Oooh... I like that! Keep the ideas coming guys, this is fantastic for my thought processes.

Hi all

I ran Night Fears at our local club con last year, and I have decided to run a sequel at this years con. I am still several months out, but I started to have a few ideas today driving home from work so I decided to start getting them down.

The premise is the following:

Four years ago, about to start High School, you and a bunch of your ‘friends’ spent a night in the Cranston House. That night changed your lives; the Cranston House ghosts introduced you to the fact that the supernatural was real.
While that night in the Cranston House created bonds between you all, the High School experience is tough and four years later some of those friendships are stronger and others frayed. Still it’s your last hurrah before college and it’s time for that post High School tradition – the pre-college road trip! 

I am currently thinking a scenario crossing the traditional "Coming of Age" movie with a teen "Horror/Slasher" movie. Something along the lines of Hotel California (the song), Salem's Lot (The Stephen King short story where the car breaks down in Salem's Lot rather than the novel), or Jeeper's Creepers (the movie) crossed with Road Trip(but less ridiculous).

I want to keep the same characters, four years later. I have been throwing around some scene setting questions, but would love some more input and thoughts on how the characters would have developed over High School. Anyway, some starting generic questions - some of these are possibly too similar, so feel free to throw out as many as you can think of. Also any character specific questions:

Starting Questions: Generic
1.Two of you dated through most of High School but recently broke up. Which two of you was that, and why did you break up? What do the others think?
2. Two of you are in a serious relationship but the others don’t know it. Why haven’t you told them?
3. One of you has had a crush on one of the others for some time now and this road trip is likely to be your last chance to make your move. Who has the crush, and who is it on?
4. One of you has a dark secret. What is it, and why is it a secret?
5. Whose idea was the road trip? Why did you really suggest it?

Starting Questions: Character Specific
1.   Andy (Sports Star)
2.   Chris (Changeling)
3.   Dani (Spoiled Rich Girl)
4.   Jamie (Psychometry)
5.   Mike (Medium)
6.   Nicky (Best Friend)
7.   Terry (Religious Kid)

That's what I decided as well. Black Court Vamps heal after feeding.

Yup.

I feel that a ward is different from a block/armour. I always envision them as a complicated web of magical energy over whatever (be it threshold, doorway or object) it is protecting. Disturb the "anchors" to that web, and the ward collapses - hence why they can't be moved.

And how are they picking it up with A?

The whole point of a "standard" ward is that it is a barrier. I would suggest that a warded object couldn't be picked up if it's warded. It's surrounded by a magical barrier that resists with as much force as you try to use to move/grab it, same as if you tried to cross a warded doorway. I would further suggest that it only applies to actually attempting to touch the object itself, although I guess you could create a protective "bubble" around an object if you added a "zone" enhancement (+2 complexity), but if someone inside the bubble moved the object, the ward would collapse.

Or that's how I've been thinking about it, it hasn't actually come up yet.

I suppose so.  And they would defend against anything that tried to cross through the book's cover, I suppose.  And even then only until the book moved, since wards are always immobile.

Agreed. Wards are immobile, so would be destroyed if you moved the warded object.

In any case, you are using the geometric definition of area, while DFRPG uses a geographical one.  The basic definition is given in the second sentence of the Wards section on YS276:

"It’s intended to protect an area—usually a home or sanctum—from physical or magical intrusion."

You don't like that ambiguous bit with the word usually?  Ok, remove it, leaving the unambiguous remainder behind:

"It’s intended to protect an area from physical or magical intrusion."

You can intrude into a geographical area, you can't intrude into a car tire (except by trying to climb through it; in this case it's basically the moral equivalent of a small doorway).  Also, from the next page:

"Wards don’t have a “scale” concern, the way that veils do, and they cannot move."
 gets
Again, "they cannot move".  They are immobile.  Not sometimes or usually immobile; they cannot move period.  Immobile like a doorway is, but like a book tends not to be.

I wasn’t deliberately using the “geometric” vs “geographic” version of area, and I have no problem with the word "usually", it’s you that seems to have the problem with it. My feeling is that it is there deliberately because while wards are typically used to protect areas, that is not their entire function.

We agree that wards cannot move, and thus if you warded an object the warding would only last while that object was motionless. However, that doesn’t preclude warding an object. I can see reasons to ward objects – you don’t want to ward the door to the hotel room, as that might accidentally harm room service, but you don’t want anyone stealing the valuable statue? Ward the statue (doesn’t have to involve permanent markings) – that way if anyone attempts to steal it, the ward activates and harms the thief, but not the person changing the sheets.

My feeling is that the words "almost always" and "usually" are are a deliberate choice - particularly as the phrasing gets used more than once in regard to warding. By excising those words to suit your argument, you are changing the entire intent of the sentence.

By a reading of the book wards are typically used to protect Thresholds, doorways and windows, but there are other uses (e.g. warding of objects), with the limitiation that whatever is warded cannot move.

You are suggesting that the word "usually" is an anomally, but reading the entire passage shows that the ambiguous phrasing is used multiple times, indicating that it is deliberate, and that you are interpreting the passage in a restrictive manner because that's how you want the rules to work. That's fine, but is not how the rules are written, which is what I was pointing out.

Wards are a specialized, powerful type of Block applied to a treshold.

While slightly off-topic, and in no way changing the answer regarding the OP's "warding of clothing" question, I keep seeing the "fact" that wards must be tied to thresholds stated on these boards and feel a need to correct this misconception. While wards are immobile and limited in size if not tied to a threshold, by the rules they don't have to be applied to a threshold. YS277 specifically states:

Wards don't have a "scale" concern, the way that veils do, and they cannot move. They are almost always tied to a particular place's natural threshold - think of them as a super-boosted immune system - so they are limited by the size of that threshold. Without a threshold they can only be set up to cover a small area at most - usually a point of transition such as a doorway or intersection.

Emphasis mine.

Basically, ward are typically cast on thresholds, but by the RAW you can cast them on doorways to motel rooms etc., if you so desire.