I have two questions for you all, as I suspect you have more experience in blowing things up and possibly the creative uses of spells.

First question:
A physical barrier can either be a dome centered on you, or a way such/such big. When you make a wall from the spell, can you tilt it and otherwise place it within LOS and not by your person? (the moving part makes sense, tilting's another matter) Depending on how that's answered, would it be possible to set up a barrier horizontal, say, over a gap on a bridge or just in mid air? Gives you a way to cross the bridge or stay off the ground if you want. How does that sound?

second question:
Powerball (and its smaller form, powerbolt) can break physical objects. The problem is, despite having read the section on breaking objects and all that, I'm not quite sure how it works still.
A Force 6 (L) powerball seems to have the same potential as a Force 6 (D) powerball in breaking things, the only difference is the damage factor, which seems to be pointless anyways in this case. I could understand if it determined a hole size or the actual damage potential against a wall or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Also, with PowerBall, you have a wide-spread spell, if you used it on one big object, say the side of a building, and you did manage to break it, would you say the size of the spell just makes one nice big gap, o makes one mini one because it's still one target despite the size and the spell?

Hopefully those made sense. ^-^;

Dome/Wall physical barrier - you can place the dome or wall where you wish, they do not have to be centered over you or near you. The other questions are a GM decision for your campaign. For example, in our campaign, we rule that you can place the wall horizontally, it is frictionless or has friction at the choice of the caster, and has no weight capacity on its own if unsupported. Therefore you could not use it in place of a Levitate spell, but could use it to cover a short gap in a bridge. If your GM allows this, he is likely to give it a weight limit based on the Force of the spell.

Powerbolt and Powerball can do Light, Moderate, Serious, or Deadly damage to objects that your GM decides have condition monitors, like Vehicles and Cyberdecks, for example. Such things are hard to affect (target number and Force requirements), but if you make the dice rolls they do not get a chance to resist. A vehicle that has taken Deadly damage no longer operates, but might still block a doorway.

To determine whether you get through a barrier, like a wall or door or something blocking a doorway, then you use the barrier rules where the damage level you have chosen is unimportant but the force of the spell matters. See the thread Wreck (Object) for more info. Wreck Vehicle and Wreck Door are simply Powerbolt spells with a restricted target and easier drain. As a house rule, if I were your GM, I would make the damage level matter, in some way, against barriers, but I don't see that in the published rules.

Some of the ideas I had for a barrier was to make a ramp to send chasing cars too high or something, but that was more amusement then consideration. The other reason for making horizontal was when you needed multiple people off the ground, as it was easier than levitating everyone. Those are good reasonings however, so I guess my best bet it with the GM.

As for cars, I knew to go by a meter for them, cyberdecks didn't occured to me, but that was a good point.

I did see the wreck thread, or a few posts on it. If the damage lvl is not important at this point, then I guess there's not too much to worry about if that's a general agreement by book and people, which it seems to probably be.

Still think it amusing to use powerball in comparison to bolt. Bolt was meant for a single target, so could make a hole more fit for a single person, powerball can hit several things at once however, and maybe even make a -big- hole as a collective effect of so much space effected. hehe.

Guess that's another GM point, but thank you very much for your post, OurTeam.

If you look at the Barrier Rating table on page 124, that gives a good idea on how much weight a Physical Barrier could hold. If the car were going fast enough to cross the bridge, I'd allow a Force 4 spell (BarrierRating = Force) to hold the wieght and crumble/dispel in the passing. Force 6 I'd allow to hold the weight for a few seconds longer, but not 'set' on. The structural integrity of that Barrier Rating just couldn't withstand the weight for a lengthy period of time.

As for Powerball/Bolt/Wreck. I agree with OurTeam. Perform a Deadly wound, TN = OR table on page 182.

Sphynx