The only other stat I ever put points into was the odd cunning for persuasion checks. If you don’t mind not being able to get higher levels of the professions or stuff like that feel free to just dump in magic and WP though.
Mages are easy: Magic (2) and Willpower (1) for cannon’s, and a more even mix for healers.
I find mages tough to play - not enough single target damage, and most of the cone damage doesn’t have a good secondary effect. Only the freezing of Cone of Cold is continually effective, even against cold immune enemies.
I would invest in spellpower and the mage line myself. More magic points and Storm of the Century. Also, Force Field is nice for whenever those emissaries put a character in Crushing Prison. I haven’t yet tried the Glyphs, or the Spell Wisp line, the latter which I understand makes mage fights much easier.
Once a mage’s arsenal of spells is large enough, on normal a mage can easily solo most of the game’s encounters. Sometimes I feel bad for the rest of the party members; I often make them wait while my mage easily clears a room by himself.
Hint: Paralysis explosion. Follow this up with a Storm of the Century, and the room is clear in seconds.
The real challenge in the game is not taking a mage.
Mana Clash kills enemy mages D.E.A.D. - incredibly useful, as enemy mages are invariably the most frustrating of standard foes what with their nasty Curse of Mortality, Crushing Prison and Fireball attacks. It is a terminal spell in the line of course, but the rest of the line has it uses. Particularly Spell Might if you go for the Storm of the Century combo Knorf linked. The best single target attack period is Crushing Prison - again terminal to an overall useful line.
Frankly I think going pure primal is perfectly viable, but probably a bit overdone unless it is for roleplaying reasons. You will miss out on a number of good lines that way. The Cold line is universally considered the most useful, due to its superior crowd control. Pair it with a second line ( Fire for the Fireball nuke or Lightning if you enjoy the idea of the Storm of the Century combo ) and leave it at that. But even if you do decide to go full primal, at the very least avoid Chain Lightning - it’s a useless waste of a spell. Negligible damage to start that does not scale in the least bit. Probably the worst terminal line spell of all.
I always put points into cunning on my PC to avoid failing any “Persuade” checks. Your character is the only one with the Coercion skill so it’s not like you’ll be able to have another party member train it. You only need 16 cunning to train Master Coercion, but you’ll still have a chance of failing occasionally. Otherwise, I just train Willpower & Magic, really. However, I started adding points to Dex so my Arcane Warrior actually has a better chance of hitting stuff in melee - it seems to be working, but she still misses more than I’d like.
The blood mage abilities aren’t really that great, in my opinion. It’s just too easy to accidentally off yourself trying to cast spells, and it seems like health poultices aren’t as potent when you have blood magic active (but maybe it’s just me), however the 4th tier blood mage (Blood Control) spell is kinda cool.
Mages definitely make things go faster. With two mages (one Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage, one Spirit Healer), I played through the Dead Trenches portion of the game last night in about half the time as my previous run-through. It was silly how fast it went with AOE. I just park my party for a sec, then cast inferno where I know the bad guys will be running through, then say “come & get me, bastards!!” and watch them writhe in pain as they try to run through. In many cases about half of them are either asleep or paralyzed when the firestorm hits. Then to add insult to injury, I fireball them as they’re running through 
I actually switched the difficulty to “Hard” until I reached the boss.
I need to try some of those other spell combos, they look neat.
I also read on another forum about a combo I’m going to try on my next go : get two guys with 2H weapons in your party. Switch them both to Indomitable (immune to stun and knockdown), and tell them to pommel strike at will. When they’ve got the attention of the crowd, drop an earthquake+grease right on top of them. Enjoy the slapstick :).
It also doesn’t hurt to throw a point into your mage’s dexterity now and again.
The area paralysis is incredible too, it does damage on top of stopping everyone. I usually opened with that then dropped a storm of the century on top of everyone. That and mind controlled shrieks just wrecked entire packs of darkspawns without anyone else in my party lifting a finger, even on nightmare.
Found this info on the BioWare forums.
Patch 1.02 is out! Magic is nerfed (Crushing Prison, Force Cage, Cone of Cold and Blizzard has their duration reduced), daggers does 0.5 damage per Strength and Dex.
