Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-71.1.235.131-20171022191243/@comment-4010415-20171023033019

Just because Ozpin has been alive for a long time, doesn't mean he's omniscient enough to know about every single thing that is possible. In our world, mankind has been discovering and inventing things for millennia and documenting it, but even going over such documents does not inherently cause us to suddenly discover something. If no one has figured out how to do something yet, then it's reasonable for Ozpin to not know about it.

And there is absolutely no reason to think that the barrier should have the capability of blocking Semblances when it is literally just a Dust effect. It is no different from them sticking fire Dust in a machine that is designed to have the Dust create fire for it to shoot out. Most likely, that is literally all that is going on there - a machine has had whatever type of Dust creates barriers inserted into it, and it releases that Dust's effect over the area they want a barrier to cover.