I'm trying to get more novelesque, but...well...not many novels have huge chapters on everyone screwing up and trying to fix this irrelevant little major problem, you know?
Railroading, man. Somebody tries to escape from the initial briefing or fuck with you on the very first turn, smite them. Smite them hard. I mean, freaking legions of archers. Thunderbolts and lightning. Very, very frightening things.
And make the important quest-giving NPC's (or at least the plot-essential ones) capable of smiting at least one player without much effort.
I don't railroad.
And there's only so much railroading can do to stop a clusterfrak like this, short of Deus Ex Machina or--worse--fudging rolls.
GM- The way you've done things is quite hostile towards the players, where even basic actions are getting ridiculously penalized for rolling a 1, 2, or 6. For all the magical stuff with power getting high rolls and control getting low ones, mostly understandable in the failure of Control rolls. But rolling a 6 for butchering shouldn't CRIPPLE the player by losing all their fingers.
To be perfectly fair, I intend to let her work around it for however long it is until it gets fixed.
Yes.
Though to be fair I only messed up once with magic.
Messed up badly? Sure.
Yes, Overshoots are supposed to have some pretty bad side effects, but they're supposed to be MOSTLY good.
Tell that to every GM I've ever played under. Start with piecewise, I'm sure the HMRC* would appreciate it.
*Yes, I know they're ARM now. Shut up.