Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Another survey: Childern killing poll.

Everything in the game should be killable. If children are immortal then I do not believe that the devs will resist the temptation to make them troll us from their unassailable invulnerability.

We do not need a repeat of Little Lamplight from Fallout 3.

A glut of ill-informed (and typically incurious) people influencing the outcome of a product of which they have little or no interest? Where have I seen this before?

If they really want to give us ultimate flexibility, then it should be possible to do both "kill everything" and "kill nothing" playthroughs.

(apparently I hit the quote button rather than the edit button)

Likening monsters to differently-structured humans and/or likening monsters to very real ethnic minorities is a quirky viewpoint...in moderation; when these sentiments grip the droves who are perpetually seeking the next socio-political crusade, then, yes, it is a problem.

+1

And, I'm not going to re-quote everything but
@The_Red_Queen :


In my case, I'm basically saying, if it doesn't bring anything in term of story-telling or characterization, no need to make children killable.
Am I advocating for that to be the case?
Nope.
Just sharing my view on the matter.


I do like the idea that if every children can be killed then add consequences when applicable. But that requires more coding...is this really a priority?

Good point, as it turns out Goblins are NOT classified as monsters at all - or at least they are not monstrosities...

Offspring of the civilized races, absolutely, but those (antagonistic) reactions should be far from universal if the spawn of monsters are eradicated.

If the race eats people in general, they are monsters in my book.

If SOME don't eat people, those are rare offshoots of a monster race.

Goblins eat people. Tieflings don't. Therefore, I would consider goblins monsters and tieflings not.

That said, I don't like killing the children of either.

That said, if I'm in a hostile monster camp, and their kids are going to warn their elders to come kill me, I must kill them or I will likely die. Likewise, if tiefling children are going to turn an entire grove full of tieflings against me, to survive, I should probably kill them.

Humans eat humans. To honour, remember and respect the dead, not just survival. If that's evil in your book so be it. Evil to me is cultural genocide and driving to suicide those who did what they needed to. Both can be depicted in fiction of course.

They bedevil travelers. They harry frontier villages and towns. They swell the ranks of their more ambitious and stronger kin. Rare is the individual who will shed a tear for their deaths.

Well, fortunately we don’t have to agree on whether goblin children are monsters, evil, or whether being monsters or evil means that it’s okay to kill them. We don’t even need to have a settled opinion ourselves. I can choose to roleplay a character who sees goblins and their ilk as a scourge that should be slaughtered without mercy but protects lives of other races with their own, or one that treats all lives as disposable, or one who regretfully kills goblins to save lives but has nightmares about it, or one who will refuse to kill a goblin or any other creature unless immediately required in defence of their life, or all kinds of flavours inbetween. I want a game in which all of these options are possible, and I think largely we have one.

The question in this thread isn’t about that, but whether having some lives artificially protected by the game is an unwarranted restriction on our freedom to roleplay the characters we want, or I guess whether the ability to kill goblin kids means we have too much freedom. Personally, because the restrictions the game has aren’t ones that are going to significantly impact any character I’ll want to play, I just don’t care very much one way or the other, but I have sympathy with those who do. If there are no great consequences for the game classification or ability to access certain markets, subjects about which I have no knowledge, then I’d be okay with opening up more murderous possibilities. Though I do agree with folk who have said there should be appropriate consequences for killing tiefling kids, and while for me this just isn’t a priority for development so don’t mind Larian ducking the issue, I recognise that’s just my personal preference.

I’m not particularly comfortable that some of the posts here seem to be suggesting that only roleplay options that don’t see moral difficulty in killing goblin children are valid, but as long as the game continues to enable a wide range of characters with different moralities - albeit potentially with some limits - then everyone is entitled to their opinions.

Just let us knock them out, but not kill them, and make no plot-essential NPCs out of them. This is my take. By them I mean all children, goblins included.

Ahem. Let me put it this way. I call any creature a monster who:

1. Goes about purposely killing people for fun.
2. Purposely tortures people for fun.
3. Enjoys raiding villages and towns with the sole intent of killing and eating people.
4. Enslaves people and cruelly mistreats said slaves, often eating them when they no longer prove useful or just because they're hungry or just for fun.

