"By Invitation Only" - 2nd, 3rd and 4th law loopholes?

[exploding_brain]

There are some gray areas of the second, third and fourth laws that aren't discussed in the DFRPG, or in novels for that matter.  Is it permissible to enter another's mind, or to make changes to another's mind or body, provided you have that person's explicit permission and cooperation?

Obviously the practical dangers of these activities would still be a problem, and a make these activities quite risky, but, in terms of metaphysical stain on the soul, I wonder what the effect of the following actions might be.  I'll assume that Wardens would likely execute you anyway, cause, hey, warden.

The third law specifically outlaws invading another's mind.  That may imply that it is permitted to enter another's mind, provided they invite you in.

How does the second law distinguish between transforming another and healing them?  Is it a matter of intent, or an issue of the person's "natural form", or harmful side effects?  What if I want you to turn me into a wolf.  What if I just want you to change my hair color, or the shape of my face, or help me grow a beard more quickly?

The fourth law forbids Enthralling another.  Again, there's an implication that the change is being made to the other's mind against their will.  What if I ask you to alter my mind, or to help me alter it?

Some examples:

I'm afraid I may have been enthralled by another.  Can you look inside my mind to find out?

I've been transformed by a warlock.  Can you restore my body?

I've been enthralled by a warlock.  Can you mitigate some of the damage that was done to my mind?

I need to know how to diffuse a bomb.  Please put that skill in my head.

I need you to know how to diffuse a bomb.  Please read my mind to acquire that skill.

I'm learning how to become a werewolf, but my ability to transform myself isn't quite there yet.  Turn me into a wolf so that I can practice a wolf's physical skills, then change me back.

I'm being hunted by Red-Court vampires.  I need a disguise.  Change the way I smell, change my hair color, rapid grow my beard, make me a little taller, alter my cheek bones a bit.

I lost my hand, help me regrow it.

I have sickle-cell anemia.  It's a genetic disease, so it's my "natural" form.  Make a tiny change to one particular gene in the cells of my bone marrow, and I'll be free of the disease.

I need to stop smoking.  Help me plant a suggestion in my own mind that will help me pause, for just a tiny moment, before grabbing that cigarette.


How would you handle stuff like this in your game.  Maybe a discipline roll against the complexity of the effect to resist taking shortcuts that would violate the laws on a metaphysical level?

[Deadmanwalking]

Personally, I'd say that the 3rd Law can be avoided if there's consent. The 2nd and 4th Laws can also be avoided even without consent, but only to return someone to their natural state (ie: break a transformation or mind control spell), and I'd say consent doesn't help to avoid them.

I don't think healing ala regrowing hands or fixing sickle cell anemia counts as "Transforming Another", and putting an anti-smoking compulsion in someone's head is both a bad idea, and a 4th Law Violation.

All of these are obviously judgement calls, however. It's very much an individual GM call.

[Moriden]

its important to remember that the laws have absolutely nothing to do with morality. so weather the action is good evil or doesn't hurt anyone is irrelevant.
All of your examples come down to basically two points. ill note that i don't necessarily agree with these and may or may not run them in this manner if/when i run. and the official answer to all law questions is "whatever your st says"

Transformation is transformation:
one of the biggest problem with trying to transform another beneficially/benignly is that you very probably don't know how. Can a person be healed by magic instantly ? sure the fairy queens have done it repeatedly. however harry also says that magical healing cant do anything that modern science cant. now out of those two im going with the example that actually happened over the opinion of a wizard who is admittedly bad at subtle magic. But the problem an aspiring healer needs to face is that to affect the body on that level and to do so in such a manor as to do more good then bad. you need to understand exactly how the body works For fae its claimed that that's not terribly important because there magic takes care of that part for them, And my interpretation of there method is that there not actually "healing" you there simply transforming you whole into a "healthy body" using the statement that healing magic cant do anything modern science cant and cant make you heal faster. [although this is contradicted by Elaine's rieki spell} as to why is transforming somone who wants you to a violation of the law, but doing it to yourself isn't? honestly i don't know, but my assumption is that your you, you understand who you are on a level that you will never know another person, so its actually possible[ if still hard] to transform yourself back to your base self and to know what you actually want when changing yourself. without breaking the mind reading law you can never have that knowledge of another.

