The Dresden Files > DFRPG
"Official" Perspective on Lawbreaking
Mrmdubois:
Off topic slightly but some supernatural critters still foul up technology. It's one of the signs that Murphy checks for first. There was also the flickering lights in that short story with the Grendelkin.
Point being, it might only mostly be a mortal thing to mess up tech.
Troy:
I think recklessness with magic counts.
I think that's why some people, Morgan for example, are so hardcore when it comes to the Law.
If you let people be reckless with their magic and use excuses to worm their way out of the consequences, then what's the point of the Law? Incinerating a building that you believe to be empty... but you don't know for sure? That's reckless and claiming ignorance or accident if someone gets killed by that recklessness is practically begging to be killed. "Kill me now because I'm too stupid for magic."
Side Note: Are there White Council Law experts? Lawyer types that have these sorts of debates when issues like this come up? If not... I'm putting them in my game! Maybe they are a special class of Warden... or retired Wardens. Or Wardens like Harry that refuse to kill people. What would be a good title for someone like that? Marshal? Intercessor? Arbiter? I kind of like Marshal because it has that same feel as the Warden title... but I also like Intercessor because the person is a Wizard that intervenes on behalf of the accused/offender. Hm...
Emperor Tippy:
--- Quote from: Troy on May 26, 2013, 02:02:16 PM ---I think recklessness with magic counts.
I think that's why some people, Morgan for example, are so hardcore when it comes to the Law.
If you let people be reckless with their magic and use excuses to worm their way out of the consequences, then what's the point of the Law? Incinerating a building that you believe to be empty... but you don't know for sure? That's reckless and claiming ignorance or accident if someone gets killed by that recklessness is practically begging to be killed. "Kill me now because I'm too stupid for magic."
--- End quote ---
The White Council will just take off your head but that doesn't decide whether or not you get Lawbreak (the metaphysical punishment for breaking the Laws). If there is no intent to kill then there should be no Lawbreaker (and especially if there is no intent to do harm to another human); but the White Council will still take off your head if you kill with magic regardless of circumstances or any extenuating information.
Cause the death of another human with magic and don't have someone willing to take on the Doom for you and a sympathetic Senior Council? Then you are a head shorter. Self Defense (and anything else you want to try) is no defense at all.
--- Quote ---Or Wardens like Harry that refuse to kill people.
--- End quote ---
Um Harry has no problem with killing people. He doesn't like it (and even less likes killing kids who have gone Warlock pretty much just out of ignorance and might be salvageable) and it grateful that the warden commander generally doesn't assign him to anti-warlock duty but he doesn't refuse to kill people.
Even Warlocks.
Mr. Death:
--- Quote from: Troy on May 26, 2013, 02:02:16 PM ---I think recklessness with magic counts.
I think that's why some people, Morgan for example, are so hardcore when it comes to the Law.
If you let people be reckless with their magic and use excuses to worm their way out of the consequences, then what's the point of the Law? Incinerating a building that you believe to be empty... but you don't know for sure? That's reckless and claiming ignorance or accident if someone gets killed by that recklessness is practically begging to be killed. "Kill me now because I'm too stupid for magic."
--- End quote ---
I've seen Jim say something similar--that the results matter as much as the intent, because even if you intend not to, ending someone else's life is a big thing.
--- Quote from: Emperor Tippy on May 26, 2013, 03:51:13 PM ---Um Harry has no problem with killing people. He doesn't like it (and even less likes killing kids who have gone Warlock pretty much just out of ignorance and might be salvageable) and it grateful that the warden commander generally doesn't assign him to anti-warlock duty but he doesn't refuse to kill people.
Even Warlocks.
--- End quote ---
What Harry objects to isn't so much killing people, but executing people.
polkaneverdies:
This is a Woj that seems relevant to the discussion of "intent".
jimbutcher
Friendly Neighborhood Writer-Man
Conversationalist
Posts: 346
Re: DF: Theories on who Cowl and Kumori really are.
« Reply #56 on: July 16, 2006, 11:50:26 AM »
Quote from: GraevD on July 09, 2006, 03:40:44 PM
Likewise, you are attracted by a smell of pie, that's normal. But, someone manipulates the timestream to guarantee that pie isn't the nice fresh cherry pie it was supposed to be, that's just wrong! Heh, pies aside, my focus is on the controlling of the free will of another person, not on just changes in the environment using magic.
Man. The existential morality of using PIE to shape the course of reality. GOOD or EVIL? That's . . . one of those discussions I never really thought I'd listen in on.
Quote
"Actually, Molly's intentions when she broke that particular law twisted her." Here's where I think you hit the nail on the head Lightsabre. It's the intentions of the caster that matter. Time Travel, Nercomancy, and Mind Control are all tools that can be used to do *bad* things. I'm fairly sure what we see in the laws of magic is a sort of wizard gun control, trying to limit the existence of these problematic classes of spells.
But if the substance of the consequences of the act itself does not have its own inherent quality of good or evil, then how can the /intentions/ behind it determine a similar quality? "Really, I was only trying to provide a better quality of life for my family and my employees. It wasn't my intention to destroy that particular species of flower in the rain forest that cures cancer." "I was just trying to give those Injuns some blankets. It wasn't my intention to expose them to smallpox and wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people." "I just wanted to get that book finished while working two jobs and finishing a brutal semester of grad school. It wasn't my intention to screw up the name of Bianca's personal assistant whose death had motivated her to go all power hungry to get revenge on Harry."
There's some old chestnut about good itentions serving as base level gradiant on an expressway that goes somewhere, but I can't remember the specifics right now. While I agree that the /intentions/ of the person taking action are not without significance, they carry far less weight than the /consequences/ of that action.
"I meant to shoot him in the leg and wound him, not hit the femoral artery and kill him, so I should not be considered guilty of murder," is not something that stands up in a court of law /or/ in any serious moral or ethical evaluation. You had the weapon. You knew it was potentially lethal, even if you did attempt to use it in a less than fully lethal fashion. (Or if you DIDN'T know that, you were a freaking idiot playing with people's lives, something really no less excuseable.) But you chose to employ the weapon anyway. The consequences of those actions are /yours/, your doing, regardless of how innocent your intentions may have been.
Similarly, if you meant to drill that ^@#%er through the eyes, if you had every intention of murdering him outright, but you shot him in the hand and he survived with minor injuries, again the consequences overshadow your intentions. You might have made a stupid or morally queestionable choice, but it isn't like anyone *died* or anything. He's fine (at least in the long term), you're fine, and there are fewer repercussions--regardless of your hideous intentions.
The exercise of power and the necessity to consider the fallout from your actions isn't something limited to wizards and gods. Fictional people like Harry and Molly just provide more colorful examples.
As for violating the laws of magic themselves turning you good or evil, well. There's something to be said on either side of the argument, in the strictest sense, though one side of the argument is definitely less incorrect than the other. But it's going to take me several more books to lay it out, so there's no sense in ruining the fun.
Jim
(PS--Murphy can't be Kumori, obviously. Kumori is a powerful and dangerous necromancer with the personal will to hold a knife to a wizard's throat. And more to the point, she was TALL ENOUGH to do it. If she was 5' 0" Murphy, she'd have had to be wearing freaking STILTS to hold a knife at 6' 7" Harry's throat from behind. To say nothing of the fact that Harry has touched Murphy's skin on multiple occasions and never picked up a ripple of /any/ of the aura of a practitioner, much less the utterly obvious one of a fellow heavyweight. I try to follow my own rules, guys. )
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