Goblins, trolls, orcs, hobgoblins, ogres, etc. Are considered "monster" races because they did these things. So, ever since the dawn of D&D, they were bad guys and evil. Now, in our modern culture, suddenly people want to turn them into alien races from Star Wars. There are no good or evil races.

Look. If in a D&D game, I ran into a human tribe full of people who did all the above things, I'd consider the whole tribe a monster tribe. If one of their kids was about to sound an alarm that would get me and my companions killed, I'd shoot that kid to prevent the alarm from being sounded. Would I like it? No. But I'd do it because if I didn't the greater good could be compromised.

Likewise, if I encountered a good tribe of goblins who didn't kill and eat people, I wouldn't view them as monsters. My point in BG3 is that the goblins are all monsters in the game. Those kids are literally going to eat poor Brian the dwarf who is cooking on a spit out front, and I'm sure Halsin is next. They're just throwing rocks at him to tenderize the meat. Larian is portraying the entire goblin tribe as evil. In fact, I'd venture to say that the only maybe not evil one is maybe the cook with Volo... maybe... But not likely because she's a cook who has likely helped dice up members of Aradin's crew and people from Waukeen's Rest to serve as main menu items for the entire clan, kids included.

And frankly, we should be careful about discussing all the cultural genocide stuff. We're talking fantasy here. If an alien race descended on Earth to enslave us and use us as cattle, harvesting our kids and such as food, I'm fairly certain we'd all be thinking about cultural and racial genocide. In d&d, that is literally what most goblins have done throughout the history of Forgotten Realms. They harvest people for slavery and food.

The option for all of them (both tiefling and goblin children) to be killable should be there. Likewise the option to not kill any of them should also be there.

This is one of those situations where a lot of people have issues with separating the real world from a fantasy world. In this particular fantasy world, being a mini criminal could easily mean death, racism exists, etc. Having a certain subgroup being somehow exempt from all of this makes no sense to me.

Exactly! Thank you. :3

That is a flagrantly absurd idea. In an age where realism (and "realism") is treated as sacrosanct and "darker and edgier" themes are still enjoying immense support, the inability to kill a mortal being that just-so-happens to be on the lower end of the age spectrum is going to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Program in (appropriate and reasonable) consequences. Hell, introduce an Alignment/karma meter. Whatever L does, it should be anything but that; having non-critical NPCs who would otherwise be susceptible to damage instead be inexplicably immortal is catastrophically immersion-breaking.

We also live in an age where whoever controls the flow of information controls people's attention as well and is free to propagate any agenda, including the moralistic harassment towards the developer who just wanted to make things realistic for the sake of your, or any other kind. Should we also romance kids as well? Should the game have a jail where you should spend 50 years to pay for your crimes of killing children? What are the appropriate and reasonable measures you've mentioned? Can you specify, because otherwise it is hard to correlate with your opinion. I came up with this idea not because I find it realistic, but because it is a sensitive topic that can resonate and finding a middle-ground should be the most appropriate solution. Is there any absurdity about it? This is not a rhetorical question, please humor me.

No. Let us knock out the tiefling children so the goblins can take them alive and put them to work doing slave labor... or fatten them up and eat them. That's much better.

Look. Let's put it this way. It is fantasy. It isn't reality. In D&D, usually goblins are vicious, malicious, terrible monsters. However, if in your D&D play sessions you make goblins just another race that aren't this way, that's fine. You see them as another race. However, this is not the goblin tribe that Larian is presenting to us. The goblins and their children are vicious, malicious, terrible monsters. Larian, being the DM, has the right to present them as such.

And as such, they need to be wiped out. All of them. (Meant to be said like Darth Sidious in Phantom Menace.)

Imagine you are a mercenary in Aradin's adventuring party. There's this dwarf named Brian who is jovial, fun loving, loves food, and he is as greedy as sin. He's got this great treasure map, and he's telling you all about how rich you're going to be some day. You guys all go into this temple to try to find the treasure - and find vicious, malicious goblins there - TONS of them. They swarm you. They capture you and Brian and a few others. You're lashed to a torture rack along with some other guy you barely know, and there's poor Brian.

"Hmmm," says one of the goblins, and he pokes Brian in the gut. "Fat and juicy. Eh boys? Looks like 'e'll make a GREAT suppa for at least a few o' us."

