The Dresden Files > DFRPG

The First Law of Magic In-Play: Semi-Official Advice

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ways and means:
My opinion is that GM's shouldn't compel players out of the game, so if a GM compel someone to break the laws he should be willing to run with a lawbreaker and possibly go as far as to accept fate point debt if they are on 1 refresh.

Drachasor:

--- Quote from: LCDarkwood on March 16, 2011, 12:22:32 AM ---That said, of course it's totally fair to call ninja bullshit on a player who's all like, "Woo! 12-shift gravity hammer, eat it!" and then backtracks and goes, "Uh, but I totally pulled it enough not to kill them. Honest." You just have to judge the situation on the ground and use your people skills. No set of rules can substitute for that.

--- End quote ---

Eh, I don't think that's totally fair at all.  What are you objecting to there?  Is it the 12 shifts?  You seem to have said that's ok.  Is it the fact the PLAYER visibly enjoyed doing a big attack?  Well, that's really kind of a jerk move to say "[haha] you enjoyed that too much, so the guy is dead."  Players are allowed to enjoy doing big moves.  They should also be allowed to make hyperboles about their big move and say things like "I'm gonna kill/slaughter/destroy you/him/whatever" without being forced to actually do it.  Heck, they should be allowed to say something now and then and then say they didn't mean it like that later.

Frankly, in all this, if a player doesn't want to kill someone, you should be working with them to help that happen.  If they do a 12 shift gravity attack, well, it is easy to argue that simply subjecting someone to high g forces can make them pass out (and well within the brute force nature of evocations).  That said, like others have noted, being hit by a car or truck doesn't always mean death.  Even if it is just EXPECTED that the average person would die to a given attack, doesn't in any way mean you should enforce death.

A lot of people have talked about compels.  I'd say if you want to compel an anger aspect to get someone to kill someone they are pissed at, then that's ok.  However, if they have no fate points to resist, then you should accept debt instead to avoid it.  There should always be an out from getting lawbreaker on the player's end of things, unless the player is ok with it being forced on him (most aren't comfortable with this sort of thing in my experience, so this has to be discussed ahead of time).  I'd also not resort to a group vote on this sort of thing, as the only thing worse than a GM forcing a player to kill someone is having the whole group vote and decide that your character does something you don't want him to do* -- ideally, of course this should all be discussed ahead of time.

*Group consensus works for a lot of things, but I think it is heinous when used to force a player's character to do something against the player's wishes.

Tedronai:
Of the majority or the individual, tyranny is tyranny.

Falar:
EDIT: Mods, delete this post. I shouldn't be cluttering up this thread with my opinions.

LordDraqo:

--- Quote from: KOFFEYKID on March 16, 2011, 12:07:54 AM ---However, it also means that you cant (without GM intervention) just say that the weapon 10 evocation you hit the group of mortal gangbangers with left them all miraculously alive. Thats not really within the realm of reason, considering that a weapon 4 attack is a grenade (which granted, people have survived), I cant really think of something that would constitute a weapon 10 attack.

My point is you can "be forced to kill" if survival is not within the realm of reason.

Otherwise I find your post to be very interesting.

--- End quote ---

Actually, if you are being "forced to kill" by the mechanics of the game, you can figure that an NPC with Average Endurance has 3 boxes of Stress. Plus 2 for  Mild Consequence, plus 4 for a Moderate Consequence, plus 6 for a Severe Consequence, plus 8 for the one (and only) Extreme Consequence means that you have to do a minimum of 23 Shifts of Damage in order to guarantee a Taken Out result which you can assign the value of "Killed." This is established as a difficulty for magically Transforming a character (and it is pointed out that death is a Transformation. So "accidentally" killing another character is not going to happen. However this is just my opinion (based on the mechanics in the book) and I could be wrong.

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