Secret Spells and using Ward

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

This is leaving aside knowing spells at a high enough level so as not to have to make visible gestures or shouting a long incantation out loud, or that I have significant incentive as an opposing wizard not to make a really big deal of pointing straight at you and crying out "Avada Kedavra!" in a battlefield voice.

Not to mention that almost all of your PC mages (and I assume a lot of PC mages generally) have made a point to know their spells at 15+. IIRC 15 is the break point for casting with either a gesture or a word or two.

Most of 'us' have made it a point of casting in the most obscure of the languages we know. So if not the 'gesture' it would be a word or two quietly in the more obscure of the dead languages we knew or in the language of the dread planes hopping villains or the language of the low population hill tribesmen 700 miles and one ocean away. Anything but the local lingua franca.

Honestly I occasionally did cast in a loud 'battlefield' voice in the local lingua franca with sweeping arm gestures and cute toe tapping. These instances almost always involved being in the sight line of an archer with a Return Missiles blocking spell mentally on the tip of my tongue. Since the casting was a performative bluff when/if the archer loosed and 'hit', then the blocking spell was actually cast with a word or a gesture in the language of the terrors of the southlands (elric was such a good look on me).