However, while reading Heroes of Horror today, I found a way to actually reconcile the differences. Enter the Tainted Scholar, a PRC that has a large chunk of the abilities Blood Magi get (Blood Component, Stanch, Death Knell, Bloodseeking, Thicker than Water), but gains them through collecting forbidden knowledge and practicing dark, evil magic. The lore of the Tainted Scholar compares much closer with BG's custom lore than pnp Blood Magus, with BGTSCC's lore simply filling in the blanks of where the forbidden knowledge comes from. This, then, opens the way for both types of Blood Magus: Those rare few who gain it through natural talents, and those who discovered similar abilities through dark practices. While most "Blood Magi" that are encountered are evil Tainted Scholars, there are those few true Blood Magi who are not evil and never asked for their abilities, who face unjust persecution for their similarities with Tainted Scholars.
Sources below:
BGTSCC Blood Magus
PnP Blood Magus (Tome and Blood and Complete Arcane)
Hidden: show
Tome and Blood Description
"One slow red river flows through us all."
Fade to red, then nothing. What happened? Where are you? No sound, no light, nothing. You can’t see or hear, or even feel your own body. The awful truth of your plight steals over you... you’re dead! An eternity passes, then you feel a call from beyond this nothingness. Something beckons, and you are drawn up out of the endless gray, happy to leave your final fate undecided. A swirl of color streaks toward you, enveloping, bathing you. You have come back! A sound breaks into your ears, the sweetest sound you will ever hear. It is the renewed pulse of blood through your veins—blood music: the sound of your life. You can feel it reenergizing every particle of your form, flushing death from you and leaving life in its place. It is thick and warm, and you greedily embrace it.
Blood magi are formerly deceased spellcasters who, when returned to life, gain an understanding of their blood’s importance, bequeathed by their close call. They learn to evoke magic from this vital fluid that sustains their lives. A blood magus cannot be trained, owing to the unusual nature of his enlightenment, and is most likely to be a sorcerer. NPC blood magi are thus rarely if ever found in groups but are thinly scattered through-out the population of spellcasters.
Complete Arcane Description
Death is the ultimate risk that spellcasters, like all adventurers, must contend with. Some are cut down before they have a chance at true glory; others find true peace only in the afterlife; and others are brought back from death by companions with the powerful magical resources to perform such a miracle. For a rare few such arcanists, this trip to the great beyond and back brings a new enlightenment—a comprehension of the body and its individual parts that transcends the understanding of those who have not experienced death and returned to tell the tale.
These newly raised spellcasters say that the first sound they hear upon returning to life is the pulse of life-giving blood in their veins. To these fortunate few, this flow of blood through their veins is sweet music: the sound of life. They can feel it reenergizing every particle of their form, flushing death away and leaving life in its place. It is thick and warm, and they greedily embrace it. Such arcane spellcasters become blood magi: formerly deceased spellcasters who, when returned to life, gain an understanding of their blood’s importance, bequeathed by their close call. They learn to evoke magic from this vital fluid that sustains their lives. Blood magi cannot be trained, owing to the unusual nature of their enlightenment, and they are most likely to have first been sorcerers.
NPC blood magi are thus rarely, if ever, found in groups. They are more likely to be thinly scattered throughout a region’s spellcaster population.
Adaptation: A twist on the blood magus as presented here would be to tie the class to some deity or entity. Whenever the blood magus works his blood magic, he also gives blood sacrifice to the deity or entity so named, and it is through this bloody patron that the blood magus powers his magic. (Rhifox's Note: Likely the case for the Spirit Shaman Blood Magic feat)
Requirements
To qualify to become a blood magus, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Alignment: Any but lawful good.
Skills: Concentration 4 ranks.
Feat: Great Fortitude, Toughness.
Spells or Spell-Like Abilities: Arcane caster level 5th.
Special: The character must have been killed, then returned to life.
"One slow red river flows through us all."
