So Larian decided it is ok to perpetuate negative sterotypes with their depiction of Goblins. But what is even more insidious is they allow you to kill children in BG3 but only the nasty green skinned ones.

Try killing a Tiefling child and you arent able to.

so what is the message here Larian?

Games are generally not meant to reflect real life, so maybe try not to put so much emphasis on being offended. The genre is called 'Fantasy' for a reason.

it's not that deep, dude...

Offended!

Can we just not.

I feel like a lot of people are either trolling or looking for reasons to be offended. People trying to compare IRL racism with some fantasy creatures like Orcs, Goblins, etc., when there are literally minority humans in game, or trying to find some hidden message to be offended at instead of looking to real world issues.

In all honesty it should be across the board though. Larian should either 1.) Not have any children being killed because of backlash they'll get from the parents or 2.) Everyone can be killed.

Rofl. It has nothing to do with the fact that goblins, by nature, are evil and cruel. Nope.

Stop getting so angry at a video game, lordy.

whaaat? who does not want to kill goblins?

Same rules for all. If it lives and our characters are strong enough to defeat it they should have the option to attemt to do so. 'Real' world politics should not need to be reflected in games. It reminds me of some professors talking about the actuality and current relevance of literary classics as if relating to current events were the best way to make a classic.

True! But in some parts of the world (I think Europe?), the rating changes MASSIVELY if children can be killed/are seen dying.
I think goblins are okay because they are 'monsters'. Even in D&D, goblins are evil and cruel. Whereas Tieflings are people, playable in the PHB.

But getting upset over it? Well, some people just aren't happy unless they're tilting at the next windmill.

Yes, there are strange rules here on the good old continent when it comes to such things. Here in germany we only recently allowed swastikas in games, as if they would magically make those seeing them plot genocide.
If a game does not allow such things, someone will make a mod. Banning it in the first place is pointless. But it sure does allow some people to play flame wars on forums. Fortunately it seems to happen rarely here.

I think we should be able to kill them especially if your a paladin they are demonically tained after all and goblins are just as sentient as tieflings

Except, by the D&D rules/settings, goblins are evil and Teiflings can be any alignment.

I would think a Paladin mass slaughtering Teiflings would lose his powers and alignment, as it would be an evil act. Since the Teifling race is not evil.

This isnt the case.

WOTC have stated that no races in D&D are inherently evil anymore.

What are you talking about? You can kill anyone you want in the game. So it's up to you whether you spare the goblin kids and kill the tieflings, or you kill both, or you kill none. Nobody is holding up your hand.

If you can also kill the tiefling kids then theres no issue here, I read you could if you chose to side with the drow / goblins.

So you can kill the goblin kids, the tiefling kids, or none of them correct?

I don't know, but you tell me, please. I am literally curious to see who are the goblins and who are the tieflings counterparts in your head.

The OP is just having a laugh obviously.

I found it hilarious. personally.

#NSPCGC

I thought that goblins are people now. Moreover, each goblin is an adventurer with class and skills.
With that said, i think player should be able to attack (and kill, eventually) any creature in the game.

It's still up to the DM, nothing WotC can do or say changes that.

Also, we need to distinguish between goblins as a race and goblin society/culture. While individual goblins may not be evil, their society/culture as a whole is definitely evil. It's a society built on the strong bullying the weak, cruelty, torture and destruction.

This is not entirely correct. They are allowed now, if the art of the game demands it (just like it was before with paintings, caricatures, movies), and/or if they fulfill the purpose of education. They just sort of opened the law up towards video games, so they are more considered art. The symbols are still banned and unconstitutional and a game like Battlefield would not necessarily be allowed to have them. In case of Wolfenstein it could have gone either way, really. I am not a fan of the new ruling, as categorizing games as art I find often stretched, and there is room for abuse and/or worthless additions to games.

On the topic at hand, if you can indeed kill gobbo childs, this is one of those worthless additions, and from a moral POV, regardless of what the rules or the lore says, this would be the decision of a madman and universally "evil". Plus of course picturing a race as inherently evil is obviously incorrect, as it is all subjective if you think of gobbo as a sentient race with culture, and is also sort of contrary to lore, as in SoD you can recruit a gobbo shaman, who has a somewhat gentle heart even.

You can let the tiefling kids die. It's like you're completely blind to the scenario and circumstances at hand. The tiefling kids do something stupid, like get drawn in by harpies or steal from the druids and it can cost them their lives if you don't save them. The goblin kids are hitting a bear with stones and you can choose to kill the bear or the goblin kids. Honestly I find the goblins much more shitty than the tieflings.

It depends on how you play, so what in the world are you getting so unnecessarily triggered over?

Goblins aren't real though

Didn't realise you had relaxed the rules on the swastika. As a keen modeller, do you realise how many kit decal sets I had to modify because they didn't include swastikas for the tail? Of course, I blame you, personally, for my life-changing issues.

I'm also highly offended that the game encourages you to ruin the plan of the mind-flayers. That's denying them their culture and imposing non-mind-flayer values on them. I am appalled.

I also see that Larian have included devils. What message is that to send? We are going to have a generation of devil-worshippers if this is allowed to continue!

Trigger warning. Goblins are oppressed by stereotype/lore. Don't play this game if you're an ideological zealot.

Why do people make fun of the OP only asking for continuity, the game is marketed under "inclusiveness" and other modern politics bullshit.

His request is sensible.

At this point, so many silly complaints have been lodged over absolutely nothing that I can't tell if this is a legitimate concern or satire.

Well the complaint is either that you can kill kids in this game, or that you can not kill all kids in this game. Honestly this should be out of the question totally, but the OP is correct that it is at least a double standard, especially when your game is otherwise trying to be very inclusive.

