However, as mentioned above, the issue of fees is still outstanding - which does relate VERY closely to this.
Determining the "right" fees is a separate issue; see https://gist.github.com/2961409 for my current thinking.The raw transaction API will let you create and try to send a transaction with as much or little fees as you like, but if you try to send a 20 kilobyte transaction with zero fees you shouldn't be surprised if nobody relays or mines it.
This looks interesting - just one question after reading this document (as the word "change" does not appear in it at all) - will it be also possible to specify the *change* address with such "raw transactions" (in perhaps the sendrawtx command itself)?
If you use the raw transaction API then you're responsible for saying exactly where all of the outputs go. If you create a raw transaction with a 50 BTC input and a 2 BTC output then that is a no-change, 48 BTC fee transaction. If you don't intend the 48 BTC to go to miners, then you need to specify where the change goes by adding another output.
I suppose the RPC calls could have limits to try to keep you from shooting yourself in the foot, but anybody using the raw transaction API should be doing a lot of testing with worthless testnet coins and I'd rather not start playing the "lets write lots of code to try to prevent RPC-users from being dumb" game.