But in my example the guard does make the alertness roll.
No, your example was the guard making a declaration, explicitly
not beating the veil with his alertness roll, but still getting the benefit of beating the veil.
If the guard fails to see the door open because of a stealth roll on the veilers part he does not the to make the declaration, and thus does not get to attack. I am just saying that the difficulty to see a door open and guess where the opener is is less than the difficulty to actually determine someone's position with no external clues, and this can be handled with a declaration+attack (or traditionally by tagging the declaration to boost a subsequent alertness).
And I am saying that the Veil's strength is the difficulty in finding the veiler. If you're shooting at them, that means you found him, not that you made a declaration entirely independent of the veil's strength. You are advocating someone get the benefit of beating a block's strength without having to beat that block's strength.
I am well aware that an alertness beating a veil does not mean you just see through it, though it could. What I am saying is that when external circumstances provide something more obvious than the person themselves, and that something is not hidden by the veil, then there is a lower difficulty alertness declaration to be made, that could justify an attack.
Again: To notice the action, yes. To see through the veil and attack?
No. You could compel it to say the veil failed, or tag it to make an Alertness roll against the veil, but if the veil's strength isn't beaten, that means
the guard does not know where the person is. That is what the veil's strength means. Per the book, it is
explicitly not a block against damage, which is what you're trying to treat it as.
Further, these are not "I know exactly where you are" like in the Murphy example, simply a "I know you are in that general direction."
Close enough as makes no difference. If you're able to target someone accurately enough to do damage, you've beaten the veil's strength and know where they are.
Look, the whole purpose of a veil is as an
alternate defense, using less power to protect yourself by exploiting a skill that's going to be significantly less for your opponent than their main attack skill. Allowing someone to still attack them
without beating the veil's block is robbing the veil of its unique properties, and missing the point entirely.
Again: Per the book and Molly's write-up, if veils and declarations acted the way you're insisted, Molly would be dead several times over instead of coming away with, at worst, a new coating of paint.
Come to think about it, I think there are many instances where an attack could be substituted for an alertness check to overcome the veil. Swinging a sword around might not cause stress, but if it hits anything substantial, it's going to give away the position of a veiled target.
Of course, a person would have to have a good reason to WANT to use weapons instead of alertness in the first place.
As I've said before, I'd allow this sort of thing as a maneuver (or a compel/invoke that someone has to make to use that skill--as you say, there's got to be a reason they're swinging wildly around), but not as an attack.
Hell, that's probably what the Ick did against Molly--made a maneuver with Fists, tagging the declaration
Bucket Of Paint for a bonus, and then tagged the resulting aspect to either make the alertness roll or remove Molly's veil until she cast it again with an invoke for effect.
I think there's two ways to look at it (the above statement aside. I was thinking out loud):
1. a veil as a block against perception therefore if you cannot perceive the target you cannot attack the target.
2. the veil as a block against all actions that require you to perceive the target. Attacking in any way that requires you to perceive the target would put you up against the block.
That seems to be the gist of it.
1. There's no reason to use any skill other than perception skills unless the veiled person tips their hand (GM's discretion)
2. Even if they do use another type of skill, they still have overcome the block, which is within the rules.
The way I look at it, however, is that a veil isn't meant to be a defense against direct attacks. Per the book's description and how we see them play out in the series, they're meant to be a defense against being targeted at all.
Would you have someone use their Stealth skill as a physical defense against an attack?
3. A veil is still slightly better than a regular block because even if the attacker overcomes the veil with an attack, the veiled person still has many options to confound the attacker while, with a regular block, an attacker always knows the location of the target and can continue to attempt to overcome the block. (I'm not sure how clear that statement was)
This goes against the rules, however. If you overcome a magical block, it's not supposed to stay up. And, as I've been arguing, if the person being veiled is being shot at accurately enough to cause stress and consequences, then the veil has clearly not done its job of making sure the person is not perceived and targeted.
A veil isn't going to do anything to stop or redirect the bullets coming at you--and that's what a block against damage would do. A veil is meant to stop and redirect
attention--if someone is able to pay attention to the point they can target and attack with reasonable accuracy, that, to me, means the veil has straight up failed, either through a successful Alertness check or a compel or some kind.
That's my bottom line here. A veil is, essentially, a declaration on the part of the caster saying, "You can't find me." If they're being attacked directly, that means someone has found them--either via a successful perception roll of some kind, or a circumstance that justified a compel.