The Dresden Files > DFRPG
Lawbreakers: Do We Need Them?
Nudge:
--- Quote from: KOFFEYKID on April 28, 2010, 06:24:22 PM ---Do you actually think lawbreakers (the stunts) are actually needed?
--- End quote ---
I've had the same concern you did: punishing someone for a choice that otherwise creates good RP. I had two solutions in my head:
1) Extend the bonus to related actions to "tempt" the player. (Just as others have come up with)
OR
2) For characters coming into play with it, Skip the Refresh cost and have them take an Aspect. They get punished in game, but get Fate points as their reward, the equal of other characters. They can exercise a bonus by invoking it (representing the temptation and slippery slope). Break the Law again and they get the Stunt.
TheMouse:
I like the idea of extending them to things that would otherwise be breaches of the Laws.
Honestly, I mostly see them as something for NPCs. That sorcerer who doesn't have the ability to keep growing in skill can still be dangerous by getting a +1 or +2 to all acts of magic to blow you up or control your mind.
If a player wants to take the things, that player is choosing to play with fire. That fire has a lot of power, but it can definitely burn the hands of someone using it.
Gaining such a thing after char-gen seems to me not to be a punishment so much as the result of a choice the player made knowingly. I mean, to break the Law against killing, the player must choose to kill someone as part of taking them out.
Korwin:
Some points why I don't like the stunts:
1. If I use Char Building resourses I expect to use those abillities in the game, but if I do that I get harrased/killed by wardens.
2. If I build the PC with lawbreaking in mind, I don't have a problem with free will (buy the Stunt for -2).
But if I use an Aspect for Lawbreaking...
Let's use the juvenile Warlock from Proven Guilty as an example:
He brocke the Law many times so he has the aspect: My wish is your Order.
So he wakes up --> compel: get someone to bring you breakfast to the bed.
Afterwards he wents to school --> compel: borrow the new car from the neighbor, even if you have no driving licence.
In the school: compel the chearleader to go with you...
etc.
So if the warlock does those things he get many fatepoints, but if he wants to change? How long can he get by without running dry?
Deadmanwalking:
--- Quote from: Korwin on April 28, 2010, 07:47:33 PM ---Some points why I don't like the stunts:
1. If I use Char Building resourses I expect to use those abillities in the game, but if I do that I get harrased/killed by wardens.
2. If I build the PC with lawbreaking in mind, I don't have a problem with free will (buy the Stunt for -2).
--- End quote ---
Uh, not to disagree with the possibility of using Aspects, but, well, I really think my solution helps:
--- Quote from: Deadmanwalking on April 28, 2010, 06:30:15 PM ---Ah! I actually have an alternate way to handle this issue: I allow the Lawbreaker bonus to apply to two things other than breaking the Law (and in both cases the character in no way suffers for it):
1. I apply it to doing things that would break the Law but don't due to a technicality. I'd give Harry his Lawbreaker bonus to killing Ghouls and vampires with magic, for instance, or a reformed necromancer his bonus to raising an animal zombie.
2. I also apply the bonus to figuring out what other people with the same Lawbreaker stunt are likely to do. There's an incident in Turn Coat that sums this up best...
In both cases, you're that kind of person, and that means something.
--- End quote ---
As for the Free Will thing, bear in mind that by the official rules every three times you break a Law you need to change an Aspect to reflect that Broken Law.
Korwin:
--- Quote from: TheMouse on April 28, 2010, 07:46:18 PM ---Honestly, I mostly see them as something for NPCs. That sorcerer who doesn't have the ability to keep growing in skill can still be dangerous by getting a +1 or +2 to all acts of magic to blow you up or control your mind.
--- End quote ---
An aspect would do the same. First the aspect get compelled, then the aspect invoked to better kill.
--- Quote ---Gaining such a thing after char-gen seems to me not to be a punishment so much as the result of a choice the player made knowingly. I mean, to break the Law against killing, the player must choose to kill someone as part of taking them out.
--- End quote ---
Or the GM concedes...
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