It is also not consistent with the current lore, as in SoD you at least can have a goblin follower, who is true neutral and a rather gentle soul, too. It is said that she is this way, because of her maturity, so she might be an outlier, however does mean that Goblins are not absolute evil. This does not matter either, as the morals of the story are a reflection of today's morals. And in today's morals killing of infants or kids is universally condemned, especially deliberate. Going against that code of conduct is so rare, that the need of representation through implementation of it is inherently worthless.

This is some kind of "Green lifes matter" message?

At this point, I have no idea.

Troll, SJW, highly-sensitive, champion of the small goblinoid people, legitimate concern... it could be anything. I long ago gave up thinking that people made sense in the modern world.

Because it couldn't be something as simple as a minor oversight on flagging NPCs or have something to do with alignment, right? This is clearly some agenda that we need to quell before it gets out of hand.

Isn't it more the question about consistency?
If goblins can be killed so should humans and elves which IMHO is much better (so basically what FO2 did, rather than F3).
Although, if no other way (which probably is the case in order to please SJ warriors), none should be allowed to be killed as a compromise. I guess what I'm trying to say there should be all of them or none of them allowed, for the sake of consistency.

Well you can ally with the goblins and wipe out the druid grove entirely, which is what I'm doing on my evil drow playthrough, so what the heck are you people going on about? xD

For the sake of consistency, just remove killing altogether. Adults are just as cute, why we killing the adults?

Kill them softly with our song.

Bring up the Bard.

Sure, could be, but even then the OP is correct in calling this out as a bug. Still I suppose you are talking about Tiefling kids not being attackable and not Goblin kids being attackable. The problem with having that option is that, while the game wanting to represent contemporary moral standards and also include being able to open a wide variety of choices, they do not offer the corresponding consequences. Does the killing of the Gobbo kids remove the option to side with the goblin camp? It should. It should also have several other consequences like companions leaving, quest givers not giving quests anymore, certain factions or NPCs being hostile on sight, restricting certain traders, increase trading prices and so forth. So it would reflect the consequences of the real world, they are trying to represent in a fantasy setting.

Contemporary moral standards don't apply in a fantasy setting.
To most people in Faerûn goblins are nothing more than dangerous pests, so most people would be ok with anyone doing pest control. Traders/merchants and travelers would more than likely be grateful that you've made the roads a little safer to travel.
And let's be honest ... if you're slaughtering them, you're unlikely to want to forge an alliance with them anyway.

I'm playing a dwarf. Goblins are my traditional enemy and I'm sworn to wipe them out where I find them. One of the characters is a dwarf ranger and is not going to be best pleased at goblin kids teasing the wildlife (my future dwarf druid will be even more angry).

Goblin children will grow to be goblins. Kill them all. Genocide is not only right, but it is my duty!

That's playing in the Forgotten Realms for you.

It's being reported in the General forum and not the Bug forum, and the inclusion of the silly bait that is "So what is the message here, Larian?" makes it very clear that OP isn't a concerned member of the EA process in this case.
It's just another fake virtue-signaling baitpost meant to challenge the integrity of a developer that we can safely disregard and throw into the tire fire of similar posts like "This is not Baldur's Gate 3, it's Divinity: Original Sin 3" and "I'm an SJW and I'm offended by comments on the Steam forums so please moderate them better."

My take on it is that there wasn't any particular decision-making behind it other than "what might be required for particular quest outcomes?" Things like this may be standardised at a later stage of development.

I really would like that to be the case.
At this point my guess is that the OP wanted to star a little flamewar. It produced some interesting bits of satire so far.

Hopefully WotC won't try to enforce their new marketing "inclusivity" on Larian. Especially their newest change that "everyone is unique and special" so that you can freely switch around your racial ability modifiers (+2 strength halflings, etc.) because biology having an influence on your physical or mental attributes is racist.

So my very minor issue is this: Why are we bringing "real world" into a fantasy game discussion? If I wanted to deal with the real world 24/7, I wouldn't be playing fantasy games. I'm sure not looking around as hard as I can to find things to be offended by either. I mean, if one looks hard enough, they can always find something to be offended about.

So I guess my question to the OP is this: Can you side with the goblins, and wipe out the Druid Grove? If the answer is yes, then they've picked the wrong topic to be offended by, because there are children in the Grove. I know that I have failed a dialog check that resulted in the death of a tiefling child, so it would seem that this imagined immunity from death is just that, imagined. That's not including references made in this thread that I haven't personally seen, just the one I have, and already I'm left thinking "Are we playing the same game".

I just got to this part in the Goblin camp area - the Worg Pens, specifically.



I'm not a huge fan of "If you're not evil, you must attack these children right away." Even leaving aside morality, that's not very intuitive, nor does it allow for any sort of flexible approach or strategy. I do not like it.

The way the deaths of children are handled seems to be exaggerated and over the top, like it's trying to be edgy to make a point about how edgy it is to have the deaths of children in the game.




That's dialogue. I think he means you can't force-attack the Tiefling children in the camp. I haven't tried that so don't know if it's accurate, though.

The DC for the Tiefling child death is 18 for Persuasion and 20 for Nature, which are extremely high for level 2-3 characters, and the game offers no way to mitigate that or have a partial success. It's pass a DC 18 or watch a child die in agony, sucker.

As I recall, you have the option of agreeing that death is a good punishment because she's a thief. I might be misremembering, but I know that some of the dialogue is fairly hard on the tiefling's chances.

Because Wizards of the Coast, the owners of D&D have lately quite often brought real world into their fantasy game for marketing purposes, first be their "No race is evil" statement, the changes they do to Orcs and Drow because them being evil is racist and now their "everyone is special" rules changes that basically remove ability scores from races as everyone is free to trade them around, again because apparently the biology determining your strength is racist according to them.

