Here's the thieving scoundrel caught right in the act!
Originally Posted by Anska
I don't know if it plays out any differently, if you already have the githyanki egg in your inventory but otherwise, you can tell Esther that you won't get involved and the matter is settled. The quest is not added to your journal and while you can chat with Esther about the experiment, it counts as a decision made and you can simply walk away. The owlbear egg is an option for characters who are a bit greedy or like to lead a cruel experiment astray, but it is not necessary to get out of the situation peacefully. I would even argue that giving her the owlbear egg is not part of a paragon playthrough at all, as it is a con.
Still, I agree that it should not be randomly fed to the cub, a situation during which you don't have control over what is handed out, unlike the long rest menu in which you have control over what you eat.
The thing is the egg is necessary because the point of the thread is laid out clearly - if the player wants to peacefully complete the quest.
That's the whole point. Anything outside of this singular outcome is just personal roleplay working around a problem after it occurs, when the actual point is to solve the problem so it never occurs again. To ensure other people aiming for this outcome don't end up with their egg randomly consumed too. Because although there are numerous ways to work around this problem, workarounds are not the point otherwise I could've just used CheatEngine or the ScriptExtender to spawn myself another egg and completed the quest the way I originally intended.
The point is to solve the issue of the egg getting lost due to bad game mechanics and by doing so locking the player out of a quest outcome, which is laid out in the opening post too; "ultimately leaving the player without a lore-appropriate way to peacefully complete the 'Steal The Githyanki Egg' quest (without everyone dying in ACT III)."
The only other option to complete the quest is to either kill her or give her the Githyanki egg, both of which are terrible choices so I had to choose the lesser evil by stealing it back. I also couldn't have just walked away either because I already accepted the quest hours ago at that point, believing the Owlbear Egg to be in Shadowheart's backpack as I proceeded to complete the entire Mountain Pass. Not to mention that my character roleplay got tainted the moment the egg got consumed anyway, because I'm roleplaying Eilistraee's Sword Dancer (Cleric/Bard/Paladin) who is under the sacred oath (of the Ancients) to preserve the sanctity of all life... which the game defecated upon by making her feed an unhatched baby to its big brother.
Originally Posted by The Red Queen
Could eating the Owlbear egg in EA result in a paladin’s oath being broken? I have this vague and probably inaccurate memory that it was treated as an evil act.
Which is a bit of an aside, but it does seem that we’re intentionally being given the RP option to dine on Owlbear egg which I agree would be fine if it weren’t so easy to do by accident. I’d be for making that not possible.
I could go check, but I'm pretty sure it's just the Oath Of The Ancients itself which unlike the other oaths is very strict when it comes to fighting against neutral NPCs and one of its direct acts against the oath is killing the Owlbear Cub during the battle against its mother. During EA the oath was incredibly clunky regarding NPC attitude behavior and the cub sometimes would remain permanently hostile, so it often led to an oath being broken right next to the egg.
Luckily it stopped being an issue since full release as the oaths got massive improvements, however it can still be an issue within Honour Mode; am playing through the game now as an Oath Of The Ancients Paladin and if the mother is killed before the father, the cub will remain permanently hostile and break the oath of the Paladin if they're unable to flee because its cutscene cannot trigger.
