Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Does 5E not have characters select alignment?

I never played the first two Witcher games but have played Witcher 3 and I loved it. My complaint about that game is with the very shallow game mechanics and that you have to play a predetermined character with very minimal ability to engage in any character development from a mechanics standpoint. However, I found the game's story, characters, character development from a non-mechanics standpoint, and world-building to be fantastic. And I did not have any problems with "alignment" in that game. The game does not have any alignment in it and yet found very meaningful ways to recognize and acknowledge my "good" choices and actions. I played the game doing things in as "good" a way I possibly could, and the game generated results that were very much in line with the "good" outcomes I was looking for. Only in one or two instances did I end up with "bad" outcomes despite my efforts to produce "good" outcomes, and even then the game acknowledged that I had made the effort to do things in a "good" way. So if BG3 does things the way TW3 does things, I would be happy with that.

I'm ok with going away from alignment system, yet some system of personality should exist. Seeing "Lolz-devoted drow" priestess of Lolz having full terror on her face when some completely unrelated event (e.g. minor event with tielfling-and-snake) appears completely breaks immersion. What else can I do on my end to ensure evil cleric to be evil:

• Lolz-devoted drow? Check.
• Priestess of Lolz? Check.
• Ignoring troubles letting folks decide their issues? Check.

I couldn't handle faces from drow-ranger and had to let friends warlock to do talking. I had some hope for this cleric. I was wrong.

https://imgur.com/a/FWgXUfz

Incidentally, you can find some youtube videos of parts of Witcher I that had some dialogues on the Law - Chaos continuum and how Witchers are tainted by Chaos but ultimately serve the interest of Law by removing Chaos from the world. The devs removed those aspects and changed the model of the subsequent witcher from bone-skinny, thin white duke like, to pretty buff to protect themselves a copyright suit from the author of the Elric series or one the devs he's allowed to use his work. As I understand from the series and reviews, the magic system is still based on an Moorcock alignment model -- casters mold chaos into a lawful form, right?

Maybe. I don't know. Never read the books myself, and as someone who generally doesn't care for casters I avoided the casting side of the game for the most part.

It has been a while, but I don’t think Michael Moorcock ever really defines how magic works in extensive detail. He is more like Tolkien insofar as magic is just a thing that isn’t really explained and you just accept, rather than going into extensive detail about the workings of magic like Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson would.

If Elric was a character in D&D he would be a warlock. His first patron is the Chaos God Arioch and the Hexblade subclass is a pretty direct homage to Stormbringer.

I think that's right for 5th. I think Gygax had him down for Fighter / Magic User so multiclass conjurer / Eldritch Knight might be a second choice but you're right that combo ignores the patron aspects.

One day we will get a good Elric game. Blood and souls

I played Stormbringer back when it was a thing. I recall that the magic system mainly revolved around binding demons and using their effects.

WoTC made the decision to take alignment out, because as of 5e it hardly servers any purpose mechanically, and is mostly left for RP purposes.
It is still their and has a very minor role but apparently at least I read they have come up with solutions for those situations in BG3.

I went back and checked on the magic system in Stormbringer, which I assume can be taken as non-apocryphal. The vast majority of magic spells are connected to Chaos, but there is a bit of magic related to Law, too.

I really love 5E, but man, looking through this pdf is making me nostalgic.

Nostalgia is dangerous.

Chaosium are rereleasing loads of old games as print-on-demand, including a lot of Runequest and Pendragon stuff. I have the originals but the thought of getting bright shiny duplicates for the players to use is becoming more difficult to resist.

I had thought about some sort of demeanour option in character creation. Wouldn't be alignment related at all but it would apply to your facial expressions during cut scenes. I agree with you that a lot of these currently are very immersion breaking.

Maybe in the full game we will get inspiration points for making choices that agrees with our alignment.

And how do they defined those?

Take the Paladins of Tyr. What is actually the good/neutral/evil choices there?
Believing the Paladin of Tyr? Unless you pass some DCs or talk to some corpse, they are goods aligned so their quest should be too.
Believing the target? How do you know that person is saying the truth?
Killing everyone? This is actually a good option based really, maybe a bit chaotic, but good. Could also be an evil option. Really depends why you are killing everyone...

How to you manage true neutral alignment? Giving points because people are skipping quests?


I do agree with previous posters that suggested that if alignment had to do anything, it would be the facial expression in scenes. Evil characters shouldn't look so affected by unknown people dying...

If you need a tag of "lawful" or "evil" for other players to identify your character's alignment, then it's not a well developed character. Useful for deities and npc's, but hopefully Larian does not build alignment into the game (or if they do, it's superficial to please fans of 3e).

As other posters have mentioned, it would be really cool if they mixed that into facial expressions and dialog quibs when moving around the map