314 réponses à ce sujet

[n7stormrunner]

It didn't last, though. And technically, the Imperium only ruled Thedas for a few centuries, not "millenia."

 

 

and their fall was because they did one of the classic bad guy more and tried to supplant god/the maker... now we have darkspawn.

[Uccio]

Set aside your Chantry hate for a moment and accept that letting the player practice blood magic was extremely problematic from both a gameplay and story perspective.

1) Allowing the PC to use blood magic created a discrepancy with the setting's established lore. If you have a party member who aligned with the Chantry or at least holds a belief in the Maker, they should at least be hesitant about working with you. Ditto for the qunari and the Dalish. They might even be obligated to kill you. And yet, in both DAO and DA2, nobody really cared about the PC using blood magic, because the devs are hesitant about forcing any drastic repurcussions like that on the player.

In Inquisition, the main character is supposed to be building a major organization with the intent of saving the whole world. Who the hell is going to put a maleficar in charge of that?

2) Learning blood magic should be dangerous, or at the very least difficult. Presuming you don't have access to a teacher, the only way to learn blood magic is through contact with a demon, which is how it was handled in DAO. But that also led to a lot of people basically cheating to get the specialization, just as they did with the reaver specialization. And it certainly wasn't dangerous in either game.
3) It's difficult to model what a blood mage can actually do within the setting. According to lore, blood mages can view the dreams of others and tear open the Veil. A blood mage PC in DAO or DA2 can't do any of that, mostly because it would be totally game-breaking. And it goes further than that: if we're allowing mage PCs to use blood magic, then why don't we also allow them to tow around several slaves and slit their throats whenever the PC needs a power boost.

With all that in mind, I think they did the right thing denying access to the blood mage specialization to the player. There will no doubt be opportunities to employ blood magic in the story proper, as it's ideal for ethical quandaries.

Well, none of the things you said prevents pc from using blood magic. As a world savior you decide what to do and how to do it. Someone has a problem you using blood magic? Touch break, thats the way the cookie crumbles. Its the pc's way or the Imperial highway. If needed certain dose of Murder Knife can be distributed. Pc is not out to please people, just to save the world. And if you are concerned about peoples feeling, be discrite when using blood magic. Its not like its written in pc's face that he is a blood mage.

And I do hate the chantry, hypocrate slavers. I always play friendly freedom loving blood mage.

[Cainhurst Crow]

I like consistency. Origins introduces a world where you have a imperium which lasted millenias, was built by blood magic and built marvelous things bringing civilazation to barbarians. Ruled by magisters who used constantly blood magic. Then Bio tries to backpedal by saying that every blood mage is actually batshit grazy and/or possessed by demons in order to influence players. That just doesn't fly with Tevinter. Batshit grazy possessed blood mages do not build imperiums to last.

 

Well, if you read world of thedas, it's clear the imperium views its history of blood magic users with mixed feelings at best. Yeah, a lot of their mages used blood magic, but they also tended to be crazy slave sacrificing weirdos who were killed by their own subjects and colleagues. A magister from the book even lists off how their student shouldn't admire blood magic and think of it as anything but a dark source of power, listing and abolishing the commonly used in world examples of how a good blood mage can exist. The imperium itself doesn't openly allow blood magic to be preformed anymore, even though they have no reason to thanks to their breaking off from the chantries law and forming their own religion.

 

Blood magic is part of their history and their culture, but its hardly as glamorized or beneficial as you seem to think it is. And I don't see how any of this has to do with "consistency" when the first two games did a good job showing the danger of blood magic and how its a dark and evil source of power. You learn it from a demon at the price of sacrificing a kids soul for crying out loud in DAO, unless you have a high enough persuade to break all speech check decisions in the game, and even then you are still making a pact with a demon to get that power.

 

It is not, nor has it been, a morally grey kind of magic that you can be wishy washy with its morality with, in any of the incarnations, even awakening. And I still don't see what any of this has to do with being anti-chantry and how not being a blood mage makes you a chantry puppet.
 

