Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Which companion(s) won't make it?

Ieldra2 have a point ...
That is an approach our character can have.

Is it weird to have such mindset in context of settings? Yes it is ...
But is it still possible? Absolutely!

Is it weird? It would be interesting to have an in-world debate about this.

I think that a belief that all X are evil is inconsistent. By definition, you can only be evil if you also have the capacity to be good. If you have no freedom, if you don't have a choice about being, say, a murderous monster, then it may be necessary to kill you in order to protect everyone else, but you're not evil and you don't deserve hate. In order to be all evil, every single member of a group must, while having the freedom to be evil or not, generally make evil choices. This is, btw., a very traditional reasoning, not at all modern, which should be quite appropriate for this kind of fantasy world. It may be unusual to apply it to undead, but these undead do have the capacity to reason.

So Astarion. He has the capacity to reason and by the events of the game if you do not kill him, he proves he has the capacity to refrain from drinking his companions' blood, and he's willing to do so. Refrain, that is. He slipped when he attacked me, and sure I'll keep a closer eye on him after that, but I think he deserves a second chance. And in any case, had he succeeded it wouldn't have killed me, so why should I kill him in response?

There's of course the underlying factor that I find characters like Astarion, Shadowheart and Lae'zel interesting. Much more so than, say, Jaheira. But I see I'm in the minority here. I guess I understand now why so many people are not satisfied with the companions.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure he does kill you because he is unable to stop himself once he starts. It's metagaming, I know, but I won't be taking any chances on that in the future for sure. There are no good vampires (or spawns) for this reason alone - dietary choices aside - they have instincst they cannot seem to control. Evil instincst.

Depends ...

In general? I wouldnt say so, no.
But in-game? I have not even shadow of doubt on my soul.

You mean ingame? With NPCs?
I dont think it would interest many people.

More likely it would cause flames on social media.
Where one group (DnD purists) would be complaining about Larian not following lore principles close enough, if they would introduce someone who is even a tiny bit more open minded than them (those purists) ... and other group (i have no name for them) would be pissed that Larian is not open minded enough, bcs all (or just many) NPCs in their world seems to be on a scale between stubborn old timer to complete bigots. :-/

This is something that would apply on our world ...
Not so much on DnD tho, since there are being that are physicaly unable to do Good, Evil, or even Neutral as the matter of fact ... so even definitions of those Alignments are different.

Wich (obviously) is something our philosophy never explored, since such beings dont exist (at least to our knowledge) ...
I think we should be able to find some inspiration in religious texts tho ... every religion have some sort of Celestial beings, and Hellish beings ... no matter how they call them.

I cant really say i agree with this statement.
I would say "it doesnt matter if you are evil" rather than "you are not evil".

As for deserving ... that is also kinda deeper topic than just being evil or not.
If you see a hungry wolf as he rip appart your kid and eats it, you will hate him ... no matter if he deserves it or not.

Theese are same things said in different words ... you are not defining it, you are just describing same thing twice.

Not sure if all Undead ...

But we know for certain tha Astarion do have option to ... do good ...
Not really sure what is happening in his head tho! Is he fighting some deep urge? Is there some struggle with his nature?

Bcs if not ... i think that by DnD definition ... his Alignment is neutral. O_o

And i think this is perfectly valid opinion ...
Also i think that everyone from Faerun would see you as really strange person tho.

Here i see small problem: You dont know this.

Unless your character just happens to be somehow educated about Vampires, and happens to know that it is actually possible for Vampire to drink, while dont kill their target ... also, if it even was established in the Lore (read as: If this isnt Larian interpretation.).

Since, from what we know about playing as Astarion ... and we know very little, since it was long time ago, when Swen played as him in presentation ... it is certainly possible to kill your target, as you drink.

There's probably some obscure order of monks who would reason in a similar way. Heh....maybe I can play one of those some time. But sure, if I projected myself into these worlds I'd likely end up in Sigil, home of the weirdos of the multiverse.

In any case, I won't kill anyone unless they give me sufficient reason. Especially not the questionable ones. They're just more interesting.

I think it is an interesting conversation, as well. I was disappointed both D&D and Pathfinder dropped alignment because I thought it led to interesting, if often redundant, debates. It seems like WotC and Paizo both acted like a moderator on a forum and came to the conclusion "People arguing = bad" and shut the whole thing down. (I'm probably being unfair to Paizo, who said they removed it because it was confusing new players and they already had a mechanic that handled the outerplanar aspects of alignment adequately.)

Anyway, I took the position in my games that if a creature was "always evil" it meant the creature was a reincarnation of an evil soul (that had already made the decisions to be evil in a past life). And because it should probably be possible to be redeemed (switch from evil to good), such a creature must necessarily not truly be "always evil", must be an avatar/imprint of an evil soul that is incapable of change (i.e., does not have free will), or would transform into something else or die if they turned Good. (There may be more options, but those are the ones I came up with.) Sentient undead in my games usually fall under the category of mentally ill, which is fun because you can't Detect Evil on a Good Vampire, but they'll kill you when the urge takes over, making them in some ways more insidious than Evil Vampires. That's always fun and leads to some serious soul-searching on the part of the vampire, which is also fun.

