Blood magic in Dragon Age - Your opinions

[thejboy88]

In the popular game series if Dragon Age, there is one particular set of abilities that seems to cause the most debate, both inside the world of the game and out, and that's blood magic.

Within the game it's viewed by many as an inherently evil magic that only causes harm to others. Others disagree and some are somewhere in the middle.

But I'd like to hear your opinions regarding blood magic, both as a gameplay mechanic and within the context of the story.

 

[The Madman]

You mean this blood magic?

Yeah, never really made much sense to me truth be told. It's also pretty dumb that you can become a Blood Mage and no one even notices or care, and even moreso when you can make old granny lady who's name I've forgotten one as well. Frankly the entire premise is kinda stupid as well to be honest, I really don't understand what the appeal is supposed to be. You're already hurling fireballs and lightning everywhere, why bother with squirting blood at people?

Another entertaining comic on this much debated and totally serious subject.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Blood magic was useless, your a mage and it HURTS you to use it, you don't have high constitution as it is and all it really did was draw magic from your health instead of your mana which is useless

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Yeah, blood magic wasn't really that impressive in Dragon Age. You know what had really awesome blood magic? Avatar: The Last Airbender! Seriously, I love the concept behind Blood Bending.
1)It makes sense. Blood is water, so it's natural that Water bender would be able to control it
2)It isn't super overpowered because it's use is limited to the full moons when water bender is at his peak
3)It shows just why that kind of magic would be a taboo. Someone takes full control of your body, but leaves your mind intact. Also, I'm pretty sure it's really painful because your veins are basically holding your whole body weight!
Sadly, blood bending concept was butchered for me in Legend Of Korra. It's still terrifying, but now it's so overpowered it's almost comical.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

its one of the things which actually bugs me about Dragon age, it SHOULD have been really powerful BUT give story penalties as people shun you or outright hate you for using it

I can understand people ignoring it in 1, warders are exempt then ok thats fine, however they could still distrust you for using it but in 2 you should be outright hated by some people if you chose to use it

HOWEVER there needs to be a REASON to use it, it has to be worth the right, the power needs to be there so that then the player gets the choice of "am I a renegade after power at any cost or am I a true hero and some prices are just to high", THAT is the sort of moral dichotomy that the back story sets up but the main story fails to utilise

 

[Doom972]

Blood Magic by itself isn't that much of a problem, but the fact that it makes a mage more vulnerable for demonic possession is the problem. However, I'm not sure if that is entirely true, since many mages of the Grey Wardens apparantly used it successfully without getting possessed (maybe being a warden has something to do with it?). I think that it might've been better if the circle allowed mages who have enough self-control and willpower to learn it and how to use it with relative safety instead of completely banning it.

Blood magic was useless, your a mage and it HURTS you to use it, you don't have high constitution as it is and all it really did was draw magic from your health instead of your mana which is useless

It's not useless because there's much more power in blood than in lyrium, which allows for very powerful spells. A health sacrifice could be worth it.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Blood Magic by itself isn't that much of a problem, but the fact that it makes a mage more vulnerable for demonic possession is the problem. However, I'm not sure if that is entirely true, since many mages of the Grey Wardens apparantly used it successfully without getting possessed (maybe being a warden has something to do with it?). I think that it might've been better if the circle allowed mages who have enough self-control and willpower to learn it and how to use it with relative safety instead of completely banning it.

Blood magic was useless, your a mage and it HURTS you to use it, you don't have high constitution as it is and all it really did was draw magic from your health instead of your mana which is useless

It's not useless because there's much more power in blood than in lyrium, which allows for very powerful spells. A health sacrifice could be worth it.

I'm sorry, your right the last 2 spells may actually be worth it but why would you bother going through a whole spell tree to get 2 good spells? the same goes for dragon age 2, except that the spell tree to GET to those 2 spells is much much larger and you have to be actively losing blood in order to use those last 2 spells if you have them

Compare the spells sucking health from an ally to say the mass heal spell, why would you pick killing an ally in battle for a spell which healed you BOTH? that's just STUPID

 

[Doom972]

Blood Magic by itself isn't that much of a problem, but the fact that it makes a mage more vulnerable for demonic possession is the problem. However, I'm not sure if that is entirely true, since many mages of the Grey Wardens apparantly used it successfully without getting possessed (maybe being a warden has something to do with it?). I think that it might've been better if the circle allowed mages who have enough self-control and willpower to learn it and how to use it with relative safety instead of completely banning it.

Blood magic was useless, your a mage and it HURTS you to use it, you don't have high constitution as it is and all it really did was draw magic from your health instead of your mana which is useless

It's not useless because there's much more power in blood than in lyrium, which allows for very powerful spells. A health sacrifice could be worth it.