[Allan Schumacher]

I was under the impression that the chantry comments have more to with the fact that the player forms the Inquisition, which isn't too far removed from the eyes of the Chantry for many.

[fchopin]

Sounds blood magic is gone as spec according to Cameron Lee.

Thank you for the link.

[Cainhurst Crow]

I was under the impression that the chantry comments have more to with the fact that the player forms the Inquisition, which isn't too far removed from the eyes of the Chantry for many.

 

It seems weird to see no blood magic as drawing the line in that regard, considering we've known what the inquisition is and whose authority it operates with for at least a lot of months now, depending on how long you were here. And that's one of the only ways I can really interpret that response, given the context of this thread and the context in which the comment was made, being in a thread about not being able to use blood magic, with a comment directly responding to not being able to use blood magic.

 

If that wasn't the case then I would apologize, but I hope in explaining my confusion I made it a bit clearer as to why I would be confused in the first place.

[thats1evildude]

I always play friendly freedom loving blood mage.

 

Yeah, yeah. You're really sticking it to the man by slashing your wrists. 

[In Exile]

It seems weird to see no blood magic as drawing the line in that regard, considering we've known what the inquisition is and whose authority it operates with for at least a lot of months now, depending on how long you were here. And that's one of the only ways I can really interpret that response, given the context of this thread and the context in which the comment was made, being in a thread about not being able to use blood magic, with a comment directly responding to not being able to use blood magic.

 

If that wasn't the case then I would apologize, but I hope in explaining my confusion I made it a bit clearer as to why I would be confused in the first place.

 

I thought Alan was referencing this like "Look ultimately the Inquisition is something that stands apart from the Chantry, so it's not like you as a player are beholden to them or beholden to being always good--you can be whatever you want to be..." which really is about how the Inquisition in DA:I isn't beholden to the Chantry.  

[In Exile]

Yeah, yeah. You're really sticking it to the man by slashing your wrists. 

 

That always seemed bizzare. Using your own blood seems like a good way to get yourself weakened and killed in the middle of a fight. And draining your few soldiers when you're massively outnumbered also seems like a bad idea. Lore-wise, I don't think you can use the spirit healer spec to turn a character into a walking bloodbank. 

[CannotCompute]

Using blood magic should've been more dangerous. F.e. a 50% chance of becoming an abomination when using blood magic in combat + disapproval and comments uttered by some of the companions.

 

 

Critical Mission Failure - You have become an abomination.

 

Load a Saved game / Exit to Main Menu

[andy6915]

Just curious, do you validate this perspective based on the fact that you used blood magic in DAO and DA2 without consequence?

It wasn't to me but... I have strong issues with blood magic being "evil" too like the other guy you quoted. Both about it apparently driving the user crazy and about it supposedly weaking the veil. Blood magic being used in general weakening the veil sounds like nonsense. That may be the current claim about it, but not once in the games or extended resource materials has that been shown. There was several blood mages in Denerim in DAO, yet that city only has the veil damaged in a single place... The reason for that was a mass murder of elves and children by city guard, no magic to speak of. So in the entire city where blood magic is being used, the only place the veil weakens is a place where magic isn't involved? Please. There are a number of things proven to weaken the veil, lots and lots of death or places where idiots summoned demons to them on purpose like with Avernus in Warden's Keep. But simply casting blood wound weakens the veil? Or merely using it to cast a basic fire spell because you have no mana left to do it weakens the veil? Hogwash. If, if, if does... It must be by about 0.0000001% or something, definitely less then a simple murder weakens it. It is true that blood magic does typically lead to a weakened veil, but only because those same blood magic casters purposely summoned demons using their blood magic for that specific purpose and not because of the spell they cast and what medium they used for power.

