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I have been talking with my sons (24 and 21) about magic mechanics. Here are a few things for what they are worth.
Their opinion is not to use blood magic - they have before and they say it gets nasty fast. Like I said, for what that is worth.
Here are a few of my own thoughts for limiting magic. As I understand this world has two different types of countries - those ruled by magic users and those who overthrew them. In both cases I would thing these countries would very much want to regulate who uses what magic. Those countries that threw off the magocracy would not want them around at all except maybe in the military. Those ruled by magocracies would want to control who is doing what. Some spells are pretty harmless, such as identify or phantom steed, and would be common. Others, particularly combat spells, would not just be out there for anyone to buy and add to their spell books. If you think aobut it, a wizard would have to have a pretty good reason to give another wizard a spell because it could always be used against him later. I know wizards love thier fireballs and lightening, but serious you really don't want every wizard running around doing that. Wizards that are in countries with these tight regulations may have other requirements, like military escort to keep them in line, a locater "beacon" they have to carry, or some kind of "off switch" that can be used on them if they get out of hand.
Players would be forced to find spells themselves, and finding them would not necessarily be really good at using them for a while. And using them would be dangerous if the wrong people found out they had.
I also personnally think that combat spells should take a lot longer to throw, but I doubt we are changing the game systems that much unless a good reason could be found. Magic energy is rare enough the it takes longer to gather enough for a multi-dice spell?
My sons did not like the idea of the clerics storing energy in a holy item because it did not limit them at all, but I still like it as a game mechanic to make clerics act like they really belong to a church.
Comments
The way I see the setting
The way I see the setting right now, access to spells would be governed by the Schools, and high-level spells of each School would only be available for members. For example, if you want to learn high-level Enchantment spells, you would have to join the School of Dominion. And as part of being in the School, you have to be aligned with their goals.
As for fireballs and lightening bolts - those would be the purview of the School of Desolation (evokers), and those who went around with spells like that would do so on behalf of that particular school and it's goals. Moreover, the various Schools simply would have to work together - each alone is too limited in what it can accomplish. So I could see trading access to spells between the Schools, with each hoarding it's highest-level spells and keeping them as secret as possible.
As for "blood magic", I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically. Right now, casting arcane spells drains hit points from casters, and there are some ways to drain some of that energy form dying opponents, for example. If you take Feats, or levels in a Prestige Class, other options open up for you as a caster. Is there some experience in particular your sons were thinking of?
For divine casters, the limitation we've been discussing is making larger, more meaningful sacrifices specific to your alignment each time you would gain new spells as you level. We haven't worked out an exact method for this, but have talked about it a bit and I presume people are thinking about it.
I agree that we're not likely to make spells take longer to cast. The thing with magic in Pathfinder is that it is very limited, like with any D20 system. As a wizard, at first level, I get 1 or 2 magic missiles and then I'm back to my dagger or crossbow or something - and most spells still allow saving throws or require attack rolls. Arcane casters get few skill points, lower AC, not so great saves and lower hit points in exchange for things like fireball and lightening bolt. If those took longer to cast, I think arcane casters become an even tougher sell.
We've talked about the problem of the cost of arcane magic being too high, and of that making people not want to play them (the cost as we have it now that is). One thing we've talked about to deal with that is a Feat (I think I wrote it up in a comment somewhere) casters can take where they still have to pay the cost of spellcasting, but they can apply metamagic effects to their spells a limited number of times per day.
Anyway, that was a lot. Partly I was just taking the chance for myself to review what we've talked about so far. We definitely still need to nail down the cost of magic in the wake of the Collapse, and to work out a way that arcane magic is both more costly and more interesting.
I think that there are also just settings with limitations, and those limitations are part of what makes the setting interesting. If you want to play Dark Sun, you have to deal with arcane magic killing plants. If you play Dragonlance during the War of the Lance period, you have to deal with there being almost no divine casters. I think that part of the concept of the DGA has to be that arcane magic used to be everywhere, and now it is incredibly costly, and the whole world is in upheaval because of this fundamental change.