[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by prescience

I'd be interested to hear where you're getting these "below par performances" from.

If as depicted, our mass weapons are going at Mach 3, your Para 2 won't be there.

All we know is that, in all cases where mass-based weapons have been used against mages, they have failed to be effective.

We have two shankings with a non-magical attacker, a set of whippings and for an all-time low, windblast with no hint of attacking magic... (trying to prove there is no magic, or no attacking magic, is a futile attempt at proving a negative)

From this, all we can infer is that the weapons used in these cases are ineffective against magic defenses.

Which then leaves us to determine the mass and speed of the rounds. Also, for the 2nd example, it seems canon wants us to credit the Cyborg body, more than the magic. Read previous posts.

I would like to take object with your general insistence that timing measurements are admissible as evidence in this debate.

Join the club

<snip>

It may be just me, but I think that if the scene under discussion involved a "baseball", but the best estimate of its speed was Mach 3, I'm sure none of you there would accept any solution other than Mach 3 speed. And if it hit a mage and mage is unfazed by the attack with only his barrier jacket, you will not accept anything less than a conclusion that everything is as shown and thus the mage BJ has excellent ballistic characteristic despite its thinness. The fact it was supposed to be a "baseball", Naruto, or any of the above would have no importance in comparison to the observable speed.

Which is all very well, and scientifically correct, but why does everything change when the situation inverts to "howitzer" and <50m/s speed?

I prefer to be consistent and scientific. Observations through good and bad.

... or they could just steal a bunch of M16A1s (or, more likely, AK47s) from Earth. If Fate could come over and steal Jewel Seeds as a 9-year-old kid, surely an organized crime syndicate wouldn't have any trouble finding somewhere to steal assault rifles from.

That assumes they are even aware of Earth as more than a number, that they are aware of the goodies we have, that they understand the advantages of our weapons ... etc before they would even consider an acquisition mission. It also assumes they have independent teleportation ability (since no regular ships come here) and we don't exactly see an excess of private interdimensional transport, which is not that common and if they have such ability they are likely mages and presumably less interested.

Think about how little we really know about most other countries. How interested do you think the average syndicate is in our "backwater" world?