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

There is nothing wrong with wiping out a goblin stronghold, goblins are vile, murderous vermin that delight in cruelty and torturing those weaker than them. Sorry, but I don't buy the WotC nonsense of "they're sentient creatures and have free will".

Anyway... let's get back on topic.

Astarion is definitely evil, he delights in acts of cruelty and generally detests helping people. Resisting the book has nothing to do with it, especially as he isn't a wizard so having the book would not aid him. He'd still require the protection of a party and I have little doubt about him sacrificing anyone who lost their usefulness for him. He's an absolutely self-serving individual ... and that clearly makes him evil in D&D's context.

That's a rather simplistic way of looking at things. We simply do not know. Anyone who judges her at this point is basing their judgment on flimsy evidence.

Yeah, well, I'm also not ready to make a final judgment about her, but she's the most clearly evil companion at this point.

I think maybe people's idea of what you need to do to be evil is out of step with what it means to be evil. Being evil isn't a record of your deeds, it's your worldview, if you've never hurt a fly before in your life, but you think Might Makes Right, then you're evil. Just because Astarion or Shadowheart haven't twirled their moustaches while murdering children doesn't mean they haven't espoused evil ideology.

Being evil isn't a crime in FR, and having an evil worldview isn't incompatible with existing in a good or neutral society. In a highly pluralistic and polytheistic setting you have to expect that there's a live and let live dynamic that allows people of wildly different beliefs coexist, Baldur's Gate itself has a pretty prominent temple to an evil deity.
We might mostly run into the wild eyed cultists, but there must be a slew of stevedores and clerks who go home after a long day at work, and say a little prayer at the altar of Bane before supper.

Astarion might have a pretty warped view of the world, but that doesn't mean he can't do good, or become a good person. I think it'll be interesting to see how the game treats our evil characters as they face moral conundrums where these worldviews are challenged.

Shadowheart doesn't fit evil by any standard. Hell we see first hand that she doesn't even do the the rituals required of Sharan clerics she probably isn't even one. Also swen was very carefull to not go to the selune claric at the harper camp and remembered last minute to not talk ot the shar doctor guy when he had shadowheart in his party. The while exchange there with the Narrative lead telling swen it was fine to do the interaction on his playthrough where his shadowheart bought fully into shar was telling.

At the end of the day there's a reason Wotc has moved away from the strict alignment system, but Astarion really doesn't fit chaotic evil either. He's closest to chaotic neutral and has demonstrated repeatedly he has a good heart when it comes to the party.

Excellently put, Sozz, and hopefully well enough put that we can finally end the circular arguments. With every new post, my dwindling faith in humanity diminished, lol.

Yes, +2

Thanks for the kudos.
I think the only way we'll find solace at this point, will be to actually see how our companions turn out.

Don't start any long term arguments fellows.

This is not how things work. Morality is for social action, and you're judged for your actions using your culture's dominant morality, not for your motivation. In some cultures it doesn't even matter why you do something at all for how you're judged, but all cultures judge certain actions like killing one of your own group. If "good" and "evil" is about morality, then action counts and ideology alone does not, and to say that someone "is" evil or good does not make sense as a rule.

Which means that as long as you're absolutely determined to use that phrasing that someone "is" evil, they're only evil insofar as they do evil. Doing evil is what makes you evil, if anything does. How you think might cause you do to evil, but it won't make you so on its own.

In any case, ideology doesn't matter much for how I deal with companions. It's cause for suspicion, all right, but not for judgment.

Shar blesses her Priestesses with moustaches?

You're presupposing morality as social construct, but we're dealing in fantasy setting. Morality is beamed into the material plane from the other dimensions, dimensions lorded over by beings of great power that feed on worship. When we say evil, we're not talking about our culture's social mores, or even the natural ones from which those spring, we're talking about a 3x3 grid overseen by the Laws of this setting.


Shar's Moustaches are the darkest and most voluminous. Anyone with evidence to the contrary is a heretic or infidel.

Disagree completely. Someone can have evil thoughts, evil motivations, evil ambitions, and evil actions.