I'm sorry, your right the last 2 spells may actually be worth it but why would you bother going through a whole spell tree to get 2 good spells? the same goes for dragon age 2, except that the spell tree to GET to those 2 spells is much much larger and you have to be actively losing blood in order to use those last 2 spells if you have them

Compare the spells sucking health from an ally to say the mass heal spell, why would you pick killing an ally in battle for a spell which healed you BOTH? that's just STUPID

I was talking about it from a story viewpoint rather than game mechanics. I plan on making a Blood Mage character eventually, but I haven't done it yet, so I don't know how useful the spells you actually get are. By your post, I'm guessing that they aren't as powerful as one would expect. One way to counter the massive loss of blood is to put more points into CON at level-ups and equipping CON/health increasing items.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

I was talking about it from a story viewpoint rather than game mechanics. I plan on making a Blood Mage character eventually, but I haven't done it yet, so I don't know how useful the spells you actually get are. By your post, I'm guessing that they aren't as powerful as one would expect. One way to counter the massive loss of blood is to put more points into CON at level-ups and equipping CON/health increasing items.

Yes I was looking at it from the game mechanics side because that's really what wrecks it for me, blood magic was something I went out of my way to acquire for my "bad side" play and and you have to actually go out of your way to get it, then it turned out to be useless and this really broke the story for me. I had sacrificed my friend because I was good and he was using forbidden blood magic and sure HE gets to be powerful with it but when I get all it does is change from using mana to using life, second spell is canabalise a friend for health which is STUPID!!!! its the last thing you want to do in battle then you get blood boil which boils the blood of enemies if they happen to have it and finally blood control where you MIGHT be able to turn ONE enemy into your slave, in number 2 in order to use ANY of these spells you have to have the "mode" activated which constantly does you damage

Also the story never recognises your a blood mage, no reference is ever made to you using it (at least in 1, didn't try it in 2) which is a missed opportunity if you wanted to play as a darksider, in fact at various times you HUNT blood mages and they don't even mention the fact that you or your party are ALSO blood mages even if you use it while fighting them

 

[Doom972]

I was talking about it from a story viewpoint rather than game mechanics. I plan on making a Blood Mage character eventually, but I haven't done it yet, so I don't know how useful the spells you actually get are. By your post, I'm guessing that they aren't as powerful as one would expect. One way to counter the massive loss of blood is to put more points into CON at level-ups and equipping CON/health increasing items.

Yes I was looking at it from the game mechanics side because that's really what wrecks it for me, blood magic was something I went out of my way to acquire for my "bad side" play and and you have to actually go out of your way to get it, then it turned out to be useless and this really broke the story for me. I had sacrificed my friend because I was good and he was using forbidden blood magic and sure HE gets to be powerful with it but when I get all it does is change from using mana to using life, second spell is canabalise a friend for health which is STUPID!!!! its the last thing you want to do in battle then you get blood boil which boils the blood of enemies if they happen to have it and finally blood control where you MIGHT be able to turn ONE enemy into your slave, in number 2 in order to use ANY of these spells you have to have the "mode" activated which constantly does you damage

Also the story never recognises your a blood mage, no reference is ever made to you using it (at least in 1, didn't try it in 2) which is a missed opportunity if you wanted to play as a darksider, in fact at various times you HUNT blood mages and they don't even mention the fact that you or your party are ALSO blood mages even if you use it while fighting them

Seems like it's not worth in DAO. It does sound useful in DA2 due to the Hemorrhage spell, and because you can consume blood from nearby corpses (or live enemies after upgrade) using Grave Robber. I hope that it has an effect on the plot of DA2.

 

[wulfy42]

In DAO.....blood magic was I believe the weakest specialization....with the largest penalties as well. Why do blood mages suddenly lose all ability to cast spells normally? Shouldn't blood magic be in ADDITION to normal spell casting? That would make way more sense, and effectively double the ability of blood mages to cast spells...while also giving them some spells only they could cast.

In DA2...blood mages were a bit better, but still, you were better off with other specializations in my opinion. Blood magic was supposed to be so bad/evil....and the temptation to use it was there because it was supposed to be powerful....but it just never seemed to be more powerful in actual application.

In real life (or a fantasy world with magic that is semi based on normal laws etc), blood magic should enable you to use anybodies blood to cast spells, so sacrificing a person could enable you to cast huge spells one spellcaster normally would not be able to cast, with no cost to yourself. I think blood magic would not HAVE to be evil though....if the spellcaster only sacrificed their own blood to cast spells. There have been many magic systems based around rules similar to that..with good mages only using their own life force (not blood but still the same) and bad mages using other peoples life force to s cast spells. A blood mage then, in theory, could be a good guy in DA....and I guess you can play your own characters that way if you want.

