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

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Mr. Death:
This is going to turn into my catchphrase or something, but compels are a good way to enforce First Law considerations.

But instead of offering a fate point to say, "And you lose your shit and kill the guy with a gravity bomb," maybe offer the wizard a fate point to say, "This guy's just a human grunt. If you hit him with a 4-shift force blast, he's going to die."

If he takes the fate point, then Takes Out said grunt with a 4-shift gravity bomb, then it was the player's choice to face the consequences of that compel: The mook dies and the character accidentally broke the first law. Conversely, if he takes the point and downgrades his spells to, say, 2 shifts of offensive power, then he gets to take them out non-lethally--but at the same time, maybe that 2-shift spell doesn't have the stopping power to take him out right away, giving the mook another round where he might get lucky and nail the wizard instead.

And if he buys out of the compel, then for that scene he gets to keep slamming them with full-powered, but non-lethal, spells because he paid for it.

This way, the compel is only dictating the situation, and the choice of whether to kill or not is still entirely up to the player--they just make that choice by limiting their spell strength to an agreed-upon degree rather than saying, "Yeah, I just hit him dead-on with enough force to punt a Volkeswagon into the next area code, but he's totally fine."

It's like how cops aren't supposed to use their firearms unless they intend to kill--every time a cop has to tackle a lunatic on PCP and risk getting pummeled instead of just shooting them, that cop's taking a Compel similar to what I just described.

nick012000:
So, a bit of thread necromancy, but it's not something I see addressed:

If you use Conjuration to whistle up a sword (perhaps because you have Unseelie Magic, and you're conjuring up an ice sword using thaum w/ evocation speed), and then use it to stab someone to death, is that a violation of the First Law?

Richard_Chilton:
You aren't killing with magic, so no.  Doing that isn't all that different from killing with the Warden's Enchanted Blades.

Of course, that's just my opinion - but there are no "official rules calls" for this game.

Richard

ReaderAt2046:
To be honest, the way the First Law is presented in the books doesn't seem to make any kind of sense. Let me run through the situation as I understand it.

1. Magic is the expression of belief. Therefore, you can only do something with magic if you believe it's the right thing to do, and when you use magic to do something, you will believe in the future that the magic was the correct thing to do.

2. Now, the reason we have the First Law is specifically because of the application of Point 1 to murder. In other words, if you commit murder with magic, you are the sort of person who believes murder is justified and will continue to believe so.

So far this makes sense, but then it seems to go too far.

3. It is fairly indisputable that the Council believes there are several circumstances where killing someone, specifically someone human, is not only acceptable but morally required. Why, then, is killing with magic under these circumstances still out. Or to put it another way, if you may chop someone's head off with a sword because he is a warlock, why is blowing his head off with a fireball for exactly the same reason banned? The belief that will be reinforced (that killing is acceptable under certain specific circumstances) is one the Council agrees with, so where is the problem here? As the rules now stand, a player can be punished for doing something that is arguably morally required.

3.5 To be fair, there does seem to be a proviso for using lethal force in self-defense if necessary, but that hardly seems to cover what I'm trying to get at here.

Tl;dr. Why is it wrong to kill with magic when it would be right to kill any other way?

Tedronai:
The White Council does not set the Laws of Magic.  Rather, they take it upon themselves to execute those that do, unless they did so under circumstances the the Council deems 'acceptable'.  The Council's acceptance, however, does not change whether or not an action violated one of the Laws.

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