Giving teeth to enforcement of The Laws

[Tallyrand]

I think a flaw of the whole discussion is we have forgot that intent precedes the mechanics.

Players, IMHO, should never state: "I use a force 12 flame burst attack" but the whole discussion should be like the following:
Player: "I'm going to take out the whole crowd with a <element> spell"
GM:"What kind of spell?"
P:"<reasonable method to use non-lethal force>"
G:"Ok! This is an attack spell 'cause your aim is to incapacitate them. How many shifts?"
etc.etc.

From this perspective, all becomes simpler.

That's actually funny because I was considering pulling out that line earlier.  I feel, in this case, that intent preceding mechanics really applies to the intent of the laws being a real threat should precede the perceived mechanics that the attacker always gets to choose what happens after an attack.  If my player said I'm using non-lethal force and then told me he was rolling a Weapon: 5 attack, I would be very quick to tell him no, you aren't using non-lethal force but feel free to roll or if you like you can adjust your spell.

[toturi]

and if it was intended to be that way you'd have to ask yourself why Harry doesn't spend all of his time learning guaranteed non-lethal spells rather than constantly throwing around fire balls. (yes I know that Harry is in the novels not the game, but still the novels are what the rules are supposed to evoke)

The reason I see why Harry doesn't spend his time learning less-than-lethal spells is the same reason why he is such a sucker for damsels in distress. His player doesn't want to change the way he plays Harry. He could swap out "Chivalry is not dead, damnit", but novel after novel, story after story, Harry falls for the same routine. His player need not have taken that Lawbreaker and "Not so subtle, still quick to anger" in the first place, but that's what he did. Does that mean that just because Jim doesn't swap out those Aspects, other players cannot swap out their characters' Aspects? If it was intended for players to swap out their character's Aspects, then you'd have to ask yourself why Harry falls for the same compels over and over again.

[Drachasor]

To me, this isn't the person considering the consequences of their choices, it's attempting to avoid them.  Personally I see players going through convoluted explanations of how their spell is non-lethal to be basically The Dresden Files form of Min-Maxing, and if it was intended to be that way you'd have to ask yourself why Harry doesn't spend all of his time learning guaranteed non-lethal spells rather than constantly throwing around fire balls. (yes I know that Harry is in the novels not the game, but still the novels are what the rules are supposed to evoke)

Harry basically NEVER fights humans.  Why would he waste time coming up with non-lethal spells?  The Harry argument isn't really compelling when I don't believe he even ever has to knock someone out.

They don't indicate any level of stress that may cause death no, but what they do indicate is an intent that the choice of whether an enemy dies isn't always in the hands of the player.  Also, not for nothing, but personally I would rather sit with my group and agree what level of spell is or is not lethal than have an argument back and forth every day about whether Fairies have an inner ear or what the relative alcohol tolerance of a hexenwolf is.

Not always, but then again, you expect that when you are using lethal force.  Your argument completely loses its weight when you consider any kind of non-lethal force (and you grant that it can exist).

Ok, so this is actually factually incorrect, the number of shifts in a spell (of which Weapon value has a direct relation) is an indicator of the raw power of the spell not the relative complexity or control of it.  That's why shifts of power are limited by Conviction (raw power) instead of Discipline (control) and why Harry (a high Conviction middling Discipline caster) is described as being a powerhouse with little control in the early books.

Err, in fact it is an indicator of both.  A very complex spell requires a lot of raw power.  That's just how the system works.  You can also use raw power in an unrefined way as well.  I suppose aspects could come to play here and some might have trouble with say...the subtly of non-lethal spells (if you want to stick to thinking about Harry).

[Tallyrand]

Harry basically NEVER fights humans.  Why would he waste time coming up with non-lethal spells?  The Harry argument isn't really compelling when I don't believe he even ever has to knock someone out.

Ok, two things here

1) He fights humans a fair bit, Marcone and his men, evil Wizards, mortal gang members and once or twice the cops just to name a few.

2) From a mechanics argument it doesn't matter if he ever fights humans, if a Weapon: 20 make you dizzy spell is the same as a Weapon: 20 fire spell other than ascetics there's no reason to ever risk killing.  Also, if the player narrates the Take Out then there is no reason he could simply narrate the Dizzy attack as lethal whenever it suited him.