OH! And here's another food for thought. Blood magic is WIDELY used with with wild abandon in Tevinter. Yet the veil there has not once been said to be weak. They don't have lots of demons pouring through or frequent veil accidents over there, it sounds pretty stable. Yet blood magic supposedly weakens the veil... So why isn't Tevinter like Kirkwall in that it has a super weak veil that demons can pass through effortlessly? The "veil destroying" blood magic is used over there more than anywhere, yet their veil seems fine.

 

And while I'm on about Tevinter, isn't it weird that the country where it's used far more than anywhere else is a stable society? I mean yes they do have far too much liking of slavery, but their society is currently the longest standing society in DA so far. For a country that uses a crazy-fying magic all the damn time, their society seems pretty dang stable. You'd think it would be more chaotic seeing as every person in their government over there uses blood magic often. But no, their government seems to have a good head on its shoulders despite all their government leaders using blood magic.

 

Oh, and Merrill. She used blood magic ALL THE TIME for 10 years straight, and her personality and sanity stayed the same for that whole time. For a magic that is supposed to mentally screw people up with use, blood magic seems to be pretty safe from everything I've seen.

 

This whole thing about blood magic being evil by default seems like one big retcon that actively contradicts the game's lore. Oh, and I've only done maybe 2 playthroughs as a blood mage in DAO and NEVER in DA2 (I always do force mage and spirit healer in that one)... So don't think I'm a biased blood magic lover.

[Allan Schumacher]

It seems weird to see no blood magic as drawing the line in that regard, considering we've known what the inquisition is and whose authority it operates with for at least a lot of months now, depending on how long you were here. And that's one of the only ways I can really interpret that response, given the context of this thread and the context in which the comment was made, being in a thread about not being able to use blood magic, with a comment directly responding to not being able to use blood magic.

 

If that wasn't the case then I would apologize, but I hope in explaining my confusion I made it a bit clearer as to why I would be confused in the first place.

 

I'm not 100% sure.  It just seemed like it was mentioned as a general "thing I am not looking forward to in DAI but am willing to accept" that wasn't actually related to blood magic at all.  At least in the way that I read it.

 

EDIT: Nope, seems I was mistaken and he does consider this to be evidence of being chantry bound.  /shrug

 

 

This whole thing about blood magic being evil by default seems like one big retcon that actively contradicts the game's lore. Oh, and I've only done maybe 2 playthroughs as a blood mage in DAO and NEVER in DA2 (I always do force mage and spirit healer in that one)... So don't think I'm a biased blood magic lover.

 

I put the question that way not because I was thinking "you like Blood Magic, so obviously you won't have issues with it" and more "Are you basing it on the gameplay of the previous games?"  You seem to sort of being doing this, when you say "simply casting blood wound weakens the veil? Or just casting a fire spell because you have no mana left to do it weakens the veil?"

 

I already had felt that Blood Magic was not at all done particularly well from a gameplay-story integration perspective.  I considered it the most egregious fault in terms of narrative consistency, and to me it more came across as "here's this cool, really powerful thing that we think people will have fun with."

[Treacherous J Slither]

I knew they were gonna shaft us on blood magic. I knew it!

 

They wrote themselves into a corner apparently. I was hoping to finally have an actual blood mage experience. Alas.

 

Only fools think blood magic is evil. It's just a tool. Quentin wasn't a psycho killer because he was a blood mage. He was a psycho killer because he wanted his wife back so badly that it broke his mind and he turned to murder and necromancy in an effort to bring her back. Necromancy is in fact a spirit magic spell (not blood magic) and it isn't evil either. Quentin himself was evil. Not the tools he used.

 

If blood magic was truly corrupting then the Grey Wardens wouldn't allow it's use because every practicioner would become a liability to the group. If magic was truly as dangerous and self destructive as many believe, then every magocracy in Thedas (Rivain, Dalish, Chasind, Tevinter) would have imploded long ago. Yet they do not.

