On the limits of Circle Wards

That particular spell is not a Circle Ward.

It uses the Base 4 ReIg guideline (Control a fire in a slightly unnatural fashion (for example, stop it from burning a person).), not the General one that uses Touch/Ring/Circle.

Further the spell description says the "target" (in this case maybe focus would be better; also, the spell doesn't specify what the "target"/focus is - person, rock, rabid stoat, etc. all seem to work) is the center of a one pace radius circle where fire is affected by the ward. Since a Base Individual for Ignem is defined as "a large campfire or the fire in the hearth of a great hall", a six foot diameter fire seems to fit within this definition. How this scales up is probably based on the volume of fire affected and if the target/focus doesn't fit in that volume, you have a problem.

HoH:Soc does say there are two different "types" of wards in the Columbae section, so this spell probably comes from a non-Columbae source.

True, but it's functioning as a ward does and the language of the spell says the target of the spell is protected from (any, unspecified) fire, not a targeted fire is prevented from burning anything. The spell is functioning as a ward does (the target of the spell is protected from the Form of the spell).

I could use the same argument for a Personal/Sun/Individual ward against natural animals; the target of the spell is not an animal, they are being warded against animals but they are not a valid target for Animal spells. Obviously wards are a special case in this regard, but the rules as written do an inadequate job of explaining this (where the Vim guidelines do a decent job of pointing out that Vim spells can have non-standard Targets for the Form).

Circle wards (as well as Room/Structure/Boundary) operate more logically, as they target an area, it's the Individual/Part/Group targets that get weird.

I assume you have exactly the same issue with all InFo spells that use T: Taste, Touch, Smell, Hearing, and Vision, right? They do work the same way.

Those are also poorly explained if you pick them apart. They have a Sense Target, but then talk about them giving 'the target' a magical sense. It's not hard to figure out how the game means these spells are supposed to act, but they aren't well explained. Again, the guidelines for Vim spells should be employed in a more general sense - sometimes spells of a certain Form act on something not within that form. For example, Sense Target spells grant magical senses about (Form) to anything, and warding spells can protect anything from (Form). For these sorts of spells, Target =/= receiver of the spell's effects.

There are many spells that works 'like a ward'. And there are also wards with personal range. CORE. Rego can repell things. And muto?

CLOAK OF THE DUCK’S FEATHERS reaq
Break the uncomming waves reaq
lungs of the fish muaq
...

And creating a perdo terram efect with duration to create a hole, you can afect new soil trying to fill the hole for the duration of the spell.

Nobody's arguing that it shouldn't. But not all wards operate the same either. Ward Against Heat and Flames is only effective to fires doing so much (+15) damage, while Ward Against Wood is basically infinitely powerful against any amount of wood. Wards vs Supernatural creatures are scalar (can be of any level), while wards against mundane animals or people are fixed and absolute.

If I was a hermetic magus, I'd be asking questions like "If this spell can keep an infinite mass of wood away from a target, why cannot another spell affect an infinite amount of wood in a different fashion?" It would make more sense if Wards had to deal with Size modifiers; you basic Terram ward could keep out a cubic pace of stone or a cubic foot of metal. A ward against animals would keep out animals of +1 Size or lower.

Come to think of it, Ward should probably be a Target guideline.

And IMHO wards against supernatural creatures should be a fixed level as well, with the penetration being what makes it harder to ward off powerful creatures. But alas, that is not how RAW works...

So, it seems that there are two sub-types of wards:

1. Those that directly affect the target: keeping beavers out of your house, for example.

2. Those that indirectly affect the intent of the target: keeping the flood that the beavers caused from washing your house away.

Rego wards seem to affect both. The issue seems to be the latter, as it would seem to require an Intelligo effect to determine that the water crashing down on your lawn was caused by an irate beaver, rather than, say, the annual spring snowmelt.

But in thinking about it a bit more - with this logic, all wards require intelligo effects, as they need to determine if the target is in their scope of authority. "Are you a beaver? If yes, you cannot enter - if no, come on in!"

Except that wards work against demons: who are immune to Intelligo effects. This suggests that wards, rather than asking if their target is something specific, blindly push against anything that tries to pass over them - and only beaver-shaped animals are affected.

So, that takes care of direct wards. Which leaves indirect wards. I would argue that the same effect holds: the ward blindly pushes on anything that tries to cross its boundary, and only the thing which the ward was designed to repel is affected. However, this suggests that wards push against two types of things: the object, and the motive intent of an object.

Again, this suggests that "who caused the object to move" is an innate property that a ward can blindly push against, just like size and shape and innate beaver nature. As such, an anti-beaver ward doesn't block out water: it blocks out beaver motive intent. And because the motive intent is attached to the water itself, blocking beaver motive intent ALSO has the fortunate result of preventing your basement from being flooded.

This seems to work for me - although it suggests two separate types of Wards that have been Integrated into one guideline. And I do assume that wards are of the "stops things from crossing the boundary" type, rather than "prevents the action from occurring" type.

Wards get a lot easier to swallow if you just let indirect effects bypass the ward. Ward yourself against Faeries? Great, until the faerie causes you castle to collapse atop you. Build stout buildings and ward the whole structure. That chalk ring against humans? They'll smudge it with a bucket of water, so carve a circle in stone.

