Author Topic: First Law and World Hopping PCs  (Read 4234 times)

Offline Bruce Coulson

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Re: First Law and World Hopping PCs
« Reply #15 on: September 28, 2010, 02:40:00 PM »
The key element in the First Law is an intangible; the soul.

A human that has gone to negative Refresh through mortal stunts, and has lost free will...still qualifies as 'human' for purposes of the First Law.

Whereas a WCV, with positive Refresh and Free Will, does not.

So, for these other worlds, it would be the delicate question 'does this race have souls?'

Obviously, starting out with Free Will would be a pre-requisite.  But whether or not something has a soul is harder.

Mortality would be another defining characteristic.  Not that a creature CAN die; but that members of this race WILL die, eventually, also seems to be part of having a soul (The Gift of Man, later referred to as the Doom of Man in LotR.)

This would be where I'd start...
You're the spirit of a nation, all right.  But it's NOT America.

Offline Richard_Chilton

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Re: First Law and World Hopping PCs
« Reply #16 on: September 28, 2010, 04:21:37 PM »
Just a thought about the first law - remember that "taking out" doesn't mean instant death for NPCs any more than it means deaths for PCs.  If you take someone out with a spell you don't have to say "so he's dead", you could say "He's lying on the ground unconscious and bleeding" or something like that.  You can also work with the GM to apply consequences that make the story more interesting than just "he's dead".

Richard

Offline Becq

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Re: First Law and World Hopping PCs
« Reply #17 on: September 28, 2010, 05:11:57 PM »
Just a thought about the first law - remember that "taking out" doesn't mean instant death for NPCs any more than it means deaths for PCs.  If you take someone out with a spell you don't have to say "so he's dead", you could say "He's lying on the ground unconscious and bleeding" or something like that.  You can also work with the GM to apply consequences that make the story more interesting than just "he's dead".
Absolutely true.  Of course, the GM -- in order to reinforce the fact that a w:12 ball of superheated plasma is *not* a nonlethal weapon and ensure that frivolous misuse of lethal magic has consequences -- might choose to "conceed", stating that the target dies, the upper half of his torso burned away to ashes.  Or he could simply disagree that the "taken out" narration for the victim of such an attack might result in a glancing blow to the skull that knocks the target out but leaves them alive.  Or ... etc. 

As to the question of who qualifies for First Law protection, my conclusion is that the formula works something like this:

If the target is monstrous by nature (rather than simply by choice), or
If the target's race is fully or partially supernatural in nature, or
If the target's race is not native to the (a?) material plane, or
If the target or the target's race is an aberration to the Natural Order, or
If the target or the target's race was created by someone/something other than the Authorized Powers That Be of the cosmology in question, or
If the target lacks sentience or a soul,
Then the target is not a "person" and lacks protection of the Laws.

I'm not sure that this is a 100% complete formula, but I think it is probably close.  Thoughts?