Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Please implement alignment in some form.

repeating this lie doesnt make it true

alignment only seems one dimensional because that's how people are approaching it.

what is stupid is how evil is always some form of "f--- you, pay me" and good is always something "i'll save you!" sort of tropes. evil means self interested and discompassionate, it does't mean by default malevolent. good means selfless, but it doesn't mean benevolent by default either.

likewise, chaos doesn't mean complete and utter formless abandon, it is the opposite of "lawful" so is closer to anarchy. the stereotype of the frenetic madman as chaotic neutral is so stupid and reductive. someone who is neither good nor evil, not firmly anti establishment is not, by default, a lunatic.

A chaotic neutral guy can be a outcast, a crazy person or just a very individualistic guy. IMO order VS chaos leads to better stories than good vs evil.

The OP is right. Even though WotC nerfed alignment it needs to be in some form. Sorry Swen, the D&D secret sauce isn't in a potion bottle, it in the traditions and lore. Larian needs to be, at the very least, conscious of how alignment works in D&D. Faerun isn't Rivelon or Westeros . . .

Case in point -- we are starting out in a temple of Selune and traveling with priest of Shar. Great! So many role playing opportunities since Shar and Selune are immortal enemies. So if the temple is guarded by the undead -- and it looks like it is -- that needs to be explained because the neutral good clerics of the moon would never create undead to guard their temple. So what happened? Obviously, someone came along to desecrate the temple and the undead must be guarding something other than the remains of Selune's faithful.

If you take the alignment our of the mix the secret sauce loses it's potency. As WotC found with 4th edition.

Make way villainy!

"we are starting out in a temple of Selune and traveling with priest of Shar. Great!"


Yea...The priest of Shar has lots of enemies, and she seems a mess anyway..Oh and the Trickery Domain is sub-par, so she can sod off. (Evil and confused)

A vampire who may try to give me a hickey...no thank-you. (Evil)

A warlock who regrets his own decisions....sigh...just say no to self loathing drama...crossed his own line for power. (Evil and confused)

A Wizard who blows up his own peeps...naw...more drama. (Neutral and unreliable)

A Githyanki who doesn't hate herself or whine, but instead steps up to adversity...she's a winner! (Displays good qualities...although her race is traditionally or perhaps situationaly lawful evil)

I am hoping for some good archetypes when they add in the remaining npc choices...otherwise its hirelings and the Gith.


See...they don't need tags. Evil is as evil does.

So in the original BG series there were a bouquet of characters from all alignments and even some like Viconia DeVir who seemed to react to the character's decisions a bit.

Some hated Minsk...I enjoyed him (at least for a time). But that was the thing...its personal opinion.

Jaheira and the Paladin left me cold when I killed Drtzzt for the second time (the first time was cuz I refused to help him, and the second time he didn't like my dialog either...both times he attacked my good action character). That was great drama! loved it...and the turnip eating rogue, the amazing Mazzy, Viconia, and my main toon whooped them again using a lot of positioning (hit and run) tactics.

I ended up with the Good...Mazzy, the Bad...Viconia, and the Ugly...Jan Jansen. They were all loyal, dependable, self confident, and interesting.


There were sooo many options and I tried most all of them during several play-throughs for at least a little while. They all interacted with each other, which encouraged mixing it up.

Now having 2 of my six NPCs walk out on me at the beginning of one of my toughest fights illustrates well the alignment system at its best. The characters followed their convictions and while I was almost tempted to reload, it was a much more satisfying victory and development as is...and then there were four.

The game seems to be missing a strong Good (not selfish and having conviction) but not too goodie-two shoes characters like Mazzy, or any good for that matter. Lae'zel seems to be a good answer for Viconia as she hails from a race that would be considered evil, yet I can easily see us working in the same team.

The alignment system is a roleplaying tool not a gameplay mechanic. But the only way to add the alignment system to a computer game would be as a game mechanic. (or as a decorative choice in the character creator that doesn't actually do anything I suppose, but then why bother?)

The game will have good, neutral and evil choices, chaotic and lawful choices. Is it so bad that we will decide for ourselves which is which just like we would at the table instead of have them marked by an awkard dialogue mechanic? It will have characters written to have their own beliefs and opinions and they will react to your choices, thats better isn't it? And those few characters who are alien entitites capable of only having one unchanging alignment (fiends, celestiels etc) will no doubt be written that way if and when they show up.

