Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Hag - Missing The Choice To Kill Her After Deception

No no, the opposite. You only get to choose one speech check of your choice. If you fail, that's it, you no longer have a chance to obtain both Mayrina and the Power.

And I agree, would be interesting to have penalties for trying to gain more when beings of equal power are bargaining with us. Basically a high-risk high-reward situation.

To go through my reasoning in more detail.

At the moment, there are, I think, three main things you might hope to get out of the Ethel quest, setting aside a tadpole cure, which gets dealt with separately: (1) save Mayrina, (2) an attribute increase, (3) kill Ethel (which gives you her loot, and enables you to save three - iirc - of her other current victims and make sure there won’t be any future ones).

As it currently stands, if you want the attribute point but don’t care about the others, then you have no real reason not to try to deceive/intimidate Ethel, as you might get to save Mayrina as well, but if it doesn’t work you can always just let Ethel go with Mayrina and get your attribute increase anyway.

Similarly, if all you really want is to save Mayrina, then you may as well try to deceive/intimidate Ethel as you might get an attribute point as well, but if you fail you can always kill Ethel.

But, if your priority is killing Ethel, you do have reason *not* to try to coerce her. Sure, there’s a high chance of failing and you’ll probably have to kill her anyway, but you could do that already and there’s a small chance you’ll win and then NOT get the main thing you want. You actually don’t want to succeed this check.

Just adding the ability to kill Ethel with 100% certainty after coercing her unbalances this, because then someone who wants to kill Ethel *also* has no reason not to give the deception/intimidation check a go, as they’ll still be able to get what they most want whether they succeed or fail, and may get an attribute increase as well. And if they succeed in this case, they get ALL THREE of the things you might want to achieve, which isn’t currently possible.

Tweaking it so that if you succeed in the check you might then fail to kill the hag would reintroduce a disincentive to Ethel-slayers to undertake the check, but it would probably just as much be an incentive to them (us!) to save-spam to get the outcome they want.

I think it’s reasonable for the game to make it (or keep it) so we can achieve a maximum of two out of the three possible objectives, and force us to choose. But there are other ways of tweaking the encounter, as we have discussed, that might also work to enable the higher reward but balance it by also increasing the chance of coming away with less, at least if we ignore saving/reloading.

If we're approaching this strictly from a reward balance perspective, then I'd agree.

But by doing so all it accomplishes is sacrificing a satisfying story by intentionally sabotaging its outcomes for the sake of imaginary reward balance, which doesn't really even solve anything as all it does is create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Especially considering the amount of extreme obstacles required to be beaten to even achieve this piece of dialogue, let alone fully succeed it.

Keep in mind that the player has to go through all of these extreme obstacles in order to even get a chance to experience the interaction all the way through:

So why should after all of these extreme obstacles the player be punished with reward balance by sabotaging the deception outcome with a non-satisfying ending where the Hag survives? If anything that will just make me ignore all of these requirements and just kill the Hag.

It is very important to understand that the whole reason why I even came to submit this feedback is exactly because this imaginary reward balance directly affected my story choice and broke my character immersion by not offering me a choice to finish the Hag after all the exhausting work I went through to get to that point. And most importantly because it does not respect the meaning of deception.

So whether we should or shouldn't be allowed to obtain everything because of balance or how other players might play the game is irrelevant because the rewards are just a bonus, not the primary purpose of encounters. The primary purpose of encounters are the story and outcomes. Story should never suffer for the sake of balance nor adjust itself to it, but the other way around.

And I have to also point out that practically the same situation is already present in the game, but this one actually respects character immersion:


If we apply the logic of reward balance into Fezzerk's example, then we shouldn't be able to kill him after getting all the information from him and his loot. He should just somehow run away. Which just isn't good storytelling then and why I think balance has no place when it comes to story outcomes.

The price of power is letting the hag live. I don't think that should change.

Rewards are not the issue.

It's the story dialogue choice that doesn't respect "Deception" in its true meaning of the word and all the hard work that went into achieving it, which ends up breaking character immersion by not allowing the player a choice to attack the Hag.

Especially since there is a similar encounter in the game that respects this immersion of choice.

Agree. I also agree with Crimsonrider that the story should make this make sense, and that simply not having the option to *try* to kill Ethel as it stands doesn’t ring entirely true and given this whole quest line is generally so great, it seems worth Larian putting a bit more effort into the end to make it wholly convincing.

I personally don’t see Fezzerk as a direct equivalent. I can’t recall what he gives you as loot - a heavy axe? - but I don’t think it’s nearly as valuable. And the whole quest line with him isn’t about deals and bargains. Plus, unlike Ethel, I’d struggle to think of a way he could realistically escape death at that point.

Don't knock that axe, it cleaves at full damage.
When talking to Ethel's corpse she also mentions seeing you again at some point, so she probably has some control still over her magic.

I think if you want to beat the Hag at her own game, you'll have to come up with something a little more clever than just killing her immediately after making a deal to spare her life.

Ah, but however good its special abilities, a non-magical great axe is probably only for Act 1 whereas an attribute score increase is for life . But point taken.


I don’t believe I have ever tried talking to Ethel’s corpse! I’ll give it a go. Despite the fact she’s so awful, or maybe because, I kind of do hope we’ll see her again.

