For a sensitive, running into people who are using either shields or other forms of defense is an increasingly common occurrence. Many books have been written which give a variety of shielding techniques, unfortunately most don't give any instructions on how to bypass them in emergencies. This document will address this lack by explaining how to counter shields of varying types. This is important to know for a variety of reasons,such as healing someone who has natural shields up,overcoming a shield someone has put in place around you against your will,in order to facilitate an attack, etc. A word of warning, bypassing someone's shields can be construed as a hostile act, therefore you should be selective in your application of these techniques. In the text I will list the various forms of shields and the best methods to overcome them.

The one thing to remember at all times is that for any defense that has ever been designed there is a way to go around it, or force the user to discontinue it. There are no exceptions to this rule. The method you use to counter the defense is a matter of deciding whether or not you care about how much pain you cause the user.
The second thing to remember is that you need to have patience,and unless you are actively under attack you have all the time in the world to discover the shield's weakness. Rushing helps nothing, and can actually cause you harm if the person is using one of the offensive shield types where a single misstep can trigger the shield's offensive capability.

Basic Personal Shield:
This is the common shield that you will encounter,and to be honest the easiest to bypass. Most people when they create such a shield don't keep in mind that the shape they form the shield in is very important,most will form it in the shape of an egg. Plus too, most people don't have the experience needed to keep the shield solid across it's entire surface. It is these two weaknesses which offer us the method to bypass the shield.

How to Bypass the Basic Personal Shield:
As I said in the earlier part, bypassing this shield is exceedingly easy. I will give two methods here, I am certain you can think of several others.

1. The first and most painful method is to apply pressure to the top and bottom of the shield simultaneously. What this does is create backlash on the user of the shield, until the point where the pain becomes too much for them and they decide to drop the shield. This method also works if the person is using any shape that has corners, just apply pressure to the corners.
2. The second method is to look for the weak points in the shield. To the Sight these areas will appear less bright than elsewhere,or you may actually see holes in the shield since as I said, most people don't have the experience to keep a shield solid across it's entire surface.Once you have found these points,it is a simple matter of using a low power offensive technique to puncture the shield at that point.

Advanced Basic Personal Shield:
This is a variation of the Basic Personal Shield in which the person actually knows enough to form the shield in a sphere so that attacks are spread across the surface, and they have enough experience to hold the shield solid across the entire surface.

How to Bypass the Advanced Basic Personal Shield:
While this shield design is marginally more useful than the basic one, it still has several weaknesses that make it easy to bypass.

1. This shield's first weakness is that the person is powering it from their own energy. Because of this they can't hold out against a sustained attack for a long period of time. To this end all we have to do is use low power attacks repeatedly so that the person is forced to use more and more energy to keep the shield stable. Eventually they will be too tired to keep the shield solid,and you can puncture it at will.
2. The next method is to simply take advantage of the fact that with this shield type there is nothing to prevent us from just literally blowing it to pieces. Use full power attacks against it until it cracks,that simple. If you are concerned about draining yourself,then just use a sword of power to cut a hole in the shield. There is nothing about this design that makes it unhealthy for you to pierce it.
3. The third method,and my favourite,is just drain the shield (and thus the user) of energy. It causes little pain or harm to the user, and if you are a psi vamp, it means a free meal :) Not to mention that it will cost you nothing to breach the shield.

Externally Powered Shields:
This is a more advanced shield, where the user has learned,usually the hard way the perils of powering a shield off of their own energies, thus they have learned to power their shield with outside energies.

How to Bypass Externally Powered Shields:
This shield is actually quite good. Unfortunately,or fortunately in our case most people tend to forget that if something is powered from an outside source, that source can be disrupted. Which is one way how we can bypass it.

1. The first thing you need to do is spend some time searching for the flow of energy which is powering the shield. Once you have located it it is a simple matter to place a form of dam in the flow, thus causing the shield to fail within a matter of time. In cases where the person has been smart and has several flows entering the shield, we must resort to placing a shield of ours around theirs. Thereby cutting off the power flow. Then it is just a matter of waiting for the shield to collapse, and listening to the person curse :)

Now that we have covered the basic shield types, I will cover the specialty shields some people use. Most people will use these in conjunction with one of the basic types, but occasionally you will encounter someone foolish enough to just use a specialty shield.

Anti-Empathic Shields:
As the name implies this shield is designed specifically to prevent the user who is an empath from picking up all the emotions around them while allowing other things to pass through. Many also use this shield in reverse to stop themselves from broadcasting their emotions at others.

How to Bypass Anti-Empathic Shields:
Usually there is no reason to bypass one of these shields, as most often they are for preserving the mental health of the user more than anything else, but since this is a document on how to bypass shields, here is the method. I strongly urge that you just leave this shield type alone.

1. The easiest way to breach these shields is just to hit it with more emotional energy than it can block. To accomplish this simply form a link to the user and send every ounce of emotional energy you have at them.
2. The other way to handle it is to cut off it's power source,be that internal or external using the techniques I outlined earlier.

Mirror Shields:
Mirror shields are used for a variety of purposes,but mainly they are used by people, especially wiccans, who want a non-offensive defense against attacks.

How to Bypass Mirror Shields:
These shields are annoying to bypass in some ways because you have to be careful not to send the wrong things at it and have it bounce it back at you. It can be bypassed however, it just takes some thinking and some patience.

