Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion A nonexistent (dead) army shouldn't be able to attack anyone, regardless of leadership.

One of the first things in the game, is the tieflings wanting you to defeat the goblins.
If you advance to the mountain / act 2 without helping, they die when they attempt to travel. Makes sense.

They suggest taking out specifically the people leading the goblins, not the goblins as a whole. They think the goblins will be too disorganized without leaders to be enough of a threat.
If you get past all the goblins on the map, reach the leaders, and stealthily take out only those 3 (plus the goblins immediately next to them), it turns out the tieflings were right to think as stated, and they survive their journey. Makes sense.

If you proceed through the entire act 1 map, kill every single goblin, but spare even one leader, the tieflings die without reaching act 2. To ghosts and walking off cliffs like lemmings, apparently, since there's no goblins to attack them.
This does not make sense. None at all.
The basis behind Zevlor asking you to take out the leaders is that he thinks you can't take out the entire army. But you CAN. You can eliminate every single enemy or potential threat in the entire act 1 region.
If you kill off all the random goblins, the tieflings should be considered safe, and make it through. Even if all three leaders are still alive.
Instead, the game acts like they were still ambushed and killed by goblins, but you can't be killed by goblins that don't exist anymore.
Heck, I'm saying "literally all the goblins" because it's effective for discussion, but really you wouldn't need to kill all, just "enough". At some point in act 1, if you kill enough goblins, the quest should receive a "roads are safe now" update, even if you never encountered the leaders at all.

Frankly, the goblins without the leaders should be a bigger danger than the leaders without goblins.
Goblins without a leader to organize them are still violent goblin raiders. Reasonably, some of the tieflings should die before reaching act 2 if you only kill the leaders, leaving extra goblins alive.
But if you kill all the goblin soldiers, the leaders would have nobody to send, so reasonably the tieflings should be fine. They should all survive leaving act 1.
And don't just tell me there's another goblin horde we don't see off map, as if that once sentence is enough. If they're off map, don't you think that should suggest they're far enough away the tieflings can reach the forest before the goblins get them? And, you know, move on to forest problems instead.

Someone's probably going to read this and take it as wanting to make one of the three choices on offer in the questline without its consequence.
But that's not what this is. This is wanting the fourth choice the game basically already lets you do actually be recognized as the game's story continues, instead of choice 4 giving the same results as choice 3.
The choices being:
1: kill the leaders with or without extra goblins, siding with and helping both the tieflings and the druids
2: siding with the goblins and attacking the grove, ultimately killing both tieflings and druids.
3: ignoring the quest and proceeding to mountain / act 2 without helping either side, which reasonably means the tieflings die to a goblin ambush after the druids remove them
4, the one my thread is about: taking the tiefling's side (but not necessarily the druid's) and successfully saving them by eliminating the entire goblin army, but leaving one of or all the leaders alive for whatever arbitrary reason you had.
To send a message? To make a point? To maximize drama? Because you're playing as a drow who want's to spare their own people? Because you think you can take out the goblins without them knowing it was you, and trick them into thinking you're really on their side like with option 2? "I can fix her"? Munchkinizing a tactician save? Roleplaying a Dark Urge who's trying to limit sating their urge to those who are arguably less important?
This could be considered siding with the tieflings, by making the roads safe for them, while not actually siding with the druids because you still leave behind the leaders that want to target the grove in the first place (theoretically they could return later, but only long enough later that the tieflings would be long gone).

Minthara + Halsin

the tieflings should still be save-able

being punished at Moonrise for losing her army, rather than successfully wiping out the TIeflings and Grove, which is how it is at the moment.

can't recruit her if you sacrifice the Tieflings and Grove, as she would be rewarded and indoctrinated further into the Absolute's cult.

if you successfully wipe out the goblin army leaving her (and maybe the other leaders) alive to be punished by Thorm.

find and retrieve the Astral Prism,