Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Killing Goblin Kids ok but not Tieflings

If a person really wants to kill children in game.....

I hope they find a good therapist.

Its a game ...

Whats the difference between killing one NPC and another?

And you can already kill two children in the game anyway.

Could say the same of anyone playing a murderhobo or a evil character in general. I mean, if you re going to judge that, might as well judge any bad deeds in video games.

I took a look at the scene with the goblin children teasing the bear, which is a very IMPORTANT bear, I don't want to spoil it for anyone that may not know. All I will say is DON'T kill the bear. It seems in the cinematic scene we are shown children goblins BUT I don't think that's who you end up fighting. I noticed one of the goblin kids running to get help. So, who you end up killing is maybe one goblin child because the rest are actually adults but since the goblins are the same height, it's hard to tell. I took a look at the faces on the top left of the screen and noticed that they don't seem like faces of younglings but they look more adult.

You can kill the children or leave them to run away and warn the rest of the camp. While killing them is optional, it is still possible unlike the invincible tiefling children.

True, much of all the versions of D&D seem to generate murder hoboes in general.
In this case I'm a splitter, not a lumper and someone complaining that they can't kill children .. that has a definitely different feel to "I kill monsters and take their loot" to me.

YMMV

But we can kill children in this game. The Goblin ones at least. If they hadn't put that in, then no one would be wanting to kill the Tiefling kids as well.

Oh, they do. That is why there were no same-sex romances in BG1+2 (romance was even race-restricted in some cases), but they were in SoD and the Enhanced Editions. They've also been in any RPG of the last decade. And since the last three years we have seen more and more representation, with rather "polarizing" outcomes. Like Corwyn in SoD, who in a half-sentence, told you her lifestory and the internet went ablaze. I believe you can romance anyone regardless of race/class/gender in Baldur's Gate III, just like you can about anywhere in the Western World. Thing is, we do want the contemporary morals implemented, and some things haven't changed in thousands of years, regardless if it is a fantasy setting or set in the "real world". The killing of infants, like murder in general or stealing is one of them. That also extends to animals or, vermin. Goblins are on a higher tier, because they are an intelligent people with culture and language and, most importantly, they are humanoid. So you would have a hard time drowning a baby cat already, but a much harder time killing an infant that can talk back and resembles something you are very familiar with.
The reason we see it a lot in games and the demand for it, is because of reloading and no consequences whatsoever attached to it. That is why it is a double-standard to have certain actions, yet not the repercussions. That is why having amoral decisions in general in games is tendencially futile and solely there for the "hurhur, I just wiped out a village"-effect. So like GTA, where to whole world is curiously devoid of children.

There's a difference between children who are enemy combatants, and children who are not.

If you join the Goblins and choose to wipe out the Druid Grove, then the tiefling children become enemy combatants, but are still invincible.

Also the Goblin kids literally don't attack you, THEY TRY TO RUN AWAY!

But you can kill them from behind while they are trying to escape.

Ah, well in that case, you should definitely be able to kill the tiefling kids. I haven't seen a game that let you kill kids since Fallout 2, though.

Wasn't there someone claiming that they had to slaughter all the hiding tiefling kids in order to push forward the plot...?

Either way, I don't get why you are so wound up about this. The 'preset' option seems to be going the good aligned playthrough, that's usually what most people do. Goblins have been very humanized in this game, and I have to admit, as much as I disliked them being made so smart and civilized, I found some of them very cute, I grew fond of Zassa or Sazza and I couldn't be mean to her in my evil playthrough, I had to spare her. Still, I'm sorry, but they're effing gobbos and 99% of them are evil (I haven't found a single good gobbo in the game, so I leave that 1% open.)

The children that you can kill, but you don't have to kill (I didn't even manage to catch them in my playthrough, they darted off so fast!) are clearly growing up to be just as evil and already behaving like psychopaths, they are shown torturing other creatures and enjoying it thoroughly. There is clearly a difference between them, and the tieflings, as much as you wouldn't like to admit it, the goblins are still a monstruous race, and their culture revolves around cruelty and back stabbing.

My criticism is to have the option at all, since it is one of the few things in the world across time people can agree on as being amoral. In any world it would have social, professional and therefore personal consequences, which are not represented in this game, hence having these interactions themselves is worthless other than filling the desire to act as an inhuman being. Even people inclined to that sort of behaviour know it is wrong and refrain from doing it, because of the attached consequences, hence it is a statistical outlier and always has been. Even if you go by the definition of them being just vermin or animals, taking a puppy behind the barn is not something anyone would do for fun and is quite stressing for the individual.
If one agrees that goblins are humanoids with a culture, that might be alien to us, we are now in a society (and this western society is represented in this game) that respects that and does not directly make the assumption that different cultures are inherently evil. Besides, cruelty to animals is a totally human behaviour, especially as a child, I bet everyone of us has a story of witnessing or acting on causing an animal mental or physical stress and pain deliberately inflicted for a varied amount of reasons.

In the end it barely matters for most the players, but if your game wants to represent the society of liberal standards of today, this is something to keep in mind for the devs.