I failed it on my Rogue, but passed it on my Ranger. I don't recall what the roll was supposed to be. It's not like I'm actively trying to run around and force attack children, Goblin or otherwise either.

Or, alternatively, enough players are going, "I have in mind a character concept for a race and class, but I don't get any racial bonuses to get to a 16 in that class's favored ability from point buy, and still like to make the character without the rest of the people at my table yelling at me for playing 'suboptimally'."

I got enough flak for saying "I'd like to make a Halfling Wizard" just in a D&D thread on a discussion forum, before even getting to a table.

I was roundly berated over on RPGNet for daring to suggest that players could design characters that were sub-optimal but fun to play.

"You shouldn't play a healer because the DPS versus the healing times the average hits... blah blah blah. You're letting everyone else at the table down."

Some folk take their hobby far more seriously than I do.

I agree. In this forum and others, I have noticed people taking video games way too seriously even DnD. When it comes to Baldur's Gate, I see a lot of people bringing up DnD rules and such but based on my research through WOTC, they claim it's not set in stone. These rules are in place to help you play the game and not mean to take over in your game play. Especially when it comes to characters and their personalities and such, WOTC has their own canon but that doesn't mean you can't create your own. The one thing that is stressed by WOTC is that the most important part of DnD is storytelling. When there are players that want to push forward the rules, that takes the fun of playing DnD away.

All should be fair game.

I just let them run away (even turned off my Attack of Opportunity for that fight.)

The point is that if you can kill Goblin children, you should be able to kill any other children in the game.

It's an argument of consistency.

Both WOTC and Larian are strongly advertising both tabletop 5e and BG3 to all the current SJW diversity stuff for marketing and social media credit, so they should apply those views consistently in this game.

The arguments are not being made because people are being SJWs, they are pointing out the flaws that WOTC and Larian have already made such statements but may not be applying them in this game.

I haven't actually checked if you can kill any of the non goblin children in the game as it isn't something I would normally do in my playthroughs, I've heard from some people you can and this thread that you can't.

However my brain had the exact same curiousity as the OP when I got to Halsim's cell and found out you could kill the Goblin children.

What goblin children?

Actually, they shouldn't apply them at all. Keep the real world political stuff in the real world, and leave my fantasy games alone.

Argh...I see people advocating for similar blanding of races and abilities in ESO (my other "play a lot" game).

I LIKE the fact that certain races/gender/culture/background can be a starting point and a limitation. I'm had pressed to understand how that can be racist; but then there are silly and uneducated people everywhere.



I offer you sympathy and respect for working with such choices - I really like the unusual choices that make playing a particular character fun...or challenging...or both.

If I want to be a follower of the absolute and slaughter children that's my call. I'm disappointed that the only children I can kill are the goblin children. Sometimes I want to save everyone, sometimes I want to play through a second time and be the most horrible individual possible. Maybe I want to know what dwarf tastes like, and maybe dwarven children are like veal.

Ok I just went ahead and tried it to confirm, you can't kill the tiefling children, they just go down to and stay invincible on 0 HP.

I agree with the OP that there shouldn't be any difference between being able to kill Goblin children and those of any other race.

Either they should all be killable, or none of them should be.

+1

But I'd rather it's all

If a person really wants to kill children in game.....

I hope they find a good therapist.

Its a game ...

Whats the difference between killing one NPC and another?

And you can already kill two children in the game anyway.

Could say the same of anyone playing a murderhobo or a evil character in general. I mean, if you re going to judge that, might as well judge any bad deeds in video games.

I took a look at the scene with the goblin children teasing the bear, which is a very IMPORTANT bear, I don't want to spoil it for anyone that may not know. All I will say is DON'T kill the bear. It seems in the cinematic scene we are shown children goblins BUT I don't think that's who you end up fighting. I noticed one of the goblin kids running to get help. So, who you end up killing is maybe one goblin child because the rest are actually adults but since the goblins are the same height, it's hard to tell. I took a look at the faces on the top left of the screen and noticed that they don't seem like faces of younglings but they look more adult.

You can kill the children or leave them to run away and warn the rest of the camp. While killing them is optional, it is still possible unlike the invincible tiefling children.

True, much of all the versions of D&D seem to generate murder hoboes in general.
In this case I'm a splitter, not a lumper and someone complaining that they can't kill children .. that has a definitely different feel to "I kill monsters and take their loot" to me.

YMMV

But we can kill children in this game. The Goblin ones at least. If they hadn't put that in, then no one would be wanting to kill the Tiefling kids as well.

Oh, they do. That is why there were no same-sex romances in BG1+2 (romance was even race-restricted in some cases), but they were in SoD and the Enhanced Editions. They've also been in any RPG of the last decade. And since the last three years we have seen more and more representation, with rather "polarizing" outcomes. Like Corwyn in SoD, who in a half-sentence, told you her lifestory and the internet went ablaze. I believe you can romance anyone regardless of race/class/gender in Baldur's Gate III, just like you can about anywhere in the Western World. Thing is, we do want the contemporary morals implemented, and some things haven't changed in thousands of years, regardless if it is a fantasy setting or set in the "real world". The killing of infants, like murder in general or stealing is one of them. That also extends to animals or, vermin. Goblins are on a higher tier, because they are an intelligent people with culture and language and, most importantly, they are humanoid. So you would have a hard time drowning a baby cat already, but a much harder time killing an infant that can talk back and resembles something you are very familiar with.
The reason we see it a lot in games and the demand for it, is because of reloading and no consequences whatsoever attached to it. That is why it is a double-standard to have certain actions, yet not the repercussions. That is why having amoral decisions in general in games is tendencially futile and solely there for the "hurhur, I just wiped out a village"-effect. So like GTA, where to whole world is curiously devoid of children.