Fade to red, then nothing. What happened? Where are you? No sound, no light, nothing. You can’t see or hear, or even feel your own body. The awful truth of your plight steals over you... you’re dead! An eternity passes, then you feel a call from beyond this nothingness. Something beckons, and you are drawn up out of the endless gray, happy to leave your final fate undecided. A swirl of color streaks toward you, enveloping, bathing you. You have come back! A sound breaks into your ears, the sweetest sound you will ever hear. It is the renewed pulse of blood through your veins—blood music: the sound of your life. You can feel it reenergizing every particle of your form, flushing death from you and leaving life in its place. It is thick and warm, and you greedily embrace it.
Blood magi are formerly deceased spellcasters who, when returned to life, gain an understanding of their blood’s importance, bequeathed by their close call. They learn to evoke magic from this vital fluid that sustains their lives. A blood magus cannot be trained, owing to the unusual nature of his enlightenment, and is most likely to be a sorcerer. NPC blood magi are thus rarely if ever found in groups but are thinly scattered through-out the population of spellcasters.
Complete Arcane Description
Death is the ultimate risk that spellcasters, like all adventurers, must contend with. Some are cut down before they have a chance at true glory; others find true peace only in the afterlife; and others are brought back from death by companions with the powerful magical resources to perform such a miracle. For a rare few such arcanists, this trip to the great beyond and back brings a new enlightenment—a comprehension of the body and its individual parts that transcends the understanding of those who have not experienced death and returned to tell the tale.
These newly raised spellcasters say that the first sound they hear upon returning to life is the pulse of life-giving blood in their veins. To these fortunate few, this flow of blood through their veins is sweet music: the sound of life. They can feel it reenergizing every particle of their form, flushing death away and leaving life in its place. It is thick and warm, and they greedily embrace it. Such arcane spellcasters become blood magi: formerly deceased spellcasters who, when returned to life, gain an understanding of their blood’s importance, bequeathed by their close call. They learn to evoke magic from this vital fluid that sustains their lives. Blood magi cannot be trained, owing to the unusual nature of their enlightenment, and they are most likely to have first been sorcerers.
NPC blood magi are thus rarely, if ever, found in groups. They are more likely to be thinly scattered throughout a region’s spellcaster population.
Adaptation: A twist on the blood magus as presented here would be to tie the class to some deity or entity. Whenever the blood magus works his blood magic, he also gives blood sacrifice to the deity or entity so named, and it is through this bloody patron that the blood magus powers his magic. (Rhifox's Note: Likely the case for the Spirit Shaman Blood Magic feat)
Requirements
To qualify to become a blood magus, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.
Alignment: Any but lawful good.
Skills: Concentration 4 ranks.
Feat: Great Fortitude, Toughness.
Spells or Spell-Like Abilities: Arcane caster level 5th.
Special: The character must have been killed, then returned to life.
Hidden: show
"Cost? Gold is a cost. Servitude is a cost. My soul is not a cost—or it's one I don't mind paying."
—Thavik of Donegan, a tained scholar
Great secrets await those minds skilled enough to unearth them, and great secrets unlock great power. Let others speak in fearful whispers of secrets humanity was not meant to know. No secret is barred from a tainted scholar's grasp, and if such forbidden knowledge comes at the cost of his soul, he's willing to pay that price.
Becoming a Tainted Scholar
Any arcane spellcasting class provides relatively easy access to the path of the tainted scholar. Because they are more inclined toward scholarship than many other arcane spellcasters, dread necromancers and wizards (particularly specialist necromancers) are the most common tainted scholars, but sorcerers, wu jen, warmages, and even warlocks find their way into the class. The most significant requirement is having a moderate or greater amount of depravity, which the character might experience as a drawback until he acquires enough depravity to enter this class (at which point it helps him rather than hinders him).
Requirements
Skills: Concentration 8 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 4 ranks
Spellcasting: Ability to cast 1st-level arcane spells or use least invocations (warlock)
Taint: Moderate or greater depravity
Class Features
Like the loremaster class in the Dungeon Master's Guide, your class features are built around uncovering secrets. Your secrets, however, relate to magical practices that many consider abhorrent—and indeed, your use of blood in your spellcasting is an abomination to most.