So why is it a problem that they are only writing the moralty of people instead of creating some limited video game mechanic? Every video game mechanic alignment system I've ever played has sucked. Making you choose whatever choice has the correct alignment system symbol on it to not miss out on rewards or roleplay properly and choose the "wrong" choice by choosing what you think your character would actually do.

Better to just let you role play freely, make the consequences story ones not mechancal ones, like a real roleplaying game.

Of course if a paladin violates their tennents or a cleric pisses off their god thats a different story. That's a story consequence that has a mechanical consequence aswell - You can have trigger reactions for that just like the companions react to your decisions and I hope they don't ignore that possibility.

But adding an extra system to the dialogue system for alignment when you can just decide your alignment and roleplay it yourself through choices seems alot of programmeing time for nothing but annoyance.

Would it be so bad to improve upon the dialogue so that it weren't so awkward?

It's both. Protection from evil works because evil is a real force. Holy weapons do extra damage to demons because goodness is a real force that can be captured inside a holy avenger. To hold a holy avenger you need to adhere to a moral code. You need to be both lawful and good.

Selune grants me real powers to smite her enemies as long as I act in way she approves. Selune doesn't care if I disobey the law, neither does she judge me if I obey orders I disagree with. But she does care I do things like create zombies, make deals with devils or sell the slaves down the river for some extra gold.

And I like this. This is D&D. My BG2 chaotic good conjurer was never completely comfortable with forcing elementals to do her bidding but she always put the vampires in their graves, freed the slaves and slew the dragons.

I also liked DOS2. I helped Sebille murder the master *and* the mother tree. I don't know if those decisions were Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil or even Chaotic good but a lot of good people died as part of that effort. But I don't want to play another game in Rivelon. Or Eora. Or Westeros. Or any place with a moral muddle. I want play in Faerun where gods are real, where evil is real and the lore that makes D&D, ya know, D&D is faithfully implemented.

The vampire spawn is jaded. Not having tons of empathy after hundreds or even thousands of years of existence doesn't automatically make one a slavering rabid monster--he clearly hates his old master, to whom he was enslaved, and for all we know it's because of what he was forced to do to people. He also seems to be trying not to murder everyone around him with his bloodlust. This isn't 100% hardcore rules stickler territory; "delve into an epic adventure that subverts the binary morality found in many RPGs" doesn't sound like all vampire spawns must be 100% infant-devouring evil. He could easily be neutral. He may even harbor some guilt over what he's directly responsible for, or harbor a secret desire for heroism that we haven't seen yet.

The cleric of Shar may be neutral as well; she seems bitter, cagey, and severely untrusting, not confused or pointlessly cruel. The warlock may be a good person who made a terrible deal for compelling reasons for all we know. The wizard--same deal, he may have done the best he could in a terrible situation; liking power doesn't automatically make one evil and maybe he took in that Netherese destruction orb in an attempt to neutralize it and save people. The Githyanki seems about as good as a baatezu, not even neutral, let good far alone. You kinda repeatedly shanked your own argument until it was deceased there. Clearly it's not so obvious, at least before we've played the game and gotten to know the characters thoroughly.

Nevertheless, I agree with the idea that tags aren't needed. This is a perfect example of the fact that alignment is at least somewhat subjective and usually poorly enforced. Thinking as a character rather than trying to conform to rigid alignment standards makes so much more sense. In real life, people's alignment may vary from issue to issue thanks to cognitive dissonance or just nuanced views. The more restrictive one is, the more potential there is for frustration or annoyance or sheer disagreement on the part of the player. It's not constructive or fun for players to think about how they disagree with the developers rather than being drawn into the game world.

Feeling annoyed at alignment shifts that don't make sense is always going to take the player out of the experience. It's incredibly anti-immersive and even fourth wall breaking. If alignment is implemented in this game, I'd hope for it to be very forgiving on all ambiguous situations where you may have murdered that guy because you noticed a strong clue that he was the one keeping people in his basement, and harsher in clear and obvious cases like if you throw the neighborhood children in your oven like in Hansel and Gretel.



I agree. The only hard alignment choices I want to see are really clear-cut violation of tenets of one's god or cases which are truly obvious, objective, basically a majority of smart players will agree beyond a reasonable doubt to be evil/good actions.

