A few of us remember personal wards differently. I thought there was a comment somewhere (perhaps in a spell) about having trouble wearing or using objects warded against. I cannot find this right now. Am I incorrect? Has anyone else read this, and if so, do you know where?
Also, is there any sort of accepted agreement between Ward Against Heat and Flames and Ward Against Wood? I'm mostly thinking in terms of Soak and protection here. ReIg is pretty specific about total protection versus partial protection. Ward Against Wood, on the other hand, seems to protect you perfectly against 100 000 kg of wood falling on top of you from 100 m above. (Sure, that's an unlikely amount of wood, but a similar boulder is quite reasonable.)
I've had similar issue in my saga, trying to figure out mentally how to deal with this. I may have posted a thread on the subject with regards a Terram specialist warding himself vs. metal, yet wanting to carry arms and armor. In the end, I tried to conceptualize the spell as making the recipient's skin impregnable to metal so that he could still act as a knight.
I prefer the method of making your armor your talisman. That's supposed to be one of the perks of the talisman, that it's considered part of you and not outside of yourself. Meanwhile things like armor are generally outside yourself. And then you can have a non-metal weapon, or at least a weapon with a long wooden shaft.
IMS we ruled that personal wards can only grant soak, not total immunity. +3 soak per magnitude IMS, even if some people are more comfortable with +5 soak per magnitude when we suggested it in this forum. Total "wall-like" immunity corresponds to the area of circular wards, and it is one of the reasons of why circular wards are cool. But that is a house rule.
Agreed, it's strange that some personnal wards are absolute, while others aren't. Personnaly, I don't like absolutes at all.
Some thoughts: If you've got your armor on, and cast a ward vs metal, if wards need to penetrate and your ward can't penetrate your MR, maybe it doesn't repell your armor (since it's protected at the time of the casting), only further objects?
Similarly, there's a thought, although probably at least in part HR, about holy and mythic swords. A ward vs metal protects absolutely vs all swords. But a sword which is a relic... don't relic have MR (and thus able to resist the ward)? Similarly, a sword with a relic in its hilt could/should benefit from it, and thus be able to resist wards.
This could give mundanes an edge vs magi, lessen the wards power, and make those swords and relics more important.
Also worth mentioning that many magi design their wards with openings to allow for such things - a ward against wood does not affect enchanted wood i.e.
Simple such exceptions would be free, while a more advanced version might add magnitudes for complexity.
A version you might consider is one that does not affect small rings of iron/steel (which covers chainmail), nor hilts.
Or maybe one that only affects edges?
(Edit: Addition) Actually, I noticed seconds after pressing 'Submit' that I had a serious reply as well.
Maybe those Soak granting spells (personal things, like Wards against heat and flames) should not be called Wards? Gift of the Bear's Fortitude isn't called this, but WaHaF is. The difference between those is that GotBF just adds Soak, while WaHaF gives immunity for small fires and Soak against larger ones.
Maybe those personal protection spells should be streamlined, and not called Wards. And decide whether you'd want the easy metod of just granting Soak. or the slightly more complex method, if you want it general, that small damaging effects are ignored rather than rolled. I see the point of ignoring small stuff, to avoid too many dice rolls. Also, once in a while the claw of the cat rolls 10 consequetive 1's...
And then leave Wards to be Circular things,that either protect fully or not at all.
I know, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that both GotBF and WaHaF are protection spells (although they protect in different ways, using differens Techs), giving a Soak bonus. WaHaF just does more, by giving complete protection against small fires. Coordinating such spells to make a coherent system might be a good idea. Decide which Re [Form] spells does what. If WaHaF can do this, so must a ReHe or ReTe spell - protect fully against small, trivial attacks (like flying debris) but only partially (by a Soak bonus) for larger attacks (falling logs, landslides etc.).
And in hindsight just leave GotBF out, since it is a Muto effect. After all, it stacks with the others.
Apart from ignem, these spells typically protect 100% against whatever they are designed to protect against. Terram wards tend to be limited in that they only protect against a single type of the element (i.e. metal, stone). Ignem wards also protect 100%, but can be overpowered by strong fires - in which case they are only able to hold part of the heat away - technically WaHaF should reduce the amount of damage bonus the flame does, rather than give a soak bonus, but it is easier just to give a soak bonus.
How doesn the partial protection on Aegis of the hearth get it's affect. I's basically the same thing but backwards. maby you design the ward so that objects with a samll rune of your choosing are unaffected (like aegis of the hearth).
But it's not just than Aegis ignores the tokens, the tokens were part of the group participating in the ritual walk aorund the boundary. So in effect the tokens are like the people who are immune to effects. And remember that Aegis is a breakthrough and not completely in sync with regular hermetic magic.
But to take that angle on wards like those against metal one could argue that items carries/worn at the time of casting somehow are immune as well. I wouldn't allow just any object thusly marked to avoid the effects, since this sort of indicates the spell is intelligent and able to sense and discern. And IMHO it can't
If you look at the covenants book, there is a referance there to magi using special marks that allows for bypassing their wards - an example was mentioned of the archmage that had an tattoo he didn't know about - put there by a master to allow passasge through his wards.
Same principle would naturally apply to the personal wards. Offcourse, this is kinda like a inbuilt achilees heel - you make a weakness in the ward to allow you to handle similar things.
Problems with this is that that means the protection isn't complete - and anyone seeing your lab-texts would know just how to bypass those wards. (And someone might stuble across the means to do so - by attacking you with your own dagger for instance).