Of course, no GM would ever let a PC have that kind of protection in his place, even if they are capable of creating it;
I might. I'd even let it work as intended. Right up until I wrote in a baddie capable of finding a way around it.
Harry's wards in Changes were pretty badass but they got bypassed by less than five bucks worth of materials put into a molotov cocktail.
I am not sure which book this was, I think Death Mask:
When Harry and Susan flee to Harry's place and he lights up that ward candle for the big ward and then he is trapped with a bloodthirsty Susan in his apartment.
You'll notice I used a graveyard as the anchor for the various wardings in the house. The ground of the graveyard itself is hallowed (or cursed, as the case may be) and thus it has a base threshold of +3 on which you can anchor the wards. That's the ground of the area itself that serves as anchor, rather than some structure that can be destroyed.
So if a priest comes around and does a "this place isn't concentrated anymore" your wards would go?
That rite does exist - when they close a church, move a graveyard, etc someone does that rite...
Also (don't read if you haven't read GS):
The threshold of a graveyard keeps things in, not out
Cursed graveyards... I don't see them having a threshold. If so, then a simple blessing would hallow it.
As for the fire, unless your attack roll exceeds the ward's strength with that fire hose, the Ward is going to reflect the fire back at you. And no human can get attack rolls high enough to overcome that reflection for a major ward without equally powerful magic.
Wards don't provide mundane protection. They provide magical protect. For example, there's that time that someone tossed a pipe bomb through Harry's window.
The only time they effect mundanes is if you put landmines in your wards. If don't do that they don't slow down anything that isn't affected by a threshold.
... and is immediately faced with the Sight backlash of witnessing the true forms of several dozen bound Outsiders, which leaves him insane. So you either totally ignore the existence of the stronghold or you are obliterated by seeing it if you have a human mind.
Okay, I have to ask - how do you bind outsiders?
Richard
The ward would block the truck bomb.
It isn't complicated. The ward just reflects all force that hits it. And a truck bomb definitely qualifies as force.
Unless, of course, you were dumb enough not to put your wards around the whole building. If you've only warded your office, you may be in trouble when the building falls.
Time travel would work.
Another thing that might work is a very large fire outside the wards. The effects of wards on heat and light are not clear. So you might be able to roast someone without ever breaching their defenses.
But probably not. And even if this would work, it'd just be another layer for the defender to add.
Dresden had shitty wards then. Zombies beat the door down. Magic is pretty OP I get that. I just hate the idea that anything is absolute.
Another idea: Dig underneath the bunker? Doubt they;d ward the floor...maybe hte outside of the brick/wood/mortar...sounds difficult enough to make GM's cranky though.
Ebenezar response: Volcnao under it! Sattelite dropped on it. PWND!
Show me one place where it says that wards (or thresholds) protect the mundane parts of a house (doors, walls, windows) and I'll stop harping on this, but I can't recall anything like that in the books or the RAW.
Changes, when the FBI and Rudolph came to his place;
Those are examples of landmine triggering - not the mundane parts of the house being protected. The window breaking...
Well, there's one problem with discussions like this. I cite "bomb tossed through window" and it could be Jim decided "wouldn't be awesome if a bomb got thrown through his window?" without thinking about that act would impact on the system of magic he's built up. As a recent discussion on outsiders brought up, the game is constrained by what Jim writes - but the reverse isn't true. If Jim thinks that something will be cool he probably wouldn't let the scene's impact on the game affect what he wants to do.
But going through the books I can't see any examples of a ward stopping physical damage to the building that it's attached to.
Edited to add this last point. Warning, it's taken from Ghost Story - but it impacts directly on this discussion:
If the wards protect the things they are anchored to then how were those anchors messed with? Yes, I am trying to keep this vague, but if you've read the book you know about those major wards that developed anchor problems - even when the threshold was still there.
Richard
Nice point Richard_Chilton.
Ghost Story spoilers.
I doubt that the magic user who created those wards was a newbie. Anchors seem to have a large effect on wards.
PS: I think wards are three dimensional. And a strong enough one would just reflect a dropped satellite.
It might be something which needs to be specified when setting up the Ward. While the example in Turn Coat is not a perfect one...
The crystal which Molly activated in the ruined cabin on Demonreach was setup as a sphere. My understanding of the crystal was that is was effectively a one-use Ward using a potion item slot. Ancient Mai specifically mentioned digging underneath the effect to get a Molly and Morgan when Harry regained consciousness and Harry specifically said not to, that the effect was spherical.
I think part of the issue a number of us have is that some of us get some very different numbers when sit down and work out what we consider as 'realistic' in terms of the number of shifts which a mortal wizard could raise and put into a Ward. Given what Jim has stated in various books and short stories like in Curses, which mentions a curse afflicting a certain sports team for ~60 years which if it was still the same spell, would've required enough power to survive that many sunrises to have actually cracked the crust of the planet, tends to give some a different view of the amount of power spellcasters can manage.
It all has to do with what one's group/GM will accept or allow though, to each their own.
Now, from canon, the only instance I can recall of a mundane, physical object coming into contact with Harry's apartment was the roman candle which was thrown through the window in Day Off. Everything else which would have come into contact with the Wards, (the frog-demon in Storm Front, the zombie horde in Dead Beat, possibly Cowl's mental attack in White Night, for the FBI and Chicago PD in Changes)
So far, there hasn't been a specific example of something like a car crashing into a Warded structure and either going straight through, or bouncing off, getting blown apart by a 'landmine' or doing a bad impression of an accordian after crashing straight into the magical equivalent of a solid rock face.
In order words, absent more specific word from Jim, Fred, or someone else at Evil Hat, it depends on just how one's group interprets the RAW.
Now, regarding those who suggest some sort of gas attack against a Warded location, that would seem an effective method, and there is a suggestion within the novel Dead Beat that the Red Court has already successfully used just such a tactic, given that I would consider any White Council installation would have at least some sort of Ward to defend it against intruders.
I'm referring to the hospital which the White Council had setup in the Congo, which the Red Court attacked using a nerve agent, most likely sarin. The attack was estimated by Luccio to have cost the lives of several thousand people, both Council members and ordinary 'vanilla' mortals.
-Cheers