While I disagree with Anthony in his implying that Blood Magic isn't overpowered (as I just explained to wulfy, if used properly with any build it's still obscenely overpowered), there is no doubt about a disconnect between NPC use of blood magic as related to the story and player-used blood magic as it relates to the story. In DAO it can be played off as "Well...you ARE a Grey Warden soooooo...ummmm...I guess anything that helps stop the Darkspawn is alright...." at least that's how I always justified none of the other characters batting an eye as I slit my wrists to make people's blood boil, suck the life out of my own friends so I can keep casting, or out right control people's minds. But in DA2 there really isn't any excuse. You spend the vast majority of the game killing Blood Mages, so I can't help but imagine that some members of your party would have a pretty big problem with the fact that you, yourself, are a blood mage. Beyond that is the fact that, like I mentioned in my response to wulfy, Blood Magic is demonic magic. You can't learn it through normal means, you have to learn it from a demonic spell book or have a demon teach it to you directly. To say there's nothing wrong or evil about consorting with demons is just silly. Deals with demons always turn out bad for the mortal, as the demon always rigs the deal in their favor, usually with dire consequences for many other mortals other than the person the deal is being struck with.SpunkeyMonkey said:But you need to remember that the perception of Blood Magic to which you refer is that of other NPCs, legendary lore, and the populace in general, and it doesn't mean that it's a truth.Anthony Corrigan said:The fact you can find a build to make use of it doesn't actually change my point, I could find a build to make use of the shapeshifter ability quite easily, the point is that there is a disconnect between game play and story, it SHOULD be massively over powered but with equally large story reasons NOT to use it, what it shouldn't be is ignored by the story and only useful for certain builds. If you look at it the way it's portrayed in the story it's a comstant temptation for every Mage, that its unlimited power but at a dreadful cost, where is that in the game play? Where is the temptation to give it to every Mage because it makes them an evil god? Not for certain builds where you have done this and that, for EVERY Mage, unlimited power
The way I look at Blood Magic it's like a drug, and like drugs people aren't always in possession of all the facts and don't know how to use them properly. Blood Magic, like drugs, is a taboo subject - you don't leave school with a qualification knowing how to take and use them, you rely on what you pickup, hear, and read.
A lot of the "temptation" and "don't do blood magic, it's bad m'kay" which you hear from the circle is as vague as the same gumph we get from PC types about drugs, and the actual effects could be miles off their opinion of what they are. The temptation may be there, but it's only temptation of the unknown or ill-explained, and like such things half of the temptation is the mystery which surrounds it.
So really, it's not just vague warnings from NPCs saying "Don't do blood magic because we don't like it", it's established canon that blood magic always leads to disaster.......except when the player uses it for some reason. It's built into the story itself that blood magic is evil, the history of Thedas proves this. The closest argument you could come up with against this fact would be to point out that "The Sith aren't really evil, they just have a different way of thinking than the Jedi." Then you look at the fact that the Sith will do anything to increase their own power, use abilities that melt people's faces off with lightning, and don't hesitate to choke the life from a person that displeases them and your argument kinda falls to pieces. What the player does with blood magic is one thing, what the story holds as canon is something completely different. They did a better job in at least trying to show the player's temptation with blood magic in DAO than they did in DA2. In DA2, once you get to the right level you can just say "Oh, by the way, I can use blood magic now" while in DAO you have to strike a deal with a demon in order to learn it or find a demonic spell book.