Preliminary steps

I have a feeling that Nephi would never have been convinced to kill Laban if he had not previously:

• Known that his children would need to keep the commandments to receive blessings.
• Known that the brass plates had the commandments.
• Seen that Laban would not give them the plates.
• Seen that Laban would not sell them the plates.
• Seen that Laban would be willing to kill them to obtain their property.

I’m confident that if any of those steps had been skipped Nephi would have either considered that getting the plates wasn’t important enough to kill for or that there must be some other option to obtain them.