You should specify exactly what types of thaumaturgy it allows you to use the methods of evocation for. Illusions and psychomancy, maybe?

That's what I was thinking. I wasn't certain if I should limit it, though, given that people on this board have said that psychomancy at the speed of evocation can be overly powerful.

This I'm not so sure about. Clearing stress boxes isn't really much of a thing in this system; I think it would be better to be able to hand a mild physical consequence off to the mirror.

Thanks! This is a good idea.

As for the doubling-at-risk-of-backlash thing, I don't think it works. It's an inordinately powerful bonus, and while there's a way for the GM to turn it against you it seems hard to make that drawback interesting and game-able.

What specifically is the doubling bonus meant to represent, in the story of the game?

Because it's mirror magic, the idea is that your mirror can double your power the same way it doubles your image.

The restriction is supposed to be that if you abuse it the GM gets your mirror broken. The idea behind it is inordinate power at inordinate risk. The "if your mirror is sealed away, you lose access to this power" means that it can't be behind wards, so it should be vulnerable to assault.

This power was inspired by Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett, where Esme Weatherwax's sister is super-powerful (and deluded) up until her mirror is broken, at which point she is completely destroyed.

I am.

Minor consequence: "A crack inside my head"--leaves you vulnerable to mental assaults, makes it harder to focus.

Moderate consequence: "cracked and shattered sight"--you see the world as if through shards of glass: imperfectly, missing information, and with prismatic rainbows everywhere (applies both to your actual vision and to how you interpret the world).

Severe consequence: "which one of me is real?"--you are trapped in a world of infinite reflections, and you can no longer recognize yourself.

Extreme consequence: "fractured personality"--you have MPD.

So, I don't really like the Lawbreaker power because I feel like it discourages people (or at least discourages me) from playing a character like Harry or Molly, who broke a Law once but is trying to reform. If you're not breaking whatever Law a bunch in game, then it's just wasted refresh. I was thinking about just treating breaking the Laws like an extreme consequence, but then I thought that it might work better if I expanded the Lawbreaker power to give bonuses to things that weren't just breaking the Laws. For example, Lawbreaker (1st) would give a bonus to all violent magic, not just First Law violations. Do you think that that would work, or are there problems with it that I haven't thought of?

So what is your point then?  Michael had very good reasons to tell Harry what he did...

Oh?  How?  The original question was did Michael lie to Harry?  The answer is no, he didn't.. 

No, there is no difference, one person's delusional/in denial is another person's profession of faith..  You may doubt that people's belief that the world is flat can ward off vampires, but try to tell that to someone who sincerely believes it...  Whether it is really true or not is immaterial to them..

Why?  People do that every day, whole movements have been based on indoctrination, Jones Town being a good example of that...  The Hale Boop suicides are another, there was no logical reason for these people to believe they way they did, yet they did and they died for it.

PLEASE READ THE FREAKING THREAD.

Edit: My apologies for shouting. What I meant to say is: Most if not all of this has been addressed on this thread already, and I feel like you either haven't read it or are ignoring it, which frustrates me. Furthermore, as I have also said earlier, I'm not comfortable delving too deeply into the faith thing because it gets too close to real world issues and I don't feel this is the place for that discussion.

Again, this is where faith comes in....  Michael has been right about things in the past because he
believes it will come to pass because he believes the Almighty has his back..  He doesn't need evidence, he just knows it is so.

Look, even faith doesn't mean believing things for no reason whatsoever. Michael is not going to suddenly start believing in flying polka-dotted elephants because he's a person of faith and as such doesn't need such silly things as facts and logic--that isn't how it works.

I may believe in global warming because scientists say it's real, and I consider scientists a generally trustworthy source of information.

A devout catholic may believe that God wants us to protect the environment because the Pope says so, and he/she considers the Pope a source of trustworthy information.

Getting rid of a Shadow is, at best, extremely rare, rare enough to be a non-issue for whatever Nicodemus has been up to for the previous 2,000 years. Nicodemus has more important things to worry about than something that may well have never happened. He has no reason to go out of his way to suppress a bit of obscure minutiae that he may well not even know exists in the first place.

Well, given that he's already suppressing a bunch of information, I don't see why he wouldn't add it to the list. Honestly, I just don't think that it would take much effort.

Yeah, that's not what I said or implied. What I said was, after a few centuries of nobody getting rid of a Shadow, Nicodemus would not bother to continue worrying about people getting rid of a Shadow. "Spying on the church" doesn't mean he gets every single minor fact and detail every time he looks.

I figure that he probably tries to keep track of everything the Church thinks about Denarians, just on general principle.

