I've seen a number of topics that ask for advice on how to keep the potentially limitless power of Wizards in check. And (at least where combat is concerned) it seems that one of the key enablers for Wizards is the ability to narrate the fate of a victim that is taken out. That is, if I'm playing a optimized Wizard, I can probably get away with throwing a weapon 6+ fireball at a group of human foes and, when they fail to roll high enough on their defense, proceed to narrate how they are scattered by the blast and knocked unconscious, but suffer nothing more than severe (but not life-threatening) burns.
You would *never* see Dresden doing this, because he'd realize that a spell of that magnitude would kill the people, which would be a violation of the Laws. But the game mechanics allow it, which makes it difficult to make the Laws limit the capability of Wizards the way they probably should.
So what stops the GM from playing the scenario more like this:
Player: "Ok, I'm going to lob my 'Corpsemaker Mk II' fireball at the group of mafia thugs. It'll be an 8 shift spell, with weapon 6 and one zone area effect."
GM: "Are you sure you want to do that? After all, you are talking about using LETHAL magic against a MORTAL foe. A spell that powerful is almost guaranteed to kill them, which is a violation of the Laws of Magic."
Player: "Yes, but I'm going to cast my fireball in a non-lethal way, which will just knock them unconscious."
GM: "A ball of super-heated plasma that powerful can't really be used as a non-lethal weapon..."
Player: "Look, if I take them out, the rules say I can narrate the results, right? So I'm gonna make it non-lethal."
GM: "It's your choice. Last chance: Are you absolutely sure that you wish to deliberately use your magic in a way that could well result in mortal deaths?"
Player: "Whatever. I rolled 7 control, so I'll take 1 mental stress for the spell and 1 physical stress for the backlash. That's 13 shifts of damage to the zone, minus their defense roll."
GM: "There's no need for a defense roll, they'd never survive that blast. I conceed that the entire group is reduced to charred, lifeless corpses."
Player: "Wha-?"
GM: "Let's talk about your Lawbreaker stunts..."
In other words, while the concession rules are generally there to allow a player facing certain doom to narrate their way out of it (assuming they can come up with a reasonable justification), I don't see any reason that they couldn't be used to enforce a modicum of sanity into situations such as the one above. The rules for concession set the limitations on it's use:
A concession has to pass muster with the group before it is accepted—the conditions of the loss still have to represent a clear and decisive disadvantage for your character. If the group (note that your opponent is part of the group for this!) feels like your character is getting off easy, you’ll need to rework the concession until it’s acceptable.
Given that weapon 6 is several steps more powerful than a hand grenade, I don't think that anyone could argue that the concession result is unreasonable, and I think it would be hard to argue that the victims are "getting off easy". It meets with all of the specific considerations the rules suggest on the same page, which generally suggest minimum long-term consequences rather than maximum. And as far as inflicting Lawbreakers on the attacker, the GM clearly stated to the player that he was at risk of breaking the Laws, and gave the player ample opportunity to revise the action. If I were the GM, I *might* even be more lenient that this any give the player one *more* chance to revise their action after previewing the result, since the result is likely going to be a loss of the character.
So is this a fair use of the concession rules to enforce the potential lethality of magic? Or mundane attacks, for that matter?
Making use of this mechanic should obviously be done sparingly (and hopefully would not need to be used more than sparingly). It would also probably be a good idea to have at least some rough guidelines as to what constitutes a (potentially) lethal attack. For example, an attack with a weapon rating greater than the target's stress boxes that results in enough stress that the target could not avoid being taken out even with a maximum defense roll and even if they were previously undamaged.
Thoughts?