Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Fextralive on Companions and Romances - Spoiler

What I'm saying is that there is an absolute truth to who Shadowheart was right up to the point where we meet her in that pod, and that history informs our initial interactions with her, is the point I'm making. She's always got a set history that is always the same once we get to that pod. And that history and what she's done and who she is when we meet her is what the people who have a problem with her and call her evil are talking about. Saying "well you can change her" isn't satisfying to those people because they take umbridge to who she was and who she is when we meet her. What we influence her towards doesn't change who she's been, the same goes for all the companions. No matter what we do, Wyll will still have made the pact with a devil, always for the same reasons. Astarion will always have been turned into a vampire spawn, Gale will always have tried to usurp Mystra. And it's those things people have a problem with. People look at the things they did in their past and decide "no, I don't want to associate with them because of what they've done and what they are now, and what they, based on their past and current actions will continue to be if I don't take the effort to change them.

I have always found this to be not a very productive approach. Your character is in a bad situation with other people who are in a bad situation. Trying to go on a morally high ground and judge them, even though your character has probably not been in a similar situation is not the most pragmatic thing to do. I guess it is less about changing them than surviving together. Seeing with whom you can make a compromise and with whom not. And maybe achieving great things together.

In addition, you, the player, know things your Tav is not supposed to know. And by the time you know them, you might have seen something different than what the past says about the said character.

As Shadowheart says about the party "We are all monsters in the making"

That is all true. But from an out of character perspective, talking about people disliking the companions and not being satisfied with them as all we get in the party, that's why people have an issue. Honestly, I'm not even one of those people. I do wish we had one or two more firmly good companions, but I like what we have for the most part. This isn't truly about in-character actions, it's about players not liking the characters.

It was not an accusation, btw.

It is very difficult to make characters liked by all, especially when there are so few of them. It is also understandable why the number is limited. Quality over quantity.

The theme is fighting your own demons and temptations. I think there is too much nostalgy towards the Original BG saga (I have played it until the ToB), which frankly speaking is too much black-and-white, good vs. evil type of game.

As for the truly good character we have Minsc and Halsin, at the very least. Maybe more

Let's not dunk too hard on BG2, there were several characters whose life path you could influence with your choices and conversations. It wasn't at the same level as some of the later games in the industry, but for its time it was groundbreaking.

And what actions are those? What proof do you have that she was evil? I haven't seen a single list of any actions or reactions she took before meeting you.

Saying she is evil because she seems to be sworn to an evil god is a real slippery slope. There are plenty of human beings that are sworn to a inhumane religious groups here in the real world that aren't evil just because they were brainwashed to think it was right.

Once you meet her however, we do have lists of her actions and reactions and I would to hear your logic for how they on average tend towards evil. Here's a page with a list in case you need it: https://baldursgate3.wiki.fextralife.com/Shadowheart

This 100%. It just seems like an outdated concept imo. Some people see it as set in stone, some as dynamic, some treat it as the absolute core of a character, some just as tendencies or whatever. It just gets in the way of a more nuanced characterization. I say good riddance, we don't need alignment anymore. Really happy that both DND and Pathfinder move away from it.

So, Minthara is properly recruitable. The "1-2 more" is odd. A surprise to heighten publicity, or does Larian not know?

Minthara IS recruitable post-Act 1, by Moonrise. I'm 90% certain Larian just came out and said it.
Maybe we haven't even met the last 2.

It's not just outdated, it's dangerous. You see people using the AD&D alignment system to judge people in the real world.

People use a lot of things to judge people in the real world. This strikes me as dangerously close to the "violence in video games leads to real world violence" argument.

If the alignment system was unclear, then it could have been made more clear instead of simply being removed. A world where the Good and Evil are explicitly associated with certain planes of existence/gods, defines certain creatures (e.g., devils and demons are by definition evil), and can be used to cover the majority of certain creatures' tendencies (mind flayers and goblins are *generally evil, gnomes and halflings are *generally good, githyanki are *generally lawful, etc) can be both useful and interesting. I think D&D will be lesser for their removal, if simply because we've lost word defintion that isn't, afaik, being replaced with anything.

Mind Flayers eat your brains. That make the concept of "good" and "evil" moot. No one want their brain eaten.

I see your point. In my opinion the characterization of creatures, gods or even planes of existence do not need good or evil. There are plenty other ways to make it more interesting and nuanced. Does, for example, a god of fire or love or secrecy need to be categorized as evil or good? Fire can harm but also nurture, love is beautiful but if unrequited it just hurts, secrecy can destroy trust and alienate but also protect. So instead of limiting ourselves to using the old alignment i'd say using broader concepts as characterizations is way more compelling.

I hope that made sense, english is not my native language and trying to write about philosophical stuff like this is really hard

Dude, even the source books break these rules all the time. By strict standards it would likely only be Devils and Modrons who could ever truly be considered lawful since it is innate in their being and they are unable to do otherwise. All other non-programmed beings break at least one law that they agreed to throughout their lifetimes. As soon as that happens they are strictly neutral in perpetuity, unable to regain lawful status.