The most fair way to implement it would probably be conversations inside of your own head where you couldn't be lying to keep someone happy or piss them off; where you think to yourself about why you killed that guy and select "for the funsies because I hated his stupid face" (evil) or "because I needed his money to survive" (neutral) or "because I saw his murderbasement but knew as the Duke's son he would never be brought to justice." (good.) If you're a cleric, talking to your god like that might even make some sense.

I don't want it to feel like there are no consequences, I do want to feel like good and evil exist, but I don't want there to be some gimmicky mechanic that feels like your mom slapping your hand as you reach into the cookie jar. The player should be an active participant in the story, able to evolve their character without undue judgment.

Alignment is and should be a Gameplay mechanic.
DnD isnt a highschool drama play, its a game

The problem is how this mechanic is implemented into a computer game.
Many games encourage the player (as in giving rewards) for selecting some options. The player will chose options that give the best gameplay reward, no matter if it makes sense for that character.
Some examples:
- In some games you get the maximum bonus when you are either as good as possible or as bad as possible but a small or no bonus if you are in between. You feel forced to select one side in the beginning and then always chose the option of this side to maximize the bonus.
- In BG1+2 you automatically max out reputation by finishing quests. I do not remember quests that you could in an evil way were you get the full exp for finishing the quest and you lose reputation for finishing the quest. Its a long time since I played so I am not 100% sure. I could never play those games with evil chars in my party because I always end up with max reputation.
- In P:K some players complained that they had to select lawful evil options for their paladin in order to remain lawful. Selecting the good option would have made them neutral good and they lose their paladin abilities.
- There are tons of examples where players say: " I have to select alignment x because in this dungeon I find a great armor that can only be used by alignment x." or " Ability A of class B works great in combination with ability C from class D, but class B must be evil and class D must be chaotic so I have to select a chaotic evil char." and so on.

Maybe its possible to create real roleplaying were players do stuff that makes sense for their char in PnP.
But in a computer game everything that can happen is progammed and some options (including alignment options) will be better game mechanics wise than others.
Many players know situations were they find a great item but nobody in the party could use them.

So far I have not seen a computer game were alignment matters for the personality of the character and it is not just a requirement for some items and classes but it does not matter otherwise.

In the Pathfinder kingmaker game, they have a different approach with the alignment. You can only say and take some choices if you are of a particular alignment, if not you do not even have the choice to do so.
i.e) If you are not neutral (something) you cannot take a neutral stance in the kobold-mite war and you have to choose a side, if you are not chaotic you cannot pose your "holy" useless gauntlets as a holy relic for the kobolds, if you are not evil(something) some characters in the game do not join your ranks...

Your alignment also changes often when you say and do something, so there is a possibility that your overall alignment changes from the one you have from the start. I kinda like that approach because you still have the mechanics that affect the combat ( spells, holy/unholy weapons, etc) but you also feel that your alignment means something in the world and adds replayability because you can take a different road in the next run.

I don't play games with brain eating squid men and psychic neanderthals who ride dragons looking for a mirror of reality. Yeah, in the real world eeevol doesn't exist. Chose an evil actor in the world of politics and chances are they would tell you their actions are actually good -- they are carrying out the commands of god, protecting the people of their nation or their people, ensuring stability in the region . . .

But to hades with the real world, it kinda sucks.

In this world two sisters, light and dark, were in perfect harmony until the light sister decided to create the sun and bring life to the world. Shar's sister betrayed her and she has waged an eons old battle to right this ancient wrong, to destroy all life on earth and to return the world to perfect, perpetual darkness. Shar, the god of darkness, became the first evil from which all other evil was born those who follows her do so for their own reasons but Shar's aims are evil, her powers are evil and her followers further that evil or lose their powers.

Sure there is "sheer disagreement on the part of the player" but that's part of the fun. People like to debate D&D rules, if they didn't care they wouldn't be motivated to debate. Larian has already made its own world without alignment but they put that side to play in Faerun. And people are going to be annoyed if you don't have alignment -- when 4th edition removed alignment from the game people were furious.

Again, without alignment it's not D&D. Sure, I'd play a Westeros game where motivations mirrored the real world. But D&D was based on Tolkein and Moorcock and alignment matters in those worlds and in Faerun. Take good and evil out of Tolkein and you've lost the story. Eliminate Law and Chaos from Elric's world and nothing makes sense. Take alignment out of Faerun and . . .

