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

Barcus, just off on a journey to find his old friend Wulbren because he's worried about him.

i'll say dwarf mage cleric but she may have been gnome Illusionist cleric... it was a long time ago and Bioware before Beamdog days

Not quite sure what you're telling us here. You will sacrifice him to Boo? :P

No, Boooal(precise spelling) is a potential boss fight, but you can choose to sacrifice a party member for a permanent passive bonus that gives you advantage to attacks against any bleeding target.

Let me reiterate. Gigax specifically was inspired by specifically heroic fantasy written by Moorcock... and many other heroic fantasy novels.

Since some people here gets touchy about trying discus real world moral. Let me give you much more themed example. Not even just D&D-themed, but specifically Forgotten Realms. Or specifically FR cosmology, earlier known as Great Tree (now it doesn't have any name, but that's mostly because 5th edition cosmology lore mainly is a huge mess).

Most of you probably heard of Lathander. Most consider him as THE most good-aligned deity.
What many of you might not know, is that at some point (very far in the past) Lathander rebelled against established nature of cosmology, and attempted to reform it entirely, putting himself on the very top (so practically he attempted to unseat Ao himself). The event was known as Dawn Cataclysm.
Reason of it mostly was that he couldn't stand of nature of good vs evil balance. And wanted re-establich cosmology only with forces of Good dictates how things are, and all evil being relentlessy hunted down.
His attempts ultimately failed, causing of death of several gods in the process. Helm specifically could never forgive Lathander for death of his lover.

So... good intentions, that ultimately lead to horrible disaster. And by all accounts Lathander still is good-alligned god.

Another interesting example is Jergal. An evil deity that at some point grew to an immense power. No other gods (besides an Ao again, of course) could compete with him.
But in the end... he just grew tired and bored of his powers. And he just gave those away (well, most of it), and instead "retired" himself simply as seneschal of the Kelemvor (before Kelemvor - Cyric, and before Cyric - Myrkul).
And although his actions doesn't really brought anything good (specifically that's what gave goodhood to Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal), he himself broke the prejudging cliche about that evil would never give up on power in his possession.

It's not a bad definition. You're just wrongly applying alignment to shit like sheep.

There is a huge difference between people who do bad things as a means to survive and evil. Evil is someone like Shar, who wants to destroy all of existence because she hates everything, to cause suffering and pain for no other reason than because she is spiteful. But some poor soul who is starving to death being taken in by Shar's loyal people and being offered a place where he can belong, have shelter and food, accepting to do terrible acts in the name of Shar is not by default evil...he does what he must to survive. Nobody else offered him pity or help when he was about to die in the streets so why would he feel obligated to sacrifice anything for the good of those who couldn't care less about him? There are a lot of nuances here...but putting your own well being above the well being of others is not inherently evil at all.

Most people make moral judgments in different domains. I'll try a list. Note that not all people make moral judgments in all these domains. The details also vary by culture.

1. Harm: caring about others' wellbeing and avoiding harm where possible vs. being indifferent to others' suffering or actively causing unnecessary harm.
2. Fairness: showing fairness in your exchanges with others vs. ruthlessly going for your advantage.
3. Loyalty: being loyal to people who can legitimately expect it from you vs. betraying them at your whim.
4. Authority: respecting legitimate (!) authority vs. undermining it at your whim.
5. Purity: Taking proper care of your body and mind vs. wallowing in the unclean, unhealthy or disgusting.

The further you're on the right of the scale defined by the listed opposites, as the more evil you will be regarded by your society, but cultures vary greatly in some domains. The Purity domain is not usually consciously recognized as being morally relevant by our culture, but it is often invoked in fiction to mark something as evil or enhance its evil in our perception by giving it disgusting and repulsive traits. It usually works.

The most commonly recognized evil is being indifferent to others' suffering. You are expected to not cause harm, and if it can't be avoided for some reason recognized as legitimate (such as self-defense), you are expected to minimize it. Most evil game characters I've known express their evil by not recognizing the limits of the suffering they can legitimately cause by their actions.
But as the list shows, things are considerably more complex and evil characters can be interesting in rather different ways.

