Ok, so as last topic of mine said, I'm new to shadowrun and I have (yet another) question. How dangerous are blood mages? I've done some preliminary research into blood mages but have not really yielded any pertaining information as to how dangerous they are. In my game we came across a blood mage (i missed the session where he was introduced was there for the second session) and he basically wrecked everything with black fireballs... how difficult would it be to capture him alive? I understand that if characters (or others) turn a live blood mage into the Draco Corporation, they will get on million nuyen and I'm thinking this could be permanent financing for the campaign... Also, since they are worth so much, they must be utterly difficult to capture. Any idea what they are capable of??

I understand that the GM has full digression over their actual powers but I'm hoping for some further information on them... I only have access to the Sourcebook and Arsenal...

All a blood mage is is a normal Awakened person ([Mystic] Adept/Magician) with anything blood-related - IE: Blood Fetishes (page 14, Digital Grimoire), Blood Metamagics (pages 139-141, Street Magic), or summoning free blood spirits (Calling, pages 174-175, Running Wild; pages 106-110, Street Magic; and also detailed on my threads here and here).

The mages are only as dangerous as they are easy to be hit with Slab.

Also, the bounty is only for those mages on a "Most Wanted" list.

What does that mean then? What makes a person "Most Wanted?" Highly proficient in blood magic or what? Also (i hate doing this for fear of being someone breaking the rules, i swear it's out of curiosity...) What would a blood magician look like statwise if you as a GM would make it? I honestly don't know the magic system in this game as I made my character in haste (less than a day before first session) and didn't read that section fully. I'm wondering what makes them so dangerous. *sigh* i hate being such a noob...

Don't worry about your "noobness" - experience comes just after you needed it, after all.

The thing that puts blood mages on the Most Wanted list is them being identified positively as a Blood Mage by the Foundation. This was meant to prevent "Witch-Hunt"-styled attacks on basically any Awakened that acts oddly, or against any person just to try and make a quick mil.

Read over my Free Spirit/Ally Spirit thread and think about what you can do with the rules and suggestions I present there. Anything you come up with will fit your campaign much better than something I stat up.

That aside, Infected make natural Blood Mages. Ghoul Adepts could easily stumble on the Cannibalize Metamagic, and Vampires, Nosferatu, Wendigo, and a few others make good Blood Magician/Mystic Adepts.

One Blood Mage I used for my campaign was a Troll Western Drake Adept that used Cannibalize and Power Bleed to take Immunity (Toxins) from a Devil Rat and Regeneration from a Vampire, in addition to maxing out all his physical stats. He also had an Infusion Focus and changed his Elemental Attack to Blast.

I played him poorly so he only lasted 1 Combat Turn. If you decide to do something similar, I suggest using a Feathered Drake Elf and trying to stay at range with his Elemental Attack instead of trying to go melee like I did. Keep the Elemental Attack (Blast) though.

Ask me if you want me to actually scrounge around for his stats or make a new guy's stats. I have one set of 400 BP stats for a Nosferatu waiting in the rafters, but I'm certain that one would TPK a group if used anything remotely resembling "right."

According to fluff and a handful of canon-statted examples, blood mages are very, very dangerous.

Yah.

First off they're mages. Secondly, they're smart and resourceful enough to not be killed on sight.

Essentially Blood mages are so dangerous b/c They found a working solution to the primary inhibitor of magical badassary (Drain). The only thing that stops a mages from doing the truly impossible is they want to survive doing it. The more impossible the more power it takes the more dangerous the drain is. There are other factors involved. But thats the general concept. Why is this bad you ask? Good question, the means to overcome this problem is by shifting this drain to other people in the form of shedding the other person's blood. Think Virgin Sacrifice. This make them feared, dangerous, ruthless and powerful all good reasons to hunt them down and collect mad bounties.

To clarify, this character is not for me, I have no ambitions to play a blood mage but am merely trying to see what I'm up against. The GM already said that it was interesting to see the Blood Mage in question (an NPC) as a possible Dunkelzahn's Will collection when I asked him. I'm merely trying to metagame the knowledge of what blood mages are so I can know what to search for in character (I'm 1/2 sniper, 1/2 hacker)...

Ah part hacker and you decided to use your data search skills by asking around on dumpshock. You aren't metagaming, you are role playing.

I feel less bad as a result of this post . Seriously though, I fell into being hacker after nobody else took it and i had BP left to spend... I seriously didn't want to mess with the matrix and wanted to be pure sniper... now it's more of my specialty... :-/

This is the simple reason why even a "poorly" built blood mage can be a pest. For example: Summoning high-force spirits can be really dangerous. Binding them even more so. If you can just avoid the drain, all you really need are enough dice to get some services.