Any other interpretation becomes moral relativism immediately, thereby invalidating a strict reading of the Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic definitions.

Zariel broke the codes of her heavenly alignment, but is somehow still considered lawful in the books. By a strict reading of what it means to be lawful, she can no longer be classified as such, and therefore the source books are not following the tenants of their own definitions.

They don't even differentiate in the spell literally titled, "Protection from evil and good". Instead of labeling anything as good or bad, they just list out the creatures that have attributes than maybe sorta could be good or bad including celestials, undead, and fiends. I would argue that lesser undead can't even be 'evil' themselves, but only constructed by evil means. At which point shouldn't you be protected from all tieflings and dragonborn who were created by creatures of one alignment or another?

It is all B.S. which is fine to accept for creatures made of the essence of one alignment or another for gaming simplicity, but as soon as you bring free will into the discussion, all rules are out the window. The origin characters are meant to be representations of humanoids with free will, so binding them strictly to an alignment is a detriment to both the storytelling and the philosophical realities of the real life the game is attempting to emulate.

And if you stare into the light long enough it will blind you, surely as darkness.

I found alignments to be useful to get new younger players to get into the habit of not simply playing themselves. I had a chart with alignment, bonds and goals, and would on occasion ask a pointed question to focus them on their character.

For me and my older friends, we use it because it's just another idiosyncrasy of D&D. Much like the word 'Armour class' or elves being resistant to charm.

I undestand, but would still say that alignment is not necessary for that. If we have new players and have our session 0 to explain stuff and make the characters, we sometimes write up some bullet points like "wants", "needs", "pet peeves", "quirks", "no-go's" and so on to help the newbies get into their characters. I think that has made it easy for them to get started.


I absolutely get that. In an old group that will probably never be a problem, because when one of you says "that guy is lawful evil" you all know what that means in your specific group/world. At the end of the day, you do you

Just going forward and especially in a video game i think it's a good thing to get rid of alignment.

That makes sense, yeah. But there's already a perfect alignment for such a fire deity within the Good-Evil spectrum: Neutral. Beasts and nature-related things are typically neutral. Whereas, say, a god of selflessness and justice will be Good, and a god of cruelty and despair will be Evil.

To bring the discussion back to companions: given that D&D gods exist and embody certain traits & alignments (even if mortal creatures aren't given specific alignments), it's fair to assume that a worshipper of an evil god is themselves evil. Especially when it's such a world-ending, turn-everything-to-nothingness goddess such as Shar. Now, such a worshipper *might* not actually be evil, but it's completely fair to come into the relationship with that initial opinion.

The rest of the alignment talk is getting off topic so I'll spoiler it

I did mean moral relativism. What makes something 'evil' enough that there is no coming back to the 'good' side is different for different tables (cultures/groups/whatevers). What number of innocents murdered flips the switch from good to neutral to evil. For some people 1 is enough to stain you forever regardless of your reasons, for others killings done for 'the greater good' can outweigh a number of murders, to another it is simple math if you have saved more people than killed, then you are on the good scale. My argument is that there is no absolute authority on that line, nor what it takes to cross back the other way.

Short of listing a large number of representative actions and attributing point scores to each of them on the goodness and lawfulness scale, there is no way for there to be an 'objective' right and wrong in a game. And there are very few companies that will do that for a game with as much freedom involved as there is in BG3. Owlcat could do it because they had pretty simple choices and their world wasn't very interactive. Meanwhile, Bethesda games, which are arguably make the most 'freedom of choice' based games of any other company, do a shit job of it.

As we've seen in other games, as soon as you start making some chests "owned" by different groups and others not marked you are defining a moral point system, and things get messy real quick. Is it lawful to loot a body if you killed them in the name of the law, or must you turn it in to the authorities? What if it was self defense, should you get their stuff or should their surviving dependents? What about if you steal from some thieves? Is it moral to keep their loot, even knowing that it is stolen, or is it your moral imperative to hunt down each of their victims and return their goods?

How should any of those choices affect gameplay? How many points are each worth on the scales? How many donations to a temple does it take to reset an alignment?

So no, I don't think alignment is useful for anything other than a basic starting point along the lines of 'yeah that guy mostly follows the rules, but tends to use it to screw other people over' or 'that guy does his best to help everyone, but he keeps breaking laws to do it' communicated to the player by someone who they may or may not trust to be accurate (knowing everyone has biases and their own motivations). After that initial introduction, it is up to the player to make the call based on their observations of the NPCs actions.

Nope. Considering a Shar-worshipper to be evil is an eminently reasonable, proper and correct thing to do in the context of the Forgotten Realms setting. NOT considering a Sharran to be evil, and excusing and rationalizing their being a Sharran is what's a slippery slope.