Would it be considered haram even if you don't actually eat it?
replies(3):
[1]: Eating pork is forbidden in the Old Testament in Leviticus 11:7-8 and Deuteronomy 14:8.
are you therefore required to answer the phone, because who else would be calling on shabat?
I always thought these workarounds were odd - does God have no objection to using proxies to get around the rules? Then again, my friend is not Jewish, so perhaps he can freely break the Sabbath because he’s outside the scope of the rule? Or is damned anyway?
There's a lot of crossover between Judaism and DnD player mentality. You're very much encouraged to learn the source material, the commentary and to discuss and debate it. Workarounds don't actually break the rules; and you need to put a lot of study into doing them properly.
Sometimes you need to take a sensible decision and choose to just flat out break the rules. In those situations one is encouraged to do so in an uncommon or abnormal way so it doesn't become habitual. This makes sense to me - I didn't smoke inside for the first 3 years of moving into my house, but the first time I did break that rule it made breaking it much easier the second, third, or subsequent times.
In your example given I can see a situation that isn't actually a risk to life (which comes under different rulings), but is still serious enough you need to take some action before waiting for Shabbat to end. A burst pipe would be a good example; it's not going to kill anyone but it could cause extremely serious damage if left. Asking for help rather than just picking the phone up and treating it like a regular day sorta makes logical sense in that context, though it's probably not what I'd choose to do.
Jewish laws only ever apply to Jews [1]; they have no expectation, want or desire for it to apply to anyone else, through conversion or otherwise. If your friend isn't Jewish then he's welcome to do what he wants. There is no damnation in the Christian sense for anyone, Jewish or otherwise. It's also possible to get into Jewish heaven without being Jewish, but you do have to obey a small subset [1] of the laws.