Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Free the artist - confusing wording

Probably discussed before ... somewhere.
When talking with ginger cutie in the Zhentarin Hideout, my undrstanding of the dialogue options

[ROGUE][PERSUASION] Art's more valuable once the creator is dead. I can arrange that (DC 15)
[BARD][PERSUASION] If this artist were to tragically expire, his portfolio would become finite - therefore priceless. (DC 15)

is that they scream "kill the git, that way you'll get more money for his paintings", not "free him". The implication is that freeing Oscar lowers the value of the paintings.

English is not my first language, though ...

I also have no clue why they let him go. My game is half in German, though, so I thought it's a wonky translation until now

The idea is, that you want to free the guy, but make up arguments so that the Zhent lets him leave without having to be payed for it. I felt it was a little weird that this is handled as persuasion and not deception. But I guess because you try to convince him through arguments that are technically true and not spin him a completely fake story, it counts as persuasion.

That still doesn't make sense. They'd have to kill him for the value to raise, not let him go. You very clearly don't kill him after the roll. I'm not expecting 300 IQ plays from the Zhents here, but this really is rather funky. As lies go, it's about on the level of claiming he has a severe and infectious disease, best kicked out, not touched at all, really.

In the rogue dialouge it's implied that you kill Oskar once he's handed over into your "care". The game just doesn't follow up to check if you really leave together and such, but the way I understand it, it's intended as a ruse.

Starts to make sense now, thanks.

There are bits like that. In the interaction with tomb raiders early into the game, they pick the fight with you as they see you as a competitor to looting the Flayer ship. You can convince them that the ship is too dangerous to loot, and rather than letting you go, but staying with the Tomb they walk away and disappear all together.

I understood the tomb raiders all right. It was the part that I am offering to kill Oskar "off screen" that I did not catch.