Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Evil and Jerk aren't the same thing

It feels like somewhere along the line, videogames have conflated 'evil' with 'asshole', which are not even close to the same. It made my 'evil' playthrough less enjoyable than I expected.

Generally in each big decision there weren't good vs. evil choices, just levels of gray. That is fine with me, a morally gray world is more interesting anyway.

However, my choices as a player weren't. My choices seemed to boil down to "pick a team" and "be rude or not".

Every single alignment in DnD has situations where they are jerks and where they are nice. To quote one of my favorite musicals, nice is different than good.

Examples: LG Paladin sees all creatures from Avernus as monsters, has no problem killing 'innocent' tieflings on sight.

NE Bard uses his charm and deception to make a court of nobles love him only to manipulate them into killing each other so he can steal their stuff/position without ever having to rude if he was smart enough.

Suggestions:
Let us turn leaders against each other within the same 'team'. Creating infighting is a great way to manipulate a group into self destruction. Maybe even become the leader of a group/cell temporarily.

Let me stealthily kill someone and point the finger at another character, getting them arrested and earning the trust of a group. Then stealing both the dead and the jailed's stuff while they are out of commission.

I fell like these scenario's are possible in videogames, it just takes a little more thought. The Whodunit? quest in Oblivion is close. If you could manipulate every NPC to kill each other and then pin it on the remaining one who you 'had to kill in self defense' it would be perfect.

Those are my thoughts. What do you guys think?

This is what happens in most RPG's unfortunately. I call it the 'stupid evil alignment'. Where are the lawful evil manipulative and charming options? A lawful evil alignment wants it all, they're hardly going to get it by being rude and killing everything that moves, that's a fast way to getting killed yourself.

Ah yes the classic 'the good paladin is actually the evil one' trope. Seriously it only works if you abandon all reason, try to use wordplay to 'game the system' and have no common sense imo.

Good and evil are true concepts in dnd. Murder is still evil, regardless of whatever the one doing it believes it or not. Killing unarmed civilains regardless of race is kinda frowned upon by good aligned deities. Neutral ones could be ok with it depending on the curcumstances under which they occur.

In the case of the pala what happens would depend on his god. Paladins get their powers from their gods and if they piss them off enough they can strip them off those powers and make them fallen paladins.

So could he still do it? Yeah he can. But it would still be an evil act and can have consequences.

Sorry. Pet peeve of mine. I agree that 'asshole' isent the same as evil. And evil isent always moustache twirling bond villain evil. Nor is beeing snarky or sarcaatic beeing evil.

Well written evil characters can come across as good characters infact because often times the only difference is how willing the character is to do 'morally questionable' things.

Friend of mine who likes to play lawfull evil characters can confuse people by following the word of law almost to the letter and only does things when he cant get caught or uses the law to protect him from people who want to retaliate against him. It drives people nuts. Its great!

Except that in DnD creatures from the hells are very much evil by nature, and much like the undead, are considered 'kill on sight' by a lot of gods. Where is the line for murder? If a Lemure hasn't killed anyone yet, but you kill it anyway, have you committed murder? How many murders does it take for you to be evil?

Been evil also doesn't mean you HAVE to make only evil choices.

So no, "evil playthrough" by no means force you pick only evil options. And there are plenty neutral options to pick.

Generally, I agree with your first point. Much of the time a polite evil character would do something similar to a good character but with a different motivation. The flaw in the game is that there is rarely payoff for that alternate motivation.

I think a good example of how to make this work is choosing to kiss a foot in order to submit or to steal a ring.

My favorite evil person of all time is in the Coldfire Trilogy

The Neocount of Merentha, the Prophet of the Church for Human Unification on Erna. He was a visionary, an individual who sought more adamant uses of the Fae to tame the planet, which was contrary to the Church's primary goal of rendering humans null to the Fae. He sacrifices his humanity to gain untold control over the Fae by murdering his wife and children in a dark ritual. Thus was born the Hunter.

The Hunter is an Adept with unfathomable capability and power. In the sacrifice he gained a control over the Fae no man had ever dared dream of before. Not only can he control the Earth Fae with ease, he can now utilize the elusive and tantalizing Dark Fae, with which he can perform the most arcane and dark of Workings.

He is smart, charismatic, driven, pragmatic, and horribly horribly evil person who killed his family to seal a pact with an unknown horror to gain power. Hes a bit aloof as hes traveling with a member of the church he once ran, but that member is kind of an outcast from it in his own way. Its fascinating. But im not constantly rolling my eyes wondering why theyre such jerks to one another - not to say its without jabs at all, but generally amicable as they have a shared goal. Brilliant series, great characters. I hate petty, which is what most evil turns into. Its petty.

Except that tieflings are also from the hells and are not by nature evil - as seen very easily in BG3 with Karlach. And that celestials can fall and become part of Avernus, which means fiends can 'rise' and become good. Tbh, it depends on context on why the paladin is there. But any paladin killing tieflings is probably not going to get away with "but they're FIENDS".

I love playing Paladin, but I doubt I'd ever play one that'll mindlessly go murdering Tieflings. That doesn't make any sense. I could imagine feeling pity for the thiefling. After all, it's birth was tainted by evil, which will probably disadvantage the person in many ways. However, if this tiefling has a family and is a constructive law-abiding part of it's society there is no reason to go as far as murder! Perish the though! Murder in itself is a heinous crime! Why would I even consider it? No, prayer, blessings and compassion will be the tools that'll free this thiefling from it's bonds to the infernal. Let us pray!

Of course, I'd extend the same leniency to the Lemure if there was any point to it. It's a damned soul eternally bound to the hierarchy of the nine hells. All help that could've been provided has come to late! This is no being of agency and choice, It's a devil. Lowest of the servants of hell, true, but a devil non the less. Banish it back to whence it came and be done with it!

Not just you its a fairly common trope. I think TV tropes even has a pretty extensive page on it.

Video game evil tends to be, more often than not, stupid evil. RPGs tend to do this pretty badly quite often with both your enemies and the player character evil choices. Since its easier to design you doing something remotely bad and classify it as evil action. Sometimes you can do a purely good playthrough, and only turn at the end to do the bad thing. Since it was all a grand big plan to do the big bad. Still will have good alignment probably.

Thank the gods BG3 has no alignment at least. That's one bullet dodged.

Isn't think why 5e drops alignment altogether? The modern generation is so morally bankrupt that no-one has the ability to distinguish good from evil?

The opposite, they don't want to say youre good or evil just because of your heritage - anyone can be good or evil. You can be an LG Goblin priest or an Evil Aasimar.

Tieflings are not from The Hells. They are mortals with a Fiend several generations back in their family tree. They almost all grow up on the Material Plane.

Paladins are likely to look down on them and be suspicious of them, like most people in Faerun, but they're not going to go around murdering them. Well, some are. The sort that take a stance that no corruption however small can be permitted. The sort that are the absolute classic example of the Falling Paladin.

The sort that are the absolute classic example of the Falling annoying Paladin. FTFY

Like others said, Thieflings arent creatures born of the hells. Devils and Demons beeing killed on sight us different then making Thirflings kos.

One has free will while the others have not. Demons and devils do have some resemblence of will but they are also creatures who follow their base impulse almost without exception.