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

Just a reminder that these are fictional monsters in a video game. Overthinking IS A thing.

@GM4Him

Regarding your point 1, I recently read an argument that the alignment structure in D&D was an outgrowth of its origin as a war game (specifically, the fantasy conversion of Chainmail). The alignments were indicators of which team could select those troops. Since war games are not particularly concerned with the individual morality of the soldiers, it made sense to group them this way. This was continued with the publication of D&D. That was a mistake (In MY opinion) but it is what it is.

Regarding goblin children: the crime against escapism is to include them at all. If Larian wants the goblins to be evil mooks that you kill because its a video game and they have red circles under them then they should leave the kids out of it. You include goblin children if, and only if, you actually want to make some deep statement about the nature of good, evil, and sapient creatures. I only played through that section of the game once, but I did not find it to be particularly deep.

Personally, I don't want to kill children of any sorts. If the option to kill the Tiefling children were present I would not do it. I'd still prefer that the option be there, because it would reduce the temptation of quest authors to make them super obnoxious underneath their invulnerability flag.

My Drow character didn't have any qualms killing Tiefling children, if only those goblins hadn't gotten to them first. But I'd hate to make this another 'Drow aren't Drow anymore' thread.

A lot of this seems to be coming down to the Nature/Nurture dichotomy. Something that isn't settled in our world, but which can be settled in a fantasy setting. In D&D creatures could be a certain way because of their nature. But that is becoming less and less true.

This of course is related to free will, something that also seems to be taken for granted by some. GM4Him said that the races with good or neutral gods were imbued with it, but that evil gods didn't give it to their races. That was an interesting way of approaching the subject I thought.

The precise details here should be left to the DM, and not mandated as part of the game system.

The DM is Larian, the material is FR, the publisher is WotC, the writers are many. But who are we? I think, confused and maybe a little anxious.

Not quite, Sozz. Good, evil and neutral were supposed to be imbued with their alignment from birth/creation. So, if goblins were, by nature, born aligned to evil, it would be hard to be good. And vive versa. If a being was born aligned to good, they would find it hard to be evil.

But that doesn't seem to be the way the game is anymore. You now decide. Are characters good or evil because of alignment, or is alignment dictated by character choice? If by choice, then no race is truly good or evil now. Right?

I too prefer playing Good-aligned characters. Additionally, even though I am long past giving Wizards of the Coast my money, I prefer that they don't encourage murky "anti-heroes" in the vein of Game of Thrones and the like. However...I would never ask that the option to play Evil characters be removed; this is a hobby that ought to allow freedom of choice. Besides which, redemption stories have been a part of fiction since time immemorial.

I'm not actually expecting them to remove evil playthrough. I just don't like it. I was just being totally honest and transparent.

The idea that demons - demons - aren't necessarily evil has been done as recently as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel (if there are media examples that date back even further, I missed them). Again, an interesting one-off subversion, yet in no way the end result I want to see in Dungeons & Dragons. Labels should mean something.

Purely in terms of quest writer person hours I would rather that they put more time on good playthroughs, which I (and I suspect most others) will play. That being said, its possible that writing quests for an evil playthrough may add more depth to the game that will be apparent in places in the good play through as well. I cannot prove that this is true, but the possibility moves me closer to agnostic on the topic of whether they should write an evil path.

I believe that is exactly the problem ...
Especialy in situation when those goblins actualy DONT get to them first ... meaning before raid even starts ...

You know, those times when bunch of totally imortal and unattackable Tiefling children is stealing from you, then insulting you, and then in finale turn half of the camp against you bcs they start spreading lies about you ... and you have SINGLE and EXTREMELY DIFICIULT (well, maybe not as extremely, if you allready have 20Cha) and also quite stupid (sory whoever write it ... its not bad by itself, but lack of anything else is quite annoying) option to get out of the situation ...

And there is nothing you can do!

That is the problem here. :-/

Firstly, I think that Buffy can't really be used as a recent example anymore, being 30 years old now at this point. Also I would argue that such ideas are older even than that anyway. For a very recent example that's closer to the subject at hand though, I'll point you to Wrath of the Righteous. There we have a demon that required divine intervention to even realize that good felt good, and then further divine intervention to fully purge herself of that evil instinct.

