Blood Magic Blocked forevermore because writers don't want their Heros sullied by it

They completely misunderstand the Aqun-Athlok and how they relate to the Qun as a whole.

Yes, that's the part that detractors misunderstand.

As I always understood it, Merrill and Marethari are equally responsible for how things ended. Merrill has a serious pride problem of her own, it just shows itself in an unusual way.

And yet she was right. Every problem that occurred wasn’t because of her, but because people thought she was wrong.

And yet she was right. Every problem that occurred wasn’t because of her, but because people thought she was wrong.

This.

This right here is what I see way too often in my actual gaming groups that I run. People wanting to use things like Necromancy and "Blood Magic" type powers/abilities, not to help the party, but to just further their own power and personal gain. And yes, 95% of those characters I've seen are evil. Not even non-good neutral, just pure, 100%, unabashed, unapologetic evil. One of those players never played past Origins because Blood Magic became "demonized" according to him. So, he just simply ends at Origins.

Do I think it's wrong to remove the option? Yes, because it's still just a game and people like to rp evil characters. But I have witnessed the example listed here far too often in my GM career. I personally don't care for it, but I'm not going to stand here and say no one should be allowed to take it. That's just silly to say things like that.

And as was said above, probably from a mechanics standpoint, they couldn't balance it properly, so it was just easier to eliminate it all together. Lore-wise, they're moving away from "villain-who-does-good-despite-everything" and going towards a more "heroic" style character, since Blood Magic has become so much more powerful in the lore since Origins. They sort of did this already in a way with Mass Effect by getting rid of Paragon/Renegade, but that's just my observation. Other people may see it differently.

And they had a very good reason to think she was wrong. Blood magic has the reputation it does for a reason, and people aren't going to ignore that just because Merrill says that she's different, no matter how many times she acts surprised by this.

I don't really care about blood magic in particular as I never played a blood mage in the games. It seemed not particularly better than any other mage spec and it did not make much sense why my character would be different than every other blood magic example. But the core idea behind it raises concerns for the amount of role playing flexibility that will be allowed in this game and future games.

Now that I think about it, I’m a little mystified as to why the assassin specialization is no longer available for the PC, and yet we can apparently be affiliated with the Antivan Crows, Thedas’ most famed assassins.