...
Playing a Tainted Scholar
Your years of delving into dark and forbidden secrets have taken a toll on your mental well-being. You are more than a little insane. You pay scant heed to the whispers in the back of your mind, the threatening nightmares, or the things you see that others don't seem to notice—these are simply occupational hazards. So what if a full-blown hallucination unfolds before your unseeing eyes as you contemplate the passage you just read in Kazerabet's Art of Necromancy, muttering snippets from its dark lore under your breath? The power and knowledge you seek is worth any price.
Advancement
Tainted scholars come from a variety of backgrounds. Many are inexperienced spellcasters who stumbole across or seek out the forbidden secrets of magic in libraries or ancient crypts. Others are little more than hedge wizards who learn sinister secrets from an aging mentor or a darker, otherworldly force. What they all have in common is a fascination with the interweaving of magic, life, death, blood, knowledge, and power—a delicate balance, an intricate dance. With that fascination comes a lust for more knowledge, a lust that quickly overpowers any concerns about morality, safety, or sanity.
As a tainted scholar, you spend much of your time seeking out ancient scrolls containing forbidden secrets, lost tombs with esoteric inscriptions, undead wizards and the vanished arts they might yet preserve, and other sources of arcane mysteries. Between adventures, you pore over the lore you have uncovered, opening your mind to its incomprehensible secrets and bending your thoughts to navigate its warped logic. Your fragile sanity falls casualty to this exploration, and your soul slowly disintegrates under depravity's rasp, but you give no consideration to the price you pay for your knowledge and all the power that comes with it.
As you advance, you have frequent opportunities to choose the secrets you will pursue and the powers you will unlock as a result. The secrets you choose depend on your interests and desires. If you enjoy using metamagic and know a handful of metamagic feats, blooded metamagic enables you to use those feats without expending precious higher-level spell slots. Bloodseeking spell makes your spells more dangerous, and forbidden arcana secrets give you more spellcasting power—always a boon. You can combine forbidden arcana with blooded metamagic to wring every drop from these additional low-level spells. If you find yourself too often paying the price for your high taint scores, clarity of true madness and wholesome corruption can turn a handicap into an advantage. If you're something of a scrapper, you might instead consider secrets that enhance melee fighting, such as stanch, death knell, and thicker than water.
Resources
The one resource you covet above others is knowledge. If you have other tainted scholars in your acquaintance—or even other wizards, dread necromancers, or similar characters whose interests run in the same vein—the exchange of knowledge can be highly profitable for all of you. There is no structured organization of tainted scholars, and you might feel competitive animosity toward others who hoard their knowledge and keep their secrets from your graps. If you can overcome this emotional reaction, you'll find sharing spells, tomes of forbidden lore, and clues to the locations of ancient secrets a worthwhile enterprise. Besides, keeping in touch with your peers puts you in a good position to seize their effects (and possibly some dark knowledge) should some sad fate betall them.
Tainted Scholars in the World
His books should be torched, his tower toppled, and as for the man himself—well, I think Thavik of Donegan should be burned at the stake."
—Brother Erland Buckley, Disciple of the Hallowed Doctrine
The tainted scholar is an example of a classic archetype in horror fantasy—the wizard who delves too deeply into forbidden lore. The class builds on the idea that some knowledge is beyond mortal ability to comprehend, along with the concept that power is a corrupting influence on the human soul.
Organization
There is no general organization of tainted scholars. Secret cabals exist where like-minded scholars come together to share their explorations into forbidden lore, but these are small, egalitarian organizations with little structure. One feature shared by all such cabals is a strict requirement of secrecy, with violations punished by painful, grisly death.
Cabals of tainted scholars are true communities of equals. If the knowledge of one member exceeds that of the others, he has little or nothing to gain from the association and usually leaves it (often traveling far away to avoid any possible repercussions of his departure). The scholar with the strongest personality often adopts some kind of leadership role, but this amounts simply to setting a time and possibly declaring a topic for the next gathering of the cabal. In a community of depraved, often paranoid, power-mad spellcasters, leadership is best handled with a very light touch.
