A thematic error, or at least it seems to me

[Clow anderson]

First of all I´m Spanish, so I want to apologice abouth my bad Inglish.

Recently I played with my Jokari Beastmaster against a Warlock. He has a Circle of fire atached and I puched him against a Wall of thonrs. Both of us agreed that the wall must suffer some kind of damage (The mage was surrounded by fire, some spiked branches would burn for sure...) but we don´t agreen in what kind of damage: only one roll of 4 dices or 5 rolls of 4 dices.
When we look at the codex our surprise was really big and awfull: the Wall were totally safe! because A) the atacks of the wall aren´t melee and B) te atacks of anithing that it´s not a creature won´t trigger a damage barrier.

Thematically it simply doesn´t have any sense for me (And all my friends untill now agree with my in this point): If the Warlock it´s "On fire" logically it will do damage to a wall made of plants when he trespas it, and of course that it will do "melee"damage to the mage because if the thorns don´t touch the Warlock how will they hurt him?. Ethereal Walls that have passage atacks don´t have this problem: they really won´t tuch the mage; but the phisical ones don´t make sense like this...

[ACG]

Many things in Mage Wars do not make thematic sense. Some even go out of their way to rip common sense to shreds. My two favorite examples:

Hydro Immunity for plants. In the real world, plants are, if anything, more vulnerable to water than animals are. Being unable to move, they are prone to drowning, and powerful waves can easily knock them down. Probably this is put in because "plants drink water", but animals drink water too.

Lightning +X for Metal objects. This is absolutely the most egregious violation of common sense, in my mind, for two reasons. First, armor clad objects such as [mwcard=MW1C22]Knight of Westlock[/mwcard] would act as Faraday cages, with the current flowing on the surface, and hence should be lightning immune (or resistant, at the very least). Second, the mechanism by which electricity inflicts damage is through power dissipation, which is proportional to resistance. Reduce the resistance (i.e. increase the conductivity), and the damage inflicted on the object should be reduced. This is why we use conductive metals for our wires - they have high conductivity, so little power is dissipated, and hence they don't melt the second we flip the switch. Yet in MW, make an object out of metal (high conductivity) and it somehow becomes MORE vulnerable to electricity, not less. The absolute worst offender is [mwcard=MWSTX1CKW01]Wall of Steel[/mwcard]. In the real world, a metal wall would be fantastic for protecting against lightning damage; in the world of MW, the lightning somehow does more damage to it than it would to a normal wall. By what mechanism is the lightning inflicting this damage?

Anyway, I should stop ranting lightning+X; it is my go-to pet peeve about MW thematic inconsistencies. I guess the bottom line is, not everything in MW makes sense. Ultimately, in any board game you have to be prepared for some thematic inconsistencies, as not every interaction can be forseen. Mage wars has excellent theme overall, so I am prepared to forgive the occasional lapse (with the exception of the lightning issue).

[sIKE]

By what mechanism is the lightning inflicting this damage?

Magical Lightning would super heat the metal making the steel molten and flow on to the ground. Of course.

[iNano78]

Many things in Mage Wars do not make thematic sense. Some even go out of their way to rip common sense to shreds. My two favorite examples:

Hydro Immunity for plants. In the real world, plants are, if anything, more vulnerable to water than animals are. Being unable to move, they are prone to drowning, and powerful waves can easily knock them down. Probably this is put in because "plants drink water", but animals drink water too.

Lightning +X for Metal objects. This is absolutely the most egregious violation of common sense, in my mind, for two reasons. First, armor clad objects such as [mwcard=MW1C22]Knight of Westlock[/mwcard] would act as Faraday cages, with the current flowing on the surface, and hence should be lightning immune (or resistant, at the very least). Second, the mechanism by which electricity inflicts damage is through power dissipation, which is proportional to resistance. Reduce the resistance (i.e. increase the conductivity), and the damage inflicted on the object should be reduced. This is why we use conductive metals for our wires - they have high conductivity, so little power is dissipated, and hence they don't melt the second we flip the switch. Yet in MW, make an object out of metal (high conductivity) and it somehow becomes MORE vulnerable to electricity, not less. The absolute worst offender is [mwcard=MWSTX1CKW01]Wall of Steel[/mwcard]. In the real world, a metal wall would be fantastic for protecting against lightning damage; in the world of MW, the lightning somehow does more damage to it than it would to a normal wall. By what mechanism is the lightning inflicting this damage?

Anyway, I should stop ranting lightning+X; it is my go-to pet peeve about MW thematic inconsistencies. I guess the bottom line is, not everything in MW makes sense. Ultimately, in any board game you have to be prepared for some thematic inconsistencies, as not every interaction can be forseen. Mage wars has excellent theme overall, so I am prepared to forgive the occasional lapse (with the exception of the lightning issue).

