Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Reasonable Oaths for Paladins

Having played a Paladin through two runs, the Oath system feels arbitrary and irrational. I've had my Oath broken for pushing a goblin off a cliff from sneaking while she was jabbering about torturing a druid. Okay, I'll accept that I attacked a helpless psychopath as breaking my oath....but.....

Raising Myrna's husband? Really. She's crying, and I'm trying to comfort her. Oh, but I can resurrect my allies with no penalty. And I can cast the spell animate dead, again with no penalty. I can bring up the dead to talk to them, and that's fine. There is no consistency here.

Now, I'm in the prison, and I'm trying to free the Gnomes, so I steal the hammer. Apparently stealing is fine. No one sees me, but somehow, by magic, when I descend the ladder the Warden confronts me and attacks me. I kill her in self defense and get the dreaded Oathbreaker message. So, trying to break prisoners out of Moonrise towers constitutes breaking my oath?

This is a fun concept, but there really needs to be some firm lines. Stealing is fine but looting a corpse is not. Killing thousands of enemies is fine but is wrong when they are confronting your for taking something that is not even theirs to help someone escape captivity?

This is why some sort of reputation system would be helpful. So you can see the effect that your actions are having. As things stand, you can slaughter a whole room full of people, and the people next door have nothing to say about it. I appreciate that the conventional Alignment system was rigid and restrictive, but this feels absurd and capricious. If nothing else, it is frustrating. I know that many will rush to defend the system and rationalize the above scenarios, but that is my point. It shouldn't take sophistry to justify these gameplay consequences. They should be clear and reasonable to anyone who adopts the Paladin mindset. I've gone through the game stealing nothing, protecting the helpless, doing things that the game does not require because they are CONSISTENT with my character, and then I get hit with something like the above. It ruins the role playing.

Also, I've seen posts on this topic, but none covering exactly what I want to discuss here, so I'd appreciate not being redirected to any of those threads, thank you.

Oaths have me shying away from playing the class since I really don't understand them. I found playing a fallen Paladin in BG2 annoying, but at least there it was sort of a 1 off situation that one could resolve relatively easily without really needing to know anything particular.

In-game our only potential Paladin companion is Minthara, but she doesn't mention it, or hasn't yet. I've done 3 runs with her now to the beginning of the Third Act. Each time sorta hoping for more content on that front hehe.

Companions in my view always served as an introduction to the Class archetype, so by bringing them along for the ride you sort of learn what you need to learn to then maybe consider playing as that class yourself. But the Oath mechanic just hasn't cropped up yet. I'm not sure, like is she a Paladin of the Absolute, or was she a Paladin of Lloth but then fell and we're getting the Oath Broke version initially? She speaks a few Oath sounding lines when you first recruit her, so I guess we maybe are witnessing it in real time, right then when we bust her out of Moonrise? Basically I just don't understand what the deal is for her, so it's hard to generalize from that example. I never liked Paladins because in earlier editions they were restricted to the least flexible Alignment and just seemed kinda boring to me, so I'm still waiting for someone to really nail it and open my eyes on this one. I felt the same way about Monks and Sorcerers, but BG3 flipped the script on those for me, now they seem pretty badass, but that's an aside. In the BG games the way they had things set up, seemed to drive home the point that being all rigid and inflexible with ones morality basically was the preserve of hypocrites or charlatans or characters who lacked any sense of nuance or scope, so sorta setting your Paladin up to fail. At least when interacting with other regular characters who aren't like Fiends and Devils and whatnot. But that stuff is all pretty much gone, now it's much more abstract, but for that reason harder to parse.

If you are a new player, say you've never played D&D maybe haven't even heard the word before, I can imagine this being frustrating.


Part of the issue is perhaps the lack of a Palace/Order/Temple complex or some sort of holy guide, or I don't know a ghost maybe? Who visits us and gives us more insight. Or I guess a reputation system as you mentioned which would clarify what's going on for the mundane aspect.

I think the Oath itself needs to be framed as an active decision rather than a passive/reactive one since this seems like a pretty big flavor component. In other words the player should get an Oathbreaker message before the Oath is Broken, and then they can decide whether it's worth the cost or how they want to Role Play that decision. They should basically know what they're doing, if they don't know then it's not an expression of will at all, which seems to be their whole deal right?