And in other news, the pen and paper version of the game is ready for pre-order.
Beat the game today, noticed an error in the epilogue. I romanced Zevron with my male Dwarf commoner, and at the end of the game it said that Zevron fell in love with “her” and stayed with his “woman”. I was definately a big black, beefy, man dwarf.
Apparently you were the woman in the relationship, though.
That was not how I pictured the gay sex working out between a beefy dwarf and a blond elf. 
On another note - finished the game! Am working through a second time, and love the toolset. It helps so much to have the option of fixing your characters face mistakes halfway through the game.
Though, additional mage starting stories would be great (as they seem to be the most interesting to me.)
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Perhaps mages could be apostates in the wild? They could incorporate an alternative way to learn blood magic that way, and have dialogue options with increased hostility to the circle, the chantry and the templars.
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Or allow you to play a mage having successfully hid his powers, thus giving you the ability to try out the other starting locations. Though the mage would have to explain why he is wearing a robe and fruity hat (not to mention the odd spell) while arguing that he is not a mage at all.
Beat the game today, noticed an error in the epilogue. I romanced Zevron with my male Dwarf commoner, and at the end of the game it said that Zevron fell in love with “her” and stayed with his “woman”. I was definately a big black, beefy, man dwarf.
I noticed the same error in the end, refering to my female warden as a ‘he.’
Althought my biggest disappointment/peeve was that bioware took Morrigan from me right before the end. Err, thats my best mage and has all my debuffs. Its a dick move. Why punish the player for actually wanting to kill the archdemon. I guess it wouldnt have been so bad if it made sense in the story. I mean, she does stick around for everything else and even with 100% approval still leaves. Thanks bioware.
I figure the Grey Wardens are sort of like the French Foreign Legion : once you’re in, nobody asks questions anymore. You’re going to die in a famous last stand somewhere any way, what would be the point of bugging you further ? 
Besides, no one seems to mind that Morrigan is an apostate, or that the protagonist might be a dang Blood Mage.
However, the apostate starting scenario does have a problem : if you’ve been hiding the fact that you’re a mage, and possibly are living away from civilization, how would Duncan find you, and why would he care about you ?
I think Duncan takes all sort; Grey Wardens doesn’t seem to care much about the ‘morals’ of the Chantry (heck, did the Chant of Light save anyone from the Darkspawn?) and are willing to take any measure to ensure the ranks of the Wardens are strong.
This sounds like a good idea for a custom campaign or a pen and paper game.
The Dalish aren’t exactly “civilization” and Duncan finds them pretty easily. I imagine it would be the same story, maybe even Duncan has a friend or two in the village. In the tower Duncan says that you shouldn’t dismiss Blood Magic out of hand, since some great Wardens resorted to Blood Magic, so he wouldn’t have anything against it either.
I’m with you on this. Really bad implementation on that. Senseless, really.
I’d imagined that playing as a mag- in-hiding that you would start in one of the other starting areas making Duncan find you as he did for them? (For example you would start as a city elf or a human noble). If this was a mod, it would require little tweaking other than dialogue changes. (I’d imagine your family would know, and comments could be made that you need to remember to hide your ‘problem’.) Plus then funny dialogue as you insist that warriors can indeed shoot bolts of fire out of their fingers.
Good points!
It is driven home that mages are treated quite poorly, in fact several conversations bring up the fact that families disown their children when they are found to have magic. One (Jowan?) mentions that his mother started referring to him as a thing, and refused to let him back in the house.
Running off to the wilds (or having a parent attempt to kill the ‘devil chid’) is just as likely as the mage waiting to be taken in by the tower imho.
Feverishly finished the game Sunday night, at long last–and I spent the next morning thinking of what I’ll do on my next play-through. First time I was a cold-specced wizard who handled most situations with a blizzard, cone of cold, and spot-freeze-thingy. Was all honorable and shit. I want to try it again as a dual-wielding rogue of dubious morals who, instead of partying up with the goody-two-shoes (Alistair, Lelianna, Wynne), goes for the outcasts and misfits (Sten or whatever, Morrigan, and maybe the dog, who’ll get a name like Fluffy that he’ll spend the rest of his life compensating for).