The letter not the spirit of the Law

[Drachasor]

I have argued before that warden has the law breaker stunt. i see little difficulty in haveing all of his aspect reflect that he has no value for life. they make a point in the end that he valued life so little that he saw no difficulty in giving up his life to save the white council some politcal trouble.

He also risked his life to protect a bunch of kids.  Don't belittle his self-sacrifice in the end,

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because he did what he did to keep the council together and stable, which saves a TON of lives in the long run.

Again though, LAWBREAKER has nothing to do with how you value human life.  NOTHING AT ALL.  The first law is about killing with magic and that is it.  You can go around bombing school houses with conventional explosives, killing families with guns for no reason, burning down theatres with oil and matches, and NEVER get Lawbreaker.  That doesn't mean you are a good guy.

[Moriden]

If it did, then all Wardens would have Lawbreaker, since they surely use a lot of magic to help disable Warlocks before killing them

You can have lawbreaker and not be at negative refresh, you can even have lawbreaker and face no social sanction.

[bitterpill]

I think there is a difference between Lawbreaker and being a killer and the way the Wardens behave is within the law otherwise why would the white council need the blackstaff, I think if you want morality in game then use this house rule that your first kill change one of your aspects and If a character casually kills he would need an aspect to justify or the gm could compel him not too such aspect could be Solider of Aires or Compasionless Assassin.    

[Drachasor]

You can have lawbreaker and not be at negative refresh, you can even have lawbreaker and face no social sanction.

If the wardens were racking up Lawbreakers, then the Law would be broken and pointless.  Enforcing Lawbreaker the way some are arguing here isn't what the rules say, books indicate, or very sensible.  It would result in Lawful Stupid behavior where the Warden even defending himself against magical attacks, if he intends to kill the warlock doing them, would be a bit questionable.

[My Dark Sunshine]

Like I said, you use that as an example of something bad Law-wise, and how is it different from just overpowering someone with magic, preventing them from fleeing, running, getting a successful attack off, etc, and then killing them?  If anything, that's more protracted and emotionally intense.

I don't see any way to have a consistent and sensible standard where putting an enemy to sleep and then killing them conventionally earns you Lawbreaker, and using multiple magics to stop the enemy and then killing them conventionally doesn't.

I believe I mentioned it 'may not earn', in the context that it implied I believed it didn't; however it in the end, its down to individual GM's. I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure which part of my comment you're disagreeing with.

Doing something WITH MAGIC.  Putting someone to sleep isn't killing them with magic, unless falling asleep  causes them to crash their car and die or the like.

Magic is who you are. Magic is your intent put into existence. Both of these concepts are stated in the books &/or RPG at one point or another. If you are the type of person to kill, no matter how you pretty it up or go about it, you're likely the type of person that'd cross the lines of magic. Which is best reflected as an aspect, not the lawbreaker power. Until you directly break the laws as you say.

But then, I believe my original point was too that effect.

When you're used to seeing the worst things that humanity/wizards can do, it's hard for you to see any good in anyone.  If you don't see a stain, they're just concealing it real well.

Except for your fellow Wardens, the men and women who back you up when you're sent out against a warlock.  Those are the only people you can trust.

And Harry was trained by the worst sort of rogue...of course he's guilty of something.

Morgan has at least one aspects related to how he views the Laws and other magic users. A Warden could easily have the aspect, "Jaded & Blackened from all the murder", etc as someone suggested earlier.

Aspects are how this should be handled, in my opinion. It doesn't take a house rule, aspects are already supposed to be used to reflect your character in such ways.

[Drachasor]

Magic is who you are. Magic is your intent put into existence. Both of these concepts are stated in the books &/or RPG at one point or another. If you are the type of person to kill, no matter how you pretty it up or go about it, you're likely the type of person that'd cross the lines of magic. Which is best reflected as an aspect, not the lawbreaker power. Until you directly break the laws as you say.

The books and RPG flatly disagree with this statement.  In fact there are many examples of wizards killing conventionally and not being tempted to do it with magic in the novels.  Being willing to kill with magic is very different from being willing to kill conventionally.  You may argue that this aspect doesn't seem very much like human behavior to you, and you'd have a point, but that's how it is.  Dresdenverse humans also put blinders on to ignore the blatant magic going on around, which is ALSO not very human (we tend to be a pretty curious species).  These sorts of things are part of the conceits you must allow to accept Dresdenverse as sensible.

[My Dark Sunshine]

"Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived."

I'm sorry, but this would lead me to believe the Book actually agrees with my statement. If you believe in killing someone, then by Harry's logic, your Magic can easily be manifested as such. Harry generally avoids killing full stop when he can. I'm not saying killing with mundane means makes you a Lawbreaker, I'm simply saying you're more likely to believe such actions justifiable; which in turn makes you more likely to become one.

Naturally, you can avoid making such a cross-over. As you put it, a character might genuinely believe killing with magic is wrong, where-as normal killing is okay. I'm not arguing this isn't correct. I'm simply saying their is a natural correlation between the two behavioural types.

As for the human's ignoring magic. Harry describes it as humans hiding from things they don't understand as its scares them. For how long was it denied the Earth was round, or that the sun was the centre of the universe? I know its a poor analogy, most are, however I'm just pointing out at least that interpretation is a tad more accurate then you gave it credit.

[Drachasor]

I'm sorry, but this would lead me to believe the Book actually agrees with my statement. If you believe in killing someone, then by Harry's logic, your Magic can easily be manifested as such. Harry generally avoids killing full stop when he can. I'm not saying killing with mundane means makes you a Lawbreaker, I'm simply saying you're more likely to believe such actions justifiable; which in turn makes you more likely to become one.

