We all know what happens when a bullet tangles with an anchored Physical/Bullet Barrier linked to Detect Bullet. (Lugh Surehand was oh so very kind, some decades back, to demonstrate it for us in public.) But Physical Barrier is a spherical concept with a fixed radius at casting. What happens when the bullet is discharged inside that radius?

To begin, there have to be some constraints on how the bullet is detected, yes? Otherwise bodyguards - presumably with loaded pistols - would never be able to get inside the perimeter of the detection spell without kicking off the anchored spell. So there should be some way to smuggle a firearm inside the radius of the anchored spell without setting it off.

Magic should be able to tell the difference between a dormant bullet and one that is in flight, IMO.

If it does, then there's no spell-related problem smuggling a loaded pistol to inside the radius of the anchored barrier. Or, heck, to mind-controlling one of the bodyguards to pull their own pistol and shoot the target. The bullet in flight will only then trigger the anchored barrier - but because it would come up automatically at its usual radius, it wouldn't block the bullet, I think?

I guess that just depends on the situation. They might have a barrier cast at its full radius (probably be more than 30 feet) which won't really help, and they might have one cast with a 1-meter radius, which'll be pretty effective. They might even use Bullet Armor instead.

Your mileage may vary!

I thought the barrier was a fixed size, it mentions nothing about being able to make it smaller.

The Physical Barrier spell description explicitly says that you can adjust the size just like you adjust the radius of any other area-effect spell.

Yeah John, that's my point, you really *can't* reliably adjust the radius of AE spells. To make a spell bigger every die that you remove from the test before you roll it can increase the radius one meter, while every two dice reduce the radius one meter. This means that a mage with a magic attribute of 8 would have to remove a whopping 12 dice to get the radius down to "only" 6 feet from the center of effect in all directions. You would need to sacrifice 14 dice to get the spell down to where its just big enough to contain the person. Subtracting 12 of 14 dice from a test sounds like a fantastic way to botch or fail the roll in the first place.

Also, given that it's an anchored spell - how could the mage know in advance what size to make it? Best guesstimate, is all. The standard anchored version (I assume) would be designed to have a smaller radius than the detect spell ... but not that much smaller, you don't really want the person you're supposed to be protecting to drop dead of a heart attack as the bullet hangs in front of their nose and fully visible. There's not much point in anchoring a defensive spell with a very low Force, and that will affect the radius as well: as BitBasher notes, it's much harder to make it smaller than larger.

Bullet armour is certainly another option, but it would need to be customised (since it isn't among the standard spells I don't think?), and thus I doubt it would be the usual thing among corporate mages.

Yea, if youre worried/concerned whatever with the radius thingy, just use the limited armor instead of limited barrier. Or make a focus with both if its an npc.

Or buy your anchored defenses from your neighborhood burnt-out magician (magic attribute 3, perhaps).

The short answer to your question is that nothing happens to a bullet fired within a physical barrier, as long as its target is within the barrier as well. Otherwise it suffers the same penalties exiting the barrier as any bullet does entering.

There was an extensive discussion on the previous forums about what exactly happens with the anchored detect bullet/bullet barrier combination. Most asked the same questions as above: how does the detect bullet spell detect a bullet? Will the rounds in the bodyguard's handgun set off the detection spell? What about bullets aimed outward from the target? What about bullets passing within the radius of the detection spell but not specifically aimed at the target? I don't remember if we arrived at a consensus at the time (probably not) but one of the better arguments was that the detection spell had some sort of velocity gate to its trigger, that it would only go off when it realized that the bullet being detected was inbound to its radius rather than already within or outbound from. And since there's no measurable delay between when the anchor is triggered and the bullet barrier spell goes off there isn't a chance for the bullet to be inside the radius of the barrier. Assuming, of course, that the mage knew enough to anchor a detect bullet spell of greater radius than the bullet barrier spell.

If the search function worked on the old forums I'd find the thread for you, sorry.

Thanks, Zazen. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to connect the two. (Moral: never post while under the effect of intense antihistimines.)

grendel: you're not talking about this list-thread, are you? It's the only one I've ever seen to try to pry open the issue (unless you count the old "Magic Bullet" thread), and I was hoping we could get some new perspectives on interpretation.

Actually I didn't have a specific case in mind, but was trying to find general ways for one or more mundane types to get around this and other anchored combinations. Identifying a specific combination as significantly more expensive sharply limits the number of NPCs who would be likely to have access to it.

Another, somewhat related question: is anything fired from a firearm necessarily defined as a bullet? (Would a bullet barrier - or bullet armour - recognise all such projectiles?)