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[Gervaise]

I was wondering if it has ever been explained exactly how the Vengeance half of his specialisation works.  The explanation is that when this is active he actually has more control over the spirit within but this makes him immune to normal healing.  Then if he uses martyr, he sacrifices some of his health to gain more mana.   How exactly?  There is also another talent (the name escapes me at present) which allows Anders to gain health as his enemies die.

When the blood mage specialisation is active you cannot be healed normally and there you can sacrifice your own health to gain spell casting ability (though not exactly mana).  This is clearly by cutting yourself in some way.   Again it is possible to have a talent activated that allows you to gain health from the dead rivals.

There is great similarity between the Vengeance talent and certain aspects of the blood mage specialisation, yet Anders is always highly critical of blood mages, even though it is perfectly possible they are doing no more than outlined above with their skill.   So how are the mechanics of his skill different?

[randomcheeses]

Well . . . Anders is a giant hypocrite, and he does constantly insist that spirits and demons are fundamentally different, so he's probably just lying to himself to justify the nastier aspects of his specialization.

Like, "Blood Magic is from demons, but Justice is a Spirit so it's okay!"

[Plaintiff]

I wouldn't read too much into it, the other half of Ander's specialisation is taken directly from Spirit Healer and recoloured. They're just imposing arbitrary limits to keep him from being a gamebreaker.

"Blood of my Enemy", the passive skill where Anders regains a varying portion of his health for each enemy he kills, is just a mage version of the Assassin's "Bloodlust", or the Berserker's "Death Blow". Those moves replenish stamina where Anders' replenishes his health, but the principle is identical, and obviously Berserkers and Assassins are not required to spec into Bloodmage..

Why does "Blood of my Enemy" replenish health and not mana? As a mage, Anders mana is constantly replenishing anyway (if perhaps slowly). And as probably the only party member in the game with any healing ability at all, he needs to be kept alive more than he needs to be constantly casting.

Lots of DA2's abilities are like this. You might as well call Aveline a secret blood mage because her "Immovable" ability causes her defense values to raise in relation to damage nflicted upon her.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 14 janvier 2012 - 02:10 .

[Gervaise]

Not really a sound arguement. It is understandable psychologically that a fighter or rogue gets a boost to their ability to keep going (stamina) as a result of a successful kill or stalwart defense. It is something that can be seen even in our own world - not killing something necessarily but for example if you were fencing someone and getting tired, getting in a good hit in might well give you the adrenaline rush to keep going and win the contest.

With the mage skill you are either getting a boost to mana or a boost to health, neither of which can really be put down to an adrenaline rush or some psychological effect. Either you have sufficient mana to cast a spell or you don't. Either your health is sufficient for you to keep casting or it isn't.

All I want to know is whether it has ever been explained what exactly Anders does to sacrifice health (a blood mage literally lets blood) in order to get a boost to spell casting ability, which does allow him to continue casting spells - Martyr ability. This corresponds to the Blood Magic ability.

The Blood of my Enemy replenishes health, just as Grave Robber does, which can be upgraded to draw health from living enemies as well as dead ones on the blood mage tree. I said I couldn't remember the name of Anders' ability but if it actually mentions blood, that would suggest there is a very close link between this and the blood mage one.

He also cannot use his spirit healer side of the specialisation at the same time as the vengeance one, and interestingly enough this is apparently because he is suppressing the effects of Justice, not because the latter is gaining more control.

I wondered if Anders' aversion to blood magic is because Justice disapproves or because Anders is still in the Circle mindset despite his anti-Chantry stance. The only real reason blood magic is forbidden is that a former Divine decided that certain passages in the Chant of Light could be interpreted that way. Whilst I would agree that sacrificing innocents/slaves as the Magisters do is deplorable, not all blood mages do this and as highlighted above, certain abilities seem very little different to Anders' own.

If Kirkwall's apostates were increasingly inclined to resort to blood magic to stay alive, presumably because they found it so difficult to get hold of/afford lyrium, it stands to reason that now the Circles have fallen, the same will be true of the renegade mages throughout Thedas. In which case, fellow mages may have to judge them by how they acquire the extra mage casting ability (sacrificing one's own health or non aggressive other) and what they do with it, rather than simply a blanket condemnation.

[Plaintiff]

Gervaise wrote...

Not really a sound arguement. It is understandable psychologically that a fighter or rogue gets a boost to their ability to keep going (stamina) as a result of a successful kill or stalwart defense. It is something that can be seen even in our own world - not killing something necessarily but for example if you were fencing someone and getting tired, getting in a good hit in might well give you the adrenaline rush to keep going and win the contest.