1. One way to bypass these shields is to force the user to drop it,to accomplish this we use a full power attack against it, and providing the mirror shield doesn't shatter it will be bounced back at you which is when you will place an externally powered Mirror Shield of your own right in front of it. Which of course will cause the attack to bounce back again, and again, and again ad infinitum until such time as the user gets tired of the backlash they are getting from each impact against their mirror shield and drops it.
2. The other way to bypass it is to simply cut a hole in it with a sword of power. Since I have never heard of an offensive mirror shield, I can be reasonably certain when I say that it is safe to do this.

Intent Specific Shields:
This is a detail that is often programmed into the basic shield types. What it does is act like a gatekeeper. If you have a certain intent that the shield has been programmed to stop, it will stop you from entering and trigger whatever other defenses the user has set up. If not, it allows you to pass. You commonly run into this type of setup where the user has set up offensive techniques to be triggered if the shield is under attack or breached. The reason being that they don't want to accidentally nuke a friend.

Bypassing Intent Specific Shields:
This technique makes it much easier to bypass the basic shield types since all you have to do is convince this Gatekeeper that your intentions are honorable.

1. To bypass this shield you will need two things, first of all you need to stop all outgoing emotional and telepathic information going out from you, this you accomplish with a standard shield and an anti-empathic shield. Keep in mind,you will be scanned hard looking for any sign of ill intent towards the user,so prepare accordingly.
2. Next what you need is to project all sorts of nice things that make it appear you have no intentions of harming the user.There is no real way I can explain how to do this, it is a matter of using empathic projection to send out feelings of safety, happiness etc as well as being a good actor.

Shadow Shields:
These are a great example of intent specific shields. What these shields do is hide the user from the Sight of those who wish them harm. Think of it as a form of limited invisibility that works to a small degree in the physical realm as well. Those who wish the user harm just don't notice the user though they could be standing 10' away. Providing of course the user doesn't do anything drastic to attract attention to themselves.

Bypassing Shadow Shields:
Because these are intent specific shields, use the method outlined above to bypass this shield.

River Shields:
This shield is one I have seen on a couple of occasions and is very annoying. The premise is that energy is constantly flowing around and away from the user thus carrying any attack with it.

Bypassing River Shields:
This is another one of those shields where you have to pay attention to details. While it is easy to bypass it can be tricky if you don't notice the energy coming in and going out. Occasionally the user will have the flow very slow moving so it is hard to notice the fact that your attacks aren't having much success. To bypass it, just find the incoming flow and block it. That simple.

Spinning Shields:
What these are is a basic shield type that has been set spinning very fast in order to make it extremely difficult to hit the same spot twice with an attack.

Bypassing Spinning Shields:
These shields are annoying,and you need to spend some serious time studying them before you even consider trying to bypass them.

1. Spend time observing the shield to ascertain what type of shield it is.
2. Now you have two options, the easy way and the hard way. The Hard way is that you see how good your timing is and try and hit the same spot repeatedly with an attack. The Easy way, and the one I reccomend,is just drain the shield of all it's energy.

House Shields:
I haven't given these their own category because to be honest all house shields fall into the basic types with a very few exceptions, which if you run into those the odds are you won't be able to handle the person who lives in that house anyways.

Bypassing House Shields:
There are three main ways to bypass a house shield, which are as follows:

1. Examine the doors,windows,ceiling and floor of the house. When most people set up house shields, they often forget to shield these areas as heavily as the rest of the house. Particularly in the case of windows and doors they forget you have to renew those shields fairly often because they are being walked through. Thus providing you with a way in.
2. Make your own door. This sounds ridiculously simple because it is.Most people have no idea how to make offensive house shields, so there is nothing preventing us from using a sword of power to cut a hole in their shield thereby allowing us entrance.
3. Gate in. This is an advanced technique, which I reccomend you practice and get very good at before you try it with a house.If only because some people tend to get rather upset with people suddely popping into existance inside their livingroom for some strange reason :) In other words you may have to leave again in a hurry. Basically what you are doing is creating a gate where the doorway is Inside the house and thereby past the shields. It works for the simple fact that most people never think about the possibility of someone projecting inside their house. They for some reason expect them to use the old ghost trick of walking through a wall or door.
4. Just for fun of course, if you are really bored and have energy to spare,you can just blow a hole in the shield with offensive attacks.

Thus ends this introduction to Counter Shield techniques. I hope you have learned a great deal about how to bypass shields,and have hopefully thought of some ways to improve your own shields to make it harder for them to be bypassed. The most important thing when it comes to bypassing shields is to use your head and take the time to study the shield thoroughly before you try and bypass it. You will more than likely encounter shields that aren't listed here,but most work on the same principles, and if you observe carefully,you may see where the weakness lies. Pay particular attention to what the shield looks like,sometimes people will make shields that look like glass or some other material,when this happens you can usually use the attacks that would break the real material to break the shield. The other reason observing is important,is the fact that some people are mean enough that they layer several shields one on top of the other,when you see that tread with caution as the fact that they can keep that many shields stable simultaneously says a great deal about their strength and experience. Another thing you should always remember is that there is always a chance that the person knows some offensive techniques and won't think twice about using them if you try to breach their shields, therefore always keep your own shields at full power when working.