230 réponses à ce sujet

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Forgive me, but learning a school of magic does harm to no one, and I see no reason to accept such disproportionate retribution.

 

Um, really??

 

First off, BM is illegal (even in Turdvinter), so you would not really have a right to self-defense. Even if you did, as an abomination (a fate you'd accept to avoid death) you would become a mindless killing-machine, so you would willfully be accepting the risk of massacring uninvolved innocents. Your survival would accomplish nothing either, because you would not really be you anymore, just the vessel of a demon. At least if you limited yourself to killing those trying to apprehend you then it would be self-defense (which, again, you are not really entitled to once practicing BM).

 

Are you, like, trying to parody the zealously pro-mage camp to secretly make Templars look more right?

[Xilizhra]

Um, really??

 

First off, BM is illegal (even in Turdvinter), so you would not really have a right to self-defense. Even if you did, as an abomination (a fate you'd accept to avoid death) you would become a mindless killing-machine, so you would willfully be accepting the risk of massacring uninvolved innocents. Your survival would accomplish nothing either, because you would not really be you anymore, just the vessel of a demon. At least if you limited yourself to killing those trying to apprehend you then it would be self-defense (which, again, you are not really entitled to once practicing BM).

 

Are you, like, trying to parody the zealously pro-mage camp to secretly make Templars look more right?

That was just one possibility. The other was to commit suicide. Which would still accomplish the goal of removing the Anchor from the Inquisition.

[Lady Artifice]

Dorian detests blood magic. 

 

It would be a huge rewrite. 

 

Edit: If blood magic becomes available to the Inquisitor, it should be something they do secretly, and in addition to their normal specialization. 

[Digger1967]

This ignores the strategic implications of the Inquisitor becoming a blood mage. Word gets out, and the Chantry can pound you into the ground with propaganda. The nations of the south would turn their backs on you. Few will volunteer to join an organization led by a blood mage.

Considering the high profile position of the Inquisitor, blood magic just doesn't work for them.

 

Plus, it's icky.

[TEWR]

This ignores the strategic implications of the Inquisitor becoming a blood mage. Word gets out, and the Chantry can pound you into the ground with propaganda. The nations of the south would turn their backs on you. Few will volunteer to join an organization led by a blood mage.

Considering the high profile position of the Inquisitor, blood magic just doesn't work for them.

 

Having a BM Inquisitor have to deal with the ramifications of such a school would've been great for my perception of DAI as a whole. 

 

 

 

Dorian is the blood mage companion, for obvious reasons.

 

Because he's from Tevinter? Despite the fact his father taught him blood magic was the tool of the weak, that he looked up to Alexius for sharing similar thoughts on the matter? That he doesn't want to be associated with the negative perceptions Tevinter is known for in the South?

 

Dorian can't be the blood mage. Simply because of where he hails from is not sufficient grounds.

 

Solas could be the BM, if Bioware hadn't decided to go all "LOL blood magic makes it harder to enter the Fade!" -- that came out of nowhere, when it was lore that BM wasn't even really tied to the Fade in the first place, other then the fact that blood = thin Veil. 

 

If anything, Blood Magic would make it easier to enter the Fade, since you're naturally weakening the barrier between worlds.

 

But Solas would be the better choice because he has no moral opposition to Blood magic.

 

Better yet, have Merrill be an agent for the Inquisition. We need more Merrill.

[Sir JK]

Leaving the discussion of the reactions of the inner circle aside, I think that while it does not fit inquisition very well (you could certainly make it fit if you wanted to, but you'd have to do a fair bit of rewriting) blood magic has fantastic narrative potential. I'd love to see a game (or even a DLC) that makes blood magic itself, the use of it, part of the primary plot.

 

Now, to clarify... we've seen it plenty yes. Used for good, bad and debatable ends. But we've never been in the position of narratively using it ourselves. Merrill and Jowan is the closest we've got, and in the former case it wasn't the blood magic itself that was the primary focus. The death of Isolde is the only time we've ever really have had to deal with the fact that blood magic is, at it's very core, about sacrefice.

 

I feel this is terribly underused. In order to do Blood magic proper, we need to have a plot about sacrefice. Where the player gets to experience it. It could be a companion quest, it could be the protagonist themselves. As long as we're allowed to see up close that something precious was sacreficed, someone close to us got hurt due to the spell. Allow us to debate with ourselves whether the situation warranted the price paid. Allowing us to experience why blood magic is seen as such a terrible thing (or choose not to pay the price and reap the consequences of that).

 

Blood magic has too much narrative potential not to do this. It's not just another form of magic after all, it's the magic of sacrefice and the desperate. One that deserves a dark plot with a morally ambigous end on it's own.