A lot of the time creatures won't have a clue what to do about a ward. Cunning creatures especially won't be able to devise an indirect strategy, and some creatures won't care - demons, for example, give up easily when presented with difficulties (no virtue of hope). Faeries might draw vitality from being hedged out by a ward, so would not even try to bring it down (but taunt the people in the ward, naturally). Creatures without Magic Lore or Hermetic Theory wouldn't know enough to damage a circle ward indirectly, as they wouldn't know that would end it, just as most beasts don't know how to work a latch on a door.

This seems the best answer to me, there is no momentum, things have to be moved by an agency, which can be imprinted on a body until it achieves it's natural state again.

Bob Dillon

This seems the best answer to me, there is no momentum, things have to be moved by an agency, which can be imprinted on a body until it achieves it's natural state again.

Bob Dillon

Which means that Wards have an innate knowledge of what acted on a body (free Intellego effect). We don't like intelligence Parma to solve the pink dot problem, why should we like Intelligent wards?

But direct wards already have this: if you go for the "free Intelligo" interpretation, then direct wards also have an innate knowledge of what a body is (ie, it knows that a beaver is a beaver.) As such, it's not a stretch to include that it can also have a free intelligo effect on what caused the object to move.

However - I also don't care for the free Intelligo effect. Hence my "blindly push against the innate property of an object" idea. It's similar to how you can use DEO as a "free Intelligo" effect to detect the infernal: if it starts smoking and screaming, then it's a demon. Or in this case: if the water parts, then you know the flood was caused by a beaver.

From my understanding of DEO - it blindly attacks the innate nature of the object, regardless of what an Intelligo would say about the target. Which means that Hermetic magic can affect something without actually knowing what it is. (ie, it can simply try, and if it fails then literally no harm done.) Therefore, it's not unreasonable to have an indirect ward that says "if you were put in motion by a beaver, then you can't cross" - regardless of whether or not the spell knows if the target was put in motion by a beaver.

Or to think of it another way: a Rego ward effect is a command to cease any Beaver-related movement in whatever attempts to cross its boarder. If there isn't any beaver-related movement? Then nothing is cancelled out. The spell doesn't need to know if there were any beavers in the command chain or not, just like a Perdo Vim spell doesn't need to know if the target is actually a demon. if there isn't - nothing happens. If there is, then something does.

EDIT - so in that sense, you can think of a ward as simply being a command, which then hands a chunk of magical energy to the object that allows it to reposition itself. So it's not the ward knowing that the flood was caused by a beaver. Rather, it's the ward telling the water "if you were caused by a beaver, use this magical energy to revert to a still state." The water then does the check itself, and if necessary uses the energy supplied.

Similarly, a magi could use a ReMe effect to command a target to "fall asleep", without first checking to see if the target actually has the ability to sleep: If the target doesn't have the ability to fall asleep, it simply doesn't work. We don't consider this to be an Intelligo effect, even though the failure state does supply information. Similarly, we can conceive of warding effects as a command to "stop all beaver-related activities", and if nothing happens, then we learn that there wasn't a beaver directly involved....or that there was a magic beaver, and we didn't penetrate his MR.

No more intelligent than Parma stopping a rock because it is propelled by magic, which happens to be Terram. If you consider "propelled by X" as a natural property of an object in movement, then there's no issue. That is similar to a "held by X" property when someone is trying to hit you with a stick. If you reject those properties, a gloved hand is not warded by Corpus.

The enchanted glove holding a stick only works if its is a very short stick. i.e. a mundane staff wound not be stopped by parma even if wielded by a character being effected by a spell. It should be the same with Wards. A corpus ward would not stop a Rego Terram Invis-Sling spell just because it was cast by a human Magus.
The "propelled by" rationale doesn't work as a match to "held by" for me in this case.

No, they have an innate knowledge of what is acting on the body. Present tense, not past, because Aristotle establishes that continuation of motion depends on continued action of a force. If a thrown rock is still moving when it hits the ward, it's still being propelled by a continued action on the part of the thrower.

Unrelated. Where do you see an enchanted gloves?

If I hit you with a naked hand, Corpus stops it.
If I hit you with a gloved hand, "worn by" property. Do you need Intellego to stop it?
If I hit you with a held stick, "held by" property. Do you need Intellego to stop it?
If I hit you with a thrown stick, "thrown by" property. Do you need Intellego to stop it?
In all 3 cases, the motive force is there to be affected by the ward. Because that's what a ward does, kill motive forces.

Now you could wonder about Vilano, is it "propelled by me", "propelled by sling" or some other source. Because that could mean that a ward against Animal would stop all rocks thrown by sling, in addition to Corpus wards.

Why do I imagine a pair of magi determining this experimentally by standing around slapping each other with a dead fish?

I'd like to see a rationalisation of wards that also allows for Vilano sling effects to be treated consistently. Specifically I think that Vilano slings can ignore MR and Wards because they are natural "throws".
I thought Rego used in Vilano spells is irrelevant to MR, and when that is expanded to include Wards the force acting on the stone of the sling is natural force of momentum, not the sling or the spell caster.
If you want to house rule that intellect is needed then phrase shouldn't be "thrown by" but "what is acting directly upon the object", and how far away is the "actor".
A Corpus ward comes into effect on a gloves hand not because of any property of the glove, but because of the hand in the glove. The hand gets to the boundary of the ward and the MR vs Pen needs to be resolved. I know that is not RAW but I've given up trying to get wards in RAW to make any sense. To me they are barriers enacting directly in the Form material. Any extra intelligence would need an Intellego req and also consider how difficult it is to query non sentient materials.

It's prolly one of the first exercise done by fostered apprentice. Bonisagi will stop at nothing to teach their filii.