Basic Trope: Magic that concerns blood, usually as part of a thematic school of magic.
- Straight: Charlie can sacrifice blood to generate Mana, and can use Mana to open bleeding injuries on enemies and steal the life energy contained in the blood that seeps out.
- Exaggerated:
- Charlie is joined by an adventuring party that can all use blood to empower themselves or unlock abilities.
- Blood magic contains entire schools of magic within it, which have spells that do anything from remote blood transfusions to creating familiars.
- Downplayed:
- Charlie's most powerful spells have the option of paying blood instead of Mana, but it's not required and usually reserved for worst-case scenarios.
- Charlie is an aquakinetic who can to a limited extent manipulate blood. It's not strong enough of an ability for most uses, but might keep some of his insides inside in an emergency.
- Justified:
- Blood contains an unusual amount of magical potential, so enterprising sorcerers developed ways to access this power.
- Charlie is a vampire, who naturally have this ability.
- Inverted: Blood is magically sterile. It cannot be manipulated with magic, and spilling one's own blood is a good way to break a curse or enchantment rather than cast one.
- Subverted: Charlie states that bleeding for magic is just important for symbolic reasons.
- Double Subverted: Charlie is against an opponent who is somewhat superstitious, and he is trying to convince them to bleed themselves as well. They do, and Charlie is able to go to work on their wounds.
- Parodied:
- Charlie jumps between Minor Injury Overreaction and Major Injury Underreaction every time he needs to draw blood for his magic, sometimes sitting on the ground and sobbing after nicking his ankle, and sometimes gleefully slicing through his neck - and his head uses spurts of blood to fly around before he can manage to heal himself back together.
- Charlie's blood magic powers vary depending on the time of the month, often giving him cramps and making him irritable.
- Zig Zagged: Magic is first introduced via Charlie drawing a glyph in blood, but then it's explained that the glyph is the important part... as long as it still has dying cells in it, and so most schools of magic teach mages to use their blood, as there's plenty of it and it regenerates. However, eventually Charlie is the first one to find out that saliva tends to be full of skin cells, and so he starts using that for smaller jobs.... though he still opens a wound to access his blood when he wants to be particularly dramatic or knows he's going to be doing a lot of magic.
- Averted: There's a lot of functional magic, but none of it uses blood and the idea is never implied.
- Enforced:
- "The mature themes and swearing just brought our rating up to M for Mature... We may as well use that old design for Charlie where he drained the blood of his sliced up enemies."
- The work is a remake of an old video game where the player could Cast from Hit Points, and some justification behind it supposedly had to be added so that modern audiences wouldn't denounce it as a pointless gimmick..
- Lampshaded: "I'll just bet you are the kind of person who'd amputate their arm to smack someone with it."
- Invoked: "My innate connection to the Background Magic Field is weak, but with a good adrenaline rush, I get much stronger. If I'm going to be spilling my blood anyway, I may as well make it work for me, right?"
- Exploited: Charlie's enemies use darts coated in blood thinners. If he dares to use his blood to cast magic, he'll find himself paying above the required toll.
- Defied: In theory, it could be possible for someone to try to expend blood to be able to use more Mana - but no one does, and Charlie says that it would be a silly idea to injure himself when he could just drink a mana-restoring potion.
- Discussed: "You're letting Lucretia heal you in combat? Does she siphon your blood to get her Mana back once you're out of danger?"
- Conversed: "Why in the hell does Charlie bite his hand to use Mana Restore? Can't he do the same thing on his arm? Wouldn't all the scabs make his hand signs harder?"
- Implied: Charlie's unique attribute is that he regains some Mana every time he takes damage, but there's nothing explicitly saying that he uses the blood itself from injuries to regain the Mana - for all we know, it may be the pain.
- Deconstructed: If one's going to spend ages in a sedentary lifestyle, barely eating, drinking, sleeping, or exercising due to spending so much time obsessing over tomes and practicing spells, the last thing you'd want to do is draw your own blood to simply cast a few more.
- Reconstructed:
- However, Charlie shows all the potential power of blood magic if one properly dedicates to its specific need: A solid portion of his time goes into maintaining a good physical condition, he eats and hydrates enough to maintain his spellcasting, and while he may know fewer spells than a more academic wizard, they're rather strong and he knows them very well. Between regeneration spells and draining spells, his net blood loss over the course of a struggle tends to be a lot lower than the costs would make it seem, and his intense physical regimen means he's tougher, stronger, and can wear full plate, which allows him to go to the limit with his blood costs when things need to be done quickly without worrying about an enemy attack finishing him off instantly.
- Nothing says Charlie needs to use ''his'' blood as a regent. Cue mass slaughter of mooks, and Charlie only becoming more dangerous as more blood is split.
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