Magus_42 wrote...
I know there's a temptation to talk about an ethical grey area here, but it's really hard for me to find a justification for mind control, and that seems to be the signature ability of a blood mage. The thing that everyone brings up as soon as blood magic is mentioned. I'm sure there are specific situations where such a thing is justified, but I suspect it would be a rare individual indeed who could resisting tapping into such power only in appropriate circumstances. I'm hardly a fan of the chantry, but I can certainly understand why they would forbid such power.
This is very much a grey area. Mind control (or body control in the case of Blood Magic) IS often seen as evil - but on the other hand, you can use it to force someone to surrender and spare their lives. Instead of outright
killing them.
Ingame, it seems that Blood Magic's dark reputation is largely justified in that people who have it have usually, directly or indirectly, received the training from a demon (while it's possible to learn it without direct contact, however removed the person you learned it from probably learned it from someone who learned it from... [insert arbitrary number of links] ...someone who consorted with a demon) - but it does seem to be something where the important thing is how it's used. The usual example, for instance - yes, the usual example got forced into doing some dubious things and isn't exactly a shining paragon of virtue, but I wouldn't say the usual example is
evil either.
Herr Uhl wrote...
Yes, cause the chantry could never dare to cross the GW. It is all politics, give and take. People has no power over a despot either, but the despot still does not cross the people.
That's because of the "every ruler needs the consent of his people" thing. Yes, that consent can be taken through fear and oppression rather than freely given, but when push comes to shove, if it ever gets bad enough that the people rebel as a group and refuse to back down - either the despot is going to lose or (s)he'll end up with no-one to despot over.
The Chantry, on the other hand, does have the potential to have a lot of power over the Wardens - since a king can exile them from a country, imagine the effect of the Chantry declaring a purge of the Wardens. They'd probably need strong reason to do so, but enough potential is there for the Wardens to want to avoid unnecessarily provoking the Chantry.
filaminstrel wrote...
--Sacrificing others: probably more on the evil side, particularly if it's against they're will. Although, hypothetically, if one were to sacrifice the life force of one's opponents on the battlefield, would that really be any worse than using fire, lightning, etc? Probably not, I'd say.
Plus, doesn't the version the Warden has access to only work on allies (which implies willing targets)? This is probably just a balance thing, since powerful NPCs can obviously drain unwilling targets (possibly the next step after Blood Control is to drain from a controlled target? Or are they just using the Draining school from Entropy?) but at least in the Warden's hands, it's all implied to be willing.
REH1967 wrote...
Blood Magic is only considered evil because the Chantry and its Templars can't nullify or control it like they do Lyrium based magics.
That is an interesting observation, although I doubt it's the only reason.
Retour en haut
I think anyone would be hard put to say that sacrificing your own life energy with bloodmagic to fuel healing for your allies is evil. The "blood" required doesn't necessarily need an outside source; you can use your own.
