Interesting takes on Gale, folks. This thread has made me give more weight to his flaws, and I’d agree he’s proud, selfish, spoiled, overconfident, greedy for magical power and willing to take large risks that could have terrible consequences. And while somewhat chastened when we meet him, he doesn’t appear to have completely learned his lesson. It does feel plausible that these flaws, not to mention the ball of evil in his chest, could lead - or even have led - him down dark paths in certain playthoughs. But he’s also funny, open-minded, tolerant, passionate about sharing knowledge and against hurting others for his own selfish ends. I remain convinced that with the right people around him (or the right player controlling him
) he can come good.
And perhaps I’m terminally naive but, while his chat-up lines are cringeworthy and it’s definitely not a good choice on his part to sleep with the PC before telling them his story, I’m still not able to see him as a sexual predator, contra KR’s suggestion. He’ll only spend the night with a PC who has actively shown an interest, no matter how much he likes them, and getting him to do so in EA involves fast-forwarding by repeated resting. In fact, if anyone is giving me professor-who-sleeps-with-students vibes, it’s Mystra. That’s why I’m inclined to cut Gale some slack regarding how he reacted after the end of their affair, when normally continuing to pursue someone who has signalled they’re no longer interested would be a red flag for me. He was a young man who worshipped her and everything she stood for, and you’d have thought she’d have known better.
And despite reading KR’s arguments with interest, I still find it impossible to think of him as manipulative. Perhaps that just means he’s good at it, or I’m a sucker, but while I can understand a reading of the deer stew scene as a manipulation, but it feels too clumsy to be that of a practiced player. And I think for it to be a character flaw there needs to be a pattern of such behaviour, whereas most often he will either tell the truth or at least refuse to tell an untruth when weasel words would serve him better. And once you’ve helped him stabilise his condition and he has come clean (as far as we know), if the PC judges at that point that he didn’t deserve the trust he was given and asks him to leave, he will go without argument or complaint.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing how his story plays out in the full release.
And in the meantime, Shadowheart is still topping my least trusted list. I definitely do get manipulative vibes from her, though she’s not yet had to use her skills to get something from me that I don’t want to part with. I do hope she doesn’t turn out to be another Chosen of any deity though, as one is plenty. I can see why folk think she might be, and obviously it makes sense to expect some jiggery-pokery with her missing memories, but my fingers are crossed that she is just a “regular” cleric of Shar, albeit one who might have been kidnapped from a Selunite village as a youngster and brainwashed, possibly with the help of some memory spells to wipe out the fact that the Sharrans killed her family.