Laws that BG3 does not implement for good reason. They never made any sense. Even in a fantasy setting, you can't just beam morality into something or someone without it ceasing to be morality. You can say the alignment system is about ideology, and that would make sense, but then it's not about morality and it makes no sense using the terms "good" and "evil".

This is why it's good that there aren't any alignments. No one can agree, and no one wants to hear anyone else tell them what alignment their character *actually* is.

I seriously can't figure out why people say Astarion is evil. It's just a gut feeling that he's evil because of what he is or what he might be thinking or what the presumption is about why approved of something. Meanwhile, I just see him as someone who was tortured and enslaved for two hundred years and now he's seeing the sunlight for the first time again while having some small bit of agency. I don't think him finding the look on Mayrina's face funny was evil. A lot of people find humor in unfortunate moments. That doesn't equal evil, and if a friend of yours made a "too soon" joke about a tragedy, I doubt they'd be labelled such.

To me, it seems that a lot of Astarion's behavior is bravado that masks his fear.

I think modern legal philosophy is the exact opposite of what you say. Conviction for almost every serious crime (other than drug possession, in the U.S. anyway) requires proving an action that causes social harm and an intention to do the act. You cannot criminally punish someone for an act alone and you cannot criminally punish someone for a thought alone because history has shown that trying to punish thought crimes leads to bad outcomes for society. However, it is the intention that makes the act a crime, with the act merely being the expression of your "evil."

A legal system has no bearing on what we're talking about. I've found this a lot in the modern discourse, people conflating laws with justice with morality.
Laws are not morality. In the liberal tradition they're designed not to infringe on your personal freedom, while safeguarding that of others. Trial by jury is a response to trial by fiat or elite, so as to establish that the basis of law is unbiased "Justice is blind". This has no bearing on whether the law in question is good, it is to make it unbiased. Go back and the basis of law, comes from religious doctrine, and local tradition, this meant the people who judged you were ordained by a higher power, for who else can pass judgement. This also doesn't mean the law is good, it just means that the in a just society the ordained are just, so justice is done.



I'm not hearing you refute my point. You might not like it, but that's how good and evil work in D&D. Fantasy is about externalizing metaphysical concepts (like good and evil), if you have trouble with that, then you might want to switch to Science-Fiction.

The idea that your morality only comes from the consequences of your actions is an ancient tradition. But it's certainly not popular today, and it's not really part of D&D.


Warlocke! You went to law school, maybe you can help us.

We do seem to be heavy on the moral philosophy today. Now with added jurisprudence!

There’s no real harm as long as everyone is having fun debating, but it does feel to me as though it’s taking this thread off track.

Please, everyone, bear in mind a short diversion from topic might be okay, but if it feels as though we’re getting into too much detail on a digression then it might be best to start a separate topic. Or to resurrect an old one talking about companion alignment if you can find one: I know it’s been discussed before, probably many times.

Not to be an ass or a pedant, but:

Statements as to which character is good or evil, along with statements as to why one does an evil or good run, all rely upon one's interpretation of the nature of good and evil, which depends, at least in part, upon ethical and metaethical philosophy. One must define good and evil before one can attribute the definition. Those definitions will be based upon arguments, which in turn shall depend upon ethical and metaethical philosophy.

I actually disagree that defining terms to that level is necessary for a useful discussion, but debating that is even further off topic than getting into what good and evil are. Which is a digression from talking about our impressions of the specific alignments of companions. Which is only tangentially related to the topic of which companions we each personally intend to use in our playthroughs.

(Which isn’t to say I don’t like a good pedantic debate - I wouldn’t have studied philosophy for seven years if I didn’t - but sometimes it’s not the time or place!)

All of this I agree with, just not the last bit.

I would like there to be more nuance in the religions for sure, and hopefully, SH is an example of that, but we'll see. It seems like the DND gods are just very binary, at least from the little I know, so nuance isn't something they deal with a lot. A more realistic religion would have varying interpretations of their god's teachings, and it'd be interesting to see a group of Shar worshippers who weren't just mustache twirling evil cultists.