Perhaps a better way of reconciling Crimsonrider’s problem with mine would be to make it so that you could kill Ethel after making the deal, but that robbed the hair of its power (and you lost the attribute point if you’d somehow managed to use the hair before killing her)? That would be consistent with Ethel’s (apparent?) death ending the effects of the other bargains she’d made.

This.

I suppose when they were writing this piece of the scene, they only took into account one of the character's reason behind the deception to just be loot. But they failed to take into account that the character's reason might also be to just make a false promise with the intention of killing her after gaining the bonus. But they failed to provide a choice for that potential character reasoning.

My expectation was we've made our choice to kill her 10 minutes ago, but may as well give her false hope in order to obtain a bonus before we end it, just like we do the same with Fezzerk or any other NPC in a similar situation. But they didn't take that reasoning into account, instead we are deceiving her exclusively for the loot. So it breaks character immersion and feels terribly unsatisfying as an outcome.


I don't know, that'd be a terribly lazy retcon afterwards if it were true, otherwise why would she be so insistent on begging for her life if she had means to survive it.

If needed I can load a save and check exactly all her dialogue, but I spoke with her corpse and she just acts annoyed, but by all means dead. Even her magic holding the masked people and all the other prisoners completely breaks off. Was an interesting conversation though, especially on why she wanted Mayrina's baby.

I’ve not seen anyone argue with this point. You’re right. The disagreement is about whether any improvements that Larian make to address this issue should include making it possible to both kill Ethel and get the ASI, which it currently isn’t. Of course, a character might *want* that, but that’s not to say they should be able to get it.

We might just have to agree to disagree, but my preference (for reasons of story/drama) remains that getting it all is not possible, either because Ethel has a convincing escape route if you try to kill her after getting her hair, or, as per my more recent brainwave mentioned above, because killing her deprives the hair of its power so you lose the ability point.

I think her possible reappearance will have something to do with her sister 'M' in Baldur's Gate, Hags come in covens of three, right? So however we deal with Ethel in the EA area will have ramifications once we get embroiled in the turf war going on in BG. I think M is Mabel but I can't remember where I'm getting that from

Not Mabel, Maggie, Maggie Two-Fingers, who is referenced in a letter found in the harpy's nest.

I'm sorry but I don't see the point Red Queen is making.
It seems like you're worrying about how other people will play it out, and them 'having it all'.
I think the point of how tough it may be to get to this option has already been pointed out.
I've seen a bunch of posts complaining about using the environs vs mobs, but this is definitely an in-lair encounter if you don't kill her previously, and it's no walk in the park!
I don't know how many folks will actually GET this opportunity, but I think you should be able to deceive her and then drop the hammer on her once and for all.
I'd love it to be an added cinematic actually!

Now, should some groups should let her live if they are Paladin/Lawful Good? - Whatever. 5e took a real step back from Alignment overall. Hell, ya don't even need to be LG to be a Paladin anymore!
How anyone else chooses to play it out doesn't concern me at all.

Personally I hate that old beeyotch!
My first playthrough I ran into her for the first time where the brothers are confronting her and picked the "Tell us what you did to their sister!" dialog!
Second playthrough I saw her in the Druid Grove - attacked her there, nobody even CARED! I managed to kill her before she got off the screen and run away, and that mucked up the whole rest of the game cuz she was DEAD already!

I am disappointed that I didn't find anything to help the teifling she crippled though...

For Pandirna, just heal her with Shadowheart or a healing scroll to cure her paralysis ^^

I was hoping for that to be part of a storyline, or the grove finding her out, etc.
Like maybe one of the potions in her lair was a cure.

No, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. I’m saying that I want to be able to *try* to trick Ethel for her hair and then kill her, but fail. I find that a more interesting and impactful story than one in which I can straightforwardly kill her after deceiving/intimidating her, or just let her go without trying to stop her. My instincts are that it shouldn’t be possible to get both the ability point and kill Ethel, both as I think it’s a bit of a cop out dramatically and in light of Ethel’s other deals breaking when she dies.

But it is a fair enough challenge that the game should allow other players to tell the stories they want to tell, too, and in a D&D game that sounds like something that could be left to the roll of the dice.

I’d see it as a fair compromise if there were some further skill/ability check after you’ve done the deal that could then lead to either you killing Ethel or her escaping. That could be a melee check to catch her, an arcana check on magic she’s using, or a selection of different possible checks like when trying to get out of Astarion’s hold if he catches you when you first meet.

Does that still work in patch 8? I'm not sure it does. I might be wrong, though.

You are right ...
I stand corected ... it no longer heals her ...
(for some unknown reason, since the tooltip clearly states "Remove one disease or condition afflicting a creature." and this seems like condition)
and its also newely 1 charge per Short Rest.

BTw you can do it just not with dialogue lines. You need to hide one of your companions and kill her while she is distracted and begging, just make sure you do it after the check is made and she gives you the hair. You just backstab her with the invisible - out of combat companion after. Never have all our strength shown in plain sight. in short always have backup!:). For added info on the check, the closest character to her will start the dialogue. I would make sure you park your bard next to her in combat and buff him.


You get the hair and extra 250 xp but not like it matters at that point, but it's good to know you did a true deception on her and she will never bother anyone again!


The game even registers it. They could give us inspiration points for doing it though.
https://ibb.co/pnjyB9D