For combat spells... well, it's mostly a waste, unless you want to go with those REALLY high drain elemental area spells. But seriously, an invisible stun-bolter is always more dangerous, really. Especially since he doesn't have to lug a collection of slaves around with him to power his magic. Which puts blood magic mostly the realm of conjuring and ritual magic in my book. However, if you walk into an Aztlan stronghold and meet the final "boss" in his tricked out lair, then he might just shoot force 12 fireballs at you, because he could be standing in rivers of blood.

Metagaming and powergaming in Shadowrun isn't quite the same as in D&D. Because the setting of Shadowrun is a high-tech society, characters in that society may be used to searching for information in a sensible and modern way (i.e. use google to look things up if they seem relevant) and have a modern rational/scientific approach towards gear selection. So choosing good weapons isn't powergaming; it's playing a smart tech-savvy character.
Particularly hackers should be doing this; part of hacker attitude is curiosity and a "use knowledge to beat them" approach.

(And before people misunderstand me: no, not everything goes, but using technology cleverly is okay in my book.)

One thing most people didn't mentioned but I think it is worth telling. As far as the "shadows" know, Aztlan/Aztechnology deals HEAVILY with blood magic. Not every Aztlaner magician will use Blood Magic, but every high-echellon magician of the government/corporation will.

So even if you could capture a blood mage from Aztlan, you'd effectively be capturing a high ranking individual from their government for which they'd come after you with their entire security forces correct?

"Like my grandfather used to say: you can't make omelets without making someone permanently deaf".

I just pointed where is the best place to find Blood Magicians, I didn't say it should be easy, did I?

Since blood magic needs to be learned from an appropriate initiatory group or spirit tutor, it's safe to assume that a blood mage has some powerful friends. Of course given the ruthlessness and power lust of blood mages, these "friends" might actually be pleased if one of them gets captured and it helps their own agenda...

I just noticed a very nifty thing about blood magic is that while you can't heal drain damage magically, you should be able to heal self-mutilation for drain reduction. So while it doesn't SEEM to make sense to cut yourself to throw fireballs, it does make sense on the slightly longer run, if you survive .

Somehow I don't find this comforting.

Follow that logic through the above mentioned Nosferatu Blood Mage.

Regeneration and self-mutilation = powerful mojo with limited drain.

This could also be used in another way. Find something with as many health levels as possible with regeneration and suddenly you have an nearly endless magic supply. In the end to fix that the rules would have to be changed so that damaged dealt to alleviate drain cannot be magically healed. But I think its more likely to just accept that Blood mages are Bad, and that fighting them you just have to expect them to do stuff like this.

If you can get your hands on it, the old Atzlan book is a trove of info on blood mages.

Yeah its a great book.

That's pretty nasty, true.

However, the idea of a guy who casts spells and then knifes himself nearly to death, and then knifes himself again to heal himself is just hilarious. It would almost make sense to play such a character - that would be like the ultimate masochist.

And I disagree that you should house-rule that option away. I was even disappointed with the errata, that you couldn't normally heal drain damage. Actions per round is the key, and if you need to waste yours to heal yourself, you're not going to do other things with them.

I've actually found a much more effective way of reducing drain than that. A few, actually.

The most logically acceptable one is for a(ny) mage to take Shielding and Absorption and then hit himself with a Touch-ranged Combat Spell. He then Absorbs the spell to reduce the Drain on his next spell.

The next option I found was actually an interesting use for something that is still hotly debated on these here forums, so I'll only talk about it if you guys really want to know. And it has to do with the other classification of Awakened that have bounties on them from the Draco Foundation (I think it's them... or the other Dunkie-built magical research group).

Well that certainly works, and could be very useful for a spell duel. The only downside being the magic Attribute limit. I'd be happy to take gander at it, if you don't want to start a debate on the board you can just drop a link to the thread.

There is a way around that, you have a spirit throw the spell at you.

Even if using stun bolts, a blood mage is much more dangerous as he can shoot more of them and at max force as he doesn't have to worry about drain.

WUT? Stunbolts are easily cast at Force 11, how much more do you need? You still can't cast more simultaneously, or else the dice pools will get really low. That's the whole point why Stunbolt is so broken.

I can make a starting combat mage build that can cast 6 stunbolts with 11 dice each, but she cant handle the drain of 11P per spell if cast at force 12.
A blood mage can, hell he could even go with stunballs instead.

