The First Law Question.

[Moriden]

As Harry says in several of the novels,

It should probably be remembered that harry isn't exactly an expert on magic especially subtle magic.

[Victim]

As to the bomb question, I'm going to side with the dissenters and say that a bomb serves one function, and one function only. To kill. Even young people know that bombs kill people. It would be VERY hard to say that even a very young practitioner could reasonably believe that his/her bomb could never be misused or kill unintended targets. Even if it didn't bring down the Lawbreaker stunt (depending on how intrinsically corrupting the Laws are in your world), I would probably say he becomes Target 1 should the Wardens find out about it.

I hear swords are pretty sweet at killing folks too.  How many Lawbreakers does Luccio have for making those magic weapons that get used on humans (intentionally even )?

The one thing I don't get is why make magic bombs?  Normal bombs aren't good enough?  Maybe the character deserves the stunt/penalty just to learn the lesson that not everything should be magic. 

[toturi]

I wonder if someone like the Winter Knight or Summer Knight or some Emissary of an Accord signatory used magic to kill someone, would that qualify as breaking the First Law and what would the Wardens do about it?

Can the White Council enforce its Laws on non-members, without running afoul of the faction that person is part of?

For example, if a sorcerer were to become part of Marcone's crew and kills someone with magic, can Harry kill the sorcerer without dragging the White Council into war with the Freeholding Lord? Or do members of other factions essentially have diplomatic immunity to the White Council's Laws?

[Deadmanwalking]

They've more-or-less got diplomatic immunity. Mostly. As long as they work for somebody the Council doesn't want to piss off.

That said, they'd still recieve Lawbreaker stunts as normal, since the magic doesn't care who you work for.

[KnightFerrous]

That said, they'd still recieve Lawbreaker stunts as normal, since the magic doesn't care who you work for.

See i always thought that only applied to mortal magic. So if the Winter Knight offs someone with magic he is in the clear, the council doesn't like it but it isn't a lawbreaker worthy. Otherwise Lloyd Slate should have the lawbreaker (first) a few times because even if he didn't kill during Summer Knight he had to have killed a few times throughout his life.

[Deadmanwalking]

But did he do it with magic? I got the impression he used a sword or other physical means for his killing. He notably never tried to kill anyone mystically in Summer Knight.

I'd certainly apply the Laws to Sponsored Magic users. Their will still guides the spell, and they still need to believe in what they're doing absolutely for it to work, so their minds are still as twisted by it as anyone else.

Also, on a system basis, it seems really unfair to ding a Wizard with Sponsored Magic for the laws he breaks with it (which clearly happens, look at Hellfire and Kemmlerian Necromancy), and then let someone off just because they only paid 4 Refresh instead of 8.

[KnightFerrous]

Also, on a system basis, it seems really unfair to ding a Wizard with Sponsored Magic for the laws he breaks with it (which clearly happens, look at Hellfire and Kemmlerian Necromancy), and then let someone off just because they only paid 4 Refresh instead of 8.

Not sure if he killed with it or not, but in this example i wouldn't ding the wizard if they were using pure sponsored magic to do it (i.e. in both those cases they are using the sponsored as a booster to their mortal magic. if harry every called up pure hellfire and lobbed it at someone i wouldn't give him the ding) Mainly because the sponsor is doing the heavy lifting, and it engenders a greater reliance on the Sponsored Magic over the mortal kind... which is pretty much the goal of every Sponsored Magic ever.

[Deadmanwalking]

There's no mechanical distinction between "supercharging" spells and using raw sponsored magic. They're identical. So there's no reason for every Wizard who's ever had Sponsored Magic not to just use it every time he breaks a Law and avoid taking the taint. Which, thematically, makes the opposite of sense. Neither heaven or hell should be able to keep you from tainting yourself with murder.

In my opinion, any human who uses magic, whatever the magic's source, can gain the Lawbreaker stunt for violating the Laws. They are integral to how magic interacts with the human psyche. Completely non-human entities (like Faeries for example) don't get such stunts, but they were never human in the first place.

[PirateJack]

Hi, I'm the guy who designed the magical bomb maker from the original question and I thought I'd explain his thought processes a bit more to perhaps iron out the complexities.

His back story basically amounts to his family being killed by the Red Court a year or so into the war and him deciding to use his talents (Pyromantic Ritual [-2]) to get his revenge, with preventing such tragedies from happening again being more of a justification than a deeply held belief. He did that through making explosives. My original plan for him was to have him plant his bombs in structurally important places in Red Court outposts and the likes so he could later bring down the building upon them all with a piece of the bomb to use as a remote detonator. Later thought brought me the idea that perhaps sneaking into a building full of creatures that could hear your heartbeat and smell your sweat might not have been the best idea. So I decided to add in Veils with the Channelling [-2] power and Refinement [-2] for 8 extra enchanted item slots.

This would leave me with 1 refresh point as per the Up To Your Waist power level, which is fine. However, since I've been working with the Fellowship of St. Giles for a good while now, providing them with bombs and doing the occasional mission myself and perhaps the Law has been broken despite my best efforts to avoid it, or I simply don't know about it, either works. My driving goal behind all this is killing Red Court monsters; it's even in one of my aspects that all other concerns fall to the wayside when I see the chance to take out some Red Court. So perhaps I'm a bit callous with the lives of those inside (though I do make attempts to prevent innocent people dying, those addicted to RC saliva are ones I try to put out of their misery with mundane weapons (I have heard of the Laws and understand the consequences for breaking them) with the justification that they're tainted and that if I had become addicted to the stuff I'd want to die too), but the real worry at this point is the bombs given out to other Fellowship members.

So would I get the stunt?

[luminos]

Yes, I'd say that you still get the law breaker stunt.  You know that there is a good chance of human collateral, even though that is not your purpose in making them, so it still counts as using magic to kill another person.

[PirateJack]

But would that count if, on the off chance, no human had ever been killed by one of my bombs? It's an unlikely situation considering the nature of the things, but I've been arguing with one of the other players that you only get a Lawbreaker stunt once a human has been killed, no matter the intent that went into creating the bomb. After all, my driving goal here is to kill me some RC vamps, not to kill humans.

(click to show/hide)

Just like Harry's goal in burning the vamps in his office building is to kill them, not set the building on fire.

[Moriden]

You definitely don't get the stunt until an an actual person has been killed. to be honest im not really sure you get the stunt until your actually confronted with the repercussion's of the bomb. If your intent when making the bombs was to kill humans then maybe you'd get the stunt right there but yeah... ultimately the best answer is it really depends on how your individual story teller wants to run the laws [in my version lucio, ebenzer, morgan, and the gatekeeper all have multiple version of lawbreaker on there character sheet's] I know thats a horribly useless thing to hear but unfortunately that just seems to be how the system was designed.

[luminos]

How do things like white court vampires and red court affected factor into the first law?  Do they count as humans for its purposes?  What about Renfields?

[Deadmanwalking]

I'd personally say no for White Court and Renfields. They're too far gone from human, and can't be fixed. Red Court Infected I'd say yes, they haven't diverged too far to not count until their first feeding kill (the same would hold for White Court Virgins).

[void]

For full White Court vampires, I'd say that depends on how hard they're trying to maintain their humanity, and to a lesser extent whether the spellcaster considers them to have succeeded at all.

In game mechanic terms, if they're significantly negative refresh, then no. If they still have some positive refresh, they could count.