care, it's magic: it has things it can and things it can't do and you just have to accept these.)

I know this thread is about Sympathetic/Symbolic links but no one has answered my question: does a ritual team with a spotter-leader inside the ward suffer from casting through the barrier?

Well, I'm pretty satisfied with Synner's earlier ruling, and I hope he gets it into the FAQ (or even better some form of Errata) very soon.

You're basing your "canon" arguments on multiple errors, piss poor logic, and mistakes made by a developer in his post.

Wards don't protect things inside them. They're barriers that stop things from going through them. From Synner's post -- which is wrong on so many levels -- you could be inside the barrier with the guy and he's still protected by it since wards apparently protect everything inside them. And that was the basis of everything he had to say on the subject.

Again: It's just Wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong.

I'm not sure why you are debating this so vehemently, considering Synner (I assume the author) has explained how he intended Wards to interact with Ritual Spellcasting (although he didn't do a great job of explaining the 'mechanics'), and has already indicated his intention to have this topic addressed and/or amended to reflect his viewpoint.

He's pretty much come out and stated that, by canon, Wards affect Ritual Spellcasting (the rest is fluff explanation). I don't see how you can argue that it works any other way according to canon. Now, if we are talking house rules, or magical theory, or whatever, I could understand it, but we are talking canon, and the dude that decides (I assume) has said just how it is.

I usually agree with your takes, both on strict (and not-so-strict) canon and on the Sixth World as a whole, but in this case I am just puzzled by your motivations.

A mistake is a mistake no matter who says it, whether its a mistake in the rules, the intent, or an opinion.

The things that make Ritual Spellcasting "broken" have nothing to do with ignoring line of sight or bypassing wards and background counts. That's a perk of it and one of the main reasons it's worth wasting a bare minimum of 13 hours creating a symbolic link and using Ritual Spellcasting. The target still gets a Spell Resistance Test. They're still protected by other measures, such as Counterspelling or Magical Guard. That part of Ritual Spellcasting is A-Okay. Logically and philosophically, that's spot on with the entire point of Ritual Spellcasting.

What needs to be addressed is the ability to have the ritual team getting 100+ dice pools (as seen in the various threads on the subject that lead to this thread) and completely obliterating the target. A target that even if the ward did affect it, it wouldn't matter one iota due to the absolutely ridiculous size of the dice pool involved. That's the problem. Limits need to be placed on that aspect of Ritual Spellcasting; limits that allow Ritual Spellcasting to still be powerful, but not to the point where there's no way to defend against it all.

That kind of craziness is the domain of blood magic and sacrificial rituals like the Great Ghost Dance. Not a group of six guys in their parent's basement just barely getting a bloody nose due to Drain when it's over and done with.

If something needs to be changed about Ritual Spellcasting, it's that. That's the aspect that's broken. Not effectively having a piece of the target in your hand and spending 13+ hours casting a spell on him as if he were there with you -- which is precisely what Ritual Spellcasting is effectively supposed to be doing.

... it's ritual spellcasting. 100+ dice pools are supposed to happen. It's fricking ritual magic.

And as far as "that craziness is the domain of blood magic and sacrificial rituals like the Great Ghost Dance"... are you really, seriously comparing the dropping a few hundred dice on someone to the Great Ghost Dance? Really?

One of the rituals lets you kill a person, or a few people if you use an AOE effect. The other one defeats the entire US military, causes volcanos to erupt, tornados to touch down and earthquakes to devastate entire cities, causes mana spikes that let horrors enter the world, accelerates the mana cycle in the vicinity by thousands of years, and basically changes the face of the world. They're not even close to being on the same order of magnitude.

And really, from a game balance point of view, it's not that bad. You drop a spell like that, and somebody's going to come looking for you. Maybe several of them. And they're going to be an order of magnitude more bad ass than you too. For any PC, it's the equivalent of signing one's own death warrant.

What's the issue with the wards again then? They're meaningless against that sort of thing. It comes down to a philosophical problem, one where the issue that needs addressing is being completely and utterly clouded by a non-issue that will do nothing to thwart the actual problem but instead will open up countless real problems. Especially with the philosophy stated in Synner's original post on the subject!

No.

Symbolic Linking imposes a penalty to the Ritual Spellcasting Test. If you got 100 dice, this penalty is meaningless.
But your Spell is still limited by Force, thus, your hit's will be Force only at best, no matter how many dice you have.