With regard to the trend in D&D, I think that in large part it's a consequence of just how long it's lasted. Very few products have anything close to a continuing narrative the way D&D has. A product can't exist and update for decades upon decades without things changing and growing. Orcs and goblins and drow and etc have been around for decades, and the longer they're around, the more they have to grow and develop to continue to be interesting. Because inherently evil or not, they're still thinking, sapient societies, and people want to know more about them, and writers want to write more about them. And you can't develop a villainous society for decades upon decades without that society growing more nuanced and multi-faceted. And when you're not just talking about one society but an entire species, things get even more complicated. Each edition is expected to have more and to be new and different in terms of lore. And when that applies to the villains, then you can only develop them for so long before they start to look less villanous. Pure evil mooks that you can kill without a thought only really work if they're one-dimensional to some degree, and you can't have an entirely one-dimensional race and keep them one-dimensional as a baseline in a game/setting that's gone through decades of change and growth.

Rhen there's also an assumption built into these fantasy worlds that goes unspoken most of the time; that good is superior to evil. That good can overcome anything and the axis of the universe on a base, narrative level will always lean towards good. I believe that that assumption, combined with decades of time to work, will very easily start to lead to people wanting to see members of an evil race being redeemed. Because if evil can't be redeemed, then it implies evil being greater than good. This kind of shift doesn't happen as much with something like dragons because with dragons people still view them as a whole species as opposed to seeing them specifically in groups based on color, so it's like "of course dragons aren't all evil. We have metallic dragons just over there." On top of that, dragons don't have a society the way orcs, drow, etc do, so they tend to get treated more like individual characters.

Lol...and let's not forget the Lucifer TV series. Lucifer. You know SATAN!!! [said like Church Lady SNL]

Back on topic, this whole part with Tiefling kids turning the entire Grove against you sucks. I did it on accident once and hadn't saved in awhile. Had to reload from Dank Crypt.

They need other options for that besides suddenly all Tieflings attack you on sight. I don't think killing the tiefling kids is necessarily the answer, but something besides them just turning everyone against you.

Well, me neither ...
But i still think it should be one of them.

I mean i have come with few ideas in my topic about missing dialogue choices:

But even with all those options ...
I would still like to have option to attack them, with my dumm evil barbarian i plan to play once it will be possible. Just to solve the problem sooner than it even exists.

Important note tho:
I certainly DONT want this to come without consequences ...

I can also think of few:
- Doni come down to the "Dragon's Lair" ... he see what is happening, and bring guards (just as Goblin child bring reinforcements if not stopped) ... you have 2 turns to stop him til he run from those stone stairs to the hatch.
- That thieving kid will do the same from the other entrance ... same story, same results ...
- Every child WILL try to run to different way, any of them that will escape will make all Tieflings hostile.
- After the fight, and after the chat, Alfira will go check uppon those kids and find their bodies ... once again, she will alert guards and when you return to the Grove Kagha will be arguing with Zevlor ... you obviously come as their both prime suspect. (HARD persuation check, that will start fight between them ... otherwise they turn to you both.)

I have to ask: How do you turn the tiefling kids against you? Never had that happen.

Have you noticed how the classic evil monsters have been drawn increasingly...hm...human? If the big message is that "Fictional monsters are huma, er, 'people' too.", then why are the folks in support of this movement taking the easy way out by rendering them less monstrous? Have they forgotten "Never judge a book by its cover." and "True beauty is more than skin deep."? Not only is this a bit hypocritical, but they're also detracting from the natural attractiveness of these inhuman beings.

The "Lucifer" TV show is based (loosely) on the character Lucifer from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic, and THAT Lucifer is based (also loosely) on Milton's Paradise Lost. So not exactly a new trend (unless you consider the 17th century to be "new").

What are several hundred rotations of a single small rock around its heat source compared to the immeasurable infinity of the universe?

Also, regardless of the source material, Lucifer (as in the biblical Lucifer) was created with free will. He CHOSE evil. He was not created to be evil.

So Lucifer is not exactly a good example of the inherent evil of D&D lower plane denizens.