Originally Posted by DiscountCanadian
Originally Posted by Shlamorel
I can’t box gale in.

In my first playthrough, he left my party because I refused to give him powerful magical artifacts without him fully detailing his scary and ominous situation. Our party is a team and we need communication. He got angry and left,

In my current playthrough, he’s a lot more tender but still secretive at first.

My point is I do think he has some very selfish tendencies, in line with narcissism. But he does open up which real narcissists never do unless they are in a crisis.

In a nutshell, I appreciate that gale eventually opens up about the truth but I think his demands for your blind trust in a party setting make him very self-centered. He’s a great character but romantically I could never be into him, and in real life, I’d not align with him in a life or death journey to save ourselves.

Just to poke at little, could this not be considered a crisis?
He is, after all, under constant threat of losing control over the Netherese orb and leveling a city-sized area on the Sword Coast while ALSO dealing with a tadpole that could, at any time, spontaneously change him into a Mind Flayer. Personally speaking, I think that very much defines a crisis.

I don't think he is a narcissist because he is able to handle criticism (he criticizes himself a fair bit) and will admit when he has felt he's done something wrong. Honest reflection and self-critique aren't things you find in narcissists. Now, do his actions foretell something sinister? Hard to say, though I will give him the benefit of doubt. He is guarded and we aren't able to ascertain much of his motivations, that much is certain. That said, I don't believe that is enough to deem him a sinister figure just yet, but I will agree that it would be best to be wary. He is a bit of an unknown factor, which could be good or bad, but lack of clarity/understanding tends to provoke the worst fears in people, whether it is deserved or not.

Touche, though I meant an existential crisis and should have been specific. He seems pretty stable in his sense of self.

Not responding @ you but to OP in general: I think of Gale kinda like an egocentric teenage boy. He thinks about the gravity of his situation inhow it affects him only, really. I dont have a word for it but I wouldn't call it narcissism. Hes egocenttric but not on a grandiose or delusional level (asssuming what he's shared with us is true, which seems to be so until the story says otherwise). And he would only be ascumbag imo if he intentionally withheld information from you because he thought if he told you you wouldn't sleep with him.

He doesn't seem unaware of these things. it's just more like he cares only about how his tratgedy affects him.