Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why play evil?

Playing evil can be achieved by going down the slippery slope of morals.

You start with trying to protect a certain goal or value. And then you need to make sacrifices to achieve that goal.

A protagonist who has certain flaws can become evil given the right or wrong choices.

Some problematic person needs to disappear. To protect village X you need to get rid of village Y.

White turns into different shades of grey and eventually into black. It is a tragedy really.

I like how Pathfinder: WotC put forth the Lich path for example. My morally flawed sorceror did and sacrifieced everything to achieve his goal and became undeath.

Moorcock, a pure heroic fantasy writer? Definitely not in the sense you mean it. The genre he wrote is nominally heroic fantasy, but Elric of Melniboné of the Elric saga - maybe his most famous creation - is almost the prototypical anti-hero.

As for why it is interesting to play such characters, or even darker ones: why do people play games? To experiment. To learn about things through play what for real might be too dangerous. What is it like to be a person who does the darker things. What might bring people to go down the darker paths? What might tempt me to do the same? And of course, sometimes it's just for katharsis, because it's so satisfying to step away from the constraints of our society for a time, even though only in your imagination, and go and just kill them all.

What more is there to say after this? Aside from me asking that question.

Allow me to once again make status.

It seems to me that most actors playing evil say they will always try to defend their character no matter what horrible acts he or she commits, because that makes the character less one-dimensional and more interesting. But I've noticed that many of you feel they have to defend not only your character but evil itself which is quite different. This is not to encourage a philosophical discussion, just makes me wonder.

Others answer they want to play evil for fun or to let out their inner demon or devil (my words not yours) which I can much better relate to.

Some want power beyond what a good alignment can provide. Others just find evil characters to be more interesting.

I now realize that my original post and question entice many of you to explain your ideas about what it means to be good or evil. Please focus on answering the original question and if you feel you have to elaborate on it by describing your views on good and evil I guess that is ok.

The question posed by the thread title was answered by Silverstar. That is the answer to every "Why do 'thing X' in a leisure activity?" question. Either the thread dies or people zing off into wild philosophical tangents.

Ghal is a sociopath and all acts leads to him having more power; talking people into helping, poison the food and chaining Mystra are all means to that end.

Wyll is selfish and wants people to 'see' him as good but is willing to do really sick things like Flogging just to keep this power... he is good if someone is watching and bad if he can get away with it

Lae'zel has absolute morality with her queen being the final word on which is right or wrong
Minthara is just bat shit nuts

and Shadowheart is conflicted ... she follows an evil God so assumes the evil path is best [prob correctly] but she also has feelings and doubts because her heart knows part of her memory is missing so she can't fully trust her head

my point is each of these [except Minthara] are playable so my view of good or evil depends on what character i picked

Gale(not Ghal lol) is absolutely not to be trusted. I will probably do his companion story but he's probably getting killed in the end...I will ultimately betray him as he has betrayed others for personal gain if I can(and we probably can).

Wyll I'll probably just sacrifice to Boooal or some such early game. Don't really care about him either way.

Lae'zel is young and hotheaded, I don't mind that too much, I will guide her and she will grow. She'll probably be in my party for most of my playthroughs.

Shadowheart has a good heart and can probably be redeemed fairly easily so she can fit both good and evil parties. At least she can be guided away from ideals of goodness, and she too will probably be a fairly fixed member of my parties.

And lastly Minthara will be a really good addition to evil parties. Even though she is not a playable origin character she still has a really interesting story. She and Shadowheart will probably be my main romance partners across the various playthroughs I will do in BG3.

I think to truly be able to play a through and through evil character, you have to see their side of the story. I saw an interview with Tobin Bell ( he is a total sweetheart btw, met him at a horror convention), who played John Kramer in the Saw movies and he said, of course this character is evil, he tortures and kills people. But he focused on the loss this character endured and his terminal illness and made him more dimensional. That is, what I like to explore: Can I play a character, that is the total opposite of my own moral code, believable? For me, pen& paper is the better tool for that, because you have all the freedom, while a videogame has limits. To stay with my Saw example: John Kramer would never have sided with the goblins but I think, he would have put every single companion through his 'tests' for different reasons.

