[dougansf]

For those of us without high CHA scores to sneak through, what's the best way of dealing with Mana Barriers (while keeping your magic toys)?

For spell options, I found Shattershield, but the Drain is high compared to Death Touch, which seems like it would do the exact same thing.

[Xenon]

deactivate your foci, walk through it on the physical plane, activate your foci again?

Or dont deactivate your foci as you walk through it, causing astral intersection. Either collapsing the barrier or deactivating your foci (which can just activate again).

[dougansf]

Sure, except foci aren’t the only things affected. And Astral intersection goes back to a CHA test.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well... permanent mana barriers are basically the reason why you can't just walk around with a bunch of quickened spells indefinitely.  You will have to re-cast and re-pay karma now and again, there's no avoiding that entirely

But, that's not helpful to your question, I know.  So how about:

1) researching the barrier, and finding out where coverage gaps exist.  "Hey, they warded the walls and the roof, but they never warded the basement or floor.... can we dig a tunnel under the foundation guys?"

2) the vampire exploit: trick the ward's creator into allowing you through.  Hello, social side quest!

3) The "there's more than one way to knock down a wall" approach: in the case of a ward, finding and remove an "integral" part of the foundation causes a ritual to unravel.  Pull the right brick out and a wall comes down!  this is true physically as well as metaphysically.

[Xenon]

Sure, except foci aren’t the only things affected. And Astral intersection goes back to a CHA test.

The Magic + Charisma [Astral] test is for living subjects, if you are using astral perception or if you are a dual natured vampire while riding an elevator through a barrier you were unaware of (because perhaps you didn't previously scout in advance, for example).

Non living that have an astral form that is forced to collide with another astral form (such as as a sustained spell or an activated foci but also the barrier itself) take an opposed Force x 2 [Force] test. The responsible magician's charisma is not part of this test. Since barriers are typically invisible on the physical plane this frequently happen when magicians walk through barriers on the physical plane without knowing that there is a barrier on the astral plane (the magician typically get to take a perception test as he already walked through it though, see noticing magic).


If the responsible magician is using astral perception instead of his physical perception, or if the magician is using astral projection (which also uses astral perception instead of physical perception), then he will typically automatically sense the barrier in advance and can try to press his own astral form as well as astral forms connected to his living aura (such as sustained spells or activated foci), but this part would require this charisma test you were talking about....