[KaiserShep]

If one wants the PC to be a maleficar, it's only fair that the character go through the entire gamut of consequences as befitting the setting. Trouble is, this is a massive waste of time and effort to create an off-the-rails plotline for a single specialization. How much longer or shorter should the story be as a result? Which characters should leave or be killed? Which allies should stick around? Without making everyone into a passive, slack-jawed follower of the power fantasy puppet theater, severe consequences should exist in this particular backdrop, otherwise it's just a silly add-on, like it was for DA2 and especially Origins, where you could even turn the most anti-blood magic mage into one with nary a bit of dialogue about it.

 

This isn't to say that I'm against having blood magic as a spec in general in the series, but it's a special case that has the potential to stop a story dead in its tracks, provided the writers actually care to acknowledge its impact in the game, thus should not always be available, unless they're willing to create a totally different branch in the story because of it, or simply go back to the old way of having no one care for no reason, which, to me, is worlds worse than simply excluding it altogether.

[Uccio]

Less empty gigantic fetch quest maps, more character related material. Problem solved.

[Xilizhra]

Because he's from Tevinter? Despite the fact his father taught him blood magic was the tool of the weak, that he looked up to Alexius for sharing similar thoughts on the matter? That he doesn't want to be associated with the negative perceptions Tevinter is known for in the South?

 

Dorian can't be the blood mage. Simply because of where he hails from is not sufficient grounds.

 

Solas could be the BM, if Bioware hadn't decided to go all "LOL blood magic makes it harder to enter the Fade!" -- that came out of nowhere, when it was lore that BM wasn't even really tied to the Fade in the first place, other then the fact that blood = thin Veil. 

 

If anything, Blood Magic would make it easier to enter the Fade, since you're naturally weakening the barrier between worlds.

 

But Solas would be the better choice because he has no moral opposition to Blood magic.

 

Better yet, have Merrill be an agent for the Inquisition. We need more Merrill.

"Blood magic is the tool of the weak" doesn't make any more sense than "all blood mages are evil." In both cases, the speaker misinterprets the reliance on something for its use. All one needs is to redirect Dorian a bit so his disdain is directed only at the harmful forms of it; indeed, that would make his character even more interesting.

 

 

Leaving the discussion of the reactions of the inner circle aside, I think that while it does not fit inquisition very well (you could certainly make it fit if you wanted to, but you'd have to do a fair bit of rewriting) blood magic has fantastic narrative potential. I'd love to see a game (or even a DLC) that makes blood magic itself, the use of it, part of the primary plot.

 

Now, to clarify... we've seen it plenty yes. Used for good, bad and debatable ends. But we've never been in the position of narratively using it ourselves. Merrill and Jowan is the closest we've got, and in the former case it wasn't the blood magic itself that was the primary focus. The death of Isolde is the only time we've ever really have had to deal with the fact that blood magic is, at it's very core, about sacrefice.

 

I feel this is terribly underused. In order to do Blood magic proper, we need to have a plot about sacrefice. Where the player gets to experience it. It could be a companion quest, it could be the protagonist themselves. As long as we're allowed to see up close that something precious was sacreficed, someone close to us got hurt due to the spell. Allow us to debate with ourselves whether the situation warranted the price paid. Allowing us to experience why blood magic is seen as such a terrible thing (or choose not to pay the price and reap the consequences of that).

 

Blood magic has too much narrative potential not to do this. It's not just another form of magic after all, it's the magic of sacrefice and the desperate. One that deserves a dark plot with a morally ambigous end on it's own.

But... that's simply not true. Merrill, for instance, never had her blood magic itself be the focus of any kind of sacrifice; it was in the reactions of others around her to it that created all of the problems (and, more on Merrill's end, the reconstruction of the Eluvian, something that did not require blood magic beyond the cleansing of the initial shard, which was the least problematic part). One can very easily use blood magic only for sustainable self-sacrifice. I personally think that moral dilemmas of mind control are more fertile grounds for storytelling.

 

 

If one wants the PC to be a maleficar, it's only fair that the character go through the entire gamut of consequences as befitting the setting. Trouble is, this is a massive waste of time and effort to create an off-the-rails plotline for a single specialization. How much longer or shorter should the story be as a result? Which characters should leave or be killed? Which allies should stick around? Without making everyone into a passive, slack-jawed follower of the power fantasy puppet theater, severe consequences should exist in this particular backdrop, otherwise it's just a silly add-on, like it was for DA2 and especially Origins, where you could even turn the most anti-blood magic mage into one with nary a bit of dialogue about it.

 

This isn't to say that I'm against having blood magic as a spec in general in the series, but it's a special case that has the potential to stop a story dead in its tracks, provided the writers actually care to acknowledge its impact in the game, thus should not always be available, unless they're willing to create a totally different branch in the story because of it, or simply go back to the old way of having no one care for no reason, which, to me, is worlds worse than simply excluding it altogether.