Broken? When it would stun drones as well....yes, then it would be broken.^^

To be fair to be a blood mage you have to have initiated at least once, So it really not fair to compare a starting to what must be at least a slightly advanced NPC.

Face it: it's an arbitrary choice. It's not some rational person sitting in a room thinking "this much is too atrocious, too powerful, let's draw a line". It's a line from a Dragon's will; it doesn't have to make sense to us mortals.

From another perspective: although system-wise blood magic is only marginally more scary than ordinary magic, fluff-wise it's always been portrayed as absolutely terrible, and that's how the Will is treating it.

Mind elaborating on how you get that many casting dice?

(I'm thinking, what you could be doing is only splitting up Magic + Spellcasting, because it says so, but adding stuff from other sources to every roll, essentially not splitting up your bonus dice. Is that the way to go?)

@ pbangarth - I can't believe I missed that line. Hrm..

@ Mäx - You're giving up Drain for actual physical damage, so instead of having possible Drain, you have guarenteed physical damage. Even with Regeneration you're taking, in my opinion, a possibly unneccessary risk. Remember, you're also giving yourself wound penalties, and you very well might have to deal with Drain in addition to your physical damage. It'll take you a little longer than normal to get to full health as your Regeneration repairs your Stun and then moves to your Physical (or vice versa).

And from yet another perspective: Because blood magic is portrayed as the great powerful evil, one can be almost sure the GM will handle any blood mages he throws at you accordingly.

I disagree, but that is neither here nor there.

I'd like to see a group of Nosferatu spellcasters that use Sacrifice and Great Ritual. They could get a ridiculously scary yeild out of that.

Ordo Maximus?

I quess thats why Drako Foundation is collecting the biggest army of blood mages in the planet, after all the reward is only for bringing in live blood mages from a list provided by the Foundation.

Why on earth would i be doing that to myself, when i can just as well use other peoples lifeforce to power my magic.

Magic 6 + Spellcasting 6 = 12/6 = 2 + spec(2) + mentorbonus(2) + spellcasting foci 5 = 11 dice per spell.

You do it to yourself so you don't have to lug around a gang of slaves on a chain. OR to get your GM to let you play that character, because it's the ONLY bloodmage that is remotely player possible.

And I feel dumb for forgetting foci. Duh.

That wasn't actually about me wanting to play one, i was just pointing out why a blood mage can be a whole lot more dangerous than non blood mage.

I had my team chase down a fairly low level blood mage for a bounty a while back.


Started with a sudden surge in ghoul activity near a abandoned chruch in the barrens and a call from the drake in the groups DF contact telling him you will be looking into this one (sucks to have a high end contact when HE wants something). The group is at first very happy about the bounty (I think I did 250k if dead more if alive) then they realised this wasnt one guy on his own for them to burst in on. His operation consisted of having ghouls kidnap awakened people and being (a couple of shifters) and take them back to his ritual site below the church. Ritual magic and stealing of powers makes for a very messy background count.


So my team find the place and after a running battle with a few more feral ghouls in the back allys they make it to the church. Unfortunatly for them the back ground count turns them from confident and cocky into scared and nervous as the mage is suddenly having trouble breathing in the atmosphere, the drake has slowed down and cant react as fast and the bear shifter is having trouble as some of his sense have dulled abit.

Thankfully the sam is relying on good old ware and isnt worried about anything apart from being bitten (we house rulled the infection to bites as contact is just silly) as the sam is a elf and very vulnarable (unlike the drake and shifter who are a tad cocky about the whole infection thing).

They get down into the basement and find a full on ritual going on with ghouls in suplication infront of a alter with the bloodmage (mystic adept) getting ready to get himself a nice boost of power from the obliglitory elf women on the altar.

The fight wasnt a bad one considering how I pulled the rug out from under them with the background count with the sam going all Sarah Conner on the ghouls with a auto shotgun the shifter flanking the mage and the drake going in for the mage armed with a very nice weapon focus.

End result they get out alive (but wounded), the mage in retaliation for messing with his magic torches the church after the bear shifter has cut the head off each ghoul for their bounty and the whole team have a greater appriciation for how powerful magic can be when its aimed at you.

The bloodmage was walking around at a level four initiate with combat sense and mystic armour on top of a stolen regeneration so was pretty hard to actually hurt.


What they dont know is at some point I will be returning to the story when looking at who taught the guy.


Blood mages are very cool as a big bad

Using Blood Magic to "milk" another, restrained mage for power would make for a pretty scary kind of advanced metamagic. Not just powerful, but something to make PC mages really nervous..