lol he's not chaotic evil, not even close.
Some quick light reading for you, T2aV:
Classically speaking, 'Evil' alignments are defined by selfishness; to be selfish and self-motivated to the point that you and your plans and your needs or desires are all you really care about; to be self-interested in such a way that you don't care who or what gets hurt or left out in the cold, if you are pursuing your interests; to be the one who will always put yourself first and sacrifice anyone or anything else before your own self-interest; to value and utilise others only insofar as they serve your self-interest; this is the core of what it is to be classically 'evil'.
Astarion is chaotic and destructive; he likes to poke the beehive just because it's there to be poked, and he wants you to do interesting things because they're funny. Alone this would just be chaotic neutral. He also has a bloodlust and enjoys seeing other people in pain and suffering - he wants to pursue that and doesn't care who gets hurt in doing so; that is the part that makes him evil. He finds other people's suffering to be funny or amusing, and on the scale balance between his amusement against other people's suffering, he will choose his amusement; this is a part of what makes him evil. He also craves power for the sake of his own freedom and survival, and again, doesn't care who gets gutted in the pursuit of it - that, too, is what makes him evil.
Shadow is entirely self-motivated and doesn't consider other people's rights, wants, needs or desires to be at all equal to her own; she has the right, in her mind, to demand things of others to suit her own ends, but they do not have any right whatsoever to ask or require anything of her. She is the most important person in her world, by a country mile, and she will leave anyone and everyone to rot in favour of pursuing what she views as her own needs and goals. She favours avoiding overt conflict - or anything else that might risk her life or wellbeing, isn't interested in justice, or following laws unless they suite her ends. She is classically neutral evil; evil with occasional pangs of regret and conscience, maybe, but still evil. Her locked memories may evoke a change in this - but it will be [in my opinion] very poor writing if these personality traits magically flip when she gets her memories back; she's still the person that she is, after all, or should be.
Lae'zel has a doctrine and a code. It is the creed of her people, but it is a selfish, self-serving and brutal creed that devalues the lives of people who are of 'lesser' races - which is everyone. It also devalues the lives of anyone of their own race who is subordinate, and any course of action that does not follow the will of their ruler is considered wasteful at best and punishable at worst. Lae'zel follows this creed with absolute blindness and fury, and would (and has) killed even her own kin in the following of it, without thought or question, or remorse or conscience; Lae'zel is classically lawful evil.
To daMichi,
While it might be sensible in universe to have these things bundled behind the tadpole use, as a faustian bargain situation, the way that's handled in game for the players is important. What I think myself and other folks are getting at here is that it's very poor writing and very poor game design to present us with a choice, but for that choice to eventuate, in real world experience for us as players, to: "Do the evil thing, and see all the game's content, OR don't do the evil thing, and miss out on much of the game's content."
I also agree strongly with Tarlonniel that the companions should each make their own decisions about whether they develop their powers or not. Right now the implication is that they are all linked, and so *any* one of us using the powers and developing the tadpoles causes them *all* to grow and develop for everyone... but the result of that is that what the game back-handedly forces on us is the idea that *none* of our companions, no matter their personal leanings, will ever use the tadpole at all - not even Astarion - and that we alone are the only one who goes that far. Astarion likes that we did it, but he wasn't prepared to do it himself, and that makes very little sense. If we don't do it, he never does. We are the only one prepared to push it, and force that risk on our companions as well, whether they want it or not - that degree of callous disregard for others is something, especially when most of them voice strongly that they don't want to take that risk, or have that risk taken for them, that genuinely does make our character's actions quite evil aligned, if we chose to continue using the tadpole. So that makes having the 'resist' path being: "you just miss out on most stuff and get nothing to replace it" an especially bad design choice.