With the mage skill you are either getting a boost to mana or a boost to health, neither of which can really be put down to an adrenaline rush or some psychological effect. Either you have sufficient mana to cast a spell or you don't. Either your health is sufficient for you to keep casting or it isn't.

All I want to know is whether it has ever been explained what exactly Anders does to sacrifice health (a blood mage literally lets blood) in order to get a boost to spell casting ability, which does allow him to continue casting spells - Martyr ability. This corresponds to the Blood Magic ability.

The Blood of my Enemy replenishes health, just as Grave Robber does, which can be upgraded to draw health from living enemies as well as dead ones on the blood mage tree. I said I couldn't remember the name of Anders' ability but if it actually mentions blood, that would suggest there is a very close link between this and the blood mage one.

He also cannot use his spirit healer side of the specialisation at the same time as the vengeance one, and interestingly enough this is apparently because he is suppressing the effects of Justice, not because the latter is gaining more control.

I wondered if Anders' aversion to blood magic is because Justice disapproves or because Anders is still in the Circle mindset despite his anti-Chantry stance. The only real reason blood magic is forbidden is that a former Divine decided that certain passages in the Chant of Light could be interpreted that way. Whilst I would agree that sacrificing innocents/slaves as the Magisters do is deplorable, not all blood mages do this and as highlighted above, certain abilities seem very little different to Anders' own.

If Kirkwall's apostates were increasingly inclined to resort to blood magic to stay alive, presumably because they found it so difficult to get hold of/afford lyrium, it stands to reason that now the Circles have fallen, the same will be true of the renegade mages throughout Thedas. In which case, fellow mages may have to judge them by how they acquire the extra mage casting ability (sacrificing one's own health or non aggressive other) and what they do with it, rather than simply a blanket condemnation.

The Assassin and Berserker abilities also mention blood, and "Blood of my Enemy" is a passive skill that will work no matter what mode Anders is in. He doesn't have to be in a mode at all.

Stamina and mana are both governed by the Willpower stat, so I could indeed make the argument that mana reserves are affected by an individual's psychology. But Ander's ability specifically affects his health, not his mana.

To my knowledge, no, it has never been given an in-lore explanation. But not every ability has one, nor are they required. They prevent players from healing Anders by normal means in he's in Vengeance mode, which means they needed to provide an alternate gameplay element to offset that in order to make Vengeance mode a viable option in combat.

You're thinking too hard about it, it's just another instance of gameplay/story segregation. Most of the abillities are governed chiefly by rule of cool and/or what would be practically useful to the player, with much less thought put into in-lore justification (not that I'm complaining). That's why we get things like "the archer fires an entire quiver of arrows into the air at once".

Modifié par Plaintiff, 14 janvier 2012 - 04:10 .

[Quething]

If you help Anders plant the bomb, he's ecstatic the next time you talk to him. Says something about "you can't imagine what it is for a spirit to fulfill its function." Which is something we also know from demons. They're connected to the concepts they're named for in a complex feedback loop; a Desire demon is drawn to desire, inspires it, feeds on it, is stronger in its presence, etc etc, but anyway there's confirmation that Justice/Vengeance functions the same way.

Also, Anders, being human, may have a division between his mana and his health, but I think it's reasonable to suggest that to a Fade spirit they're one and the same. We're told there's no physical strength in the Fade, just the various wills of the locals and passing dreamers.

Add these two factors and answer both your questions. Killing someone who's an enemy of Anders, of the mage cause ("I am the cause of mages")? That's either justice or vengeance in action, and it revitalizes the spirit within. As for Martyr, if Anders is as much Fade spirit as human anymore, being able to convert body to will in the physical plane is reasonably plausible.

And yes, that is basically the same as blood magic - before they discovered lyrium and mana, Thedas mages did all magic with life force, spending one's metaphysical self via the physical self is what blood magic is - but yes, Anders is a hypocrite, that's not news. I mean the only party members who aren't hypocrites are Varric and Isabela, but Anders is in some kind of perverse competition with Fenris to see how many orders of magnitude they can take it to before reality itself starts breaking from the absurdity of it. So.

(The Vengeance-blocks-healing thing, on the other hand, is pure gameplay convention. The short story about his desertion from the Wardens portrays the Vengeance form as shrugging off a sword through the heart, while the gameplay mechanic imposes a damage resistance penalty. But if you really need a lore explanation, imagine that healing magic works to restore physical bodies, and Vengeance is as much Fade spirit as human and thus no longer a valid target any more than a forcecage would be.)

Modifié par Quething, 14 janvier 2012 - 05:52 .

[Jugo616]

Take a notice that Spirit school has drain mana/life from corpses too - no blood magic.