Not always, but then again, you expect that when you are using lethal force.  Your argument completely loses its weight when you consider any kind of non-lethal force (and you grant that it can exist).

Right, and I say that the threshold between Non-Lethal and Lethal force is the gap between Weapon: 2 and Weapon: 3, and by my reading of the rules I suspect that that was the intent of the writers of the game as well.

Err, in fact it is an indicator of both.  A very complex spell requires a lot of raw power.  That's just how the system works.  You can also use raw power in an unrefined way as well.  I suppose aspects could come to play here and some might have trouble with say...the subtly of non-lethal spells (if you want to stick to thinking about Harry).

Ok, just re-read the section to make sure I hadn't missed anything, but no the number of Shifts of Power in a spell represent just that, how much power is there, in fact there is nothing in the spellcasting section discussing the relative complexity of an Evocation.  The difficulty in casting a spell with a lot of shifts comes from whether you can managed to control the raw power your putting into it, not whether you are skilled enough to manage its complexity.

[Tallyrand]

The reason I see why Harry doesn't spend his time learning less-than-lethal spells is the same reason why he is such a sucker for damsels in distress. His player doesn't want to change the way he plays Harry. He could swap out "Chivalry is not dead, damnit", but novel after novel, story after story, Harry falls for the same routine. His player need not have taken that Lawbreaker and "Not so subtle, still quick to anger" in the first place, but that's what he did. Does that mean that just because Jim doesn't swap out those Aspects, other players cannot swap out their characters' Aspects? If it was intended for players to swap out their character's Aspects, then you'd have to ask yourself why Harry falls for the same compels over and over again.

What I'm saying is that if Wizards could completely eliminate the possibility of accidentally killing a mortal without sacrificing any options or power, we would see at least one do it, and Harry doesn't even seem to consider the possibility.  That to me implies strongly that in the Dresden universe there are no sure things like many of the people here seem to be arguing.  Was it possible to be sure like is being suggested here it wouldn't have been called Camp Kaboom, it would have been Camp Beddie-by.  I mean if there's anyone your going to teach equally powerful but less risky magic, it would be the young and inexperienced Wizards that you want out there kicking butt for you without all of them becoming evil.

[toturi]

I mean if there's anyone your going to teach equally powerful but less risky magic, it would be the young and inexperienced Wizards that you want out there kicking butt for you without all of them becoming evil.

I disagree. You teach your soldiers the skills and techniques you think they need to win the war. In a war with vampires, the assumption may well be that your young and inexperienced Wardens would be facing monsters and you don't need to teach the less-than-lethal tactics/spells.

[Tallyrand]

I disagree. You teach your soldiers the skills and techniques you think they need to win the war. In a war with vampires, the assumption may well be that your young and inexperienced Wardens would be facing monsters and you don't need to teach the less-than-lethal tactics/spells.

But with the way it's being argued here no spell is more or less lethal than any other without there being a house rule.  With the attackers player narrating the outcome every attack can be exactly as lethal as is convenient regardless of its special effects or the amount of power pumped into it.

[Drachasor]

But with the way it's being argued here no spell is more or less lethal than any other without there being a house rule.  With the attackers player narrating the outcome every attack can be exactly as lethal as is convenient regardless of its special effects or the amount of power pumped into it.

That's not what is being argued at all.  An evocation designed to be non-lethal is going to be hard to use to justify killing someone.  And again, there are the fact that what is non-lethal to a human might not even affect supernatural creatures.  Before you go and act like this is too complicated to deal with, remember we already deal with stuff like this in the game.  Sunlight, for instance, is lethal to vampires (save Whites), but doesn't hurt humans even if you toss a dozen or more shifts into it.

[Drachasor]

Ok, two things here

1) He fights humans a fair bit, Marcone and his men, evil Wizards, mortal gang members and once or twice the cops just to name a few.

2) From a mechanics argument it doesn't matter if he ever fights humans, if a Weapon: 20 make you dizzy spell is the same as a Weapon: 20 fire spell other than ascetics there's no reason to ever risk killing.  Also, if the player narrates the Take Out then there is no reason he could simply narrate the Dizzy attack as lethal whenever it suited him.

