Do Runesmiths have witch sight?

[The bearded one]

I'm playing a runesmith in an rpg and I was wondering wether there is any info if dwarf runesmiths have witchsight, or anything comparable to see or feel the winds of magic (and aid in their famous dispelling) or is there really nothing magical about them and are they basically dwarfs with +1 dispeldice trinkets?

[Leogun_91]

WFRP 2nd edition says no, choosing not to offer them magic sense.

[The bearded one]

I just wonder how they can protect against magic or trap it into magic items, if they can't feel the aethyr in any way. It'd be hard to even use your spellbreaking runes if the only warning you'd have from an enemy spell is the loud boom noise and flying limbs it creates.

[Arnizipal]

Runesmiths don't actively defend against magic I suppose.
They probably have a number of charged items (prepared beforehand) to dispell magic when needed.

[Scalebug]

As you say, they must have some way of sensing magic shenanigans, if they are able to dispel it and such...

To me, it would feel right to see it as not "seeing" the sorcery (or likely it is in the realm of smelling sounds and hearing colours...) like an Elf or human wizard would, but something more down to earth like the aching of an old gippy knee, the bristling of their beard or the taste of copper in their mouth.

[Urgat]

I just wonder how they can protect against magic or trap it into magic items, if they can't feel the aethyr in any way.

Skills, obviously. Isn't that what dwarfs are ever most proud of? My electrician can do wonders and he doesn't see electricity.

[The bearded one]

No, he shuts it off and fiddles with the wires :P

It's a bit like stopping a computer virus without having a computer screen.

If innate magicrelated skills do not play a part, there's no real reason why the 'runesmith' can't hand his preprepared dispeltrinkets to a thane and stay home.

[Urgat]

Is there a reason why Empire engineers insist on using their longrifles when they're clearly not marksmen? There's certainly a reason for that, we just don't know it, maybe it's a bit more complicated to use than just shoot "By the power of the Moon! I command thee, dispell this malign spell!"? They hand over runic weapons alright after all.
Ok for the electrician, so what about the people who invented batteries and nuclear power plants and so on? Maybe they have googles that let them see magic to some extent. That should be possible, if it's there, after all. Maybe there's a rune of witchsight?

[The bearded one]

Is there a reason why Empire engineers insist on using their longrifles when they're clearly not marksmen?

they're showing off

Ok for the electrician, so what about the people who invented batteries and nuclear power plants and so on?

electricity and nuclear power are generally not wielded by some dude who's trying to kil you with it in a battlesituation These things are science, and figured out in a great space of time. Antimagic has to be figured out in a short space of time, and has to be instinctively, because magic energy is invisible to the regular eye and if you want to dispel against it or ward against, it you are going to have to be able to direct dispel energy towards it in some manner, instead of activating your dispelrune and trusting that the rune will know what to dispel.

[Denny]

Could a Runesmith construct a device that detects magic, like a P.K.E Meter in Ghostbusters?
(I like the gammy knee idea though)

[Arnizipal]

If innate magicrelated skills do not play a part, there's no real reason why the 'runesmith' can't hand his preprepared dispeltrinkets to a thane and stay home.

Tradition? Closely guarding the secrets of the activation of spellbreaking runes sounds very Dwarfish to me
Alternatively it could be that the way the magic was bound in the runes requires its creator to be present for it to be used.

Antimagic has to be figured out in a short space of time, and has to be instinctively, because magic energy is invisible to the regular eye and if you want to dispel against it or ward against, it you are going to have to be able to direct dispel energy towards it in some manner, instead of activating your dispelrune and trusting that the rune will know what to dispel.

Maybe we should look at it in the same way as the innate magical resistance of Dwarfs?
It's not an active ability either.

[Badbones777]

If I remember rightly (though I have never actually had a Dwarf army-I'm remembering from something I [I]think[I] I read in what was possibly the 6th ed Dwarf book)
isn't there a story in one of the older army books about a runesmith forging some sort of item by stoking up his furnace and making a single hammer strike at a precise moment
when the moon is full or something? So it's possible that they really can't sense magic. they've just learned by rote-when the moon is here, strike rune X on item Y maybe?
That does make it a bit less clear as to how they do what they do mid-battle however.

[MvS]

My thoughts on this matter are that Dwarfs are not anti-magical at all, they just 'metabolise it very differently from other species. They are an elder race that can create some of the most potent magical artefacts in the Warhammer world. Their Runic system surpasses even the High Elves runic system in its potential to bind the Winds of Magic, so these aren't a magically dead people.

