The borders of the laws are huge gray areas and in my opinion the original Merlin created them like this by design. To me it is totally possible to dance around these gray loopholes without getting the lawbreaker. You and your players are right. The loophole in the fourth law is the involuntary "invading" part. If you enter the mind of another with the explicit invitation of it's owner then you are on the save side. But tread lightly. The moment you start to do stuff the other person doesn't like you to do ... BAM! Lawbreaker.
In my opinion your Wiccan Psychiatrist is a valid and solid character idea. And it has great potential for conflict, as the wardens will be very interested in what she is doing, should they ever find out about the PC using her magic to help her patients. As a matter of fact I have an idea for an NPC in my campaign that might face this exact problem some day...
And the minute you actually change something, instead of simply observe and report, BAM lawbreaker. Changing someones mind, even with their consent, means you have to twist them and yourself to do it.
To sum up: Looking, with permission, is ok. Martha Liberty does it to everyone after the Peabody incident. (least i think it was martha. either way, someone does and they don't get the choppity choppity.)
But touching, even with permission, twists both parties and is hence a no no (ie lawbreaker). At least thats how I would deal with it, going by the books.
Practitioners are often very very good at just one thing. If the PC has an intuitive understanding of how a healthy mind looks like, she should be allowed to make minor adjustments in this direction without "twisting" herself. Anything else would be plain frustrating for the player.
I'm with Tsunami. Looking and repairing mystical damage are alright with consent, anything else is Lawbreaking and will get you a Stunt as such.
I'd say it depends on the method. If someone bent them out of shape and you have to bend them back thats Lawbreaker to me. However if , like evelyn derek the lawyer from TC, you've had a bond or block placed on your memory or a compulsion laid on you thats different. Removing currently in use magical constructs is koscher.
Using a magical construct to undo damage caused by another magical construct is not. Thats why luccio didn't get zapped back into cold hard matron mode, and why harry didn't call in a specialist or something to deal with what molly did to her friends or what the nightmare did to murphy. The damage has to be recovered from and coped with on ones own. Thats the whole point. The person must personally reachieve balance in their psyche otherwise they will unconsciously fight what you've done, causing more problems. Its an automatic response, a natural resistence to outside tampering. At least this is what I get from reading the books.
I'd say allowing actual changing of the mind is Lawbreaking with or without consent. Looking is not, and neither is removing a compulsion someone has laid or a memory block. But trying to heal the myriad little twitches and phobias that show up as a result of mental tampering (See Elaine for ex) is just twisting in another direction. Its still twisting though imo.
Okay, to be specific about what I'm talking about:
Removing magical effects from a mind is not Lawbreaking, but trying to fix the damage those effects caused to the mind in question is. You have to get over that shit on your own.
That's the distinction. The compulsions or even imposed changes themselves can be removed...but the damage suffered remains. In game terms, you can remove existing magical effects, and even change Consequences imposed by magic a bit (depending on the Consequence in question, ie: you can change Brainwashed into Used To Be Brainwashed), but can never remove a Mental Consequence without hitting Lawbreaker dead on.
Well, this part of the Concept
... who uses her magick (the character’s spelling) to help her patients truly understand their own cognitive processes by enabling them experience their own mind as a third party (the player’s heavy into cognitive behavior therapy), for which we’re working on a spell.
would basically be looking and examining plus referring that information to another person... I don't see a problem here. No Lawbreaking required.
Changes are another matter, but DFJunkie stated that he's gonna use that for compels... so there's really no problem at the moment.
Just let the character meet patients with actual magical problems every once in a while so she can actually use her skills to heal. Otherwise use psychomancy as a diagnostic tool to see what the patients problems are and make them aware of it. I bet that's something psychologists in in our reality would love to be able to do.
Also, maybe a really minute change now and again would not be much of a problem, but if she starts to go bigger, or does it more and more often... thats definetly going to lead to a lawbreaker status.
It sounds to me like this practitioner is trying to, in mechanical terms, heal mental consequences with psychomancy in the manner that biomancy may heal physical consequences. She could use Reiki, replace physical with mental, and call it a day.
The problem is that human science understands biology and physical trauma far, far, far more thoroughly than it understands psychology and mental trauma. When someone has a fractured bone, a trained biologist will know exactly what needs to happen in order for that wound to be healed... and thus a trained biomancer could help speed the body along on its natural healing process. With mental trauma, however, it is nigh impossible to have that level of certainty. A psychomancer attempting to help a mind's natural recovery would have to tread very lightly to avoid accidentallysomething up and making things worse. The human mind is used to being Alone in the dark space behind its eyes and it may not react well to having that solitude disrupted, regardless of what that person may have said.(click to show/hide)
Regarding Lawbreaker, I don't have PG with me to confirm this either way, but are we certain that? Part of me wants to say that informed consent will allow a PC to avoid acquiring Lawbreaker, since magic respects that sort of thing in regards to other thresholds, but it wouldn't necessarily let them avoid being tried as a warlock by the White Council anyway.(click to show/hide)
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Yeah, but did she ask them for permission first? Unless she did it to them both while they were sleeping (I can't reference the book to know for sure), she probably would have convinced them to go along with her scheme, even though they couldn't have comprehended it. If so, then consent didn't help.
Yeah, but did she ask them for permission first? Unless she did it to them both while they were sleeping (I can't reference the book to know for sure), she probably would have convinced them to go along with her scheme, even though they couldn't have comprehended it. If so, then consent didn't help.
To those of you pointing out our extreme lack of understanding of the workings in the human mind, and not even knowing whether or not something is wrong. I disagree.
If you look at something thats broken, or damage, you can usually tell that it is damaged, even if you dont know how exactly it is damaged, or how exactly to fix it.
In the same way Im guessing that a psychomancer could delve into your mind, and get a feel for the areas of trauma, stress, etcetera.