1)  He actually doesn't.  There are literally maybe a dozen fights with humans over the course of the books (12 or so YEARS).  All "fights" with Marcone are really him just intimidating people as far as I recall; often he just plans to do something like that in fact.  And again, there's another way to justify why Harry does this; he's not very subtle.

2)  I've already supplied a couple reasons against this here.  Harry WOULD want to eliminate supernatural threats, and often doesn't have a lot of time to stick around and finish them off after "taken out" is achieved.  Again, just because something is non-lethal to humans doesn't mean it would even hurt a supernatural creature.  Neither of these things is a trivial point.

So Harry hardly ever fights humans (maybe once per year AT BEST), and often has to run around and kill supernatural beasts where he can't finish them off or give them time to lick their wounds.  His focus on lethal magic makes a lot of sense.  It makes all the more sense when you factor in his lack of subtly.

Right, and I say that the threshold between Non-Lethal and Lethal force is the gap between Weapon: 2 and Weapon: 3, and by my reading of the rules I suspect that that was the intent of the writers of the game as well.

Again, that's an arbitrary line you've decided to draw based on nothing substantial.  At best you are what, basing it on the non-lethal technology we have today...which sucks?  And from that you extrapolate restrictions on magic?  Magic that far exceeds the standard lethal technology we have available for the best infantry?  Your reasoning is not sound.

Ok, just re-read the section to make sure I hadn't missed anything, but no the number of Shifts of Power in a spell represent just that, how much power is there, in fact there is nothing in the spellcasting section discussing the relative complexity of an Evocation.  The difficulty in casting a spell with a lot of shifts comes from whether you can managed to control the raw power your putting into it, not whether you are skilled enough to manage its complexity.

My extrapolation here is certainly no worse than yours.  Evocation and Thaumturgy work very similarly in many ways.  Complexity in Thaumaturgy and sponsored magic show power and complexity are much the same thing.  That event tracks with how attacks and such work with Evocation.  The more complex the spell (spray, multiple areas, etc), the more power you need for it.

[Tallyrand]

That's not what is being argued at all.  An evocation designed to be non-lethal is going to be hard to use to justify killing someone.  And again, there are the fact that what is non-lethal to a human might not even affect supernatural creatures.  Before you go and act like this is too complicated to deal with, remember we already deal with stuff like this in the game.  Sunlight, for instance, is lethal to vampires (save Whites), but doesn't hurt humans even if you toss a dozen or more shifts into it.

There's a pretty big difference between making the blanket statement "Humans aren't killed by sunlight" and the statement "Vampires aren't effected by vertigo" and that would only cover one possible 'non-lethal' attack against one possible type of enemy.

Also, the statement "an evocation designed to be non-lethal is going to be hard to use to justify killing someone" is no more valid than the statement "an evocation designed to do physical damage is going to be hard to use to justify not killing someone" which is at the core of this debate.  We can quibble all day about whether Vertigomatic 2000 will kill, but the argument over these many pages is whether the player can accidentally kill at all.

[Tallyrand]

1)  He actually doesn't.  There are literally maybe a dozen fights with humans over the course of the books (12 or so YEARS).  All "fights" with Marcone are really him just intimidating people as far as I recall; often he just plans to do something like that in fact.  And again, there's another way to justify why Harry does this; he's not very subtle.

It's very hard not to answer this sarcastically, but a dozen fights against humans (I'm thinking it's actually more, but I"ll go with your number for now) in a dozen books isn't rarely, it's almost every time.

2)  I've already supplied a couple reasons against this here.  Harry WOULD want to eliminate supernatural threats, and often doesn't have a lot of time to stick around and finish them off after "taken out" is achieved.  Again, just because something is non-lethal to humans doesn't mean it would even hurt a supernatural creature.  Neither of these things is a trivial point.

Ok, I regret that I sidetracked with comparisons to the book, but just to make it clear.  If spells that are in every way equally effective but carry no risk of accidentally breaking the first law are both easy and available to cast then no sensible wizard would ever put themselves at that risk.  Since Harry is a pretty sensible guy, and has put himself at that risk several times, despite having first hand knowledge of the potential ramifications, then from a tabletop perspective he is making foolish choices that I would never expect a player to make.  That being the case, if players always con volute their spells when fighting mortals to ensure that accidental first law breakage is impossible (again without having to limit their options at all) then the game at the tabletop fails to recreate the feel of the novels.  I don't believe that that was the intent of the designers of the RPG.