I only played DA2 through once though....on the PS3 even...so I don't remember that much about the classes/specializations etc. In DAO though....There was no reason to be a blood mage that I saw.

 

[Boogie Knight]

From what I gather, a lot of mages learn blood magic by dealing with demons. That in and of itself is unsettling, cause nothing good ever comes of bargaining with demons. However, the idea of sacrificing one's own lifeforce in a desperate situation to either protect innocents or stop a powerful monster, that could be an acceptable tradeoff. Then again, there's no reason to bother with blood magic because my Warden learned the lost art of the Arcane Warrior which is just awesome. How come there isn't a storyline in which that specialization makes a comeback?

As I recall, one who masters the way of an Arcane Warrior acquires a pretty strong connection to the Fade, and I imagine there would be some spiritual implications which would make for interesting drama in the Dragon Age universe. Spreading the discipline would also be a nice way to give the Tevinter Imperium the finger.

 

[fibchopkin]

Seems like it's not worth in DAO. It does sound useful in DA2 due to the Hemorrhage spell, and because you can consume blood from nearby corpses (or live enemies after upgrade) using Grave Robber. I hope that it has an effect on the plot of DA2.

It doesn't. I'm a raving Bioware fan, and I'm usually inclined to like some of the things they do that everyone else seems to rage over, but the fact that mage-ness doesn't effect your DA2 playthrough at all, even though the the mage/templar thing is pretty much the central theme of the game, was pretty disappointing. Ditto to the blood mage specialization. There is one companion in particular that should outright refuse to work with bloodmages, but doesn't, and can actually end up being your lover/ best friend.

In DAO, there is deleted content that can be unlocked on the PC version with some creative manipulation. The "old lady" mentioned earlier- her name is Wynne, by the way- will confront you about your "unusual magic" and then proceed to tell the templars on you. This can result in the PC losing the support of both the mages and the templars, since you're basically forced to kill everyone remaining in the Circle. It made sense story-wise, but it's not hard to see why they chose to cut it, especially since they also ended up cutting out the possible recruitment into the Gray Wardens of a blood mage you meet at Redcliff.

More on topic- The idea of blood magic wouldn't really bother me if A) It wasn't established cannon that in order to utilize blood magic, you must, at some point, deal directly with an evil fade spirit (I have a whole theory on the "demon" thing too) and B) If the user restricted him/herself to using only his/her own blood or that of a willing comrade. In-game mechanics-wise, I never use it. It just doesn't offer enough rewards, quickly enough, for all the drawbacks. I might use it, if it affected the way NPCs responded to my character in more than just a few throw away lines, but since it doesn't, I find it mostly useless.

 

[Abomination]

It was a bit of a failure in story to mechanics transition. Some type of sanity bar would have been better - the more blood magic you use the closer you get pushed towards snapping or losing control of a demon. After not using blood magic it slowly returns. It would let you have some kind of throttle that only blood mages have, making their spells 2x more powerful, cosing half as much manage or something... but if you push the sanity bar too far you have a chance of turning into an abomination.

Rather than being a number cost per spell it should have been a percentage of health cost per spell.

 

[Funyahns]

For you guys saying blood magic was weak in DAO you have no idea how to use a Mage. You can dominate the entire game on nightmare with Blood Magic. You have to use them as controllers more than nukers. That blood strangle spell mixed with the other chokes could completely stun lock groups of enemies.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

For you guys saying blood magic was weak in DAO you have no idea how to use a Mage. You can dominate the entire game on nightmare with Blood Magic. You have to use them as controllers more than nukers. That blood strangle spell mixed with the other chokes could completely stun lock groups of enemies.

Maybe, IF they happen to have blood. Personally I prefer Ice storm, fire storm and Lightning storm all dropped one after another on the enemies head because the blizzard freezes them then the other 2 do massive damage and this is across groups of enemies

 

[fibchopkin]

For you guys saying blood magic was weak in DAO you have no idea how to use a Mage. You can dominate the entire game on nightmare with Blood Magic. You have to use them as controllers more than nukers. That blood strangle spell mixed with the other chokes could completely stun lock groups of enemiesp
.

You can dominate the game on Nightmare w/out blood magic pretty easily. Crushing prison, mass paralysis, and ice spells followed by critical hits from Stone Fist or crushing prison, Punisher or backstab (from a dual wielder) Mighty blow, or pommel strike (from a two-hander) or assault or shield bash (from a sword and shielder) (those are combos for shattering)pretty much ends any threat. But clearly, I don't know how to play as a mage.