 

The devs can't give the pc blood magic without the game becoming easy mode as a result. The lore supports this. I say that's the whole point! To experience the world of Dragon Age properly the gameplay should reflect the lore. Sadly no DA game to date has done this.

[Uccio]

Well, if you read world of thedas, it's clear the imperium views its history of blood magic users with mixed feelings at best. Yeah, a lot of their mages used blood magic, but they also tended to be crazy slave sacrificing weirdos who were killed by their own subjects and colleagues. A magister from the book even lists off how their student shouldn't admire blood magic and think of it as anything but a dark source of power, listing and abolishing the commonly used in world examples of how a good blood mage can exist. The imperium itself doesn't openly allow blood magic to be preformed anymore, even though they have no reason to thanks to their breaking off from the chantries law and forming their own religion.

 

Blood magic is part of their history and their culture, but its hardly as glamorized or beneficial as you seem to think it is. And I don't see how any of this has to do with "consistency" when the first two games did a good job showing the danger of blood magic and how its a dark and evil source of power. You learn it from a demon at the price of sacrificing a kids soul for crying out loud in DAO, unless you have a high enough persuade to break all speech check decisions in the game, and even then you are still making a pact with a demon to get that power.

 

It is not, nor has it been, a morally grey kind of magic that you can be wishy washy with its morality with, in any of the incarnations, even awakening. And I still don't see what any of this has to do with being anti-chantry and how not being a blood mage makes you a chantry puppet.
 

 

The problem with world of Thedas is that it has been written after Origin codex. Stuffing the new history with evil blood magic references is just obvious "evilfication" of the blood magic branch. As far as Imperium comes the current Imperium is just a shadow of what it was and in the apex of their glory blood magic was not forbidden. The current situation is because andrastian faith and chantry. Even Imperium was able to fight of exalted marches they do not want to rub it in chantrys face so it is not comparable.

 

You also forget that in Origins there is a good mage Jowain who learned blood magic from the Circle books, there was no demons involved. So that could be the case with PC too if it would have been included in the game. Also Jowain in the last quest tries to help and save people as a apostate mage. He is good which also shows that a blood mage can be good.

DA2 infact just flies out of the window in both ways, it also shows (Along with batshit grazy blood mages) that the chantry is full of batshit grazy templars and priests who murder, rape and use rite of trainquil at will without no one interfering.

 

Blood magic is morally gray despite what you think and chantry is not the epitomy of goodness. What I mean of being chantry´s puppet was that it seems player is denied blood magic because Bio wants to railroad us into a faction that is connected to chantry and many of the companions seem to be pro-chantry/circle. For a rpg that is rather lame. I hope I´m wrong though and we get to play blood mage.

[In Exile]

You also forget that in Origins there is a good mage Jowain who learned blood magic from the Circle books, there was no demons involved. So that could be the case with PC too if it would have been included in the game. Also Jowain in the last quest tries to help and save people as a apostate mage. He is good which also shows that a blood mage can be good.

 

Jowan is not a good mage. He's an epic-level idiot. His reason for learning BM is that he's jealous of the Warden. He stumbles from stupid plot to stupid plot, outright lies and betrays his friend and his lover, agrees to poison Arl Eamon because Teyrn Loghain asked nicely... 

He's the worst possible example you can use. If he was within 50 feet of a demon that thing would be ridding his meatsuit like nobody's business. 

[metalfenix]

Blood magic is morally gray despite what you think and chantry is not the epitomy of goodness. What I mean of being chantry´s puppet was that it seems player is denied blood magic because Bio wants to railroad us into a faction that is connected to chantry and many of the companions seem to be pro-chantry/circle. For a rpg that is rather lame. I hope I´m wrong though and we get to play blood mage.

 

I dunno, at first when I saw the title of inquisition, I linked it to a chantry puppet doing their dirty work along thedas...but bioware might do a twist to it, I mean, if WE were a chantry puppet, why bioware gave us the choice to be a qunari, dalish or dwarf inquisitor? they are NOT fond of the chantry.