NPC Reactions
Even if their calling is not obvious—and few tainted scholars wear their profession on their sleeves—tainted scholars are typically greeted with nervousness, dislike, or outright disgust. Their corruption might be invisible, but their depravity has manifestations that are often abundantly clear even to casual acquaintances. As a result, most NPCS have an initial reaction of unfriendly when encountering a tainted scholar, even if they can't put a finger on the reason for their dislike.
Champions of good are natural enemies of tainted scholars, and this applies particularly to those groups of wizards who seek to promote the use of magic for the good of the world.
Tainted Scholar Lore
Characters with Knowledge (arcana) can research tainted scholars to learn more about them.
DC 10: Some wizards and other spellcasters are obsessed with uncovering secrets that mortal minds were not meant to know—to their ultimate ruin.
DC 15: Tainted scholars practice an ancient and evil form of magic that uses blood as a component. In their obsessive drive to uncover secrets and mysteries of magic, they destroy their own souls to gain greater power.
DC 20: These scholars embrace the taint of evil and use it to power their spells. They learn secrets that improve their spellcasting, toughen their bodies, and grant them unearthly knowledge.
DC 30: A success at this DC grants information about the activities of a local cabal of tainted scholars or a prominent individual scholar.
—Thavik of Donegan, a tained scholar
Great secrets await those minds skilled enough to unearth them, and great secrets unlock great power. Let others speak in fearful whispers of secrets humanity was not meant to know. No secret is barred from a tainted scholar's grasp, and if such forbidden knowledge comes at the cost of his soul, he's willing to pay that price.
Becoming a Tainted Scholar
Any arcane spellcasting class provides relatively easy access to the path of the tainted scholar. Because they are more inclined toward scholarship than many other arcane spellcasters, dread necromancers and wizards (particularly specialist necromancers) are the most common tainted scholars, but sorcerers, wu jen, warmages, and even warlocks find their way into the class. The most significant requirement is having a moderate or greater amount of depravity, which the character might experience as a drawback until he acquires enough depravity to enter this class (at which point it helps him rather than hinders him).
Requirements
Skills: Concentration 8 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 4 ranks
Spellcasting: Ability to cast 1st-level arcane spells or use least invocations (warlock)
Taint: Moderate or greater depravity
Class Features
Like the loremaster class in the Dungeon Master's Guide, your class features are built around uncovering secrets. Your secrets, however, relate to magical practices that many consider abhorrent—and indeed, your use of blood in your spellcasting is an abomination to most.
...
Playing a Tainted Scholar
Your years of delving into dark and forbidden secrets have taken a toll on your mental well-being. You are more than a little insane. You pay scant heed to the whispers in the back of your mind, the threatening nightmares, or the things you see that others don't seem to notice—these are simply occupational hazards. So what if a full-blown hallucination unfolds before your unseeing eyes as you contemplate the passage you just read in Kazerabet's Art of Necromancy, muttering snippets from its dark lore under your breath? The power and knowledge you seek is worth any price.
Advancement
Tainted scholars come from a variety of backgrounds. Many are inexperienced spellcasters who stumbole across or seek out the forbidden secrets of magic in libraries or ancient crypts. Others are little more than hedge wizards who learn sinister secrets from an aging mentor or a darker, otherworldly force. What they all have in common is a fascination with the interweaving of magic, life, death, blood, knowledge, and power—a delicate balance, an intricate dance. With that fascination comes a lust for more knowledge, a lust that quickly overpowers any concerns about morality, safety, or sanity.
As a tainted scholar, you spend much of your time seeking out ancient scrolls containing forbidden secrets, lost tombs with esoteric inscriptions, undead wizards and the vanished arts they might yet preserve, and other sources of arcane mysteries. Between adventures, you pore over the lore you have uncovered, opening your mind to its incomprehensible secrets and bending your thoughts to navigate its warped logic. Your fragile sanity falls casualty to this exploration, and your soul slowly disintegrates under depravity's rasp, but you give no consideration to the price you pay for your knowledge and all the power that comes with it.