All actions that permit you to know the thoughts of another, or change the way they think are violations of that person.
this was actually gone into under the law section in the book i believe and i think they did a pretty good job on justifieing this one, something about "crossing a barrier that you aren't meant to"

[exploding_brain]

So would you say that a PC would need to immediately take the appropriate Lawbreaker Stunt in all of those cases?  That's what I was getting at when was talking about the metaphysical implications of the actions.  I should have been more explicit.

[Falar]

I'm afraid I may have been enthralled by another.  Can you look inside my mind to find out?

This one, I personally don't see much of a problem with. I think it falls under one of the many grey areas that Butcher alludes to through Harry. I don't think the twisting of the mind would really attach. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: No Lawbreaker. Wardens might disagree.

I've been transformed by a warlock.  Can you restore my body?

This one is an edge case. I can see the case for allowing it, but I can also see the case for it being a short slide from just doing it this way to using it the other. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I've been enthralled by a warlock.  Can you mitigate some of the damage that was done to my mind?

Here, I think the answer is just no, as in, it's not possible. Enthralling damages your brain - the only way that I can recall for True Magic to heal damage to your brain is to stay the heck away from it. If you have trauma from enthralling, it seems that your best and perhaps only way to repair it is time. From what I've read. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I need to know how to diffuse a bomb.  Please put that skill in my head.

There's no way I can see this working. It falls directly under meddling with the brain. And where you might be able to use it for a while, there are going to be unforeseen side effects from the meddling, the brain is going to rebel and it will slowly drive the person mad. Period. That's not how you learn things. Trying to learn it that way will damage the person and also damage you. I really believe that's how it works. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I need you to know how to diffuse a bomb.  Please read my mind to acquire that skill.

Grey area. It depends on how you do it. I think rooting around in his brain and pulling out all the memories that gave him the knowledge of the skill would probably hurt him. And writing the memories into your skull would damage you. Now, if you had basically a mental conversation with the person, I can see it falling under the grey area where it's not really that easy to tell. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Let's see how you did it, and then we'll talk about it.

I'm learning how to become a werewolf, but my ability to transform myself isn't quite there yet.  Turn me into a wolf so that I can practice a wolf's physical skills, then change me back.

I think you'd have the same trauma to the brain as you'd have from non-invited. It's not all a matter of the conscious mind - it's also a matter of the subconscious and even below the subconscious. You'd cause damage that would not be able to be repaired through time. And fool yourself into the path of breaking the Law not being so bad. And, shoot, learning how to transform well is the FIRST thing you should be gaining skills in instead of trying to shortcut through it. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I'm being hunted by Red-Court vampires.  I need a disguise.  Change the way I smell, change my hair color, rapid grow my beard, make me a little taller, alter my cheek bones a bit.

So why are you trying to break the Law when you can use much easier and legal magic to achieve the same effect? Take a glamour, maybe tie it to an object that you wear. Boom. Done. No Lawbreaking. I'm not sure why someone would even do it this way. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I lost my hand, help me regrow it.

I'm personally not even sure that True Magic can do this. It seems to be able to help with a lot of things if you're good at that kind of magic, but I don't think it can straight regrow you a hand. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches, if you can figure out how to do it.

I have sickle-cell anemia.  It's a genetic disease, so it's my "natural" form.  Make a tiny change to one particular gene in the cells of my bone marrow, and I'll be free of the disease.

Second verse, same as the first. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches, if you can figure out how to do it.

I need to stop smoking.  Help me plant a suggestion in my own mind that will help me pause, for just a tiny moment, before grabbing that cigarette.

Seriously, I think this is going to have similar side effects to doing it without permission. Mind magic is complex. You're going to end up putting more in that you want, it's going to do brain damage, there's going to be side effects and the wizard is going to end up thinking that doing that isn't so bad and starting his own slide into the Lawbreaking and the devolution into a Warlock. Granted, my game, my rules.

My Ruling: Lawbreaker attaches.

I'm more or less a hardliner for the rules. There are grey areas and I realize that, but a lot of things are just straight out to me, no matter if you have permission to or not.

Edited to Add: Rulings on each case.

[KOFFEYKID]

I have to disagree Moriden, if somebody is allowing you into their mind then it isn't a violation of their mind. Compare it to sex, with consent its enjoyable, without its rape.