The "missing information" I refer to is the idea summed up as "Harry getting rid of his magic will not get rid of the Shadow." There's no statement or suggestion to that effect in the books. There's only a sort of negative evidence, in that Michael didn't bring it up in the Small Favor conversation, long after the whole idea of Harry giving up his magic is moot and clearly not in play, which has any number of other explanations besides that.

My issue with the idea that Harry giving up his magic would get rid of the shadow has always been the lack of evidence for it--and if this is true in-universe as well, then Michael would be aware of it.

On the other hand, at this point I've found some evidence that Harry giving up his magic would reduce the shadow's influence if nothing else, so I'm happy with that.

Technically there is a difference between dropping a car on someone with a force spell and killing someone directly with fire.  Given that, then Harry has killed only one human with magic.  That comes straight out of Jim.  Go figure.

Are you sure? I had thought that Jim said that there wasn't a difference, at least not in terms of whether it violated the First Law.

Did anyone else consider the symmetry in Harry sacrificing Susan and Nico sacrificing Deirdre. Of course it is not the same, but it is not so different either.

Definitely!

I'm not going to be responding to everything stated here, because some of these posts are getting really long. I'll try to cover every point brought up, but no promises.

This is still assuming a level of micromanagement that's probably completely unnecessary for an edge case that probably never, or almost never, comes up in any kind of practical sense. If it hasn't happened in 2,000 years, Nicodemus isn't going to give a damn about the possibility.

Nicodemus is a spymaster. Keeping track of what his enemies know/believe is what he does.

I'm not saying it's his first priority, but between Anduriel and the fact that we know that there is enough corruption in the Church for the Denarians to keep getting their coins back, it wouldn't be that difficult for him to keep track of.

As you say, it's at best remote; and I doubt Michael would be swayed, anyway.

Agreed.

He literally looks Harry in the eye and says that if Harry takes up the coin, he absolutely will be there, and says so while his hand is on his sword. I don't know what more you could possibly want on this -- Michael makes it absolutely clear that he is fully prepared to take his best friend's head off if need be.

I'll accept this as provisionally true, on the basis that the only argument I can think of making against it is personal and I don't want to discuss it; and I'm not going to claim you're wrong without providing an explanation of why I think so.

I kinda don't think formal logic comes into play; we're not talking about randomized statistical samples here.

Formal logic only comes into play because you were claiming that this wasn't evidence; formal logic allows me to establish that it absolutely is evidence.

How much weight to give that evidence, on the other hand...

Nicodemus is arrogant as hell, and after a couple hundred years of nobody to his knowledge removing a Shadow, he probably just thinks it's impossible and stops worrying, if he ever worried at all.

He's as vulnerable to confirmation bias as anyone, so if he doesn't want there to be a way to get rid of a Shadow, and in a couple hundred years, nobody does, that's good enough for him to conclude that it's simply a non-issue.

Maybe, but I seriously doubt that Nicodemus is going to decide "well, I've been spying on the Church for 2000 years, I'll just stop now."

The argument you should be making is that Nicodemus doesn't consider the possibility of Harry having gotten rid of the shadow because he's well aware that Harry's still throwing magic around, and furthermore that he's been using hellfire.

True. I won't posit that he can go to The Man Upstairs for confirmation on everything, but given what we see in the books, I'd suggest that his intuition and "gut feeling" is probably more accurate than most when he's trying to suss out the truth.

Fair enough.

Fair on the first bit. On the second, again, I have to insist that Michael has no reason to be aware of these risks, and that the "missing information" didn't exist until it was posited in this thread. It's just not a reasonable concern he would have or should have had, and it's unfair to expect him to account for it.

I'd argue that the missing information was in the books, but absolutely Michael would not know it. That was the point I was trying to make--Michael does not and should not be expected to have access to this information.

I wouldn't call it an exaggeration, per se, but as I said, Michael tends to speak with conviction and sureness; he believes it will work, so he speaks as if it's a sure thing.

Fair enough. At this point I'm convinced that Michael absolutely had reason to believe that his suggestion would help and would be the right thing to do (I just think it might not have done quite as much as he implied it would--but as you pointed out, that could just be a result of Michael's certainty, rather than any attempt to deliberately mislead Harry).

Isn't kind of like believing in the afterlife?  Some believe in it even though there is no documented evidence proving it and will argue hard that there is one... Others believe just as hard that dead is dead, and there is actually good evidence for that belief.. But those who believe in the afterlife will continue to cling to the belief despite the evidence... So who is lying?

I think this is an issue of differing axioms and differing beliefs about what constitutes evidence.

I'd rather not discuss it further, because it's getting too near real world religious issues for my comfort.