That's a big erratum. It still doesn't *make sense*, but at least it's in the rules.

I don't Know, I think it makes perfect sense, and it is how we have always run it. *shrug*

It doesn't, but I'm not going to repeat myself.

Heh... No worries Yerameyahu...

What of mobile homes? As long as the vehicle stays parked, it can be warded I'm guessing.

Your Shadowrunner might be a Redneck if...

Since they can be warded when they are moving, they of course can be warded if they are stationary...

"If yer ally spirit manifests as a john deere tractor..."
"If any part of yer summoning ritual is a hog call..."
"If yer shamanic mask is a truckers cap and tank top..."

We always played it as wards are mobile, as long as the anchor and ward are in fixed relation. Thus you can ward a chest or even a car. While a warded car can cause some interesting situations/rulings, not being able to ward a chest can be just as problematic and counter-intuitive to the point of wards.

I personally interperted the need for open air wards to have a tie to the physical to mean that it doesn't have to be a wall per se, but a clear delineated marker of sorts. So you could have an open air ward that is marked by a Tree, A well, and the front porch of a house to define the boundaries (within the maximum allowed area, etc.).

You could set a ward with 2 points to define the boundary (a "wall"), but it's pretty easily bypassed, so kind of pointless.

As for windows being up or down, cave openings, and picket fences, I don't think that leaves gaps in the ward at all. They're just physical "markers" of the boundary, not the actual ward. I pretend magic is stupid and needs these markers to spell out (for me the GM) exactly what is protected and what isn't.

I think understanding wards coming from SR3 did help when looking over things in SR4/SR4A.

Yes, I agree. I think it's clear that wards in SR4 are mobile (and 'portable'), and that they must be defined by anchor, some minimal number of *other* objects (probably *on* the boundary of the ward), and possibly some kind of simple geometric rules (sphere with radius x). Metaphysical interpretations of 'object', etc., are what keep you from warding a rock and carrying it around.

I just don't think the rules *say* this and (actually contradict it), because they are dumb.

Who can argue with that?

It's shadowrun, brain required (and heavily taxed). But I long ago gave up feeling the books/RAW were the whole of the rules/world and so dumpshock is a great resource to iron out thoughts (hopefully before they come up at the table so I can look all knowledgable an shit).

Given that the classical depiction of magical wards is generally some marked off area surrounding objects of power, I would play that you MUST physically delineate the ward's perimeters.

Even if it's just salt poured around the edges of a room or a circle inscribed on the ground.

I would think the minimum size of a ward should be bigger, though. I've rarely seen one in media or literature that wasn't at least large enough for a half dozen folks to squeeze into. Making the minimum size bigger would also restrict mobile usage to van sized areas or larger.

A good point was brought up earlier - if wards cannot move with their anchors, even if we assume the earth's manasphere to be the reference, wards cast in skyscrapers should fail immediately since skyscrapers do sway back and forth regularly, sometimes by a surprising amount.



-k

There are even (relatively small) tidal effects on the dirt, IIRC. There are certainly ample examples of these kind, yeah.

While you could ward a chest, the minimum ward extends one metre radius from the designated anchor. You would need a two metre cube to contain a minimal ward, and that's typically larger than what I would think of as a chest.
Maybe if we just listened to history, it wouldn't need to repeat itself so often:

Warding stops beings from astrally entering, correct? If you're in a moving object, from astral, the being shouldn't be able to tell where you are or what you're in, as inanimate/non-living things in astral appear blurry & indistinct, right? A moving car in astral looks like what?

I don't know why you keep quoting that silly stuff over and over, Bodak. Incidentally, that's not what I was talking about, because he's wrong there: a ward defined by a rock and the ground would pop as soon as you moved the rock.

Instead, I meant that (if you define 'object' stupidly) you could define a ward be 2+ points *on the rock*… if it's allowed to define a ward that's mostly 'open air', and I don't think it is. Instead, it seems clear that minimal definition for a ward is an anchor, and significant bounding objects (which I believe are required to be *on* the surface of the ward) more or less evenly distributed. That is, open air wards are *not* really possible. That's not what the books say, and it's not what Synner said.

Initially, I just pointed out that people's superficial objections had already been thrashed to death in that thread. People seemed to ignore the link and its contents, repeating objections already addresses there in this new thread. People only started taking notice of that thread's answers when I started with the copypasta... and even some found reading that was too much of an effort! I find it much easier to search and then read than to form a new ill-informed post -- but it seems I'm alone in that regard I found the initial thread quite useful and the repetition of its questions and ignoring of its answers here quite silly... am I alone in that regard also?

