To be frank, I had not Never had any character learn or use it. Weird, but it happens.
I do agree that, after reading it, it looks as if these wards work differently from what I was expecting.
On the other hand, Fishy is right to have issues about Ward against Heat (and if it were not for you absorbing back the heat of the environment, you'd quickly die of hypothermia - think of what happens if you are stuck in the Antartic night, for example), and there are a number of other crucial problems that can arise if one allows wards to create "repulsion fields" that follow Newtonian Physics and in particular the Third Law. For example, you probably should not be able to walk suspended over a wooden pavement as per the "Ward against Wood" description, you would just skid.
So, personally, I'd just read wards as protecting the target in the same way Parma protects the target from magic and stuff-affected-by-magic, and assume that the handful of spells that set up repulsion fields are the result of experimentation, exhibiting their own quirks.
But that's not really the whole point that was being discussed here. The issue is whether a spell that keeps stuff away from you instead keeps you away from stuff, at least if you are lighter and more easily shoved around; in other words, whether Hermetic Magic operates according to Newtonian Physics. It seems to me clear that, as a general principle, it does not (see also the sly note in this sense in the Path of Strife). If it did, imagine a very big, heavy, strong creature trapped inside a circular hut by a Circular Ward inscribed on its outer rim; would you say that the creature would be able to move around, with the hut being dragged along "around it"? It feels utterly unmythical.
That said, Wards - at least Circular ones - must be smart to operate as written, as they impede any action across their boundary, even subtle ones. I find it more consistent if all Wards are equally smart than saying that "smarts" are intrinsic only to Circular Wards.
Technically, the mage has to discard any staff - of whatever material - and no other wooden object to cast the spell: "If you ordinarily carry a staff, it must be tossed aside for the casting." So yes, this cannot really be construed as an example of what callen is saying (Ward against Wood can, of course).
Youre just putting words in my mouth and arguing with them here lmao, not much to say other than "no" i guess
Also, regarding your first sentence, i think if you go rearead the op, youll find that it was exactly a discussion of how dumb wards are gameable.
Yes. That's why I was surprised you came out so strongly in that position.
But even PM doesn't just protect you. Let's say you're Incapacitated and someone wants to heal you. They still have to punch through your MR.
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You're now the second person to dig into this fallacy. So let me clear it up so people understand this bit about hypothermia from Ward Against Heat and Flames is just wrong, perhaps due to watching sci-fi movies where people instantly freeze in a vacuum. First, we are warm-blooded. You may feel like I needn't say it, but several of you are working under the assumption that we're not. Second, being cooled significantly (P=dQ/dt<<0) is not the same as not being heated (P=dQ/dt≤0). So let's look at a real-world case of not being heated. We want to avoid convection, conduction, and radiation. So let's look at astronauts space suits. Your argument is they'll have to be heated a lot or suffer hypothermia. So why in actuality do we have to cool our astronauts so much rather than heat them? (Look below if you don't believe me.) It's because we're warm-blooded and we really need to shed heat to maintain our body temperature. Sure, eventually if you're left out in space you will cool off to near absolute zero. But as long as you're somewhat active, you're in decent shape, except of course you won't be able to breathe, and then your body will stop its warm-blooded processes and you'll only be cooling off through black-body radiation.
(Now, people in a space ship without power are in a different scenario, because there is a big ship around them ready to soak up heat from them, so now there is a lot of convection and conduction away from such an astronaut.)
What you don't want is to be cooled too much. For most of us for the great majority of our lives we're being cooled by the environment rather than being heated by it, but we're only being cooled a little. If the temperature around you gets really low it can draw heat away from you much quicker than your body can generate it. Now you're in trouble. But if the outside temperature is below your body temperature, then Ward Against Heat and Flames isn't doing anything.
Now, it's a much trickier question with warding away cold. We can still shed heat to warmer environments the way our bodies sweat. So hyperthermia, while a much bigger risk than hypothermia here, may be avoidable. Essentially it would be like surviving when the temperature is high outside (90+ deg. F).
I admit I was not clear enough. There are two sides to this. Let's disentagle them.
First, I tend to interpret "protection" as "smart". While occasionally harder to adjudicate what counts as "protection" (if I slap you to keep you from fainting, does you Ward vs. Corpus "protect" you from my slaps?) "smart protection" is usually far more mythically appropriate than a purely mechanical "repulsion". And Circle Wards must be at least in some way smart to act as described, so it's reasonable to assume all Wards are.
Second, regardless of whether protection is smart or dumb, it's always one way. Even if you are protected from flames, flames are not protected from you. This is particularly true for protection-as-repulsion. A dumb ward that keeps water away from you stops water from moving too close to you, but does not stop you from moving too close to water.
Well, I do not think you should avoid those; and I disagree about how you distinguish between being not-heated vs. being cooled. Let's focus on conduction in modern physics, which is basically molecules/atoms "inside" and "outside" exchanging kinetic energy. If you can prevent outside molecules from providing any kinetic energy during impact (e.g. you are constantly draining them of kinetic energy), your inside molecules will progressively transfer energy to the outside, and the inside will cool down. I think we are basically agreeing on the principles, but you view "heating" or "cooling" as the algebraic sum of X heating/cooling Y and Y heating/cooling X, while I view the two as separate processes. At the microscopic, single impact level they are separate processes (think of Maxwell's demon).
Now, physics in Ars Magica work differently, of course ... and it's not always 100% clear how they really work. But going very roughly with Aristotle, I'd say that the mechanism is similar to the one I described above. If an object is "heatable" it can receive heat from another, and will lose heat in the process; here "heat" is a quality. Note that an object is heatable by a cooler one - what we know as the second Law of Thermodynamics does not prohibit it (as long as something else happens) and the ancients knew it was possible; I think Aristotle brings the example of rubbing a cold hand on a slightly warmer body to warm it further, which is possible because there is "heat" in "motion". So if you block an object from receiving heat from others, because it can still cede such heat, it will cool down.
Be careful here. If you go that far, there is no such thing as heating something. When two particles collide we have forces/fields and work (or particles if you want to go the particle physics route) as an exchange of energy. Heat only exists as a concept if you go more macroscopic than that. As when you drop this far there is no such thing as preventing heat, what you're arguing becomes nonsensical.
Let's return to practical Medieval Europe. Was the whole population dying each night when it was 70 degrees outside, even without a fire? No. Why not? They're being cooled rather than heated. What if you go do stuff outside for an hour in the winter. You bundle up, but you're being cooled, not heated. Dead right away, right? And do you think those in Medieval Europe who worked strenuously in the cold didn't warm up? Having spent a lot of my life working strenuously in below-freezing temperatures, I can tell you for sure that you will warm up if it's not overly cold. There is a reason cross-country skiers sweat so much. So not only do astronauts demonstrate this concept is backward, but practical observation of environments by Medieval people should make people aware of it as well.
I disagree, and indeed brought Maxwell's demon as an example. You can absolutely prevent/reduce heat at the microscopic level by "stilling/slowing" individual particles with a laser, for example (of course, this will create heat elsewhere).
The issue is that you generate heat internally, but you also receive heat from the outside. Less than you shed, but you do receive it. That's the reason why the less heat there is outside, the colder you'll get, all else being equal. And if there is sufficient "communication" and sufficiently little heat outside, you'lll die quick enough. Try swimming naked in water at your 70 degrees (i.e. 21 degrees for world outside the USA!) for a night. Or rather do not!
Anyways, it seems to me I understand what you are saying, I disagree, but fail to get my point across. I'd say at this point it's more productive to just move on.
Never had any character learn or use it. Weird, but it happens.