The laws have EVERYTHING to do with morality, the laws are there to prevent you from staining your soul with evil, and its hard to ignore that Good and Evil have a great deal to do with Morality.

The third law says Never invade a person's mind. If you are invited in, there is no invasion. This is similar to when Harry and Elaine communicate mind to mind.

[Deadmanwalking]

I think healing's a little more possible, but aside from that I mostly agree with falar. Though I do think reversing a Transformation spell is a non-Law violating act.

[JustinS]

I think healing's a little more possible, but aside from that I mostly agree with falar. Though I do think reversing a Transformation spell is a non-Law violating act.

Reki seems to have been more of a 'I feed your body the right energy it wants to be able to heal itself', where as we have seen the fea do actual wound mending.

Countermagic is one easy way out. I use magic to shove you off a cliff is a break, I use countermagic to stop your flight spell, or eliminate your super-leap, sure.

If you are transformed by an active spell, you can break the spell. If I reshape you into a wolf, by the time anyone can get to you to undo it, you already got stuffed into a wolf-brain and that can not be undone (if you did want to transform someone and ever get them back, like oh, storing them as a hellhound, then make it a long duration spell, and not a permanent transform).

[Falar]

I would think that if you could regrow a hand with magic, then you'd be able to

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fix someone's broken back with magic. Or, heck, even fix their horrifically burnt hand for that matter.

I mean, in one case, you're working with something that used to be right, so you're just taking it back (or forwards) to where it will be right again. In the other case, you're making something out of nothing.

However, I think an enchanted item that is a glove that acts like a hand that goes up your arm as well would be a much more interesting and less edgy way to do it. I'm not really sure if that's even possible for Dresdenverse magic to do either, but it would provide the same function to you with none of this mucking about with the Law.

[exploding_brain]

In my game, depending on the intent of the PC, how close to the edge of the law they intend to skirt, and whether it might make the game fun, I might make it into a mental conflict.  The PC would probably be facing off against the task being attempted and their own darker nature.  If the PC takes enough stress to be taken out, or accept an extreme consequence, I'd probably rule that the PC ran out of patience, or became too arrogant in their own power, or just made a bad choice.  They gave into the dark side, and acquired a stain on their soul, reflected by the acquisition of a lawbreaker power.

If they take an extreme consequence, I might postpone the payment of one point of the necessary refresh until the end of the scenario.  Maybe they'll earn another point of refresh before they become an NPC, maybe they won't.  *evil grin*

[KOFFEYKID]

The magical mechano hand is totally doable I think, all it needs to do is read the character's mind for how he wants to move it, or maybe he works up a spell that transmits the thoughts of how he wants to move his hand to the mecha hand.

[Falar]

Not even that, really. It would see his tendons and stuff in his arm and be able to read off that, I think.

[Moriden]

I would think that if you could regrow a hand with magic, then you'd be able to fix someone's broken back with magic. Or, heck, even fix their horrifically burnt hand for that matter.

is it possible? absolutyly yes,

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Mab did it at least once

can you or anyone you can find do it? thats the question. and even if you find someone willing, how did they learn the techniques and get the practice? biomancy is one of those "good guys dont do this" things.

[exploding_brain]

Yeah, but why is biomancy one of those "good guys don't do this" things?

Is it bad because the law forbids it, or does the law forbid it because it's bad?

As I understand it, the laws of the White Council aren't responsible for putting the stain on the soul (Lawbreaker Power).  The White Council wrote the Laws to follow the observed metaphysics of the Dresdenverse.  And the Law's aren't fully accurate, which is why it is possible, in some gray area cases, to break a Law without acquiring the stain, and maybe vise-verse as well.

[Moriden]

Is it bad because the law forbids it, or does the law forbid it because it's bad?

Its bad because to become good enough at it not to horribly mutilate the people you use it on you need to .. horribly mutilate a lot of people. or self experiment and that's just not healthy.

Same way that some of our modern medical tech came from the research done by nazi doctors. they did horrible inhuman Experiments, some of the knowledge gained is now extremely useful but that dose not mitigate the damage that was done first. Its even worse with biomancy because theirs no dedicated body of lore , so you cant have one or two people go out and stain there soul to bring back the beneficial knowledge to others. each person has to do the learning process completely from scratch.