Doom972 said:
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.