But people liked that. In fact people liked BG so much that companies competed for the right to make a sequel.

And yeah, in the EEs there are fully developed evil quests. The half orcs story begins by slaughtering wedding party. The vampire thief starts with you luring an innocent to her lair so she can feed.

People didn't like those stories as much as they liked the originals.

people didnt hate the EE for those reasons.
And people didnt love BG for that. those are coincidences

D&D is a collaborative story telling game.

It absolutely is high school drama.

Quote: "Clearly it's not so obvious, at least before we've played the game and gotten to know the characters thoroughly."

Fair point...all the characters seem well thought out and it will come down to preference.


Now,I am not sure why WOTC is shying away from alignment, but they can't ignore their own lore.


Quote: "we are starting out in a temple of Selune and traveling with priest of Shar. Great!"

This is a huge oversight, as Selune and Shar fought bitterly in the Godswar...in fact a good portion of the pantheon took sides. Shar and Cyric murdered Mystra causing the Spellplague that resulted in unnatural disasters that reshaped Faerun (death and destruction on a world scale).


Ok the others (beside Shadowheart) are probably not "evil" (just not a good fit) and can sit at my campfire. I will probably do their personal missions but they won't make my main party list. I will use the fighter...and lets see...I need a Druid (hopefully they make a voiced one of those) and either a pally or I will get a life cleric hireling.

The priestess of Shar is still on her own...In the end it will be the player who has to implement the alignment system.

Good points.

Yep. It will be up to us to play alignment but I want the decisions to matter in some manner. Viconia was in most of my parties and by the end of the game she had shifted her alignment from neutral evil to neutral. Sarevok was in nearly all of my ToB parties and he started Chaotic Evil and became Chaotic Good. And, if you were playing with the semi official ascension mod that really mattered in the final battle because evil Sarevok would turn on you.

It was fun. I felt like decisions I was making mattered in some way. So I'm totally fine with party of mixed alignments -- Korgan and Mazzy had some good interactions in BG2. So I do wonder what will happen to shadowheart if she accepts help from a Selunite . . .

And if it doesn't matter then someone has messed up

Sigh. Okay, let me dig into this if I truly must.

Real-world politician evil in the guise of good is in fact a perfect template for the politicians in D&D. Most politicians do think they are good while being at best neutral and at worst evil, but they drift back and forth between the two, and motives exist. "What? The peasants are fine, let them eat cake, I really need more gold though just to be safe! I deserve it, really." Meanwhile, peasants are starving. The politicians don't see this happening but they are allowing it. If I kill those politicians, is that an evil act? Or is it more evil to let innocent people starve while sociopaths giggle over their gourmet pheasant? What good does it do to argue about labels when the player is making decisions like that? Isn't the decision and its consequences more important than some label?

Evil creatures are a different ballpark because they will have alien motives. I'm talking about developers judging humanoid characters, not baatezu. Eeeevool can exist in this universe without it being applied to the player's actions when it isn't warranted--though it's pretty boring and stupid to be evil just for the evulz. Even vampires at least have unnatural hunger and a lust for domination as a means to satisfy that hunger regularly as motives, which makes sense, but isn't it more interesting if they're on the borderline between neutral and evil, or maybe even want to be good but keep screwing up? That whole tortured struggle is the basis for why Vampire: the Masquerade is so popular. And why should a god like Shar be less complex in her motivations than most adult humanoids? "Waaah, my sister was mean to me, stupid planet, everything should be dark." Congratulations, you're the deity of edgelord. It's far from the most interesting thing about Shar, even. Why not mention the Shadow Weave or something?

There's more to D&D than alignments, just as there is with Tolkien and such as well. Other things are more interesting. Mind flayers are more interesting. The Great Old One is more interesting. Hell, even Bhaal is more interesting--murder carries with it ideas of war and adrenaline, that is understandable. Him being the "Lord of Murder" says a lot without even mentioning that he's evil, you can figure it out easily. Then you've got Lolth, who was ambitious and treacherous; the want for power and to step out of someone else's shadow is understandable. Shar's kind of the worst. From everything I've seen of her, she's just the edgelord deity. She's less interesting precisely because of what can be reduced to sheer alignment. So you're kind of making my point right there.

