On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 02:51:49PM -0800, Philip Hart wrote: > The argument, which I suppose I didn't completely spell out, was that if > you can protect your tents/horses/soldiers you can protect your gunpowder. Well, yes and no. A physical shock that wouldn't even bruise a horse, etc, would set of a container of black powder quite easily. Given that we've not seen either long-distance magical attacks on living things nor defenses against them, I presume that there is no known attack worth the effort. But setting off gunpowder remotely is probably a helluva lot easier. Didn't Vlad start a fire once via witchcraft? Yes, I know witchcraft isn't the same as orb-directed sorcery -- but on the other hand, orb-directed sorcery is a helluva lot easier than witchcraft. Proximity must be an issue, too. If setting fires remotely was easy, soldiers wouldn't have tents and armies wouldn't carry fodder for horses. Heck, I dunno . . . we're arguing nits in a system which isn't defined well enough to argue nits.