I mean what does evil even mean here?
Apparently killing goblin kids is fine. But killing tieflings is supposed to be bad. Why?
By what moral standard can you tell me that killing both tieflings and goblins is not a moral act? They are both non-human species with a bent towards exploitation (the tieflings already prepare to assassinate Kagha, and their kids already started a thieves guild, full of criminal youth).
By what moral standard can you tell me that Kagha is evil but Halsin is not? Kagha embodies the natural principle of competition for resources, which is totally in line with Sylvanus, a god totally detached from morality. Halsin in the emantime was quick to abandon his responsibilities and if you sace him he will be quick to do so again.
In fact, the more I play the game the more I realize that the only good aligned NPC-s we probably meet are Mayrina's brothers who risk life and limb to save their sister. If I really thought very hard I could probably find more, but probably not too many more.

I don't think this game will be a classical black and white morality play. I think even as an Absolutist you can be more or less ruthless in how you approach things.

I think most people define the lines in terms of who is the aggressor and who they serve...so goblins are the aggressive faction while tieflings want to be left alone and goblins are working with the absolute, the dead three...the gods of Murder, Death, and Tyranny...possibly even Shar, the most evil deity in D&D, may be in there somewhere as her magic is in play with the tadpoles and nobody uses her magic without her permission. Plus killing the goblins can be considered just self defense here. But I think if you want to play evil you should just have fun with it, I know I will. My goal is to infiltrate the cult of the Absolute and attempt to take power at any and all costs...I am not interested in justifying my in game actions any more than the dead three are.

That's funny because based on that criteria, Mayrina's brothers are evil for trying to save their sister from a consensual pact with the hag.

That woman was going to sell her newborn son for the resurrection of her husband...there's a key element of consent missing there...from the one person that pays with his life...I don't think anyone involved in that deal is "good".

In my good playthroughs I don't kill the goblin kids, I let them run away ( I deal with the three leaders first before freeing Halsin, so they can't really bring reinforcements). I don't think, I ever killed the gobbo kids yet, but Halsin in bear form did, when he was lucky enough to break out quickly and the kids were late with their initiative.
I often wonder about Halsin too. He just witnessed, how his grove was nearly going to shit, while he was away for a few days, yet he immediately goes away again. He is not really good at his job as first druid.

On this tangent, in my Patch 9 plays, once I kill the Goblin leaders and return to the grove, Halsin is automagically freed. Maybe it was always like this and pre-Patch 9 I always proceeded on to rescue Halsin after killing the leaders.

I was very hesitant to join this discussion due to the question being asked in some wacky pseudo-phylosophical way.

Why play evil? Can we for a second pretend that it is not a very complex question. Here is my easy answer.

If you roleplay:

- It can be a state of mind as a result of a past trauma
- It can be a state of mind due to the history between groups (evil to some, kind to others)
- It can be an external condition altering your state of mind (Durge be like)
- Evil deeds can be performed out of necessity, with a gun to your head

If you don't roleplay:

- Can take things from others
- More combat
- More experience
- Morally dubious yet quicker and easier solutions to quests
- Can punish anyone talking shit immediately

This hits at a very interesting topic even D&D rarely touches. There is magic in D&D that can instantly and permanently flip your moral alignment like Compel(though that's from 3e, some approximation of this exists in 5e as well I believe)...it's very rare and I'm not even sure how many DMs even bring it up at all in their campaigns...but it does exist. You can play as the most pure good of Paladins, but run into the wrong enemy, roll a nat1 on the wrong saving throw and you could instantly become pure evil. And undoing the spell can be very difficult as it would require someone else to that same spell, a wish spell, or a miracle.

Here we, go, in 5e if you attune to the Book of Vile Darkness you must pass a DC17 Charisma saving throw or your alignment instantly flips to neutral evil.

AD&D 1e had a magic item, a Helm of Opposite Alignment. If a 1e paladin (or ranger, probably a druid, too) put it on, they ceased to be a paladin until it was removed and they atoned.

Oh, I see I'm too late already.

Still, this was a great item for Viconia, as a Good Cleric is of more use in BG1 than an Evil one.

That description doesn't sound all that Bioware-ish. Is that from a mod?

Yes but for something like that at least there is something you can do to quickly fix it...the party could restrain or knock the Paladin unconscious and remove the helmet...but there is magic that can flip your alignment and there's almost nothing the part can do for you...they'd need something like a wish spell or miracle to reverse it.

In 5e there is at least attuning to the Book of Vile Darkness that can shift your alignment. If a character finds it without knowing what it is and attunes to it there are problems.