As you advance, you have frequent opportunities to choose the secrets you will pursue and the powers you will unlock as a result. The secrets you choose depend on your interests and desires. If you enjoy using metamagic and know a handful of metamagic feats, blooded metamagic enables you to use those feats without expending precious higher-level spell slots. Bloodseeking spell makes your spells more dangerous, and forbidden arcana secrets give you more spellcasting power—always a boon. You can combine forbidden arcana with blooded metamagic to wring every drop from these additional low-level spells. If you find yourself too often paying the price for your high taint scores, clarity of true madness and wholesome corruption can turn a handicap into an advantage. If you're something of a scrapper, you might instead consider secrets that enhance melee fighting, such as stanch, death knell, and thicker than water.
Resources
The one resource you covet above others is knowledge. If you have other tainted scholars in your acquaintance—or even other wizards, dread necromancers, or similar characters whose interests run in the same vein—the exchange of knowledge can be highly profitable for all of you. There is no structured organization of tainted scholars, and you might feel competitive animosity toward others who hoard their knowledge and keep their secrets from your graps. If you can overcome this emotional reaction, you'll find sharing spells, tomes of forbidden lore, and clues to the locations of ancient secrets a worthwhile enterprise. Besides, keeping in touch with your peers puts you in a good position to seize their effects (and possibly some dark knowledge) should some sad fate betall them.
Tainted Scholars in the World
His books should be torched, his tower toppled, and as for the man himself—well, I think Thavik of Donegan should be burned at the stake."
—Brother Erland Buckley, Disciple of the Hallowed Doctrine
The tainted scholar is an example of a classic archetype in horror fantasy—the wizard who delves too deeply into forbidden lore. The class builds on the idea that some knowledge is beyond mortal ability to comprehend, along with the concept that power is a corrupting influence on the human soul.
Organization
There is no general organization of tainted scholars. Secret cabals exist where like-minded scholars come together to share their explorations into forbidden lore, but these are small, egalitarian organizations with little structure. One feature shared by all such cabals is a strict requirement of secrecy, with violations punished by painful, grisly death.
Cabals of tainted scholars are true communities of equals. If the knowledge of one member exceeds that of the others, he has little or nothing to gain from the association and usually leaves it (often traveling far away to avoid any possible repercussions of his departure). The scholar with the strongest personality often adopts some kind of leadership role, but this amounts simply to setting a time and possibly declaring a topic for the next gathering of the cabal. In a community of depraved, often paranoid, power-mad spellcasters, leadership is best handled with a very light touch.
NPC Reactions
Even if their calling is not obvious—and few tainted scholars wear their profession on their sleeves—tainted scholars are typically greeted with nervousness, dislike, or outright disgust. Their corruption might be invisible, but their depravity has manifestations that are often abundantly clear even to casual acquaintances. As a result, most NPCS have an initial reaction of unfriendly when encountering a tainted scholar, even if they can't put a finger on the reason for their dislike.
Champions of good are natural enemies of tainted scholars, and this applies particularly to those groups of wizards who seek to promote the use of magic for the good of the world.
Tainted Scholar Lore
Characters with Knowledge (arcana) can research tainted scholars to learn more about them.
DC 10: Some wizards and other spellcasters are obsessed with uncovering secrets that mortal minds were not meant to know—to their ultimate ruin.
DC 15: Tainted scholars practice an ancient and evil form of magic that uses blood as a component. In their obsessive drive to uncover secrets and mysteries of magic, they destroy their own souls to gain greater power.
DC 20: These scholars embrace the taint of evil and use it to power their spells. They learn secrets that improve their spellcasting, toughen their bodies, and grant them unearthly knowledge.
DC 30: A success at this DC grants information about the activities of a local cabal of tainted scholars or a prominent individual scholar.