Monsterous races are fine to me and most players, but WOTC have stated that none of their races are meant to be inherently evil anymore. If they want to push such agendas, then they should enforce them as well and at the least remove the ability to be able to kill the two Goblin children. And likewise I actually began to somewhat like the goblins in this game, particularly the one cheering for Volo, and even most of the evil ones actually end up seeming somewhat funny, but then the game lets you kill their children.

Its ok to let the stealing Tiefling kid die to a snake, then what about if Lae'zel wants to smash the skull of the one that tricks her with fake magical rings? Or if Astarion wants to mercy kill them rather than leaving them to die on the road after being kicked out of the grove? Or if you happen to role playing a character that simply wants to kill anythkng that looks like a demon?

And on that note how are tieflings not a monsterous race as well when they straight up look like demons with actual horns? Who decides what the moral and ethical scope is meant to be in a D&D setting?

'Tieflings are invaders from hell that need to be destroyed like the devilkin they are and sent back to hell' - what is wrong with roleplaying such a perspective? Do the Githyanki spare children when deciding to slit people navel to throat as Lae'zel so exquisitely details?

You still don't differentiate between "race" and "society/culture"... goblin society is undeniably evil (they delight in torture and cruelty, bullying those weaker than themselves, etc). A goblin that is brought up in a different culture wouldn't necessarily have those tendencies, therefore the "race" goblin isn't inherently evil. That's basically what WotC meant.



The DM does. If players have an issue with a DM's decision, they are free to find another group to play with.



There's nothing wrong with roleplaying a character with that perspective, you just need the right group to play a character like that.

Well, maybe he is a teacher and he has very evil kid in his class? Video game can be good as a Catharsis . Though that would reinforce your point of needing a therapist.


That's a good point that remind me of "Zadig''book of Voltaire, where an angel kill a small kid and tells Zadig that the kid would have become a serial killer and would have murdered a lot of people. Very pragmatic.

I think your argument bites itself. "most importantly, they are humanoid." You seem to agree that people of any race are worth the same. While you are willing to expand the set of entities to whom your system of morals applies beyond tribe and race to all humanoids you draw the border at "most importantly humanoid". So it does not apply to sentient beings that are not humanoid. Is "can a human create viable offspring with it" a good basis for a system of morals?
If current western morals are to be normative then why is "racism" evil but "speciesism" is not?

"Thing is, we do want the contemporary morals implemented"
I do not want that at all. It's all arbitrary and rooted in cultures that simply do not exist in the forgotten realms.

I see your point, but this is not what my personal view is. Since I am convinced in the real world that every man is created equal I put that belief into the game and extend it to every being that has a comparable social structure, regardless of the humanoid thing (which in itself is quite a variety, like anything walking upright and having two legs can be considered humanoid so bird people, lizard people, inanimate machines and undead). Many players do the same, but draw the line at the humanoid thing. The Rachni from Mass Effect are a good example. For me there was no other way than helping an insectoid race become a thing again. Many other players ( I think there were stats on that) drew the line there. So I deduced that this would be the same here, gobbos are humanoid so most players are inclined to extend the morals to them as well.
It gets really interesting when developers put sentient creatures into their game that are either benign or have a point, but are appaling to look at and/or generally considered hostile. That is where peoples' morals really grind their gears. It does not mean that deciding against, say, a nice phase spider is wrong or right, but is contemporary moral either way.

And I still think that all games are basically rooted into the western moral code. If they are not, or if parts of it are not (Caesar's Legion comes to mind in Fallout: NV) there are serious repercussions attached. And even they abide to certain principles not unknown to us, although they are the clearly evil path. Stealing for example is not a thing, and neither is the killing of infants (which also wasn't in the game). If we take the BG as an example over the last 20 years it is rather clear it was modeled after the real world. Keep in mind morals does not necessarily mean equal to culture, but any gender can do anything and anyone can also date anyone, there are gobbo followers, drow can seemingly walk freely on the surface (and get a charisma bonus). Quite a few things even changed over the last two decades. There are still some antiquated social structures, but way more ways to get out of them and many stories/quests evolve around breaking those up, like dethroning that lord that treats his people bad and such.
Now a game that is not at all rooted in these traditionally narrow set of morals, would need to be totally reinvented and probably disconnected from the human race, too. And of course when you break out of it, you will need to add all the added repercussions. Like I said before, if you are known to be the happy baby cat killer, you are not going to be invited to tea very often. If you hunt gobbo kids for sport, then companions should leave, spread the word and cut you out of a lot of content. Some might even secretly like it, but that does not mean these people would like to openly be seen with the "monster of the goblin village". If nothing like this is the case then the addition is moot and without benefit.

I did not expect anything from the title, but it actually made me think about that sort of stuff. Hence I keep on discussing.

We should be able to kill anyone and everyone.

You could kill kids in the original series, and the game made sure you were heavily penalized for it. You took on a much higher rep hit than for killing most other innocent NPCs.

I detect evil in this thread and I will smite it.

Genociding Goblins is lawful good!
Also being able to kill kids means the game has to be censored in countries like Germany and Larian definetly doesn't want that.