I guess my perception of shield charm is based on movies a lot. I always pictured it as some kind of magnetic field. But as I remember it now, Harry uses it accidentally against Snape to defect his legilimency.

From that example, it looks like the spell basically protects the caster, whatever that means in a specific context. So I guess you are right about that. It can probably just dampen the glare.

 

The no limits fallacy is essentiallythat just because something hasn't shown any upper limits doesn't mean that it doesn't have any upper limits. Until a shield charm is hit with something as powerful ro stronger than a nuke, we can't say for certain if it would work or not.

 

That fallacy sounds retarded because the information we've been given isn't gradated based on effectiveness.

It's just whether or not it works. And it doesn't on the Killing Curse. All the evidence points to it just working.

 

So then wizards could just vanish the Earth? Or summon a celestial body into the Earth?

 

No Limits Fallacy is a legitimate argument. I don't see why everyone just waves it off.

By your logic, a killing curse will kill The Living Tribunal from Marvel or a shield charm will protect you if the universe explodes.

 

I get your point, but the general opinion here is that against the mundane, even stuff like the bombs, Magic will always prevail. The shield would work on a conceptual level, protecting the user from everything harmful (possibly depending on the skill level of the wizard) and could only be breached by Magic itself.

About your Living Tribunal argument, probably not. I don't know much about Marvel, but I guess a being as powerful as him would have magic resistance like Dragons and other creatures in HP that could survive the Avada Kedavra. Also, there is the competence factor, take a look at Barty Crouch explaining the Unforgivables, he had a very low opinion regarding the students' ability to cast the killing curse.

And your universe exploding argument...if there is no universe we sort of can't exist so...yeah.

 

Exactly. In the end, its really a matter of opinion of whether or not a nuke will work.

Also, Dragons are immune to Avada Kedavra? I don;t remmeber that ever being mentioned.

 

I don't know if it was ever mentioned, but if killing beings like Dragons and Giants was that easy they wouldn't be so problematic. It was remarked that their skin could resist spells, and if you take what Barty said in account, it's probable that even if it is possible to kill them with an AK, only a powerful wizard could do it.

And you are right about the whole thing being matter of opinion.

Edit: I'm taking Snape's comment in PoA over Harry's Patronus scaring away the Dementors as an example, in which he stated that only a powerful wizard could do it, so I guess that even though we can't measure the power level of an AK since an effective one always kills humans, there is a difference between an AK by Voldemort and one by the average Death Eater grunt.

Edit 2: I searched in HP wiki and it disagrees with me, so you can ignore all that haha

 

Uh, can you clarify which part the wiki disagrees with you on?

 

The only creatures with any sort of immunity to AK are phoenixes, and that because they can ressurect. Apparently any other will die without fail.

 

The general argument that I see everyone else using is that the shield charm "Protects" and would therefore "protect" its caster from anything, no matter what. That is where the no limits fallacy argument comes in.

It's never a good idea to remove upper limits, is that not why Powerful!Harry stories suffer so much?

As for only holding true what is literally written: What's wrong with that? Everything else, you can extrapolate from information gathered in canon but there's always the chance that its not correct. Besides J.K has done some great world building, there's no reason to go outside of what's already been written.

I'm not saying that you're wrong or that I'm wrong or vice versa. I'm just saying that neither of us can prove exacty what would happen. Sure, if in canon something as powerful as nuke had hit a shield charm then yes, I would concede this argument.

And if you feel the answer to the question is such a forgone conclusion then why don't you just close this thread?

 

Here's the thing: as has been quoted on this forum ad nauseam, JKR stated that wizardry essentially overrides mundane nature, rather than magical. Wizards in the novels performed the Shield Charm with varying degrees of success, and the Charm is challenged most against other spells - usually Dark ones, hence the variant incantation(s).

If we take into account the several potential elements that powerful magic can consist of, there's no need to assign some discrete limit to every spell. It's all conditional. For example: Boggarts. If Ron was a wizard of Dumbledorean aptitude, he still might flounder if he was locked in a room with a thousand of them.

 

Not really. Powerful Harry stories have an unfortunate tendency to suffer from bad writing, but so do most fanfic ideas. Neither is making Harry powerful some sort of intrinsically bad idea. It's all in the execution. There are a lot of stories that make Harry more powerful and yet don't suck.

Christ on the Cross, are you still on about that?

 

True but don't most readers want to immerse themselves in the journey of Harry becoming strong instead of just the usual cliche power ups which make him ridiculously op.

 

Incidentally, it's Harry's particularly powerful Shield Charm near the end of DH which lays credence to the argument. He was adamant that Voldemort would not harm anyone else: it would be one-on-one. When he cast the Charm, it expanded along the entirety of the Hall.

Was it his conviction in protecting Molly Weasley and not wanting anyone else involved that did it? I think so.

 

We're not removing upper limits, we're saying that magic conceptually trumps physics. That's how magic is written in Harry Potter. You don't seem to be able to wrap your head around this. Or just don't believe that. We've had years to discuss and argue relevant topics, and this is a fairly common conclusion.

You're basically saying that because it didn't happen in canon, you can't conclusively prove it either way? Jeez, Sesc went over why this isn't a very fruitful way of thinking... to me, you're saying that we can't convince you no matter what.

It's thinking like that that prevents you from seeing it from our point of view. You're still stuck on the science and force parts and trying to rationalize and limit magic.

When magic casually fucks over anything non-magical you can imagine, there is no no limit fallacy, it's a simple case of magic > non-magic and magic = magic. The Shield Charm can be defeated by magic. It has limits. Those limits just aren't covered by what the Muggle world is capable of.

 

However while the shield charm should work against most physical attacks, the energy of that kind of explosion would have to do some damage.