There's a difference between children who are enemy combatants, and children who are not.

If you join the Goblins and choose to wipe out the Druid Grove, then the tiefling children become enemy combatants, but are still invincible.

Also the Goblin kids literally don't attack you, THEY TRY TO RUN AWAY!

But you can kill them from behind while they are trying to escape.

Ah, well in that case, you should definitely be able to kill the tiefling kids. I haven't seen a game that let you kill kids since Fallout 2, though.

Wasn't there someone claiming that they had to slaughter all the hiding tiefling kids in order to push forward the plot...?

Either way, I don't get why you are so wound up about this. The 'preset' option seems to be going the good aligned playthrough, that's usually what most people do. Goblins have been very humanized in this game, and I have to admit, as much as I disliked them being made so smart and civilized, I found some of them very cute, I grew fond of Zassa or Sazza and I couldn't be mean to her in my evil playthrough, I had to spare her. Still, I'm sorry, but they're effing gobbos and 99% of them are evil (I haven't found a single good gobbo in the game, so I leave that 1% open.)

The children that you can kill, but you don't have to kill (I didn't even manage to catch them in my playthrough, they darted off so fast!) are clearly growing up to be just as evil and already behaving like psychopaths, they are shown torturing other creatures and enjoying it thoroughly. There is clearly a difference between them, and the tieflings, as much as you wouldn't like to admit it, the goblins are still a monstruous race, and their culture revolves around cruelty and back stabbing.

My criticism is to have the option at all, since it is one of the few things in the world across time people can agree on as being amoral. In any world it would have social, professional and therefore personal consequences, which are not represented in this game, hence having these interactions themselves is worthless other than filling the desire to act as an inhuman being. Even people inclined to that sort of behaviour know it is wrong and refrain from doing it, because of the attached consequences, hence it is a statistical outlier and always has been. Even if you go by the definition of them being just vermin or animals, taking a puppy behind the barn is not something anyone would do for fun and is quite stressing for the individual.
If one agrees that goblins are humanoids with a culture, that might be alien to us, we are now in a society (and this western society is represented in this game) that respects that and does not directly make the assumption that different cultures are inherently evil. Besides, cruelty to animals is a totally human behaviour, especially as a child, I bet everyone of us has a story of witnessing or acting on causing an animal mental or physical stress and pain deliberately inflicted for a varied amount of reasons.

In the end it barely matters for most the players, but if your game wants to represent the society of liberal standards of today, this is something to keep in mind for the devs.

Monsterous races are fine to me and most players, but WOTC have stated that none of their races are meant to be inherently evil anymore. If they want to push such agendas, then they should enforce them as well and at the least remove the ability to be able to kill the two Goblin children. And likewise I actually began to somewhat like the goblins in this game, particularly the one cheering for Volo, and even most of the evil ones actually end up seeming somewhat funny, but then the game lets you kill their children.

Its ok to let the stealing Tiefling kid die to a snake, then what about if Lae'zel wants to smash the skull of the one that tricks her with fake magical rings? Or if Astarion wants to mercy kill them rather than leaving them to die on the road after being kicked out of the grove? Or if you happen to role playing a character that simply wants to kill anythkng that looks like a demon?

And on that note how are tieflings not a monsterous race as well when they straight up look like demons with actual horns? Who decides what the moral and ethical scope is meant to be in a D&D setting?

'Tieflings are invaders from hell that need to be destroyed like the devilkin they are and sent back to hell' - what is wrong with roleplaying such a perspective? Do the Githyanki spare children when deciding to slit people navel to throat as Lae'zel so exquisitely details?

You still don't differentiate between "race" and "society/culture"... goblin society is undeniably evil (they delight in torture and cruelty, bullying those weaker than themselves, etc). A goblin that is brought up in a different culture wouldn't necessarily have those tendencies, therefore the "race" goblin isn't inherently evil. That's basically what WotC meant.



The DM does. If players have an issue with a DM's decision, they are free to find another group to play with.



There's nothing wrong with roleplaying a character with that perspective, you just need the right group to play a character like that.

Well, maybe he is a teacher and he has very evil kid in his class? Video game can be good as a Catharsis . Though that would reinforce your point of needing a therapist.


That's a good point that remind me of "Zadig''book of Voltaire, where an angel kill a small kid and tells Zadig that the kid would have become a serial killer and would have murdered a lot of people. Very pragmatic.

I think your argument bites itself. "most importantly, they are humanoid." You seem to agree that people of any race are worth the same. While you are willing to expand the set of entities to whom your system of morals applies beyond tribe and race to all humanoids you draw the border at "most importantly humanoid". So it does not apply to sentient beings that are not humanoid. Is "can a human create viable offspring with it" a good basis for a system of morals?
If current western morals are to be normative then why is "racism" evil but "speciesism" is not?

"Thing is, we do want the contemporary morals implemented"
I do not want that at all. It's all arbitrary and rooted in cultures that simply do not exist in the forgotten realms.

I see your point, but this is not what my personal view is. Since I am convinced in the real world that every man is created equal I put that belief into the game and extend it to every being that has a comparable social structure, regardless of the humanoid thing (which in itself is quite a variety, like anything walking upright and having two legs can be considered humanoid so bird people, lizard people, inanimate machines and undead). Many players do the same, but draw the line at the humanoid thing. The Rachni from Mass Effect are a good example. For me there was no other way than helping an insectoid race become a thing again. Many other players ( I think there were stats on that) drew the line there. So I deduced that this would be the same here, gobbos are humanoid so most players are inclined to extend the morals to them as well.
It gets really interesting when developers put sentient creatures into their game that are either benign or have a point, but are appaling to look at and/or generally considered hostile. That is where peoples' morals really grind their gears. It does not mean that deciding against, say, a nice phase spider is wrong or right, but is contemporary moral either way.

