Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

If a mage is using blocking spells to defend is his skill affected negatively by feints and/or deceptive attacks against the wizard just prior to the incoming attack.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

No, they aren't.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

They do fail vs. a critical attack however.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

Is there anything in the RAW that say this is the case? Blocking spells are active defenses and can only be made against known attacks. This leads me to believe that the wizard times them (or something like that) with an incoming attack. It seems that if the wizard's awareness of the impending attack is required for a defense then that awareness should be able to be manipulated with feints and deceptive attacks.

I'm not disagreeing with what has been said, I'm just posing an argument that was posed to me.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

Several past threads with interesting debate on the question, but I didn't see any cites for RAW, FAQ entries, or Krommposts. Seems like a nice area for a ruling and FAQ entry.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

I don't see why it should be negatively affected unless the mage is attempting to interfere with the attack itself.

The penalty to active defenses assumes that you're physically trying to get out of the way (Dodge) or trying to put something in the way (Parry, Block) of the incoming attack.

But, many Blocking spells just do something entirely different - like teleporting the mage out of the way or melting the attacker's weapon before it does damage. In those cases, it just doesn't make sense that the caster has skill penalties.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

While the effect of a Blocking spell is equivalent to an active defense, the roll involved isn't an active defense roll. Just to start with, the roll is against a full skill, not (skill/2)+3. On the downside, Blocking spells are affected by the penalties for low mana, shock (DX/IQ penalty for injury last turn), spells "on," and a lot of other things that don't affect active defense rolls, and do not get +1 for Combat Reflexes. In addition, they always cost FP (even high skill can't change this), automatically interrupt long castings (no Will-3 roll allowed), and can't be used repeatedly in a turn (even at a penalty). As they have their own, fairly extensive drawbacks like this, making them subject to the standard run of active-defense penalties as well would be excessive. Thus, Blocking spells aren't affected by standard active defense penalties.

Re: Blocking Spell Conundrum
 

Kromm has spoken and as always, he brings wisdom to us mere mortal.

Thank you.