Regarding Lightning +X, you make some good points... but the armour is only going to act like a Faraday cage and protect you if it's well grounded and/or you're electrically isolated (e.g. there's a higher resistance layer between the armour and you; that's where the biggest voltage drop will be, where most of the power gets dissipated).  The problem is the metal armour probably isn't grounded when it's on a living (or non-living?) creature, and so if there's current going through the armour, then there's also current going through at least the legs/feet of the creature.  In other words, current will take the path of least resistance, and if your legs are the lowest resistance charge carrier between the armour and ground (because air is generally a good insulator), then that's where it's going.  Since the creature's legs are high in resistance (~10 MOhm for humans, in my experience), there's a lot of power that needs to be dissipated... so I personally wouldn't want to be walking around on a wet surface in a lightning storm wearing metal armour...
(Note you should be safe in a car that gets struck by lightning because current goes around you on its way to the wet ground, not through your highly resistive legs/body; ditto for planes)

But you're totally right about the [mwcard=MWSTX1CKW01]Wall of Steel[/mwcard] (probably well grounded) and presumably low-resistance constructs like [mwcard=FWC09]Iron Golem[/mwcard].

I don't see the concern about Hydro Immune plants as much.  Sure, plants are susceptible to rot when over-watered and can certainly get knocked down by forces from tidal waves, etc, but in general, trees and other plants are pretty resistant water from rain storms (assuming wind speeds aren't an issue) or being temporarily submersed in water.  They certainly aren't as susceptible to damage as most land-based creatures that need to breath oxygen.  Where an animal might drown in a few minutes, it takes plants significantly longer to "drown" - if ever, depending on the plant.  Think of the Ents at Isengard.
(I'm guessing any future aquatic animal creatures will also be "Hydro Immune" or resistant, since they generally don't need to breath gaseous oxygen, even though forces from [mwcard=MW1A08]Geyser[/mwcard]s and [mwcard=MWSTX1CKA01]Surging Wave[/mwcard]s would certainly be dangerous to them in real life)

Similar arguments could be made that Demons shouldn't be Flame Immune; e.g. just because they come from a place filled with fire, which torments them according to most mythology, they shouldn't necessarily be resistant to nor immune to fire; quite the contrary.  Perhaps it would be more thematic if they all had a Bloodthristy-like effect against anything with a Burn token, cursed to attack anything that's ablaze (see [mwcard=MWSTX2FFQ02]Bloodfire Helmet[/mwcard], [mwcard=MWSTX2FFC13]Wildfire Imp[/mwcard], [mwcard=MWSTX2FFC02]Blood Demon[/mwcard]).

As for [mwcard=FWE02]Circle of Fire[/mwcard] and other damage barriers, I guess you have to stretch your imagination to get it to make sense thematically.  The Warlock isn't really engulfed in fire.  Think of the damage barrier as a motion-sensitive defense system that lashes out against anything that strikes at the mage.  In the case of a wall that attacks, the mage is being pushed (or voluntarily walking) through a stationary object.  The damage barrier doesn't trigger because it didn't sense anything moving to attack the mage. Ditto for a [mwcard=MWSTX1CKE05]Spiked Pit[/mwcard] (traps), [mwcard=DNJ10]Stranglevine[/mwcard], and other non-creature non-melee (and non-ranged) attacks and/or direct damage done to a mage.  Besides, if Circle of Fire hit a [mwcard=MW1W04]Wall of Thorns[/mwcard], then so too would a [mwcard=MW1Q05]Demonhide Armor[/mwcard] or Spiked Armor or Circle of Light, and that gets equally weird thematically. (P.S.  Water can't hurt plants (even plant creatures), but Light generally does?)

*edit* Or as sIKE put it, "... magical ..."

[Clow anderson]

It makes sense for me that a cursed item will do "demonic" damage to a living wall and even to a nonliving-Phisical wall (The one from the warlord); i see it like roting or something like that; and it makes sense for me that if you are surrounded by swords of light or are covered by metal edges/spikes they will damage these walls as well. In my limitated knowladeage of the world if you are touching a piece of metal, a thunder will reach you with less problems (And, in my mind, with less lost of power) and the plants dont get so much damage for water like other animals (because they don´t "breathe" in the same way) so for me nothing of these are thematic problems.
In other hand the plant should have get a Lighting-X trait and even a Light -X trait, but this is a small error for me because you can argue many things abouth that ("So much light will Kill the plant" or "Electricity will make internal burns on the plant" or "The plants in MW must have a brain, therefore it will be afected by electricity" etc)....

But the trigger of a damage barrier or not when you are trespassing a wall it´s... simply bizarre. The wall it´s touching you and it´s damaging you. If you are a living Fireball the wall have to be damaged but if you aren´t and you only have a "Defensive sistem that triggers when something is hitting you" it have to be damaged as well.
Untill now the things in Mage Wars have being working just like common sense says it will work. Even in the rulebook it´s written that the things in Mage Wars are designed with this concept in mind. It´s not a big mistake, but to me it "shut my inmersion of" of the game (I´m not sure if it is the correct way to explaining it). For me it is, at least, something weird when you compared it to the rest of the game.