It's not "no reason." My method does have plenty of people care, they just don't destroy the Inquisitor and Inquisition for it. That seems perfectly acceptable to me.

[Killdren88]

Would it trigger Cullen's PTSD? Because if so I'll welcome Blood Magic. Even more so if I can use Cullen as sacrifice.

[Steelcan]

Would it trigger Cullen's PTSD? Because if so I'll welcome Blood Magic. Even more so if I can use Cullen as sacrifice.

…..........

[Steelcan]

Anyways, I think we can all see that implementing blood magic well would be too much effort for just one specialization

[Xilizhra]

Anyways, I think we can all see that implementing blood magic well would be too much effort for just one specialization

Speak for yourself.

[Steelcan]

Speak for yourself.

ok, besides those who clearly want to go to illogical extremes in order to shoehorn in a specialization for their own reasons, despite it not fitting with the over all plot of the story.

[MyKingdomCold]

I don't think BM would work in this game. 

 

And Solas couldn't be the blood mage either.  If you play as a Dalish mage you can say something like "Blood magic seems interesting".  Then Solas will say that he would teach you if he knew it but he doesn't.  Apparently, blood magic "cuts off" his fade dreaming or whatever you call it.

[Killdren88]

…..........

...What?

[lil yonce]

I like this, Xil. Necromancy is a waste of a specialization and I don't see why your layout for a Blood Magic spec. wouldn't work. I don't see anything extreme about it. Supporting or not supporting a blood mage spec. in Inquisition is in the end just a matter of taste and I definitely think Bioware got it wrong.

[Sir JK]

But... that's simply not true. Merrill, for instance, never had her blood magic itself be the focus of any kind of sacrifice; it was in the reactions of others around her to it that created all of the problems (and, more on Merrill's end, the reconstruction of the Eluvian, something that did not require blood magic beyond the cleansing of the initial shard, which was the least problematic part). One can very easily use blood magic only for sustainable self-sacrifice. I personally think that moral dilemmas of mind control are more fertile grounds for storytelling.

 

Oh indeed, Xil. Merrill's story was not about sacrefice. In fact, her story would have worked out just fine the way it did even if she hadn't been a blood mage at all.

 

This was sort of my point. I feel that the sacrefice part of blood magic is woefully underused narratively. The sustainable self-sacrefice you mention? I want to see that pushed to it's limit. Can you, through hell and high water, keep it sustainable? Can you stay away from the temptation even when you've bled yourself to the edge of death? And what happens if you think you can keep it sustainable and end up killing someone by accident?

 

Can blood magic be sustainable? I want to experience a story that asks me that question. I want to explore it.

 

And i agree... the moral implications of mind control are also terribly interesting.

 

EDIT: I'm starting to feel that a dragon age game put in Tevinter would be the perfect place to explore these kinds of questions. It wouldn't be very out of place for a blood magic plot there.

[Uccio]

ok, besides those who clearly want to go to illogical extremes in order to shoehorn in a specialization for their own reasons, despite it not fitting with the over all plot of the story.

 

It doesn´t fit because the pc is shoehorned to be a religious goody two shoes loving the chantry and Orlais, which leaves no room for roleplaying.

[Lady Artifice]

...What?

In the Cullen as adviser thread, you claimed that you only brought up your intense hatred for him because the thread is about him.

Now, here you are coming off as fixated beyond reason. Again. In a thread not about him.

[AresKeith]

In the Cullen as adviser thread, you claimed that you only brought up your intense hatred for him because the thread is about him.

Now, here you are coming off as fixated beyond reason. Again. In a thread not about him.

 

Sometimes I worry about certain posters on here

[X Equestris]

It doesn´t fit because the pc is shoehorned to be a religious goody two shoes loving the chantry and Orlais, which leaves no room for roleplaying.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. You can express a great deal of distaste for the Chantry, and you don't have to like Orlais.

[AresKeith]

It doesn´t fit because the pc is shoehorned to be a religious goody two shoes loving the chantry and Orlais, which leaves no room for roleplaying.

 

....... What game was you playing?

[Killdren88]

In the Cullen as adviser thread, you claimed that you only brought up your intense hatred for him because the thread is about him.

Now, here you are coming off as fixated beyond reason. Again. In a thread not about him.

 

You are correct in that regard. But that minor quip was a joke nothing more. A joke in which I attached to my support of Blood Magic in Inquisition as I do find the play style enjoyable of blood mages enjoyable. I made no paragraph long post on my complaints about the character itself. Just like anyone else can make a joke connecting something to another topic as it relates to a character in some way or another.

[HiroVoid]

If anything, it's good we're steering away from the whole gameplay/story segregation in DA2 where you could openly be a mage with nobody noticing.