Can you please tell me what exactly makes blood spirits so dangerous? I don´t get it. In comparison with other spirits they seem not much more deadly but much more obvious.

Because people use your blood for them.

They can increase their force by 1.5 by absorbing essence. So your F8 Spirit suddenly becomes a F12 spirit.

And source of the essence is the hapless chump attacked by the spirit?

Actually, you need to incapacitate/restrain them, since the actual draining process takes some time. So it's the hapless chumps that were Sns'd and stunballed

And doesn't Blood Magic let you resist more Drain? So the inital Force of the spirit might be higher too.

So the answer is: they're scary because they're above-normal Force. A bit of an anti-climax, really. It could've been something more exotic.

That's a good point, too. Sacrifice some squatters, get your F10/15 Blood spirit. Remember, you need to invoke them, so you basically need to do this.

Hmmm...but with increasing force they also tend to beat the sh**t out of the summoner, aren´t they? But besides the force-addding, they don´t have special powers that make them uber, don´t they?

Yes, there is all that. But I meant they're scary like nuclear power plants are scary: the power they produce is totally normal, safe electricity. But the by-products are an issue. The by-products of blood magic are the issue.

AFAIK, no. Not the summoner, the summoner's sacrifices get 'beat up'. Or maybe his cultists.

Actually, the summoner just needs to sacrifice enough people so he never gets drain. The tricky part is getting enough successes to bind the spirit, but since you're a high-grade initiate anyway, that shouldn't be a problem.

As for the powers: they afaik get compulsion, which is all kinds of awesome, and they can drain essence. Use any of these on a PC, and they're screwed.

Essence Drain really is really scary when you consider the fact that it's permanent loss you're talking. Short of gene therapy.

And a quick death for our common cyber-samurais....hmmm. I need a teacher for blood magic. ^^

"When the invocation is fueled by the sacrifice of a living entity, the essence of the donor is imprinted on the invoked spirit. Blood spirits tend to take the appearance of bloody and savage amalgams of the donor and the bound spirit type (e.g. a blood-soaked Aztec guardian spirit with the face and body of the donor from whom it was created). The violent nature of the sacrifice makes the invoked blood spirit aggressive and difficult to control. It will always turn on its summoner if it becomes free."

In addition, they acquire Evanescence. They lose one point of force per sunrise/set, and have to use their Drain Energy (Essence) to fight the effects. So in addition to looking like that squatter/sararimen/hooker you just murdered, you have to keep it fed on a daily basis. If for some reason it get's lose, it's going to eat your soul FIRST, and then go on a murder spree.

Blood Spirits don't scare me the way Bugs or Toxics do, but they are still pretty frigging terrible. But hey, no drain right?

Is there still the reward for a living blood-magician that Dunkie offered in his last will?

I thought it was for dead blood mages? Or was that toxics?

It was for living Bloods and Toxics. I play that the bounty is still there, and my players have collected on it twice, once for each. The first time with the toxic was when they were pretty much starting out and most of the money went to rebuilding the Shadow Skool after a freak bear-related incident. I just had the skool skim most of it off the top witrhout the players knowing the exact size of the bounty. Later they bagged the blood mage from DOTA: Midnight, even disabling his head bomb. then they got the full rewards, but haad to split it with Frosty and Samriel, as well as the party. It doesn't spread as far as you'd think.

So, in order to discourage the use of blood magic, he wants it to be studied and experimented on metahumans?

would you want to be the guinea pig of a draconic organisation? Especially one headed by Nadja Daviar?

As I understand this (the wording is a bit ambiguous), the purpose is not to study how it (likelly adversely) affects those it is used on, but those it is used by, hence the bounty

Of course, once you have more than one of the latter, you can substitute them into being the former, with no moral issues whatsoever.

Depends. If you are doing it to find out how the blood magic affects the (meta)human over the long term, you need multiple lab rats who are going through similar trials in order to figure out a baseline average. Talk to the right mad scientist, and this could be a definite moral grossness.

Blood mages are evil enough to not cause moral qualms about putting them through thorough testing their schtick upon themselves.

Blood Mages fit into the presented morality of the game, which takes the tone of a anti-establishment, somewhat Anarchist, edgy but still humanist narrative. Blood Mages are like anything else-they're as bad ass of a tool as the GM makes them.

There's also one general thing to keep in mind about blood magic: Becoming a blood mage requires the prospective supervillain to have a powerful backer, since that kind of magic has to be learned from a tutor. Since it's safe to assume that secret, powerful magical groups and free blood spirits don't put up with mediocre, being exceptionally powerful is more or less an entry requirement for blood mages.

part of the reason blood spirits are considered especially dangerous too, is their "personality." A normal spirit, when ordered to defend the summoner from attack may possibly opt to use Fear or some other non-violent (or at least non-lethal) method, depending on the spirit. A blood spirit will generally choose the most horrifically violent and deadly method available. Also, other spirits that break free have a fair chance of just leaving the material plane, perhaps after attacking their summoner a bit or going on a short rampage. Blood spirits that break free basically always seek to become evil supervillains in their own right, the most dangerous kind of villain that has no objective other than carnage/suffering.

Unless the Nuclear Elemental is also a blood spirit, which is possible. Also, Evanescence only is an issue for Materialization spirits - those Possession and Inhabitation spirits don't have nearly the same problem overcoming it.

Don't forget the fact that the spirit also gains a Natural Weapon by default, giving it basically a free optional Power and in some cases access to a Power not on its list to begin with, in addition to making it much more combat-capable.

Natural Weapon combined with Elemental Aura is especially nasty. For most spirits, that's F+4 damage with AP -1/2

Yeah, your right....nasty.

If it's radiation it's F+4 with AP of "You don't get any. Oh, and you have The Walking Dead - 1 to 4 days left to live." Same with Sonic, but without the mass cellular death.