Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Fan club of Minthara

Exactly right. I think the film did a good job with by showing Achilles' dragging Hector's corpse for so long. Such is the tragedy of the war mad man -- he cannot find satisfaction even in victory. There is a very Greek warning about the dangers of excess in that part of the tale -- Achilles has become drunk on war and it's a horrible sight. I'd like to see another adaptation that focuses on the elements you mention. That this war has gone on forever and really emphasizing how tragic it see Achilles captured by a single passion. It's time to drink and have sex why won't he let the battle end . . .


Good point!

Yeah, I do agree there is some messaging in Episode III which was the best of the prequels. I think among other things Lucas had just lost his fondness for eastern philosophy and thus the ability to weave an interesting tale about the force.

(the let go Padme advice that Yoda gives is very Buddhist but the audience leaves that scene thinking that Yoda screwed by recommending such bitter medicine)

I am (sincerely) sorry to disappoint Sozz but in real life I, as I do suspect you, believe that morality is a socio-historical construct and not the instantiation of divine or natural forces.


So do I have you right, are you a social constructionist? If so what gives you the confidence that you have an objective view of what morality is like in our world?

I think the problem with just letting their actions speak for them is that there are gods watching the humans and trying to influence what they do. So use a phrase that I often hear against alignment (not from you) "why do you need labels"? "why put things into boxes"?

For me the answer to that goes back to the gods. Different gods control different aspects of the morality and want you act in a certain way. Shadowheart's story is interesting to me because her head and her heart are at odds. For a Sharran, the slaughter of the grove is good thing. One step closer to ending all life and bringing about eternal night.

Likewise Minthara likely worships a lawful evil deity (authority . . . Obey the drow . . . Obey Dror Ragzlin . . ) and so her decision to spare your life puts her at odds with deity.

Playing a cleric or paladin become less interesting when alignment is out of the picture.

And yeah, I'm like you. Had to youtube it. No way I'm going to play "slaughter the innocents"

It's not a traditional view, it's just an aspect of femininity. I've said this before, femininity =/= female, a male can also have vulnerability and that will be a feminine trait.

Minthara does not fall into this trope.


Do you understand that there is no such thing as universal morality? It exists in the mind of humans, and is different depending on the individual, it does not exist on a cosmic scale in a vacuum. I'm not saying that people ought to do whatever they want, there are clearly right and wrong actions withing the system of rules we created, but it is a social construct.


And that's all I am saying, and it is not a concept I want to be objective due to magic in video games.


Yes, empathy is an evolved mechanism to keep species that are not loners together to work for the greater benefit of all.


Logic and reason. I am all ears to the alternatives, if it sounds better and more logical I will change my mind.

Well that would take in a direction you've said you don't want to go. As social constructionists we know that one cannot separate subject and object and any 'objective' viewpoint is filtered through the lens by which it is seen. I think the 'grey morality' view is one that is allied with or an expression of political realism. Which believes that morality is either impossible or undesirable.

I would mention that there is one minor but significant difference between our constructionist viewpoint -- one that resonates with the nihilist / existentialist distinction @sozz brought up.

I think that's overstated. I think points of agreement are codified in documents like the universal declaration of human rights and other such documents. We don't need to think that morality is the expression of a cosmic force to see that certain ethical / moral principles are spelled out in certain historically constructed artifacts.

But the core of disagreement (and it's been fun) boils down to this:

To me the world become less interesting the less magical it gets. I want the power of the gods to turn away evil undead, I want smite devils with divine power. I want holy swords to hum with the power of objective goodness.

Make way evil!

Why can't undead be turned by Gods who just hate them and whos magic is their kriptonite?


You don't need alignment to do this.


Why Goodness and not anti-devilness?

This all can happen without alignment. You can have a paladin in shiny armor fightning undead and devils, without the universe conformation that you are indeed objectively good.

Well, as much as I agree with you, BG3 is set in the D&D multiverse and good/evil & law/chaos IS an objective concept here - I don't exactly like that part, but it is what it is. So certainly the arguments for alignment are stronger here than in most other uni/multiverses. For instance, Raphael - a devil - is an essence of lawful evil, and actually must obey a very specific "truly lawful evil" morality - lawful evil mortals would generally have a much broader set of worldviews, behaviors and moralities than the devils and beings inherently connected to Baator.

So there are really no strict rules applying to mortals with free will, certainly not those races created by non-evil gods. And generally, in 5e, it is really not used much in mechanics, spells etc. Honestly, PC's alignment in 5e is a weird thing, e.g. read this rant if you have the time. The way alignment is handled in 5e makes me say: Screw alignment for all non-celestial/fiend characters, avoid if at all possible - but the objective nature of good, evil, law & chaos in the multiverse will manifest itself sometimes.

Less interesting, innit? If you judge by memes / comics / mentions which do think is the more popular feature -- a ranger's favored enemy or divine smite?

Why do you think the big baddie is devil and an evil god? Why change gnolls from mutant hyenas to demonspawn? My answer is coolness. What's cooler -- an inherently evil book with forbidden knowledge that you should have read or that book that can't read because only nobles are allowed to read that stuff? I say the former.

I'm confused why you're addressing this question to Kadajko. I've been arguing this point much more strongly. lol.

