I picked that one and I'm stomping things to death with boots of stomping +4. I could have built a far stronger version of the character too; I made a lot of mistakes with point allocation and spell choices.

The ability which places a high drain on your mana and boosts your combat rating is a toggle off/on jobby so you can stand back with your staff and fling spells until matters require you to get closer, then turn it on and swap your weapon set to your sword (or whatever). Until you turn that ability on the only difference compared to a standard mage is your ability to equip heavy weapons and armour thanks to subbing your magic stat for strength.

The final ability in the skill tree is a bit good too. Boosted mana rengen plus better chance to dodge attacks! The tier 3 spell is a high powered defensive model that will keep you alive through nearly anything - for a short time, as it burns through mana like there's no tomorrow. Perfect for those battles where things go badly wrong and you need to scramble ASAP for anything that might keep you alive long enough to pull things back.

Note: You don't want to load up in heavy armour if you go this route. The heavier your armour the more enemy attention your character gets. High level weapons, that's another matter. I use the best quality light leather armour and a high end long sword. When it comes to close combat I can kill faster with a blade than Alistair or Sten, and toss in close range flame and lightning bursts as and when they recharge. However I reckon I spend 75% of my time at a range playing traditional mage.

I picked up healer as my second specialisation. Meh. Powerful healing spells and resurrection. If you use Wynne it's useless, if not then it's a lot more valuable.

Be wary of blood mages. From the way the world treats them I expect choosing that option will put you in for a lot of pain. It's hard to see good party members sticking with you for a start.

Better yet, save before you buy the tome and then reload. That way you get the specialisation and keep the gold. Same applies for places where you need to make a decision you don't want in order to get it as a reward; save, make the choice and wait for the pop up box, reload.

I'm only missing two warrior specialisations now. I got all of the mage ones a while ago, and picked up the final rouge one last night.

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I was going to test that, but I wasn't sure if you had to have it saved somewhere to be able to do it.

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Nope. I found it out the hard way. :mutters about the lack of autosave when you leave the camp to travel to a new area:

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I picked it for my first specialization as a mage, and I've not run into anything nearing a serious complication yet. Now that its later, I've combined it with a healing spec, and the two work very nicely together. Blood magic really is meant for control- neutralizing a large group of people into nothing, switching allegiances, and generally allowing for your party to beat on one person at a time, while still inflicting damage during the control process.

Plus, there's little that is more humorous than sending the ogre leading a group of enemies crashing into his own frontlines.

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That's disappointing. Considering the number of quests to hunt blood mages down, and the world's hatred for them, I'd expected it to be a flavoured option.

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Indeed, I'll check it out.


Well, there's one issue, as far as I know, and its to do with how you get access to blood magic.

It does seem very odd, however, that nobody seems to notice me actually use it all the times I have.

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