Wards on Walls and Doors

[Veknironth]

Well, the standard use of a ward as a protective device on a door or wall. Someone touches it or disturbs the object and the ward goes off. Or, it has some area effect or other trigger. So what happens when the ward is on side 1, but somoene tries to manipulate a door on side 2? Would that ward go off? If the ward is an area effect ward, I can see it going off and hitting everyone in the area, but if you disturb the door from side 1 wouldn't a directional ward, once triggered, fire in the direction of side 1? Or would the ward not be triggered?

If the ward would be triggered, how would a ward on a wall work? If you put a ward on side 1 of a wall, especially an area effect ward, would someone touching the other side of the wall trigger it? How thick of a wall would it have to be for the ward to not be triggered? Like if you're in an old Japanese house and the walls are made of paper, would touching the wall trigger the ward?

-Vek
"Maybe get rid of wards all together?"

[kiralon]

For me i use the area of effect, but the magic is blocked by the amount of material that blocks the x-ray vision spell (i have a more comlplete list for this) and is raytraced from the the wards themselves.

So if a turn you blue ward is under a rug on a 3 ft thick stone floor on the second level is area triggered and area effect. The people on the level below arent affect. The people in the area effect on the other side of the 1ft thick (clay) brick wall are turned blue except the guy who is laying completly down in the 4 inch thick lead bathtub (the tub is open but the "rays" come from the floor level so only hit lead).

The material rules also apply to the detection and activation ability of the wards, so the guy in the tub, if he was wheeled into the area affect would not set the wards off until he got out of the tub or stood up highish enough.

And if the ward was touch activated, touching the paper wall near the ward wouldnt be enough, moving the wall would however.

[ShadowLogan]

For Doors: If the door is frequently used, no you can't put a ward on it (RAW) though how one defines frequent use is subject to opinion and might vary by situation. For non-frequent used doors... by the book any disturbance should set the ward off (unless the Diabolist who created it). Now the Wards probably doesn't care which direction the disturbance came from and it will respond accordingly as it was designed to (so if Ward on SideA and you come in via SideB, the Ward still acts on you even if it isn't AoE).

For Walls (and Ceilings and Floors): anything on the flip side is null and void in terms of disturbing a ward (unless it comes crashing through).

Though this brings up an interesting idea in setting off wards. Would an Earthquake sufficient to shake things up set off a ward on a object (secured in place or "loose") or a building face (wall, ceiling, floor, door, window)?

[Library Ogre]

At nearly 20 years since I wrote about this in Mysteries of Magic, you'd think people would've read this stuff by now...

oh. wait. yeah.

[kiralon]

I read MoM when i first got it about 10 years ago, but had already house ruled a lot of the stuff in there earlier as there needed to be answers to those questions and more, so it is my least referenced book easily.

Was this answered in there or was it cut, I had a quick glance in it and the answer didn't jump out at me.

[Library Ogre]

I read MoM when i first got it about 10 years ago, but had already house ruled a lot of the stuff in there earlier as there needed to be answers to those questions and more, so it is my least referenced book easily.

Was this answered in there or was it cut, I had a quick glance in it and the answer didn't jump out at me.

In what was printed, it was not. The full manuscript is 158,645 words, in 11 Chapters and an appendix. Diabolism, which is chapter 4, is 14,591 words.

[GoliathReturns]

And here's where the RAW have issues (and let's be honest, wards are the biggest conflicts in the RAW).

So, while Logan is correct about the "frequently used" rule, there's also the issue of what exactly wards were used.

If it's a protection ward (and the rules here don't specify protection from, or protection by inflection, so I'd determine it means both), it has to be "visible" (page 121). While that paragraph seems directed at wards on people, the next paragraph says the same applies to objects- unfortunately, the use of commas kind of blurs some stuff, if it's meant to be included or not.

As for walls- again, it depends, again, on how wards were placed-

If the area effect is tied to the trigger, then I'd say being within range is enough (unless it's a protection wards, see above), but if the area affect is tied to the inflict portion, then I'd say to trigger would need to be on the same side of the wall, and the wall would prevent any appropriate damage (a wood wall would prevent less damage than a stone wall).

But yeah, this is where Ogre's extensive clarifications would have been incredibly useful.

--
GS

[Veknironth]

Well, at the rate I'm going, I figure I can elicit most of that manuscript in forum posts.

-Vek
"I AM doing a public service!"