 

My first character will be a mage tal-vashot that will screw the templars and chantry every chance he gets if bioware allows it on the plot. If we were restricted to be a goody-doodie-chantry-drone, this would be a very one-dimensional game, even worse than DA 2, wich at least had 2 bands well defined.

[andy6915]

I put the question that way not because I was thinking "you like Blood Magic, so obviously you won't have issues with it" and more "Are you basing it on the gameplay of the previous games?"  You seem to sort of being doing this, when you say "simply casting blood wound weakens the veil? Or just casting a fire spell because you have no mana left to do it weakens the veil?"

 

I already had felt that Blood Magic was not at all done particularly well from a gameplay-story integration perspective.  I considered it the most egregious fault in terms of narrative consistency, and to me it more came across as "here's this cool, really powerful thing that we think people will have fun with."

 

about using gameplay as evidence:

 

Not really. Even from a pure lore perspective it doesn't make sense. Like I said, Denerim didn't get a weakened veil from all the blood mages hiding out in that building or from all the stuff that  blood mage slaver was doing during the alienage part during the landsmeet. I don't remember the veil being weakened when Finn used blood magic in Witch Hunt. I don't remember phylacteries weakening the veil, nor the blood magic used in the Warden joining ritual either. I don't remember the veil in Merrill's house weakening from all her blood magic. I don't remember the veil in the Origins circle tower being damaged after the huge blood magic revolt Uldred did.

 

Fact is the only times blood magic weakens the veil is if was meant to on purpose by the user or if they summoned demons with it (and sometimes not even then, Origins circle had plenty of demons show up but the veil in that area stayed strong).

[In Exile]

about using gameplay as evidence:

 

Not really. Even from a pure lore perspective it doesn't make sense. Like I said, Denerim didn't get a weakened veil from all the blood mages hiding out in that building or from all the stuff that  blood mage slaver was doing during the alienage part during the landsmeet. I don't remember the veil being weakened when Finn used blood magic in Witch Hunt. I don't remember phylacteries weakening the veil, nor the blood magic used in the Warden joining ritual either. I don't remember the veil in Merrill's house weakening from all her blood magic. I don't remember the veil in the Origins circle tower being damaged after the huge blood magic revolt Uldred did.

 

Fact is the only times blood magic weakens the veil is if was meant to on purpose by the user or if they summoned demons with it (and sometimes not even then, Origins circle had plenty of demons show up but the veil in that area stayed strong).

 

I wouldn't but any stock in that quest. DA:O got a lot of bloat content because of the delay introduced from harmonizing the PC and console versions, stuff like the Chanters board quests and the blood magic alley quest. 

[andy6915]

I wouldn't but any stock in that quest. DA:O got a lot of bloat content because of the delay introduced from harmonizing the PC and console versions, stuff like the Chanters board quests and the blood magic alley quest. 

 

So "oh just ignore that, it's not canon anyway even though it's in the game and isn't even strictly gamePLAY"? So ignore it because it's convenient and there's an excuse.

 

Still sounds like a retcon.

[Cainhurst Crow]

The problem with world of Thedas is that it has been written after Origin codex. Stuffing the new history with evil blood magic references is just obvious "evilfication" of the blood magic branch. As far as Imperium comes the current Imperium is just a shadow of what it was and in the apex of their glory blood magic was not forbidden. The current situation is because andrastian faith and chantry. Even Imperium was able to fight of exalted marches they do not want to rub it in chantrys face so it is not comparable.

 

You also forget that in Origins there is a good mage Jowain who learned blood magic from the Circle books, there was no demons involved. So that could be the case with PC too if it would have been included in the game. Also Jowain in the last quest tries to help and save people as a apostate mage. He is good which also shows that a blood mage can be good.