And I still think that all games are basically rooted into the western moral code. If they are not, or if parts of it are not (Caesar's Legion comes to mind in Fallout: NV) there are serious repercussions attached. And even they abide to certain principles not unknown to us, although they are the clearly evil path. Stealing for example is not a thing, and neither is the killing of infants (which also wasn't in the game). If we take the BG as an example over the last 20 years it is rather clear it was modeled after the real world. Keep in mind morals does not necessarily mean equal to culture, but any gender can do anything and anyone can also date anyone, there are gobbo followers, drow can seemingly walk freely on the surface (and get a charisma bonus). Quite a few things even changed over the last two decades. There are still some antiquated social structures, but way more ways to get out of them and many stories/quests evolve around breaking those up, like dethroning that lord that treats his people bad and such.
Now a game that is not at all rooted in these traditionally narrow set of morals, would need to be totally reinvented and probably disconnected from the human race, too. And of course when you break out of it, you will need to add all the added repercussions. Like I said before, if you are known to be the happy baby cat killer, you are not going to be invited to tea very often. If you hunt gobbo kids for sport, then companions should leave, spread the word and cut you out of a lot of content. Some might even secretly like it, but that does not mean these people would like to openly be seen with the "monster of the goblin village". If nothing like this is the case then the addition is moot and without benefit.

I did not expect anything from the title, but it actually made me think about that sort of stuff. Hence I keep on discussing.

We should be able to kill anyone and everyone.

You could kill kids in the original series, and the game made sure you were heavily penalized for it. You took on a much higher rep hit than for killing most other innocent NPCs.

I detect evil in this thread and I will smite it.

Genociding Goblins is lawful good!
Also being able to kill kids means the game has to be censored in countries like Germany and Larian definetly doesn't want that.

Theres a lot of games already that aren't banned in Germany that let you kill children:

https://www.giantbomb.com/killing-children/3015-4067/games/

Not necessarily everyone on that list, but whichever ones are not banned.

That's because Tieflings are of Human origin when Goblins are not. They are considered monsters and usually evil. I wouldn't call Tiefling children invincible, look at the cinematic scene with the Tiefling child Arabella, if you fail to save her, she gets killed by Kagha's snake.

I never tried to kill any kids, goblin or otherwise, and I played both sides of that coin. The tiefling kids we all dead at goblin hands when I found them. The goblin kids were never around once you start to wipe their camp and that goes for their bodies as well. But the druid cove was littered with their bodies and there were far more tiefling children than goblin. I felt bad for the mute tiefling kid though.

But I don't want either race's kids or any kids to be removed from the game. Baldur's Gate better have kids and I loved the lil scam the tiefling kids had going on.

I already covered that. If she can get killed by the snake then theres no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to with a weapon or spell. They are invincible when they cannot die and stay alive on 0 HP. Tieflings also look like devils, pretty much the definition of 'monsterous' if you care to look it up. The goblins actually look less like monsters than tieflings do anyway.

Nope! Teifling are not monstrous or evil in 5E! Just an uncommon race alike Gnomes or Dragonborn.

They are monsterous based on the dictionary definition of monsterous:

having the qualities or appearance of a monster
came face to face with a monstrous creature

Doesn't matter what 5e or WOTC want to define it as, if players want to kill tieflings then let them kill tieflings.

They straight up come from the hells.

If you don't care about 5e lore then this discussion is a waste of time Tieflings are just differnt looking humans while Goblins are monsters
/thread closed

Erm tieflings are not Humans, they are tieflings. Goblins are classified as as humanoid as well.

And you should be able to kill human children in the game if any are put in as well.

Also goblins are not even classified as monsterous https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin

According to WOTC, the DM (Larian) is the one telling the story. That's the point of DnD not the rules or what WOTC considers canon. DnD is about storytelling, not about what the rules day, that's not fun. They are in place for guidance and that's it. To Larian, they are making Goblins evil, regardless whether they are adult or child, they are evil. Tieflings because they were once Human from pacts with demons, Larian is not making them killable. Perhaps because they were once Human. At the end of the day this is Larian's DnD story, they are the DM. I feel like some people are too invested in DnD and may in fact ruin the fun for others. This is supposed to be fun and not for us to be nitpicking every little thing Larian adds.

I did not pay attention to this in the game, but if there is such a fact it is strange

Perhaps Hitler's ideas about good and bad races? Who can be killed and who can not.
Either let's not kill children at all (that would be a good idea, I have nothing against it), or let's kill everyone. Why was one race put above the other?

By the way. J.K. Rowling some blamed of anti-Semitism, since the goblins at Gringotts were associated with Jews. https://momentmag.com/debunking-the-harry-potter-anti-semitism-myth/

Here is the first 2 lines of the entry for Goblins at https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/goblin


Goblin
Small humanoid (goblinoid), neutral evil

Goblins are evil. Enough said.

It appears most people look at this thread as ironic in a way. However, when playing through the first act of the game I have encountered two different scenarios where Tiefling children are killed or at the very least can be killed. In one instance, a Tiefling child can be killed by the druids, while an additional can be killed by harpies not far from the previous location.

For the goblin children they can be killed by the druid in his bear form when he knocks down the gate, but they also have an opportunity to run away through the main doors. I do not recall the Tiefling children being afforded this opportunity with the exception of multiple game reloads in order to get the proper rolls or setup.

Regardless, the children on both sides can be killed, it may not be the exact way you would like to kill them or have them killed, but it is available none the less.

If they are evil (but reasonable, and know how to speak and realize themselves ...), this gives us the right to kill their children, but children of good races cannot be killed? NSDAP said the same
Goblins are people too, they have feelings, intelligence, and so on.