Again, that's an arbitrary line you've decided to draw based on nothing substantial.  At best you are what, basing it on the non-lethal technology we have today...which sucks?  And from that you extrapolate restrictions on magic?  Magic that far exceeds the standard lethal technology we have available for the best infantry?  Your reasoning is not sound.

I'm basing it on what's written in the RPG book, and I've delineated many of the passages which led me to that conclusion.  If you wish to be intentionally obtuse this conversation is going to get very boring very quickly.

My extrapolation here is certainly no worse than yours.  Evocation and Thaumturgy work very similarly in many ways.  Complexity in Thaumaturgy and sponsored magic show power and complexity are much the same thing.  That event tracks with how attacks and such work with Evocation.  The more complex the spell (spray, multiple areas, etc), the more power you need for it.

So far as your possition on whether more shifts in an Evocation denotes greater control or complexity, I really recommend you read the Evocation section of the book.  I mean, you can rule it however you like in your game, but nowhere does it suggest that shifts represent what you are suggesting.  Evocation and Thaumaturgy do use similar rules systems, but there is no question in either section that Conviction represent raw power and that that is the limiter on the number of shifts you can control in an Evocation.  Most of the things we're discussing here are RAW/RAI or simply what our opinions on what makes a good story and a good game are, but the shifts of power thing is laid out clearly enough that I'd say to use it in the way that you suggest would constitute a house rule.

[toturi]

There's a pretty big difference between making the blanket statement "Humans aren't killed by sunlight" and the statement "Vampires aren't effected by vertigo" and that would only cover one possible 'non-lethal' attack against one possible type of enemy.

Actually I think the key idea here is that a non-Weapon: Zero attack can actually deal no damage, even assuming it hits.

[UmbraLux]

It's very hard not to answer this sarcastically, but a dozen fights against humans (I'm thinking it's actually more, but I"ll go with your number for now) in a dozen books isn't rarely, it's almost every time.

It's worth noting Harry's fights against humans are almost invariably with mundane weapons.  The number of times he uses magic against a human is extremely limited.  Even when fighting a demon summoner, he used magic against the demon & environment and hist fists against the human.

[bitterpill]

Yer he quite often shields and shoots it is only when he is in a bad mood he blows them away literally.

[nearchus]

What your saying, that killing accidentally isn't possible, isn't supported by the rules sense it says specifically that the Taken Out result must be reasonable.  What it at debate here is what is reasonable and what the designers intended reasonable to be, which isn't clearly stated by the rules. So to counter, the lack of any intent suggestion that it is impossible for a player to accidentally have his character kill someone makes it clear IMO that your interpretation is incorrect.  But again, it is never clearly stated either way.

That's not even remotely what I've been saying , but it's become clear to me that the distinction the book makes between character choices and player choices isn't going to become clear to you. I never said that accidental death isn't possible. I said that players can't have their characters kill other people accidentally unless they want to. DF gives massive control over a character's story to the player. If they want to have their character accidentally murder someone then they can do that (as long as the result is reasonable). If they want to have almost killed someone but happen to not have then this is also fine (again, as long as it's reasonable).

For a vague and very general example, imagine a climactic scene between a character and their archenemy. In the conflict, the character manages to shoot/spell/whatever the archenemy a couple times and big baddie is "taken out". The *player* can now decide what they would like to happen. If they feel that this was, in fact, a good climax to their story concerning the archenemy then *they* get to decide that the archenemy is dead. If they'd prefer that the archenemy lives they can say that he (it?) managed to survive the wounds after being left for dead by the character. In most games these choices are left to the GM, but in DF, these are a player's choice. Players get to decide if their characters are reckless violators of the First Law or whether they use magic carefully.

The "In your game..." sections give the exceptionally good advice to make sure that the players are all on the same page as to what sort of game they're running. To be in the spirit of DF they *shouldn't* run around flinging fireballs and then claim that the mortals somehow survived. So the players and GM should discuss what reasonable is to them and how characters should respond to mortals being in the line of fire. This section, by the way, deliberately doesn't give "mechanics" because they aren't needed. The players already have the mechanics available to them. They're allowed to have their character accidentally violate the First Law if they really want to.