Here's the thing. All of what you said about alignment does not require alignment tags. Clerics can be held to the tenets of their god without those tenets being labeled. The stuff with Sarevok and Viconia doesn't need alignment tags. That feedback can exist without the words "Chaotic Good" or whatever else. Personal journeys can be personal journeys. A dark character can come back to the light without ever being labeled "Chaotic Evil" or "Lawful Good". Astarion could re-develop his empathy and it's a pretty cheap reward if all it amounts to is two words on his character sheet changing--the cool part is not the words. The cool part is the character development. The cool part can exist without restrictive labels.

If it must exist at all, alignment should be clear. It should be easy for the player to know what they're doing and make deliberate choices for that reason. It shouldn't be as it has been in numerous games before, where the wording is ambiguous garbage and you have to roll your eyes and reload because someone decided that you killing a person who was very obviously going to go slaughter a town full of people was an evil action, as opposed to just letting that person go cut lots of throats. I got alignment points in NWN2 for telling the soldiers that I won't let them kill Neeshka in cold blood--what if my character is calculating and did it because they think Neeshka's hot and want her to be indebted to them? Then it's actually kind of neutral at best, maybe even evil. You can come up with more examples than that, but it's so easy to do it very wrong and interfere with roleplay.

Altruism and cruelty exist. But thinking about why someone is altruistic or cruel forces writers to evaluate characters in a more sophisticated manner than "okay, these guys are uh... evil and crazy, boxes ticked, Chaotic Evil, done." Viconia's cultural and religious propensity is far more meaty AND sympathetic. There's a reason why other evil characters were bit parts while she's a love interest/companion. Flat alignment is dull, and if it's not flat you don't need to spell it out so hard.

Writers at times depict insanity/evil in stupid ways. It's far more interesting and authentic when they know what disorders exist or they've studied serial killers and use those as inspiration. DA2 did this, for one example. None of the interesting possibilities required him to have an alignment spelled out anywhere. The outcomes were also more interesting because I didn't have to worry about getting alignment points. I wasn't taken out of the experience by thinking "oh, the developers decided I'm evil for killing this guy who murders elven children but will always get off scot free because his father has government power and continually covers up for him" or "oh, me bringing him in is lawful? Even though I know the law won't be followed because of who his dad is and he's about to break the law even more? Huh..." I was simply allowed to make the choice for myself, like an adult, rather than be chastised or judged for choosing one way or the other based on the character I was roleplaying at the time. I could just roleplay instead and judge for myself.

So what it boils down to is--I'm not against alignment as a framework under the hood. Yes, there should be consequences, yes, there should be character development, yes, there should be tenets. Hell, I would even go so far as to say I kind of believe in good and evil myself. What I'm against is jarring judgments of morality that don't reflect common sense and aren't nuanced, which take away from the experience, and I'd rather have no alignment than alignment that is stupid unsophisticated nonsense as I've seen in most games. Alignment limits options for developers as well as players.

I find stupid alignment arguments which never come to an end being forced on my escapism to be exactly what sucks about the real world, and to Hades with THAT.

You don't have to take good and evil or law and chaos out of Faerun. You can just take arbitrary judgments on the part of the developer out and make morality more nuanced. You can at least stick to delineating clear cases of those things and let the player worry about everything in between.

One of my favorite quests in a tabletop D&D game was when my party was presented with a group of goblins supposedly slaughtering the townsfolk. In fact, they were just defending themselves against attacks by the local soldiers intending to drive them out of their home, and all that was left were women, children, and the elderly because all the young adults had died trying to defend the cave they were sheltering in, their home, from being plundered. That very challenging of flat creature alignment expectations is what made the quest interesting and made it rewarding. A quest about evol goblinz being evol and then we kill them bc alignment=evol? Flat. Boring. The very subversion of expectation is why we had fun with that quest. If that DM had been a strict "goblins are evil creatures so they're evil, you cast detect evil, they are evil" type? Pure boredom. Yet if alignment hadn't existed as a structure and goblins were just considered evil by reputation, that quest is intact. It's fine. Strict alignment enforcement kills that quest. Soft alignment enforcement doesn't. No alignment doesn't harm it whatsoever, not even a little bit.

Alignment as a strict framework rather than a lax and forgiving guideline is a barrier to fun and to good writing and I will maintain that until my dying breath. You can disagree with me but I type 100wpm and I've been annoyed about this topic for about the past 20 years.

TL;DR: Labels are for cans, yo.