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Comments thread for "The Laws of Magic: Part 5 of 8"

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iago:
The Fourth Law of Magic is: Never enthrall another.

http://www.dresdenfilesrpg.com/news/archives/2007/07/post_1.php

hollow49:
Of all the Laws, this is the one we've seen in the most detail in the books, thanks to PG. (While First Law infractions are more common, they are also more clear-cut and unambiguous.) Because we've already got a prime grey-area example from the books, and have already had over a year to hash out the implications elsewhere on the board, I find it difficult to come up with anything really worthwhile to say, other than that you've lived up to my high expectations and hit the nail on the head. (That's the one downside to consistently doing an excellant job - people come to expect it of you!)

Rel Fexive:
This is the most explicitly defined Bad Thing To Do, because it's been discussed in so much detail in the books.  The First Law comes a close second but is less precisely defined; all there is is the "it's like adding I am a murderer into your psyche and letting it take root" from SF.

The Second Law ultimately stems from both of these, and so is clearly Not Good for the same reasons.

The Third Law is initially more about a 'social' rather than 'spiritual' danger.  To me, "merely" reading minds doesn't automatically stain your soul, for lack of any better way of describing it; it's more about accepting the easiness of it and the sort of person you become as a result of doing it more and more.  Like the First Law, but without the killin', but still a slippery slope to the Black.

The law on necromancy (the Sixth?) is much the same, to me... embracing necromancy leads to thinking of live people as potential useful dead people, and that, again, is Not Good.

Contacting Outsiders carries the suggestion of SAN loss... and so doing it would be A Bad Idea.

The ban against time travel would seem to carry the least amount of "spiritual backlash" with it... if, of course, you consider the potential to destroy the entire universe no big thing.  The Law in particular seems far more about good sense than turning you to the Dark Side.


And there's my brief Law-shaped nutshell :)

NevynK:
The last paragraph and sentence made me think bout some potentially interesting situations. Depending on whats changed it would obviously force other changes to occur in the character. Since they cant use drugs they become addicted to pain or become suicidal as they want it but cant have it cause they're too afraid, repulsed, ect or they can't pig out so they get hooked on drugs, can't watch TV anymore become a fanatic reader and go on the forums at jim-butcher.com all day long, you get the idea. Depending on who its done to and where the story is it could be used to swing it in a new direction as a character with a brand spanking new personality really changes things when it comes to decision making. The only thing I'm not clear on is in situations like these are there predetermined parameters of what we can do with the players actions as GM or is basically our choice? Within reason of course.

Slife:
If I had a character who wanted to do this, I could make a huge legal argument about the difference between enthralling and using magic on the mind.  The examples given seem like they could be transferred just as easily to surgery, with any instance of compulsions changed to "chainsaw". 

Surgery is bad because treating cancer by cutting it out with a chainsaw kills people.  You'll sever arteries and break bones, leaving your patient a crippled, bleeding mass on the operating room table.

There's also the gray area of removing a compulsion. 

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