and Micheal knew just how hard it was, it was an ordeal, also it did take its toll on morgan, at the end when harry soulgazed morgan he saw how tiered, worn, and stained morgans soul was after all of the years
and Micheal knew just how hard it was, it was an ordeal, also it did take its toll on morgan, at the end when harry soulgazed morgan he saw how tiered, worn, and stained morgans soul was after all of the years
It was an ordeal - but it had more to do with shifting aspects than something like lawbreaker. As for the other example, living life as a cop does that.
Look at the change in Dresden from the first book to one of the more recent books. His world view has dimmed. He's getting quicker to react to things as threats... The Dresden from book one would never have come close to killing a couple of con goer the way Harry almost does in Proven Guilty, but now he sees a threat and reacts to it. It's him seeing people die. It's him seeing the evil in the world. It's wanting to help to and not being able. What has happened is changing Dresden.
I would never have expected Dresden to turn his back on Susan, and the Dresden from the early book wouldn't have, but after all he has been through he did. He's done things that he hates himself for. Imagine how he'll be after hundreds of years. That's what happened to Morgan.
I'd say that some of the people who kill other people have hit a situation where they had to swap out aspects and it made sense to include something about those killings. Dresden, which all the mental stress he takes, could have easily said to his GM "How about we say that the battle with the demon in my head (or whatever it is that causing the stress) has got me thinking about that killing - so we work out me having nightmares over killing someone who needed killing?" and the GM saying "Sounds good - it should take you a while to work through that".
That makes more sense than someone losing refreshes over something that people did in the books - killing.
Butters has never killed anyone - but most of the reoccurring characters have. I can't see all of them losing refreshes over it.
Here's something a little more helpful: If you go with something like that, make it easier to buy off than lawbreaker. When you kill with magic you're not using a gun or a knife or anything like that - you are using your "you", your inner essence, maybe even your soul, and that should have a more extreme result than tossing a grenade into a room.
Richard
Darn, I forget what book this is in so I'll use spoiler tags.
There's a discussion between Murphy and Dresden where Murphy says that she has known cops like Morgan. That years on the job has worn them down and she can't imagine what it would be like to work like that for a century or more. At the end of Turn Coat Luccio reveals how she spend centuries walling herself off emotionally - which is how she survived the job with her soul intact. There are cops out there who see everyone as a perp and expect the worse from everyone - because they have seen the worse so many times that they can't see anything but the worse.
So it's really the job, the long grind of seeing mankind at its worse, that drags people down - not this act or that act of killing.
By the time Dresden meets him, Morgan had no problem doing the executions - anymore than Micheal had killing an evil creature. He has seen how bad warlocks can get and knows that if they aren't stopped in time (i.e. they go into negative refreshes from Law Breaker) they will all become monsters. When he kills them he is doing good - saving all of their future victims. Not even Dresden can marshal any real arguments against the execution other than "we shouldn't have let things come to this - we should have spotted him before he went bad".
Richard
After a traumatic event. That could be having your mind raped by an evil ghost (Murphy had "I've had monsters in my head") or otherwise had problems (like being exposed to the supernatural, or having to kill someone). The book talks about extreme consequences giving aspects like that.
I don't think that there are rules for it, but if the groups agree that something would give someone a huge amount of mental stress, the type of stress that would normally take you out and leave you in the fetal position for a while, then you could call that an extreme mental consequence that chances someone. The problem is you don't want to do it too often. Do it too often and it's a form of railroading.
The Beckitts are a good example of this. They held their little girl as she died (well, as far as they know she died) and it twisted the rest of their lives - yet technically they didn't suffer a single mental attack or social (or any other) attack during that scene. And then there's the scene where Billy becomes William.
Richard