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

I dislike every single recruitable companion in EA. If I were in a PnP game with players who played their characters that way, I would not want to play with those players any more. The EA companions are pack mules and combat assistants.

Yes, it totally is, like, just my opinion, man. And for me playing my game, my opinion is, like, the only one that matters. EDIT: The bowling balls behind John Goodman's head look like Mickey Mouse ears.

i DIDN'T WATCH MY COMPANIONS DIE FACE DOWN IN THE MUD SO THIS GIGOLO COULD TURN THEM INTO PACK MULES!!!

Is that a meme? Because it doesn't mean anything to me.

You do realize the Realms is not Earth, right? It's a fictional fantasy game setting, and can therefore have whatever lore its creators attribute to it. There is no expectation anything must "fit" whatever you or anyone else may consider to be the "real world." And in that fictional setting, yes, it is very much the case that certain groups/races are indeed entirely this or that, with some notable exceptions.

To be honest I'm still having a blast throwing fireballs into hordes of demons while playing WotR - and I love dealing with Areelu and Nocticula as evil individuals.

Blasting hordes is just fun:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pnMiV2Ykw9E

And it's as valid as any other opinion 👍🏻 And one that though unintentionally came dangerously close to bringing the thread back on track, so thank you.

Name's familiar btw, do I remember you from the Beamdog forums?

“Anything goes” does not apply if an idea leads to contradictions.

You can say “I don’t care, this is how things are” – there is no rule that our fictional worlds have to make sense – but then you have to live with the fact that your world, in fact, does not make sense.

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TLDR: A statement that all members of a group are necessarily evil without exception makes – even by worldbuilder fiat – no sense as long as they are psychologically human enough to make it possible to have them as protagonists in a class of stories which are, by observation, perfectly plausible and not altogether rare in fantasy worlds like the Forgotten Realms (see below). Since almost all races and peoples are psychologically human enough for that, as a rule it makes no sense to make the aforementioned statement about any group.
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Let’s take our statement “All Sharran initiates are evil” from above as an example. We can apply it to Shadowheart, so it's not *totally* OT

As a sidenote, it’s perfectly fine to use this as a guideline for what to expect from Sharran initiates. If you’ve met 100 of them and they were all murderous assholes, it’s reasonable to expect the next one to be the same. The cracks only appear if you claim this as a universal truth of your world.

Suppose that your earlier statement about Sharran initiation rites were true without exception. Suppose furthermore, that you exist within the world and have limited omniscience in the sense that you can know everything that is at any moment in time, but have no knowledge about past or future. So you could look into every Sharran initiate’s mind and find that they’re all mostly OK with what they did, and none of them were coerced.

That would make the statement that all Sharran initiates are evil true a posteriori. However, First, this would still not allow you to conclude with certainty that the next Sharran initiate that comes into existence will be the same, because inductive reasoning cannot establish universal truths. Second, characters in your fictional world are not omniscient, so they can’t even know this. The temple around the next corner they explore might be different, and even in your omniscience you couldn’t know what the future holds. Under these conditions, it makes no sense to claim “All Sharran initiates are evil” as a universal, exceptionless truth.

In order to be able to do so, this has to be true a priori, a necessary truth of your world. You must be able to derive this from first principles, which for a fictional world, includes the fiat of its worldbuilder. And yes, you can say “This is how things are in my world”. However, that would make it literally impossible for a Sharran initiate who is not evil to exist. And I can easily imagine a plausible case of that for the Forgotten Realms:

Suppose you grow up in a family of fanatical Sharrans. Your mother is a high-ranked initiate. You’ve witnessed those rites and for some reason, your parents haven’t managed to indoctrinate you enough for you to think this is perfectly fine. You hate it. You feel that killing someone for no reason is just wrong and that the world should not be like that, whatever your parents say. But you know it is expected of you to follow in your mother’s footsteps, for the status of your family within the cult depends on it. You’ve also seen what happens to those who refuse, and you know your mother would kill you herself if that happened, and call it an act of penance. So when the day comes, you force yourself to go through with it. And perhaps you’ll gain enough freedom of movement to run away, now that you’re officially an initiate, and perhaps even make up for what you were forced to do. Are you evil? I’m not seeing it.

To claim that all Sharran initiates are necessarily evil would make this story impossible. For people in your world, it would be a paradoxical scenario, one (ironically) only possible in fiction if anywhere. And not only is it a plausible story within the Realms, I’d say it’s not altogether a bad one for a character background, even if it’s a bit cliché.

So. q.e.d. The contradiction. We’re arrived at the statement I gave in the TLDR above, applied to Sharran initiates. And if the members of a group are not psychologically human enough to make sense for the scenario above, as might be the case with low-level devils and demons, they’re – as this example should amply illustrate – a faceless horde. I’m not sure it’s necessarily so (I might explore that later), but it is usually so.

And for that reason, I adamantly refuse to judge Shadowheart just because she's a Sharran initiate, nor Astarion just for being a vampire, or Lae'zel just because she's a Githyanki. To me all of the above is immediately obvious, and I'm quite surprised that I need to elaborate on it like this.

Undoubtedly.

I agree, and concur. Unless a fantasy race (or species or whatever) is specifically created to be evil (like Middle Earth Orcs) I don't like the notion of fantasy races being universally and/or inherently evil, because that means they have no free will. I'm OK with Middle Earth Orcs being like that, but not Faerunian Orcs. Because that does not seem to mesh with the notion of Orcs as an officially available player character race in D&D.

Iolth drow are a cultural group, by far the largest but not the only.

We’re just making Big Lebowski references at this point lmao

It is unfortunate that you don't like them, but would you really pass judgment on a player because they wanted to play someone like them? Isn't that a bit extreme? We are roleplaying after all, these characters are not us.

BTW, if they're too unlikeable in your opinion, Karlach might save you when the full game arrives.

I've seen it once. Just once. If you want Holy Grail quotes, I'm your guy.

As long as you don't say "Ni!".

And a moderator reminder that personal insults implying people’s mothers are rodents or fathers smell of fruit are strongly discouraged

Since Minsc is carrying a Hamster everywhere ...
Do you think HE smells like Elderberry? O_o

I’d like to think so Or perhaps goodberries, to make it class and setting appropriate!

How did I ever end up in this crowd?

The insult still works when changing elderberries to goodberries.

People praise goodberries for their most obvious uses but to me their true purpose will always be filling ToEE companions' inventories so they can't steal loot.

I hope Jaheira will be able to make goodberries in BG3, that will definitely increase her value as a party member.