This thread has produced interesting arguments and made some people thing about how universal a system of morals can or should be. It is a rough ride but what could easily have turned into a flamewar elsewhere has stayed focused on arguments. It may lead nowhere but maybe it's worth the ride anyway.

I don't understand the logic some are using here. I see people are arguing that if you can kill a child from an evil race that will grow up to be evil, it's wrong because you can't kill a child from a good race that will grow up to be good. That makes no sense to me. That's like a murderer wanting to kill his victim but gets killed by someone and because the murderer was killed and not his victim, the victim should be killed. What?!

Not exactly logically equivalent but you are right, that line of argument does not make sense
I think it is a matter of principle for most people. Taking morals into the story makes it depend on a common moral standard that is just not there. Same rules for every species and race avoid such problems.

Take a look at what is roasting on the spit in that picture. They are EVIL! The only reason they aren't attacking my character is because they think I am a True Soul. Stop trying to make moral equivalency arguments. Goblins have no morals and they generally kill on sight.

We really need a vegan activist on this thread. Which would prove to us that bulls and other animals in this game are also intelligent, and can talk (after reading a spell, a talk with animals), then they cannot be eaten, and those who eat them are no different from goblins who eat gnomes.

Moral philosophy is fun and never leads to results. It hast been a source of joy and entertainment since antiquity without producing anything substantial. Whats not to like

The fact that you can't kill tiefling kids isnt because they are good, their alignment, or because of anything to do with storytelling. it is an oversight of political correctness issues like in many other games where they make children unkillable for political and legal matters, such as some countries banning games where you can kill children.

But the presence of the two killable goblin children show that they have completely overlooked this, and are applying that logic inconsistently. I do not think that any legal issue would arise it all the children in this game happened to be killable, just as they already were in BG1&2.

'Evil' in D&D doesn't designate what you get to kill or dont get to kill, as you are meant to have the choice to play as good or evil yourself. The fact that we can join the goblins and create a raid on the Druid camp shows that we can clearly play as evil in this game, and as such there is no reason from a lore perspective as to why only the evil goblin children should be killable.

It doesn't affect you if another player chooses to do an evil playthrough and kill everyone, children included in the Druid camp, just as much as it doesn't if anyone does the typical same thing with killing everyone and the children in the goblin camp.

Just let the player do whatever he wants. Why is everybody rolling on their back for a couple of pixels on the screen. Its like , killing a 18/21 years old male human is okay, but killing a teenagers goblin isn't, are you for real?
Also, its okay to kill a village, but its not okay to kill some NPC because they appears younger? Uh? What about gnome and dwarf , then? They may be as small as children, but you'd happily slaughter them just because they have a better armor class, an axe, and lived a few more years.

The point that you are missing as so are others is that at the end of the day, this is Larian's story. They are the Dungeon Master and we, the players, choose what to do in that story, per what the DM (Larian) decides what we are allowed to do. If I'm the DM, I'm the one telling the players were the go, who they fight and who they are allowed to kill. It's up to the players to choose what they want to do based on the options I give them. You can choose to play the story or walk away. It seems like hardcore DnD gamers are getting too wrapped up in the lore and the rules and are turning to nitpicking and dictating to Larian how to make a DnD game. When the core of DnD is all about storytelling, and Larian is the storyteller.

I agree, people should play the game however they want. The problem is that said people want Larian to change the game to their liking and completely disregard what others might like. I've seen threads where one person wants the gore and nudity removed so she can play with her kids. When this is game is rated MA. Another thread wants Larian to remove the scene where Astarion tries to feed on your character because to her it's glorifying sexual assault and it's offensive. Some of these threads nitpick the game too much, it's ridiculous and takes the fun away from playing these game. I hope Larian continues to make the game the way they want to make it. People need to keep their own personal ideologies to themselves instead to forcing it on a video game.

Yeah, 100% agree. It's crazy how some people just want to censor the game.

If you wouldn't like killing the tieflings then don't kill the tieflings.

Making all NPCs killable doesn't ruin the game for you.

It has nothing to with this being a D&D game or what the DM says when it is simply political censorship as with most such video games.

How is it political censorship? They're fictional races. Not everything a game does is political. That's nitpicking.

Agree, I find it funny how some people get offended over fictional characters.

Hi, I have been playing since AD&D and have been a perma GM for two decades. While I am not really invested in the discussion I feel the need to point out that this is an extremely spicy take. What you described is known as railroading in the pen and paper community and is seen under a very poor light unanimously. You are the storyteller but you are telling the players story. Their choices matter just as much if not more than yours and the only time it is considered okay to tell a player what they can and cannot do is when there is a mechanical reason for it or to prevent in group conflict with obvious incendiary choices(such as PvP). I'm not disagreeing with you per se but please don't give the impression that this is the norm or standard in the tabletop community.

The literal reason for why children are unkillable in games is because of politics and people complaining about video game violence. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with the DM / D&D / Storytelling or any off your made up excuses.

The fact is that all NPCs including children could be killed in previous BG games, and they are choosing to pick that its ok to kill just goblin children in this game but not the children of any other race which is hypocritical to WOTCs statements of evil no longer being a race based mechanic in D&D.

The only nitpicking is trying to defend this as though it has anything at all to do with D&D when it is in fact an industry standard based entirely on politics.

I know right, it's like they suffered some personal slight because the character doesn't want to be BFF. can't separate fiction from real life.

