Playing AS a Warlock

[ways and means]

I have played a Changeling Caster who had lawbreaker 2 in mind-control and used to use Compulsion on everything heavily, I found as long as long as you weren't melodramatic about your actions and didn't care about the concequences it didn't create too much drama. 

[sinker]

What I wanted to point out is, that characters like these will quite soon start to gather momentum and the whole story will become about their struggle against the darkness inside. I have nothing against that, but it is something that you should keep in mind, before starting a campaign like that. One character like that could take up the entire stage and that can be frustrating for the rest, for example. If every character is like that, that might work.

This is actually the reason why I would suggest either toeing the line or ignoring the lawbreaker rules entirely. If you are continuously breaking the law and using the RAW for that then yes, the game is going to very quickly become all about your decent into lawbreaking, which is likely to pull the spotlight away from others and frustrate the other players. So yeah, either make the character play with the grey areas till their lawbreaking deserves the spotlight, or ignore those rules.

[Darkarma]

You could give them something akin to the blackstaff but only much more narrow of a protective range and not quite as effective at protecting the person, but at the very least hides and suppresses most of the evidence.

[Wolfwood2]

If you've killed with magic at least 21 times, then every one of your aspects (including your High Concept) will have been corrupted by the black magic you've been casting.  Keep in mind that in DFRPG terms, this means in effect that every bit of who you are has been twisted into something different and darker than when you began.

Of course, one of the things you can do with a minor milestone is change an Aspect.  Lawbreaker makes you change an Aspect to reflect your lawbreaking; it says nothing about the changed Aspect being more permanent and unchangeable than any other Aspect.  Unless you're breaking a Law multiple times every session, it's possible to stay ahead of the game and take the lawbreaker references back out.

Note that I don't view this as gaming the system but rather as what a warlock depserately trying to maintain control would look like.

[JustADude]

Of course, one of the things you can do with a minor milestone is change an Aspect.  Lawbreaker makes you change an Aspect to reflect your lawbreaking; it says nothing about the changed Aspect being more permanent and unchangeable than any other Aspect.  Unless you're breaking a Law multiple times every session, it's possible to stay ahead of the game and take the lawbreaker references back out.

Note that I don't view this as gaming the system but rather as what a warlock desperately trying to maintain control would look like.

Setting the Laws of Magic aside for a minute, the first time you kill someone (or, hell, the first time you get in a serious lose-and-you'll-be-spitting-teeth-while-waiting-for-an-ambulance fight) it's going to have a huge impact on you. Even if you deal with it without going Axe Crazy, though, part of you will always be different. Not Evil, per se, but learning that you're capable of that level of violence against another human being leaves its mark on you. After the first time, the amount of psychological trauma drops off sharply. Once you know the way it's easier to go there again, but it's also easier to deal with the mental consequences.

That said, I honestly think that the Aspect changed by an act of Lawbreaking should always have to retain some sort of relevance to what happened, similar to an Extreme Consequence. The major difference here would be 1) the Lawbreaker aspect can be altered to a different, but relevant, aspect at the next Milestone and 2) All Lawbreaking 'offenses' can be folded into a single aspect, as long said aspect covers the motivations you have for breaking those Laws... and yes, I'd also say that if you already have an aspect that would cover it, no further Aspect changes would be needed.

Just as an example, a soldier with the aspect 'Battle-Hardened Combat Veteran' wouldn't get an extra aspect dealing with violence just because he somehow learned Evocation and used a Force rote to splatter someone's head all over the wall instead of a bullet.

[Becq]

Of course, one of the things you can do with a minor milestone is change an Aspect.  Lawbreaker makes you change an Aspect to reflect your lawbreaking; it says nothing about the changed Aspect being more permanent and unchangeable than any other Aspect.  Unless you're breaking a Law multiple times every session, it's possible to stay ahead of the game and take the lawbreaker references back out.

Keep in mind that while a milestone does allow the option of renaming an aspect, the rules also note that "Obviously, these changes should be justified as much as possible, either within the story ... or as a result of play".  Given that both the story and play were what justified the shifting aspect to begin with, I don't see how it would be possible to justify changing it back at the next milestone.  Not to mention that the altered aspect doesn't represent some afliction for which you might look for a cure, but rather an actual change to who you are.

That said, I could see it changing back with time.  For example, a budding warlock-in-training gets started on the wrong path, breaks a Law a couple of times, and sees nothing wrong with it.  Then something happens to make it hit home.  Perhaps he badly hurts someone he cares deeply for, and suddenly the horror of what he's becoming becomes clear to him.  He resolves to make a change, and ceases using his magic in ways that are even close to the line, and perhaps finds other ways to atone.  After a time, he internalizes these practices, turning them into habits; in effect making them part of who he is.  That's when the aspect would be renamed, and it probably out to be renamed in such a way that it brings out his struggle and ultimate success.

For example, imagine an overly-zealous Warden who decided to fight fire with fire, as it were.  He starts out with the aspect "I am the Law!"  In an effort to more effectively eliminate the threat of Warlocks, he begins using his magic more aggressively than he should, and soon finds his aspect changed to "I am the Executioner!"  One day, after a harrowing fight with a nasty Thing That Goes Bump, he returns home, and senses a spell building there.  He goes in with his magical guns blazing, as it were ... and finds that he has just killed his young apprentice, who was innocently practicing a spell.  How he avoids a run-in with the other Wardens is a story of its own, but lets say he does, and manages over time to atone for his crime.  He carefully avoids using lethal magic, even against the nastiest of Warlocks he faces, because he's realized the danger of following that road.  Finally, his aspect changes one last (we hope) time, this time to "The Law is what seperates us from the monsters we fight!"

In general, I'd treat the Lawbreaker aspect kind of like an extreme consequence (because in a way, that is what it is).

[Wolfwood2]

Given that both the story and play were what justified the shifting aspect to begin with, I don't see how it would be possible to justify changing it back at the next milestone.  Not to mention that the altered aspect doesn't represent some afliction for which you might look for a cure, but rather an actual change to who you are.

I tend to play characters whose aspects are a little more fluid, more in the Harry Dresden style where aspects change relatively frequently.  They reflect what's important to the character at that moment, and that often changes from adventure to adventure.  So it's not so much "changing it back" as removing the 'tainted' Aspect entirely and replacing it with something quite different.  You know, maybe after I've killed a guy because I was caught alone and didn't see another option, I Kill Alone (to suggested a twisted version of 'I Work Alone') doesn't seem like quite such a good idea anymore.

But admitedly I've never played a Lawbreaker, so this is theoretical.