The Ward adds to the targets Spell Defense, so it always offers a higher chance of survival, as the Target has to resist Force Hits at best.

I don't have a problem with ritual magic blowing through wards by force. I just don't think that ritual magic gets to bypass them altogether.

Ritual magic already has a huge advantage -- they can reach out and touch you anywhere from a totally secured location, on their terms. There's no need for them to have additional advantages.

That's the balance philosophy, from my point of view.

As for the rules themselves, I just don't see any support for the idea that they bypass wards. The idea that you cast a spell here and instantly the effect occurs there with nothing travelling inbetween is teleportation in my opinion. And as far as the spell travelling on the metaplanes or some crazy fourth dimension, that theory has no support in the literature; in fact, if you'll read the SR4 literature, it suggests (although it does not explicitly say) that magic (sorcery) must stay on the same plane it's cast on.

Either it's cast 'remotly', or 'inside'. Pick one.

In order for me to agree with you, some of the premises that you believe need to be proven or clarified.

Premise 1: The "point of origin" is at the ritual caster.
This then means the spell is actually forming at the ritual caster. The problem is, is that the spell has no way to travel to the links location. Ritual spells are not some sort of heat-seeking missile.

Premise 2: The ritual-link goes through the ward.
The problem with this, is that it would then mean there is some sort of physical path to the link. This would then mean if I was in the middle I would be able to track to point A or point B. But the only places there is anything in the astral is point A and point B. There is no inbetween. There is nothing linking point A and point B. The only way to know about point A is to observe point B and know it's signature. You then go to point A based upon this knowledge. Point A and point B are two separate dots on a grid, and there is no line drawn connecting them. If this was the case, I could go to any point on this line and find my way to point A or point B.

Premise 3: Ritual casting is not done remotely
The spell then has no way of arriving at point B. If it is not being done remotely, that means it is being done locally. So the spell is then forming at the location of the ritual. There is only two ways for it to get to point B. By teleportation or by physical travel. Teleportation is ruled outright. Physical travel would allow the middle man scenario. In fact, it would allow other mages to interrupt the spell as it traveled to point B. Astral security could be made so the "path of least resistance" would be between mages on 24/7 watch that dispel ritual spells that come through. Believing in this premise requires us to make assumptions and create fluff that is nonexistent in the SR4 rulebook.

Jeez guys, slow down.

I'm the writer of the Wards section of Street Magic. Synner (aka Peter Taylor) was the lead developer for Street Magic. I can certainly tell you what I intended when working on the wards section, but I can't tell you what the final official ruling is. Rob and Peter decide on that stuff and make it official and can overrule me.

Intended: Wards protect against ritual magic, including ritual magic using material, sympathetic, and symbolic links.

When speaking of ritual magic, it is really the link that the ward is interfering with, not the formation of the spell itself (though these are technical details more than anything).

If you are using ritual magic with a spotter, and the spotter is outside the ward, the link is not being interfered with (it connects spotter to ritual team), but the spotter is going to have a rough time assessing the target through an opaque barrier. Note that it is not necessarily impossible: magical barriers impose a visibility penalty to astral perception equal to their Force (p. 185, SR4) assuming there are no other astral shadows in the way. If the ward is built along a room, the ward may not be totally opaque, but the walls of the room are anyway. Note that is also possible for a spotter to physically move through the ward, since spotters can physically travel to their target (p. 175, SR4). So a spotter could walk through a ward and then assense his target. However, at that point the ward will be impeding on the active link between the spotter and the ritual team (Ritual Targeting, p. 175, SR4) and will offer protection to the target.

If you are using ritual magic with a link instead of a spotter, the ward is impeding on that link, which is very active during ritual magic. Since the link is being impeded, the ward offers protection to the target. There is precedent for these links being impeded by wards, since wards add a penalty to Astral Tracking attempts (p. 184, SR4).

So you might ask, doesn't that mean spotters are doubly-screwed by a ward? In a word, yes. Of course, this is why links are sometimes used instead of spotters. Even Street Magic says so:

Okay guys, you're starting to get personal. I'm loving the debate because it is valuable, but there's a few of you who are starting to call each other names. Take a deep breath and let's continue working constructively.

The spotter never is the team leader. He will always be at his ritual place performing ritual spellcasting, not wandering around.