The GM is guilty of this or that? I didn't know there was a game court
The PC was not in a position to "take out" the bad guy so the rules didn't allow him to dictate the take out. Going by a strict reading of the rules the bad guy was going to get away - use up an extreme consequence and flee, which would have been an anticlimax for the battle. Then again, the NPC has been built up as an intelligent being, one that didn't have a motive to fight to the death if he could flee and fight another day. That would have made a crummy game so the rules were bent.
Bent? Nay, broken! The rules are clear that the GM decides what happens with NPCs (unless declarations etc happen). The letter of the rules were broken, but the spirit of FATE, of letting the players control as much as the game as they can, lived on.
If the player had said "I don't want this choice" then he wouldn't have had to made it. After all, he'd made his roll and his roll had failed. After poring everything he had into stopping Bad Guy he was still three stress from stopping Bad Guy. A fair and impartial reading of the rules would have been "Close, but no. He gets away. Well, that was a good effort but the group couldn't close the deal."
But (as mentioned) that would have been anticlimactic. By giving the choice to the player who had missed the roll I gave him the option of deciding how the battle should end - even though the dice said "No, he doesn't get a say here".
As for meta-gaming, that's what GMs do every time they scale the opponent to the players' power level. It's what they do every time they think "Joe hasn't had a chance to do much this game - let's see what his skills are and then shape things so he'll get to do more than just sit there watching". It's done every time the GM decides "I was going to put 5 guys to defend the princess, but the PCs are already pretty chewed up so there's only going to be three of them". In short, virtually everything the GM does is beyond the game world and is meta gaming. Now if an NPC suddenly had knowledge that he shouldn't then that could be a problem, but how do you run NPCs that are smarter than you are? Amber Diceless RPG had advice for that - advice that involves taking things to a new level as far as meta-gaming goes.
As for making the choice "Death or escape" - the wizard had put everything he could behind his spell. He wasn't holding anything back and he knew he was dealing with a human. When taking someone out "The outcome must remain within the realm of reason". Couple that with the DFRPG being about choices and living with decisions and I believe that there are times when the game flow dictates that death happens. Which is why Harry felt so bad after a "DIE VAMPIRE DIE VAMPIRE" fire blast when he remembered "Oh yeah, there were those kids in the house." and others had to tell him "the poison probably killed them first".
As for the Lawbreaker aspect, no one brought that up until afterwards and the Lawbreaker bit is something that gets debated to death here. There's never been a firm ruling on it - just three sets of advice that don't always agree on all points.
You seem to view the game as being a contest between the GM and the Players, with each being confined by Rules rather than the game being a story they build together. That's more true for D&D than DFRPG. After all, there's nothing stopping an intelligent foe (run by the GM) from handling thing the way Marcone would handle a conflict with Dresden - but that wouldn't be a fun game to play in.
Richard
