The Dresden Files > DFRPG
The First Law of Magic In-Play: Semi-Official Advice
Mr. Death:
--- Quote from: ReaderAt2046 on May 14, 2013, 10:33:15 AM ---But that's just the point I'm trying to get across. If your fundamental motivation for a specific killing is "protect myself" or "protect these innocents", then it is that desire, that motive, which should be reinforced.
--- End quote ---
That's your conscious motivation, not the fundamental part of who you are. If you're a wizard, you can probably find out a way to protect yourself or someone else without killing using your magic.
Remember, magic isn't all about conscious, deliberate thought--it's emotion, it's your soul. Deciding, consciously, that you have to kill someone is a different thing than believing in your heart and soul that you're right to take someone's life.
You're effectively turning your own being, your own soul, into a murder weapon when you kill with magic. You can clean blood off a sword. Cleaning it off your soul's a little harder.
Basically, when you use magic to kill, what you're reinforcing is your belief that you can decide who to kill--and the more you believe you can decide who to kill, the more likely you are to see killing as a solution to problems, because that power over life and death is a rush and feels good. It becomes a mental addiction. Everything starts to look like a nail, and you're holding a really big hammer.
Mrmdubois:
Ok, a good reason to use more mundane methods than magic to do your "necessary" killing?
Magic is easier to kill with. It only takes some kind of symbolic connection or the presence of the target in order to pull it off, and as long as you're willing to put the time and effort in it's entirely possible to wipe entire civilizations off the face of the earth.
Ok, true, you can do that with mundane technology too, but not everyone has access to the red buttons. Wizards by contrast are -all- walking tactical nuke launchers. Every last damn one of them. Because they're individuals they can fortunately be limited by the Laws upheld by the Council, but only if the Laws are brutally enforced.
The whole point of the Laws has nothing to do with the corruption of your soul (though it makes a good justification for zero tolerance), it's to limit the amount of power and damage that an individual can accrue. It doesn't make things fair, it makes them survivable.
Mr. Death:
--- Quote from: Mrmdubois on May 14, 2013, 07:40:18 PM ---The whole point of the Laws has nothing to do with the corruption of your soul
--- End quote ---
The fact that you can see the corruption of it through a soulgaze begs to differ on this point.
Tedronai:
--- Quote from: Mrmdubois on May 14, 2013, 07:40:18 PM ---The whole point of the Laws has nothing to do with the corruption of your soul (though it makes a good justification for zero tolerance), it's to limit the amount of power and damage that an individual can accrue. It doesn't make things fair, it makes them survivable.
--- End quote ---
There are two sides to the Laws, and one of them has everything to do with the corruption of the soul, and nothing to do with anything else. The other has nothing to do with the corruption of the soul, and, as you say, everything to do with limiting potential abuses of power by individuals who are immensely personally powerful.
polkaneverdies:
^ nailed it.
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