As for the warded rock idea, odinson suggested he could "create a ward using a rock as an anchor ... pick up the rock and move it around" which you mimicked by suggesting "warding a rock and carrying it around". It seemed quite closely related as I read it. And his intention in establishing "a ward that had no barriers conforming with the ground or any walls" sounded like it was explicitly designed to not depend on physical delineations but only the central anchor.

The problem remain the same if you take a 2m staff, and fix a stone on each end.
Define the stones as anchors and you have a portable ward?
Seems dangerous, thats why as a GM i say a ward need a minimum of 4 Anchors in a non-planar alignment, separed by 1m minimum from each other.

True, but then "chest" was probably out of place in the setting. How about a shipping container instead. I can think of a ton of plot related reasons I'd want a shipping container to have a ward.



Well yea kinda, you'd have a warded staff, but not a staff that emanates a ward bubble you carry around.

To me, that's what the physical boundaries of the ward are about. If you ward a shipping container, I don't think the ward is a radius around the container, rather the boundaries conform to the container's walls. So I'm not seeing what you are in regards to carrying around a warded staff.

I wouldn't even let the warded staff function as a "magic weapon".

Because of the interaction betwen wards and
* other wards (collapse)
* spirit/projecting mages/dual natures creatures passing througt (ward collapse or spirit disrupted or creature stunned)
* in the same way i can ward a shield, so could i parry direct spells...

and i don't doubt their will be other issues with a man-portable ward.

As long as you could near-perfectly move those stones without moving them relative to each other, that *would* work if we're assuming 2 points is enough. I agree that we instead must assume 2 is not enough.

We do know that the entire surface of the ward *doesn't* have to be physically bounded (house with windows, gazebo, forest clearing, etc.). But there does seem to be a tipping point, as if the surface of the ward does have to be *substantially* bound by physical objects (which, I believe, must also be to some extent evenly distributed). I posit that a stone and flat ground are enough, *if* you also have a circle of salt, 3 other stones *in a ring*, etc., even though this results in an 'open air' half-sphere (or other simply volume shape). What you can't do is have the 'open air' parts of a ward extended unreasonably beyond the bounding objects (a bubble outside the shipping container, a pickup truck with a 30' bubble over the bed, etc.).

Given that the (bounding) physical structure of a ward is unwieldy (large in 3D for even a troll), there's not too much worry about 'carrying around a spell shield', I would think. The bounding structure also has to be strong and rigid, because the ward has no physical effects, and breakage while moving would pop the ward. This satisfies portability, mobility, any earth's-rotation/etc. problems, and still keeps wards firmly in the 'location-protection' business. Yes?

They could probably build a warded shield for a battlemech, though.






-k

Yes, as long as it was big, '3D' (as in 'more sphere than disc'), and strong enough to survive movement and combat. It's like blocking bullets by carrying an oil drum. I think a really extreme Captain America shield would work (for the battlemech), if it's literally a half-sphere.

But easier to just ward an APC (simple shape, bounding objects, etc.), which seems okay.

Hey, I blocked bullets with a garbage dumpster in Deus Ex. Kinda like that?






-k

Again, I don't think we see wards the same way.

* Possibly collapse, but that's not exactly gamebreaking
* Why would they need to pass through the staff? Are you suggesting to "hit" them with the ward to force something to pass through? (A ward is defensive by definition). I'd rule if you're forcing the ward on them instead of vice versa, the ward will break, but that isn't RAW, just HR/PO (house rule/personal opinion), but then there aren't any rules for what you're suggesting either. A ward does not a magic weapon make.
* Huh? Only the shield would be so warded so I don't see how that protection would extend to the shield-bearer or allow you to "parry" anything. Even warded armor would make more sense (I still wouldn't allow it at my table since the pieces of armor are flexible and have to be put on/assembled in the first place, breaking the relative position to the anchor).

While I understand your thought process, I simply don't agree with your conclusions of how a warded object interacts when used as anything other than a Ward. (read magical barrier to protect or guard an area or object)

Might as well argue the magic fingers spell allows you to grip someones heart and kill them instantly. You can't just extrapolate on what would otherwise be logical when it comes to "magic".

Yes, Karma. If you can easily lift and carry a dumpster (large, heavy, '3D'), you can use it to block bullets. Maybe you're the Hulk, maybe you cast Levitate, but either way I think I'm okay with it.

