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

Just druids and tieflings...and believe me if you actually take Haslin as a companion you'll wish you'd sided with the goblins when you had the chance. The dude supposedly tells a lot of really disturbing stories very casually about stuff he does with animals while in animal form, at least if Swen is to be believed. You're doing them a favor by helping them out of their misery when siding with the goblins.

LOL. I don't see any difference between Minthara and vampire/Sharran/gith, so if any of those is "redeemable" then they all can be (although not by me).

I think so, too.
In my first game, I had been annoyed by her behaviour, but when I had her in my party, and interacted more with her, I started to feel sorry for her. She had been intdoctrinated her whole life, that Githyanki are superior to everyone else, and she has no experiences at all outside her own society. She blindly believes everything that she has been told (for example the "purification") - and I'm very curious what she will do now, when she starts to realize that she has been lied to. I think that, just like with every other companion, her story could easily take very different paths.
(It was quite surprising and very nice to see a softer side of her in the short romance scenes in the PFH, too.)

The way she talks about her dream of becoming a kith'rak and riding her own red dragon, at every opportunity and with great enthusiasm, really made me think of a teenager, I think she is indeed a very young adult.

Astarion was a forced slave


Laezel is the gith equivlant of a school girl.

Minthara had a long career as an evil Lothian drow before even swapping to the absolute.

I mean it is only early access...I really wouldn't treat what has or hasn't been datamined as very indicative of much. Shar will likely play a major role in the story later just because of what it takes for someone to be able to use her magic at all and we know the dead three and the illithids used her magic to put all those tadpoles in stasis...all for a grander plan to suddenly spring a mass amount of ceremorphosis transformations at once...there is no way that Shar's magic would be so extensively used for such a major plot involving so many other gods without Shar being closely involved in some way. Either the dead three managed to gain some leverage on her or she's in on their plan or something is up there but she can't be far behind the plot.

In my first playthrough I am just going to avoid/not recruit those I don't want around.
I may kill shadowheart if she attacks me when I'm camping (the artifact has to end up in my hands somehow, I guess)

In my 2nd playthrough I am going to kill Astarion for sure the moment he tries to bite my bard lol.

The only one I'm not recruiting is Karlach. All other companions seem very cool and fun, I would say above average cast. There are usually more people who annoy me.

I am not particularly sold on Karlach to be honest but I don't hate her so much she'll never join my party...there will be parties where I'll have a spot for her. But Halsin...no. Halsin always dies in act one no matter what...even if I plan to do a good playthrough, I don't care Halsin always dies.

What exactly is it that makes Astarion evil? I mean, specifically?

What does he do, outside of player control, to make him objectively evil?

He does pull a knife on you when your back is turned and try to exsanguinate you while you sleep.

I have actually really turned around on this cast. I was pretty ambivalent before, but now I’m looking forward to seeing how their stories unfold.

i don't know. It may be vaguely related to the fact that he's constantly giggly and cheerful when he's witnessing someone else's misery across the entirety of Act 1.
Just a stab in the dark, though.

Pulling a knife doesn't make him evil, right? He's worried and in danger, just crashed from a nautiloid, has no idea who we are... Do you really think that qualifies as evil?

The blood drinking... it's certainly doesn't strike me as good, but I'm not under the impression that he had any intention of draining Tav dry. Just that he had been forced into his state as a vampire and enslaved for two hundred years without being able to satisfy his intense biological need to drink the blood of something other than a rat. In fact, he seems somewhat conflicted about it.

Does that make him evil? I'm not sure it does.


Which scenes, specifically?

He laughs about the expression on Mayrina's face, but that's only after she leaves. I dare say that's not the mark of an evil person.

He makes a comment about hoping Lae'zel was going to give a show when she was talking to Zorru, but that strikes me as nothing more than commentary on her aggressive approach. Evil though?

Vague... that's a good word. It's seems that folks who think he's evil have this "vague notion" that he's evil, and most of that is almost certainly coming from him being a vampire, and so the suggestion that he's evil gets thrown about willy-nilly as if it's a foregone conclusion.

I'm in agreeance with N7Greenfire about the notion of Minthara being redeemable to be ridiculous. Furthermore, you don't just massacre people, you help kill the children too. Anyone who thinks that can be spun in a positive light is concerning. If you want her as a companion, that's your prerogative. Just don't pretend such acts are justified by trying to redeem a single person, or that said person can be redeemed in the first place.

Also, unless it's been changed, iirc Astarion was a corrupt magistrate that secretly sold people into slavery (or something similar), namely the Gur, who rightly got their revenge by jumping him and nearly killing him. It was then thqt Cazador "rescued" Astarion. As to where the information came from, it was either data mined or the friendly Gur tells us (leaning towards the former). The information is really old at this point, so who knows!

Lol'ing at the absurd Halsin slander.

I agree that Minthara is evil.

Although I do believe that redemption is possible.

*

I'm not sure about that Astarion backstory. It sounds like conjecture based on the few things we know about his history. That said, it was two hundred years ago. Give or take.

It's from an old character sketch of Astarion given to media outlets - see here for example. Have things changed since? We don't know yet.

I mean, I certainly wouldn’t pull a knife on a random passerby. If I thought they were a threat, I’d hide. I definitely wouldn’t wave them over and get them to turn their back on me.

As for blood drinking, vampires are often associated with sex because the penetration of fangs is a symbolic sexual act. So doing that without consent… hmmm. Not a good look for old Astarion.

Jesus Christ. I can't even tell if you are serious.

In fairness, I probably wouldn't go get in a fight with Dror Ragzlin, either.

I think the drinking blood is more about hunger than sex, personally, but even so, I agree, it's not a good look. Still, though... evil?

There's definitely a line that gets crossed somewhere that turns a person from "normal" to "evil." But the more I examine Astarion and really consider his actions... I see him as a victim trying to survive amidst terrible circumstances.

It wouldn't be hard, in my opinion, to tip him over into full-blown evil. And maybe that's where he'd end up left to his own devices. But right now, at the start of the game, I see him as a creature sitting on the cusp, so to speak.

Sexual allegory isn’t necessary, Astarion (and the player) will be able to try and feed on an unwitting companion. Thats pretty bad.

There’s no real ambiguity about this fellows alignment an d I think even the people who think D&D alignment is outdated would agree