It's social contract theory (cooperative self-interest). Basically, no one likes being murdered (ie killed without their consent), so we're all better off existing in a society that doesn't approve of murder. You can extrapolate an entire moral system from basic consequentialist social contract theory.

Of course, you can argue that if someone is in a position of power, like a king, then it would appear there is no social contract -- no consequences for him to be a tyrant. But if you change perspective and look at the perspective of the people who live in his kingdom, then they are compelled to overthrow a tyrant. As a consequence, a king ought to consider whether being a tyrant is in his best interest after all.

That said, just because there is an "objectively correct choice" based on social contract theory, that doesn't mean that you always have the information necessary to know which choice is the "objectively correct choice" and this is where we need to do our best within the limitations of our own subjectivity and risk-assessment.

What I object to is with a moral system in a game, it's almost always broken. For example:

• You get good karma for doing an (stupid good) action like saving a murderer (who you know will murder again) and evil karma (normal good) for letting him die.
• You get good karma for saving a town for money (normal evil), and evil karma (stupid evil) for burning it down for no reason.
• You get good karma for eating your vegetables and bad karma for eating junk food. (Like WTF this isn't even really moral.)

Like, I think it's interesting to have "holiness" and "unholiness" points. This still allows for you to have things like "holy/righteous swords". But one of the things I enjoy is when holiness is explicitly shown not to be the same as morally good, and you're forced to make your own decisions instead of just having a code of ethics handed to you.

There have been no screenshots in this thread for a long time.
See how graceful and proud she is

I understand, I just express my vote for Wizards to move away from alignment, which they slowly are as I see.


And you can very easily say that devils are just creatures in whos nature it is to keep their word, and that they lack empathy. Simple.


It is for the player to decide who the big baddie is, and it does not have to be an evil god or a devil, you are free to make choices.

Regardless, like I said, we can agree to disagree, I get your point, we just have different opinions on what is fun and cool and what is not, and there is nothing wrong with that. I think we need to get back, on topic, before the mods ask us to do so, this was fun but the derail is real. lol

@OneManArmy

Minthara looks ok, but not going to lie, when it comes to appearence I am not the biggest fan, specially that hair, but I liked her character more so far.

I love her hair, but I'm interested to see how you see her hair. Are there examples? Perhaps, it really can be improved, show how you see it.

I'll have to mod it first, and I am not in a habbit of modding EA like a lot of people out there. lol

I understand the logic behind her hair, but I would prefer something less generic. I can show you the kind of hairstyles I like in CC if you want.

Edit: Actually never mind, I forgot that I downloaded the NPC heads mod. BRB.

Apologies, I had fun with Kadajko in another thread and that's probably why I'm going to chicken out a bit on social contract theory because I have lots of problems with it (see Carol Pateman if you want to know why) and that will get us waaaay off topic.

But to your examples:

What I object to is with a moral system in a game, it's almost always broken. For example:

• You get good karma for doing an (stupid good) action like saving a murderer (who you know will murder again) and evil karma (normal good) for letting him die.
• You get good karma for saving a town for money (normal evil), and evil karma (stupid evil) for burning it down for no reason.
• You get good karma for eating your vegetables and bad karma for eating junk food. (Like WTF this isn't even really moral.)

Like, I think it's interesting to have "holiness" and "unholiness" points. This still allows for you to have things like "holy/righteous swords". But one of the things I enjoy is when holiness is explicitly shown not to be the same as morally good, and you're forced to make your own decisions instead of just having a code of ethics handed to you. [/quote]

Sure we can disagree with how well it's done but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. People disagree, disagreements lead to forum discussions and that's bad . . . why?

If you think the implementation is bad you ask the devs to change. Right now I've asked the Solasta devs to add a chaotic good option to list of responses. In the game you are deputized as council representative and you invade the castle of a necromancer to ask for a part of an artifact. When you finally make to the end boss you only have lawful good, lawful neutral and neutral responses. In the logic of the setting, getting the necromancer to hand over the artifact peacefully is lawful good because that's your mandate from the council. But I don't get to say "your evil ends here necromancer" even if that leads to greater evil down the road. My toon doesn't care about the council she is forced to deal with or their stupid laws, she wants to see evil get a smack down.

So I posted a request on the forums of devs. I want my option but I'd be even more upset if the only options left to me were grey morality ones. Because grey is dull color.

With any video game options are handed to you -- if you want to make up your own morality / own stories that's best done in a game without any dialogue options at all. Then you are free to make up any story you like about your toons. But I think we both agree that that would be boring, right?

Come on. Show me, what hairstyle from the editor would you use for Minthara?

Yeah, no. There is Blood War - an actual clash of (evil) Law and (evil) Chaos - the whole cosmology stuff etc.

You can certainly do away with alignment itself, many DMs using 5e actually already did just that (and I completely agree with it), but not the actual cosmology and the objective nature of g/e/l/c. Devils are evil manifestations of Law, always will be.

True. But the OP got to increase page numbers and there's that.

On topic. Umm. I like that ring mail?

(but truth be told I prefer to smack her down and take her mace)

Something like this:


Her head btw. A bit more elegant/proud and drow-like. Though like I said, I understand why her hair is messy, when she lives in a goblin camp.

Paladin smite in 5e does not require target to be evil (or any other alignment).