DA2 infact just flies out of the window in both ways, it also shows (Along with batshit grazy blood mages) that the chantry is full of batshit grazy templars and priests who murder, rape and use rite of trainquil at will without no one interfering.

 

Blood magic is morally gray despite what you think and chantry is not the epitomy of goodness. What I mean of being chantry´s puppet was that it seems player is denied blood magic because Bio wants to railroad us into a faction that is connected to chantry and many of the companions seem to be pro-chantry/circle. For a rpg that is rather lame. I hope I´m wrong though and we get to play blood mage.

 

The imperium still worships andraste, even if they think shes a mage. They still have templars, which will have less authority in the greater society, still hold authority of the circles. They can still tranquil mages. They can still respond to mage related crimes and put those criminals to the sword. And they still possess the right of annulment. These are all things the black chantry allows them to do, the same chanty which also still acknowledges blood magic as being dangerous and not something worth admiring or praising.

 

Others have told you why jowan isn't an example of a good mage, being that he was willing to take up work as an assassin and has shown multiple times to be highly deceptive and manipulative.

 

What's cuter though is your assumption that I somehow care about the chantry or what it thinks, like some evangelist. You should really get over yourself and your presumptions of others. I looked at all the facts concerning blood magic once in order to argue for its implementation as a class and against having unnecessary stat penalties added onto it. I've done my homework on the subject, and you are simply incorrect in your assumption. You cite companions, who suffer from plot armor of the same sort that keeps most of them from contracting the blight, even when covered in darkspawn blood, as evidence. Meanwhile you advise others to discard canon additions to the lore that have been publicly accepted as fact because they contradict with your own viewpoint.

 

Given all of this, I can say, at least with some confidence, that you wish far too hard to play as a blood mage, and have far too much hate of a fictional religious organization.
 

[In Exile]

So "oh just ignore that, it's not canon anyway even though it's in the game and isn't even strictly gamePLAY"? So ignore it because it's convenient and there's an excuse.

 

Still sounds like a retcon.

 

No, it's a "blood mages in Denerim" were an afterthought and not part of any coherent world-building but pure content filler. You make other compelling points about Tevinter, I'm just saying this one example in DA:O isn't a good one. 

[andy6915]

No, it's a "blood mages in Denerim" were an afterthought and not part of any coherent world-building but pure content filler. You make other compelling points about Tevinter, I'm just saying this one example in DA:O isn't a good one. 

Even disregarding that, the alienage part is a main quest as was the circle tower. Those can't be handwaved nearly as easily as a minor sidequest.

[metalfenix]

By the way, I have a doubt. If bioware have so many problems balancing blood magic...why warriors have the reaver spec? it's similar to blood magic, it is based on draining your own health. And even worse, you are more at risk since you are fighting in the front lines.

 

EDIT: I got the reaver info from this thread

[Cainhurst Crow]

By the way, I have a doubt. If bioware have so many problems balancing blood magic...why warriors have the reaver spec? it's similar to blood magic, it is based on draining your own health. And even worse, you are more at risk since you are fighting in the front lines.

 

Reavers aren't the same as blood mages, just as spirit warriors aren't the same as arcane warriors or templars. There are matters of scale as to what a reaver can do compared to what a blood mage can do, and gameplay wise they use different mechanics, with you getting stronger the weaker you health gets as a reaver, and you taking large chunks of your own and your parties health to cast magic.

 

Beyond that, was the way to convey what it is to use blood magic to the player in a way that actually worked, which I think was a bigger drive here. Players just didn't get what ti meant to be a blood mage, and rather then that happen, again, they decided to remove the problem of playes using their own characters as proof against the lore to present it in a more accurate manner in game, assuming that is the plan.

[In Exile]

Even disregarding that, the alienage part is a main quest as was the circle tower. Those can't be handwaved nearly as easily as a minor sidequest.

You're right about that bit too. All I'm saying is this one subpoint isn't so on point.