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.
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).
Last edited by Totoro; 27/07/2305:34 PM. Reason: To finish my thought re Astarion