I understand but what I been seeing is that when it comes to how someone is telling a story and someone doesn't like it, they will come out and say that the storyteller is wrong. I've seen people play pen and paper DnD make some weird characters or decisions but that's the fun part of telling a story. WOTC even encourages this. As they have stated that the main part of DnD is telling a story and how you tell a story, but there are players that are getting too dogmatic about DnD. Thereby, not making it seem fun. I feel like "hardcore" DnD players are nitpicking the game based on how they play DnD, the rules and the lore. Which I heard are supposed to me more for guidelines and not to dictate how someone plays the game. If a "hardcore" DnD player is all about rules and lore, that will discourage someone who may be new to DnD and feel like it's too hard to get into because they will feel like there are too many rules to playing this game.

Not in video game. You may have some liberty when you're playing Baldurs gate1, but its still the story of a Bhaalspawn, you're still gorion ward, and you're still going to kill Sarevok at the end, no matter what. Baldur's gate3 is definitely Larian story before anything else, just like Baldurs gate 2 was Obsidian and black isle story. You may interract within the border defined by them, with the degree of liberty than they decide, and that's that.

Racial issues have sparked so much discussion
Godwin's Law time



Since goblins and their children are bad, then what? The final solution of the goblin question by the paladinS?

Well that's what I'm thinking, what makes the Goblin children so evil that its ok to kill them but not other races children?

Being raised in a society that tells them its ok to throw rocks at a bear?

Surely the solution isn't to kill them for that, but to rescue them from such a society, maybe by adopting them into a better one.

Or making efforts to increase the social inclusion and welfare of Goblins as a whole.

But hey if you're going to just sit there and go 'Its just a game, its evil goblin kids, so what if you kill them?', then let me also be able to kill the tiefling kids too?

Would it be ok to Kill Shrek's kids because they're ogres or some such? And in fact Shrek should demonstrate the whole reason why the idea of 'good races vs bad races' is inherently flawed.

It's a story. In this story, goblin are bad, and their kid are bad , and the race is bad. Because its fantasy. You may or may not like the story. You may find it grim, pessimistic for poor goblins or inherently flawed. But in this world, goblin are ruthless , cruel, evil creature and you can't do anything about them.
And no, you can't take a balor home and make it into your puppy. Sorry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn

The superiority of the tiefling race over the goblin race still needs to be proven, in any case.
There were people here who wanted to play for the goblin race, at least I saw a couple of people on this forum

The drow are evil too, but I don't want to kill their children or commit genocide of this race. There are neutral drow, maybe there are neutral goblins as well?

I don't think that this has anything to do with superiority but the fact that the Tieflings have a human origin, from Humans making pacts with demons. In the game they are referred to as half human or half demon. When it comes to Goblins they are seen usually as evil with no human origin but a completely different race. I can see Larian keeping up with that stereotype of Goblins being evil, which is why you can kill them.

OMG you can kill an Ogre woman!! FEMICIDE!!!1111 FEMALE ABUSE! You can even eavesdr0p her while she's NAKED!!! SEXUAL HARRRAAAAASSSSS

#GoblinsArePeopleToo
Racial discrimination

You can kill the children of an intelligent creature that is able to communicate, only because of its genes and origin

And you cannot kill tieflings

People would not give a damn about it, in fact, if it was possible to kill everyone, or not to kill any of the children. But we see injustice, inequality. One intelligent race was placed above another intelligent race because of its origin. It's one thing in the gaming world, by Lore
bad attitude towards goblins, it's ok. Other when the developers decided it. That children of one race cannot die, and that of another race can.

I would of course kill children throwing stones at a bear with pleasure in a good walkthrough, but how are they worse than tieflings?
From the point of view of an outside observer. Maybe I want to kill tiefling children who tried to deceive me and sell the "magic" ring, why can't I do it, but and can kill goblins child?

#GoblinsArePeopleToo and Racial discrimination? I hope that you are just trolling with that. If not, I hope you realize that these races don't exist in real life. They are make believe and we are to just have fun in a fictional video game world.

maybe a troll, maybe not, who knows

At least your honest.

I guess the border between trolling and satire is fluid

@onemanarmy
I see the parallel. Is speciesism the same as racism?
To quote Dawkins:
"The director of a zoo is entitled to "put down" a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might "put down" a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our Christian-inspired attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote (most of them are destined to be spontaneously aborted anyway) can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees!"

I do not believe in the existence of universally true systems of morals. The vast majority of humans do and your point should provide food for thought for them

I lold at the hashtag.

I agree with that . People think about their culture and moral as an absolute value when often, it's relative. This often border to irrationnal, as people have a hard time understanding that what they were taught as kid / in family / in their culture isn't necessarily true.

I did too but sometimes I can't tell if someone is being serious or not as unfortunately there are people that take fictional scenes as if it were real life.

I can't believe this conversation exists. I can't believe that such obvious flame-bait is being discussed. Some people need to take a long hard look at the things they feel moral indignation over.

It is universal. We are mostly brought up in the Western World, which stretches from Europe to the Americas to Oceania, we share the same basic set of morals, which only changed slightly over the last couple of thousand years. Take the 10 commandments, for example, they are still mostly applicable, stealing, lying, murdering, cheating, jealousy and greed, honoring the family and so forth, even the one where you are supposed to have only one god or whatever belief you adhere to. Today, what has been added is the freedom of speech and the right to integrity of the human body, although this could be covered by not murdering. Basically every constitution is just a reinterpretation of these 10 commandments, although similar beliefs applied before that as well.