Goblin kids nearby start laughing like gremlins from the 1980s movie. "I want at least a finger. They look like sausages."

"I wanna chunk oh the breast. Please Spike! Please! He looks SO tasty."

Then you watch as they kill your friend Brian right in front of you. Then they chop him into pieces and carry off his parts to the cooking fires. And guess what? You're next.

This may be my head cannon, but it sure does seem more like the goblins in BG3 than what maybe some on this forum are thinking. Evil. They are evil and their kids are evil. Put yourself in the shoes of the victims of this fantasy world. This is not like Trandoshans in Star Wars who come from a warrior race - some are mean and terrible but some aren't. This is goblins who traditionally, and in BG3, literally capture and kill people and enslave them and eat them, just like poor Brian who is found roasting on a spit when you enter the goblin camp.

That is a FAR cry different from the tiefling children who might smart mouth off to you here and there. They are not really evil. They are just a bunch of smart mouthed punks who are actually scared to death but they're trying to be all tough because it makes them feel better.

All that said, if Larian wants to create a true RPG, they'll allow PCs to either knock out or kill either group of kids if the DM (Larian) sets the stage for the PCs to do so. Again, if some brat tiefling is going to turn an entire grove of dozens of people against me, both tiefling and druid, if I'm good, I - me the player - will make the decision to knock them out or grapple them to the ground rather than kill them - but if I'm evil, I - me the player - will make the decision to kill them off because they're nasty brats and I can't stand them and they are now threatening my life. If they're not going to allow players to knock out and/or kill the kids, don't put players in the position that they are going to basically be screwed if those kids get away.

Likewise, with the goblin children, you have the option, provided by Larian, to simply knock out the kids. You don't HAVE to kill them. It's your choice. If you're evil and you just don't care, death be to the goblin kids. If you're good and your conscience says, "But they're just kids," Larian has given you the right to decide. If you're good and your conscience says, "These are monster kids who will grow up to be people-eating monster adults. Best to just kill them because it would be less cruel then letting them live without their tribe, parents, etc." Then that's up to you, the player, to decide.

There should be no difference between the two scenarios regardless of whether goblins are evil or not.

Having BG3 identified as "that game where you can massacre innocent children" is something I suspect Larian doesn't want to chance.

In addition the logic of your above quote would equally apply to romance options. We can all agree that would not only be morally reprehensible but illegal in most (all?) markets.

*shoots a Fireball into the midst of a mixed-age crowd. Watches as the children (Goblin, Human or otherwise) survive without so much as a superficial burn.*

That's Looney Tunes style all right.


That - right there - lies close to the heart of the matter: what WOTC/modern D&D establishes and what the DM/players decide. Goblins are monsters; Goblins are not vertically-challenged humans that got smacked by the ugly stick a thousand or so times yet are otherwise "decent people". Succubi aren't edgy nymphomaniacs; Succubi are capricious and malevolent manifestations of the lower planes who use sex as a weapon. Mind Flayers aren't yet another sentient/sapient being with a specific dietary quirk; Mind Flayers establish societies that revolve around the utter domination of "lower beings" for the express purpose of satisfying their hunger/curiosity.

A simple tautology is the most efficient way of lubricating the machinery of escapism: "They're monsters because they're monsters." If one wishes to avoid getting lost in the forest, then one should avoid stepping into the forest.

Overly-conscientious players: "Can we reform them?"
DM: "No."

Overly-conscientious players: "Are there any exceptions to the rule?"
DM: "No."

DM: "Do you want to spend your sessions of Dungeons & Dragons making painstaking efforts to ensure that each and every humanoid monster isn't deep-down a genuinely caring individual? Do you want to escort groups of quite literally monstrous POWs - who may not be innocent and may in fact attempt to murder you along the way - to medieval court systems in villages/towns/cities that are all-too-accustomed to attacks by these monsters?'
Overly-conscientious players: "..."


Collectively, China (or at least its government) has some...odd beliefs about homosexual/bisexual relationships. Should Larian excise any potential homosexual/bisexual romance options in the hopes that their attempt sells better in that particular market?

If you continue to kowtow, eventually, the only taste you will remember is dirt.