Edit: That was a rambling way of saying, I think your alignment does not matter when deciding whether to dispose of Astarion. You could do it to protect others (Good), do it to protect yourself (Neutral), or do it because you feel like it (Evil). Or you could keep him around because you think he can be redeemed (Good), he will not hurt you (Neutral), or because you feel like it (Evil).

Speaking of companions alignments, I do have a question for those of you who intend to play an origin character. If you like Larian's concept of origin PCs and want to play as one of the origins, but you also are someone who wants very strongly to play a good-oriented PC, exactly what is your choice for an origin character to play? I don't see how anyone who wants to play a truly good character has that option among the five origins. Two of them are evil, one at least starts out as evil but perhaps can become neutral later on, and the other two are neutral. What is the truly good-aligned choice among the origins for someone who wants to play only a truly good PC?

I don't in the slightest agree with your estimation of alignments, especially in regards to the origin characters, of whom we've only seen snapshots from early access.

I will be playing an origin character. In fact, I'll be playing all of them eventually. Whether they are good or bad will be determined by what I make of them. I suspect the game will accommodate that just fine.

My first run will almost certainly be more of a traditional good path, and right now I'm leaning toward Gale or Astarion.

They are not wrong tho ...

Definitions of Alignment are known for years, and yet people are unable to agree on ... well anything about them basicaly.
Each person have their own way to work with it, own way to define it, own way to even demand to be true to it ...

I mean ...
Personaly i see main problem with choosen names ... Good / Neutral / Evil ...
Just as many other things in DnD, such names evoke wrong ideas in people ... there was several debates about "what it even means to be Good" here on this very foum, and i dont really think anyone agreed with someone else in the end.
Alignment is imho usefull tool for guidelines, as long as you manage to unify single definition for whole group ... DM have power to just force it, if necessary ... but other than that, i would dare to say that we dont loose much.
Devil will still be assholes.
Demons will still be maniacs.
Celestials will still be smug as ... well, celestials. :P

They just wouldnt have sticker with written Alignment on their forehead anymore.

And that is quite fine. We've been through this discussion a lot previously. You are someone who sees everyone as gray. Fair enough. We can only agree to disagree and move on.

My question was aimed specifically at those who, like me, consider such characters as giths, Sharrans, and vampires to be evil, and making a pact with a devil and trying to usurp a god's power to be at least morally highly questionable if not evil (at least at their starting points in the game with no consideration for how they may subsequently change). For those people here, if they're inclined to play an origin even while also wanting to play a truly good PC, what is their origin of choice (and why)? That is my question.

That's a good question... there is none as far as I'm concerned. There isn't a single origin character I'd consider genuinely good, at best there are some lighter shades of grey. For us good guys, the only real option is a custom character.

I don't consider a pact with a devil as inherently evil though, it may have been formed with the best of intentions. Certainly not the wisest choice and one you'll certainly come to regret, but who said Wyll (or any other Warlock) is wise?

I mean all those characters you listed very clearly arnt raw evil. Even lae'zel.

Its even worst. He's an evil kinky snarky comedy relief monty python vampire spawn.
I cannot comprehend the appeal to such companion. Jan Jansen is 10 folds more appealing.

If you give him the necromancy of thay it commands him to killthe party but he resists it. Calling him evil misses the mark.

He snarky sassy and chaotic sure

That doesn't make him not evil. He's aware that he needs the party for his own protection, killing them wouldn't benefit him.
One doesn't need to murder everyone to be evil...

Hes got a tome of massive necromancial power. With it he doesn't need the party for protection. If he just wanted power and protection he would have murdered the party right there.

Im glad to see im not the only one who finds Astarion unbrearably overacted

Hes delibratly done that way. Just like the paladin from the S&D movie was.

Unbearable for sure. Which is in part why I consider him well-written. If we strongly dislike someone even though we know they're fictional then the writer and/or actor has done their job right.

There is no proof yet that simply possessing the necromancy tome makes a person more powerful than a collective group of people, and if it can, one would need to master it first which few could. Any and all cooperation Astarion does is for his own survival. Even if he genuinely cared not to kill his comrades, that one thing does not preclude him from being evil. That kind of logic is silly. It's like saying, "Yeah, this guy is a depraved serial killer, but he loves to pet puppies in his spare time--he's chaotic at worst!" A smidge of good does not cancel out evil, and it does even less so if the good is for selfish reasons.

This is why I've been saying that if Larian does give Astarion a "redemption" arc (shifting to neutral at best; that's as far as I can suspend my disbelief), it likely would feel shallow and unearned because Astarion was evil and corrupt in his past life too, and to change for the better requires a genuine want to do so and the ability to feel shame, which I've seen no evidence of in his case. He knows the right words to say (although he says them so disingenuously that I'm amazed our PCs don't have the option to call him out on it) to further his survival. Unless Larian's rewrites didn't stop with Wyll, and they give Astarion a significantly less evil backstory, it's just going to feel out of place and obviously done for the fans with I-can-fix-him fantasies. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth personally, but to each his own, I guess.