Which as I said...to the person who lived on the streets and literally nobody cared about who may have been perhaps hours from death...is he "evil" for being indifferent to the suffering of those who didn't care about his? Maybe he was robbed in broad daylight of his last coin and food and nobody cared. He might quite a lot of anger at being "expected" to minimize the suffering by those indifferent to his...he might look at those scales for balancing what's good vs. evil and assess the entire city as evil. Who could such a character "legitimately owe loyalty" to? The only ones who took him in and cared for him were the Sharrans. And if we bring in showing fairness in trade, where does that line get cut off? Is making a profit evil? Maybe seeking to make too much profit but where do we draw that line? A lot of traders seek to maximize profits...where does that stop being fair? As for respecting legitimate authority, that is easily corruptible...sometimes the authority serves only to serve a major business, or worse, criminal groups like mafias or cults of evil deities. Would undermining that authority be evil?

I think these seemingly simple balances are nowhere near as simple as they seem on the surface. The world can be a VERY cruel place. There are people who are raised in areas where crime is the norm and law enforcement is minimal...then add all sorts of powerful magic at play further complicating things. The world(especially that of D&D) is an infinitely more complex place that can't be put in a neat little box of this is how we define good and evil.

Oh, absolutely. I didn't want to imply the application of these domains would result in simplicity. You've mentioned some of the common areas of disagreement between and within cultures. I just didn't want to go into all the complexities or give an account of the scientific research at the foundation of this categorization. This is an area of great interest to me, but this is a gaming forum.

I would, however, submit that the people in our fictional worlds are, as a rule, psychologically human enough to apply this broad categorization to them, and that things like the presence of magic do not fundamentally change things. For instance, we may not need to worry about mind control magic in the real world, but coercion is very much on our minds, and we have no problem recognizing coercion by magic as evil in most circumstances. (Actually, sometimes freedom vs. coercion is regarded as its own domain).

Sort of. Sadly WotC decided to ditch the whole dawn cataclysm story when it decided to blow up the realms for 4e. Grrrrr.

But in my reading of the where the story was going: the dawn cataclysm caused him to change his very nature. Remember that at the start of 4e Lathander is dead. Or as Amaunator's faithful like to think of it - he matured into his noon time state.

As I read this Lathander's act changed his nature fundamentally - the attempted reordering of the world was a Lawful act. All of you will follow these rules. Proceeding knowing you were going to kill innocents for the greater good was morally grey act and shifted his alignment away from good. That's why Lathander isn't around in 4e - he became the Lawful Neutral god Amaunator.

Lathander only came back because fans demanded him back and WotC have never fully explained his return. Now, as the god of rebirth, his return makes a great of sense but the sun cycle has changed. It was supposed to be Dawn Aspect becomes Noontide Aspect becomes Dusklord but - because people liked Lathander - morning followed noon in 5e.

@ledra2

I don't think you can use moral foundations theory to explain actions in the realms. And, frankly, I think that theory is a bunch of horse manure and it's author a cheap charlatan. For all the problems of the 9 box gird it does a better than MF theory!

Trying to get any real world moral theory to work with the alignment grid is destined to fail - but there was a very interesting Dragon magazine article about this decades ago - but you were bound and determined to do it I would start Plato or Kant. There is a form of Law, a form of Good . . .

I look forward to 20 page threads trying to apply Kant’s Categorical Imperative to each major moral decision in this game when it launches. ❤️

I'll be disappointed if we stop at 20

Aren't we confident. Brushing off 30 years of experimental research on the subject just like this....

I think the alignment grid is.....what expression did you use....a bunch of horse manure, and the game doesn't use it, so I was not trying to map anything to it. I maintain, however, that almost all people in almost all fictional worlds ever created are psychologically human, simply because it is extremely hard for a human mind to envision a truly alien one. So RL theories can often be legitimately applied.

Edit: There are factors in Faerun there aren't present in the real world. There are no atheists in Faerun - the afterlife is reality. Your actions on Toril literally change the outer planes. Gods reward or punish for making certain decisions. All of these factors are missing from modern theories of morality. Which is why - if you were to do it - I think Plato would be best because it has the metaphysical aspects you need for a moral theory to work in the Forgotten Realms. (and, to a lesser extent, so does Kant)