So is the big objection to flattish wards (3D, but with one dimension fairly small, for example 5cm x 1m x 1m) that they might be too useful/abused by clever people? Or is there a metaphysical idea behind it?

As I understand it, wards simply can't do that in SR magic. They're things of spaces, locations, not 'objects'. It'd be against their nature to be a wall (/shield/doorway), but a room, a hallway, a dome is okay. What they're for, their metaphysical reality, is protecting a place; the edge-of-theoretical idea of carrying a minimal one to block things is the same as carrying a dumpster to block bullets: possible, but not the point of the dumpster, and not very convenient.

Isn't there a spell called Ram, which functions like a magical force that just hits physical objects? If so... then there's no need to use a different spell for the same purpose. I think this is more of a game balance issue... why allow a spell/ability to be used in a specific manner, when there's a different spell/ability that fulfills the purpose?

Who's talking about spells? Warding is a non-spell function of any Awakened (and astrally-percieving?) entity, and it doesn't affect mundanes at all. The more exact spell counterpart of warding is Mana Barrier, though there are differences.

Are you talking about casting Physical Barrier, then moving it to hit people? I think that (wrong idea) is a different thread. :/

Sorry, you're right. I was confusing this with a topic on my other gaming/LARP board. A common thread we keeps iterating is that no spell/power/ability can be used in a manner that copies an already existing spell/power/ability.

I think they have to be able to astrally percieve in order to do so, yeah.

There were "Ram" and "Wreck" spells (in SR3 at least) which were a target-limited powerbolt at range touch and LoS respectively. So you could have "Wreck Camera" or "Ram Cyberware". I don't think they actually rammed (as in Ramming rules) the target though.

Using Physical Barrier to swat enemies is here.

A car is an object, so is a shipping container, and we've established those as valid targets for warding. So what's the minimal object that can be warded? Could you make a warded briefcase, to protect secret documents?

Simple rules interpretation:

1. Wards cannot move relative to their anchor.
2. An anchor can be any physical object (such as the cup holder in the center console.
3. The Ward must be defined by a physical border (could be a tree line, could be the interior of the car-GM call as to the requirements, open air seems tricky though).

Ergo, you could ward the interior of a car.

So what did I miss?

No, Ascalaphus, because it's too small.

Warlordtheft, the issue has just been that the rules, even across books, as well Bodak's nutty quotes, contradict each other. I think most people agree that you have it straight (I do). However, your statements (which the books more or less have) are kinda silly; it's like saying an umbrella can't move relative to its pole. Duh. It's more useful to say (and if the books said) that a ward is defined by anchor+physical border objects, and the anchor can't move relative to *those*. It's not really the same difference.

So what are the minimum sizes? Are they in one of the books?

Yup. Definitely mentioned in this thread, too.

"A ward must also extend at least one meter in every direction from the physical anchor that it is attached to (see below), which prevents ward shapes that are very tiny or very thin in any dimension." - Street Magic pg 124




-k

Ah, okay. Companion cubes it is then.

If my memories is not wrong you can make a spheric ward too

Yes, but whoever heard of a companion sphere?

*But*… the surface of the ward has to be significantly bound by physical objects. So your sphere has to have immobile crap distributed relatively evenly across it (otherwise it's an open air ward, yadda yadda).

Behold, the magic dodecahedron? (because some other platonic solids are said to cause cancer)

There's some more in the books about complex shapes not working, but most regular, convex solids should be fine (with physical bounding, of course). The closer to a sphere/half-sphere, the better (presumably).

Given that warded companion cubes are possible, why then do you not regularly see SWAT teams and the equivalent showing up with pre-prepared warded cube barriers, when they are facing magical threats? Much like they have heavy armored barriers they can deploy to protect against gunfire?

I mean, yeah, they're probably too bulky and unwieldy for shadowrunners to use in most cases, but SWAT wouldn't have a problem with that. They just have a flatbed truck roll up with a half dozen cubes and set them up in whatever defensive position.



-k

Magical Dragonsteeth?

I thought those grew skeletons up out of the ground?

I meant those WWII Tank-Traps.
Actually not Dragons-Teeth at all.
But i don't know how the kind i mean is named.

Presumably they do, KarmaInferno… whenever it's feasible to carry around cubes that are 6' on a side, strong enough to survive being moved, and strong enough to survive mundane combat. I'm guessing that's rare.