It's different though, doing it with magic is addictive, doing it with conventional means is not.  And the counter to the belief thing is that you can have second thoughts and a lot of doubt and reservations when you kill with a conventional weapon.  Magic, on the other hand, doesn't work unless you absolutely believe in what you are doing.  Very different.

As for the human's ignoring magic. Harry describes it as humans hiding from things they don't understand as its scares them. For how long was it denied the Earth was round, or that the sun was the centre of the universe? I know its a poor analogy, most are, however I'm just pointing out at least that interpretation is a tad more accurate then you gave it credit.

The Greeks knew the Earth was round.  Columbus wasn't arguing the Earth was round, everyone knew that.  He was arguing the Earth was much smaller than it was believed.  He was wrong.  It was generally never believed the Sun was the center of the Universe (by people who knew much anyhow), after showing the Earth wasn't the center, they weren't about to jump to conclusions about the sun.

Further, even if you buy the lies about Columbus, they still funded his expedition.  Exploration, discovery, the search for knowledge...all human endeavors.  As a species we do not close our eyes and toss away our curiosity.  That's a rather rare trait that some individuals possess, but not our species at a whole by any means.  Make no mistake, the Dresdenverse has very inhuman humans in this regard...so much so that Jim has a lot of false statements like the Columbus thing to try to back up the idea when it comes up.  And it isn't like proving the supernatural exists in the Dresdenverse is hard, especially with changing minds being against a Law.  Capture some supernatural creatures and you can demonstrate their existence easily enough.

[My Dark Sunshine]

It's different though, doing it with magic is addictive, doing it with conventional means is not.  And the counter to the belief thing is that you can have second thoughts and a lot of doubt and reservations when you kill with a conventional weapon.  Magic, on the other hand, doesn't work unless you absolutely believe in what you are doing.  Very different.

This we both agree with.

- Although I will add, the original suggestion of using a knife was preconceived, premeditated murder. I got the impression it would be a repeated action, done time and time again. This hardly seems full of 'a lot of doubt and reservations'.

However I think my original points still stand. They make a cognitive sense, and it's called a 'slippery slope' for a reason. But you're perfectly entitled to disagree; and your reasoning is sound.

As for your response to my analogy, touché. I said it wasn't a very good one, but it still applied. Although Wizard's cannot mess with people's mind, Fae and other supernatural could. I think if humanity did discover the existence of the Supernatural, it could go as badly for them as for the Supernatural factions. But that is another discussion for another topic. I guess however it does go to show certain maxims of the Dresdenverse must apply.

[Ophidimancer]

The way I run Lawbreaker is a little bit different.  When a character might be about to do something that constitutes a conscious choice to break one of the Laws of Magic, I make it very obvious to the <b>player</b> what their character is about to do.  As FATE is such a narrative system and gives so much control to the player, I like to have my players make the choice themselves.  On top of that, I allow the character to benefit from the Lawbreaker stunt without making it stack up unless it is at a plot significant point.  Again, I make it obvious that this is an <i>IMPORTANT CHOICE</i> and let them make their own decision.

To me it's all about character development and control by the player.  I want characters to only get the Lawbreaker stunt if the player thinks it's cool as well as being able to use it without losing control of said character.

[BumblingBear]

One of the things that often gets overlooked in these discussions...

Killing anyone, by any means whatsoever, for any reason whatsoever, should have an effect on the character.  Taking a human life is a traumatic event.  (If it's not, then the murderer has serious psychological issues.)  Even in the heat of rage or fear...after the initial emotion wears off, and the character has time to consider what they've just done...there should be a reaction.

Morgan is a hard-ass because he's killed too many people.  The fact that most of those killings may have been completely necessary and justified doesn't matter.  Part of his soul is darkened.  He's done too much, become too much, to become a light and cheery soul ever again.  It's a common defense mechanism.  Once you become capable of killing a helpless bound victim (again, no matter how justified), part of you is never quite the same.  You have to harden yourself against human feelings...or go insane.

I can easily see an Aspect change for any character who kills.

I think you may be watching too many Hollywood movies.

I've seen plenty of people killed.  I personally know people who have killed people.  Some of them have had to kill children.

Some of them handle it very well and you'd never know.  On the flip side, some cops I have known who didn't do anything but traffic citations act like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

How people react to things like that is a deeply personal thing.

[bitterpill]

I think you may be watching too many Hollywood movies.

I've seen plenty of people killed. 

you in the army or something otherwise that sounds very ominious.

[Drachasor]

you in the army or something otherwise that sounds very ominious.

If he's not and he answers, he'll have to kill you.

Someone compel your "curiosity killed the cat" aspect?

[toturi]

I think you may be watching too many Hollywood movies.

I've seen plenty of people killed.  I personally know people who have killed people.  Some of them have had to kill children.

Some of them handle it very well and you'd never know.  On the flip side, some cops I have known who didn't do anything but traffic citations act like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

How people react to things like that is a deeply personal thing.

I agree partially. There should be a reaction to killing and taking life. But that reaction need not be one of guilt and other such negative repercussions. Some people respond quite positively to such actions.

[bitterpill]

Uhm such people are called Psychotics and thats not a good thing!     Well I suppose i can't talk I support the State of Israel.  

I agree partially. There should be a reaction to killing and taking life. But that reaction need not be one of guilt and other such negative repercussions. Some people respond quite positively to such actions.