Put another way, the only time you should be able to break your Oath is during a dialogue type sequence, or some sort of staged encounter with that kind of set up beforehand. Or maybe like once in the game, where it's out of your hands, but more deliberate in the build up there.

Again if you're brand new, say you just choose the default, you'll get a 24 word blurb there to describe what the basic Sub-Class entails... and a few more if you cursor over the sub-class features icon. Looks like this...







The other Sub-Classes read the same way. Since I'm already disinclined to role play as a zealot, this was the last Class I tried. It was also among the last classes to be included, so I didn't feel much incentive to learn more during EA. Minthara wasn't recruitable and she was basically a Cleric before the Paladin class was added. Before she got her cool new look and spiffed up duds. Seeing her now, sure, Paladins seem cooler. But it's sort of weird that our Archetypal example would be on the villainous team and a Drow. I never bothered with Ajantis in BG1, he seemed like a pushover. Keldorn, sure, but even there, his whole arch was basically a negative example for the life of devotion. I eventually did play a few Paladin Charname runs in BG and BG2, mostly just to see what it would look like, usually bringing Aerie along and trying to be all super lawful good about everything, but then the companions you end up rolling with all have a voice that's like 3 octaves too high and I don't know, it just makes Goodness and Law seem sorta lame compared to the other alignments back in the day. And this in a fantasy universe where there is actual Evil at work and actual Devils and whatnot. Granted they ditched the scheme and it's not a Human exclusive anymore, for a while now, but I just feel like it always works better when Law is like cosmological rather than mundane/human, so you'd think it would hum for me now. Basically if you're a Palatine knight, then Caesar I guess would be like a living god and you just roll with that concept, like leaning way hard into the law of it, but the conflict between law and good always seemed, again kinda sophomoric to me and not a top pick for RP. That tension wasn't something that I vibed on, because it seemed like if forced to choose an Axis when they conflict, one would always win out somehow. Not to diss on the class with reference to older editions, and the older mechanics surrounding it, but since that's what I was familiar with, I think I was looking for a bit more to bring me up to speed with the 5e rendition.

Anyhow, I agree, more structure/info for how this might play out mechanically, would perhaps have made playing a Paladin seem interesting. Reading it and hearing about how there was a Broken Oath mechanic just made it seemed like it would stifle a go-with-the-flow and trust-your-gut playthrough, since I don't really understand all the various customs and traditions my Paladin is expected to uphold.

I think not having a Class themed prologue was a missed opportunity. They should include something like that, which I've been looking forward too since the first day of EA on the Nautiloid. Very little there deals with the class choice you've made or background, it's never directly addressed, or it is, but it happens too far along. Re-spec'ing into a Class like Paladin or taking a second class in Paladin or really any class like that without any sort of build-up or preamble or in-world development seems like a bit of a missed opportunity as well.

Minithra is an excellent example of the muddled Paladin class. As things stand, she feels like an afterthought. I made some evil decisions on a third playthrough to recruit her, but she mainly says nothing and does not react the environment. I hope that she will get more content as the game develops. But, and for me this is the crux of the matter, she at times seems bloodthirsty and self absorbed, yet on my run, she never broke her oath. Imagine this, a Drow that loves to watch blood run red for the sake of it, who can be a Paladin, but I break my oath for sneak pushing a hostile Goblin, who is torturing a helpless hafling, off a cliff. That is absurd.

As you write, the Oath should have an active component: what things have you done to fulfill that oath. A record of achievements would be great: i.e. you can look at your character sheet and see that you saved the Teiflings, helped an orphan, etc. It was act as a sort of chronicle of one's journey. Many roleplaying games have this, notably the Fallout series.

I've gotten deep into Act II with Paladin builds that I loved, and given up in frustration each time. Now, if a class is well designed, a player should not invest that much time in it, love his character, and quit the campaign. But as things stand, I can't play the class because I never know when some small decision will cost me my oath, I could care less about the gold, but the idiocy of it ruins the role playing for me.