For whatever reason though Dwarfs don't like magic drifting around them. On some very primal level they need it to be dissipated or at least controlled and contained. For me a Runesmith would feel the presence magic 'in his bones' as it were, and it would probably make him feel grim and agitated (although his magical sense wouldn't be as subtle as an elf's).

I see Dwarfs as unwittingly 'earthing' magic - a process that leaves them feeling unhappy and fidgety. If the magic directed their way is minor they can do this without too many problems. If it's a lot but over a long period of time their bodies slowly react, insulating them against it but gradually turning them into a material similar to basalt. If the amount of magic coming their way is massive and sudden then I imagine they react justl ike any other being - mutating or being effected by the spell as normal (although perhaps Dwarfs have a greater chance of 'healing' mutations over time).

Anyway, these were suggestions I made for WFRPv2 a good while back. They didn't get through, although at that time no alternatve approach was really proposed. I don't know what the 'official' line is now, if anything.

[Arnizipal]

Chaos Dwarfs turn to stone by using magic, so you idea fits rather well
No idea why they didn't go for it with WFRPv2...

[The bearded one]

Maybe we should look at it in the same way as the innate magical resistance of Dwarfs?
It's not an active ability either.

Dwarf antimagic is shown in fluff to be a fairly active ability, instead of being resistant to the effect of magic cast upon them, and runesmiths in those stories are an important link in their antimagic.

A good example would be the battle between Konrad von Carstein and the army of Zhufbar, where the necromancers were unable to practise their magic on their own troops because of the dwarf runesmiths, untill Konrad sought them out with his magical sight and killed them, at which point the necromancers sttarted gaining magical ascendency again. If dwarfs merely possesed resistance to magic as a passive ability, the necromancers wouldnt have had any trouble affecting their own troops.

[MvS]

Chaos Dwarfs turn to stone by using magic, so you idea fits rather well

Yes that was my line of thinking. Although I suspect the Dwarf + lots of magic = stone thing might be in the process of being dropped from the imagery.

Dwarf antimagic is shown in fluff to be a fairly active ability, instead of being resistant to the effect of magic cast upon them, and runesmiths in those stories are an important link in their antimagic.

This is the thing, it can be 'passive' (in the sense that it doesn't need actual concentration) but still aggressive in effect.

Runesmiths might absorb / metabolise magic quicker, hence their affinity with magic in the first place and the reason they manage to become Runesmiths. If they absorbed more magic more quickly than other Dwarfs (under normal circumstances to then force it from themselves and into their creations through their sweat, blood and implacable will) this could perhaps explain why they are even greater dampeners on spells cast in their vicinity than 'normal' Dwarfs are. Add this to whatever artefacts they have on them that also eat or nullify spells, you'd have some pretty annoying anti-magic characters.

[Urgat]

electricity and nuclear power are generally not wielded by some dude who's trying to kil you with it in a battlesituation These things are science, and figured out in a great space of time. Antimagic has to be figured out in a short space of time, and has to be instinctively, because magic energy is invisible to the regular eye and if you want to dispel against it or ward against, it you are going to have to be able to direct dispel energy towards it in some manner, instead of activating your dispelrune and trusting that the rune will know what to dispel.

Then it can be skills and experience. They see/hear/feel/whatever a spell, and have to strike a corresponding rune quickly on whatever they use to dispel. Surely no one else can do that but a runesmith? You're not going to tell me runesmiths haven't spent a great deal of time studying the subject off-battlefield, are you? So, yep, skills. MvS's idea was interesting, but if it's been rejected, well, it's not it

[The bearded one]

I still find it a bit odd runesmiths have no perception of magic, except for being skilled in the use of dispelrunes.

Imagine a runesmith walking down a creepy corridor. "dumdidumdidum... * noise from a corner * * runesmith gasps, slams a rune * * fizzle * .. owh.... oh it was just a rat.. Aw dagnabit, now I've used up my spellbreaker! sonofa..."

[Urgat]

Well, that'd make them even cooler
Let's imagine the... yeah, the spellbreaker isn't one use only

[Novrain]

I think we are assuming that spells happen instantly. While in the game they do, I think it is better to think of them taking tens of minutes to prepare and then build in intensity to a killing power. The build of magic in this case would be felt in the runesmiths "bones" and would be able to be dispellled before the spell got up enough steam to damage the dwarven army?