QUOTE (Hound @ Oct 5 2010, 08:42 PM)
was too lazy to read the whole thread, so I apologize if this has been mentioned before.
While all magicians have the potential to do great harm, and many magic traditions may be seen to encourage things that society finds repulsive (i.e. raising the dead) the rules say that all Blood magicians are certifiably insane. If you have a completely insane and sufficiently powerful voodoo/black magic magician you can bet he'll have a bounty on his head too.
Some quotes from street magic: pg 138, Playing the Twisted sidebar "While many shadowrunners might qualify as borderline sociopaths and psychotics, roleplaying a truly demented individual with Awakened power at his fingertips... "
pg 137, under Twisted Agendas "Given the madness that characterizes twisted magicians, (twisted seeming to include blood magic, toxic magic, and some others) the twisted paths are not normally available to player characters."
See you seem to be assuming that it is something about the things that blood magic lets you do that makes them put a bounty out. But in fact, I believe, it's more about the fact that all blood magicians (and toxic magicians) are completely insane and basically always a huge danger to the public.
As for that guy who mentioned a blood mage paramedic and a radiation mage nuclear physicist, I don't think that's possible based on the book saying that they'd be nuts. Or at least, if they were doing those jobs, they would be doing them in an evil way (i.e. paramedic secretly killing all of their patients, physicist allowing significant amounts of radiation to leak out and/or plotting a meltdown.)
QUOTE (Dumori @ Oct 5 2010, 08:46 PM)
You don't have to be nut's to be a bloodmage just use blood magic. These metamagics and tradtions have effects on metahumans other life and the astral. Thats cannon the DF is after them for research and likely to put a hole in Aztechs plans to bring around the horrors faster. Seeing as IIRC the list they publish is almost exculively bloodmages linked to Azetech.
He might be on to something there actually. Our Western technology-oriented perspective is to separate abilities from personality. Just because the doctor
can create a frankenstein doesn't mean he's evil. But magic isn't as impersonal as technology, and perhaps you just can't get some powers without being a bad kind of person.