I can't finish the game as anyone but a Mage.

So you spoke about the Templars... You can't say, the Templars was/are suitable. We saw it in Orlais, and in Hinterland too, not only the book showed that (and the early games as well). They didn't care anything but their own wounded pride and to hunt people who wanted to be free, and who helped to those people.

The Templar Order isn't suitable to police and protect anyone.

The only solution is to destroy the Order, and to build another anti-magical force with mages and non-mages together, for the effectiveness and the trust. And because there's no "we, and they", the mages are relatives of non-mages. (I'm sure, some Templars are a mage's son/daughter, who became Chantry-orphan and later a Templar – like Alistair). It's perfect? Not. It just the only one what safe and humane enough.

This is far not "medieval settings" – this is mixed.

The Templar Order can't be repaired, and don't have to be. Absolutely failed everything about it, just like with the Southern-Circles. The whole system is crap.

No matter, that you saw young women in worse distress, of course, there are tortured people, lobotomized people, even in the Circle, but Keili is still shocking, and any system that makes people like her. She's just young, she will get over it? Oh, the Circle just strengthened her, isn't? This view is more than cynical. Most of the people be never able to get over such trauma without professional help (not a Chantry Mother or a Templar not even some loyalist mage).
She'll be able to teach children, only if she'll be able to forget this sickness and to fight against that bullshit. I don't think she ever will be able to see her magic as a gift, but without it, she shouldn't teach anyone. In this mental state, she can't teach any responsibility, if she starts to teach children, those children will be more unstable and dangerous, than ever were before anyone started to teach them. She perhaps, able to recuperate, but only if she leaves that poisonous environment – or meets someone, here who're not that damaged like her, and able to be proud of the gift.

About Bethany: she wanted to be normal, not because she thought, her magic is something bad –at least seems she very comfortable with her magic–, he just wants a normal life, family etc, and thinks, she's a burden on her family, and on everyone whom she befriends – a danger... Not because of her magic, but because the Templars, who hunt for her kind, and who lives with her, will be hunted like her. "Other people always took the risks, to keep me free." (Bethany to Anders)

While I was okay with Hawke (ofc needed some imagination to fill the black holes of the story), but absolutely seems, they rushed the game, sadly.

It sure isn't "mixed" enough for Templars to have radio communication, which means they can't respond anywhere near quickly or effectively enough to magical crimes or disasters unless the mages are all gathered in one spot so everyone can be supervised at once. Which was my point.

My point was: with mages (magic) is this is also possible. Don't need to gather them in one place. 

I think, the nobles and the Chantry (Exalted Marches) caused more death like the mages after the first Blight happened. If you think, that's the solution, then gather everyone in one place, because everyone can commit crimes. But who will police them?

That paranoia is fascinating!

What about police arresting terrorists before they crash that plane / bomb that building / drive into that crowd? There's a difference in quality and quantity between something so devastating and, say, some burglar or thug with a broken bottle.

You're still ignoring the scale difference. What happens if a guard fails to make it to a crime scene? A house gets burglarized, a fight gets out of hand and somebody's nose or arm gets broken, or, worst case scenario, one or two people get killed or traumatized. Really unfortunate, but still not realistically the end of the world.

What would happen if a Templar was a few hours late to a magical crime or disaster? Anything could happen. Whole families or towns could be bled to death for magical fuel, turned into thralls and made to defend the perpetrator's innocence or worse. Worst case scenario, the world literally could end thanks to some cockamania ritual performed by nutcases who didn't know what they were dealing with, and it wouldn't even be the first or second time.

Even ignoring the obvious fact that there are many times more town guards than there are Templars, who take far longer and far more resources to train and equip.

I'm not suggesting to lock up potential criminals, I'm suggesting to lock up potential world destroyers. There's a difference. And it's relatively painless, because they're a tiny fraction of a percentage of people everywhere. For the world at large, seeing them go in exchange for not being blown up, turned inside out or conquered by demons is a steal.

Look, I totally understand that locking people up because of something they haven't actually done is and must feel incredibly unfair and horrible, and it would be a one-way-trip to facistland if we started doing it with ordinary people. I completely agree. In this case, however, even if 99% of the individuals would never have hurt anyone, that hundredth guy is simply destructive enough that having him in a cage with a sword at his throat and eyes on his every move is just more important than the rights and freedoms of all the rest combined.


Yes we do. If you haven't noticed, your legal ability to sit in a car and start the engine is the most strictly controlled and administered thing you will ever have. In some places, it's more prohibited than access to firearms is. And abusing it is the surest way to penalty or jail that isn't outright violence. And your car doesn't even have the potential to destroy nations or end civilization, the way magic does! 

Oh, and outlawing cars would completely ground modern society to a halt. Outlawing magic, at the very worst, compromises the workaday Thedasian's access to advanced healthcare. A loss, certainly, and a reason to try to figure out how to do things efficiently to try to make some of that available again. But not worth endangering the world over.

Again, if we put the average number of people killed by a single mage in Thedas up against the number of traffic deaths in history, the former would still come out on top because mages have ended worlds, repeatedly.

The fact that ordinary life isn't entirely safe isn't a reason not to do something about a gun pointed at your head.   That you would suggest such a thing just shows how warped and detached from reality your feelings about this whole issue are, which is the reason I've mostly stopped responding to your comments on the matter.

Yup. Which is exactly why I agree that the pre-Inquisition Templar policies were somewhat overkill and ill-thought-out to the point of being counterproductive, and needed to be carefully revised.

But relinquishing control of mages' movements and activities would exactly be to allow them enough freedom to be able to engineer those unusual circumstances which let them mess with the fabric of reality, and that simply can't be risked. Even ignoring that undisciplined mages are still perfectly capable of causing enormous local disasters through carelessness or malice alone, like Connor at Redcliffe or the Baroness at Blackmarsh.

Nobody is forgetting that destructive mages are the exception. What I keep saying is that those destructive exceptions have historically been destructive enough to make the civil rights of the rest of them meaningless in comparison. Those mages who would never have caused harm are sacrificing their freedom to protect the world from those of them who would, because doing that is the most important thing in the world, bar none.

If there was a way to make them feel better rewarded, more comfortable and appreciated for performing that duty then that would obviously be a good idea.

But let's also not forget that this is a medievalesque world beyond the circle towers. Most children die of disease before adolescence. The average person sleeps on straw, not feathers, and almost nobody has the freedom to do what they want with their lives, especially not women. The people who survive do so by working their asses off all day. Cabbage soup is the finest meal a lot of people taste in their entire lives, and 99% never travel beyond five miles of where they're born.

Daily life in the circles pre-DA2, excepting the lack of fresh air and exercise, is in fact mostly equivalent to that of the upper middle-class, which is better than most of the human population could ever hope for. And, assuming they've earned enough trust as responsible and disciplined individuals, they do have the potential of traveling outside the towers and serving the nobility. 

It's not ideal, and I can definitely understand young mages going stir-crazy with excess energy, needing to rebel against the system. Especially the guys. But it is also most certainly not Auschwitz.