This does not mean other things can not be included, it is a constant change. 50 years ago, civil rights movement. 20 years ago, no gay romance option in BG2. Your example is great, because there has been a constant shift and debate over the treatment of animals and especially apes. Only four years ago there was this headline: "Monkey selfie case: judge rules animal cannot own his photo copyright A San Francisco court said that while the protection of law could be extended to animals, there was no indication that it was in the Copyright Act" 20 years ago this would have been mostly unthinkable.
There is also the indigenous people on the Sentinel Islands that attack anyone that comes close and killed the stupid missionary two years ago. From our POV they do seem "evil" and murderers, but that is not the whole story, otherwise we would be enraged and bring them our morals by force.
To swing back to this game and this incident, so what are Goblins? Are they closer to the Sentinelese people or are they Chimpanzees? In the first case they should clearly be awarded our morals, regardless if they keep their unknonwn set of rules. If the latter, when was the last time you guys killed an infant vertebrate, and why don't you do it?
The game is designed with our western morals in mind, that are the same almost worldwide, hence the implementation of this encounter is at least spicy. Plus of course, while the German law, and a big, big market for BG3 has been a little more lenient regarding those things, especially if they fill an educational or artistic purpose, you would be hard pressed to see that purpose in killing infants running away. Now, all it takes is one complaint to the BPjM and they have to discuss it, possibly leading to indexing, which in turn means Steam won't sell it and might not let you activate it either, so that market's gone. But I am sure Larian is aware.

I think a lot of the issue comes down to the way goblins are portrayed in this game in particular.

Historically in fantasy computer games, Goblins were often portrayed as largely mindless monsters. Cannon fodder. Mooks to be mowed down. Sometimes you got a bit more flavor than that, a tiny bit of (generally) hostile dialogue, but even then goblins were usually portrayed as warbands of able-bodied soldiers. You didn't really get to see non-combatants.

BG3 is different because the Goblins are fully rendered, usually have names, and dialogue options. They are not portrayed as monsters, they are portrayed as people. This makes it a bit squeamish to consider as a "good" character just slaughtering the lot of them.

Right? I rush ahead to collect the snails off the road every time someone has to drive out during the summer. I really don't need to feel guilt over killing a goblin

We are so dramatic as a society in general, we go from insensitive to oversensitive.

Even Gale complains if you kill the ogre and bugbear that were bonking in their shed as being unreasonable kills.

But killing goblin kids for throwing stones at a bear, yea ok sure that's totally fine /s.

I really don't understand why people virtue signal for races that were originally created to be fodder/evil.

You can have a society and culture and the majority of them be evil or bad compared to yours. People are so focused on "but the goblin I made is actually chaotic good so don't discriminate against goblins!"

Congrats, your goblin is an exception. The same goes for every "lower" race meant to be enemies for XP.

The thought process for killing the goblin children was that they were going to warn the rest of the camp. That's literally what they are trying to do if you don't kill them fast enough.

I like what PFK does. Lawful good goes hardcore in the eradication of ogres, orcs, and monster races in general for the sake of all the is "Good and Just" but it obviously seems like genocide. I remember there was a moment where I had the option to kill this monster dad's kids after I killed him. The lawful choice was to kill them, chaotic choice was to let them go. Both good if I remember correctly. It shows the hypocrisy that good is in relation to something. Law of your culture or freedom to live.

Cry about murdering goblin kids.

Then rasp in agony as that same goblin kid backstab you and eat the nape of your neck.

Maybe Larian could introduce a liberal arts college safespace in the underdark for the termally offended? I think a new difficulty called "safemode" would be a good idea so social studies majors don't get their mental trigger towards "wrong think" and start flapping around like Jim Carrey on cyrstal meth while trapped in a locked elevator with a maga hat.

I was not well pleased with some of Kingmaker's ideas of what "good" entailed. Especially since they basically force it on you.

I expected that the goblin kids (at bear druid scene) will run away when the fight starts, and they did. Those goblin kids are evil, but would be difficult for them to be anything else in that entourage.
Usually most games avoid the child killing. I remember killing demon kids in Nox (a Diablo like old RPG), but maybe they weren't kids, just smaller demons (they were red, attacked in groups and had funny sounds when exploded on death doing AoE damage, so was very different to BG3 goblins).

Child killing needs the option to be avoidable, which is in there so far. Rest is up to the players (some will do it, but most won't "enjoy" pointless kills)

Tryed ... killed ... i dont see your point. O_o

one of them is a player race and one of them isnt.
Also theres no negative stereotypes of goblins. Its not a stereotype, its a type. the type is caleld "goblin"

Tho i admit, you should definitly be able to kill tiefling children just as much
How else are you gonna roleplay that conquest paladin.

You're missing the point completely. The problem is the weak stomached "law" people FORCE games to be "Appropriate".

Personally I say have games get MORE dark. We have people dying on TV and it's considered entertainment. The life of someone young is implied to "matter more". Welp, not to me. Age is moot. How you AFFECT me determines if I run you through or care about you. Witcher 3 should really let you have the option of killing the "blue kids" and let you be as evil as you please. But the game forces you to be a goody two shoes. Normally I am. But damn, where's the CHOICE? It's a game of MONSTERS and how people FEAR them. Sure, you're a witcher and should know better. But we see countless times that even witches are flawed. So why can't OUR character be just as bloodthirsty and ruthless as that if we want them to be? Just as capable of giving in to bloodlust and anger and vengeance and killing little blue snots playing pranks at your expense as they laugh at you and mock you?

The only gripe I have with the goblin children is that the game seems to force you to either let the bear remain tortured or kill them. There should be a middle ground.

You can also let a godling die to a snake. You technically don't "kill" them yourself but you can let it happen and watch with a smirk on your face. Hell, outright running them through yourself might even be a mercy killing at that point. It would traumatise them less.

I know this is a troll post, but the double standard on #TLM and #DeathToAllGoblins is a little awkward.

People take this game way to seriously I want my fantasy detached from reality. I want stuff that offends people and makes them realise this genre of entertainment is probably not for them. Its fantasy, its not real..... Not everything in life has to represent a view or attitude or position in real life.

All Druids are Bastards.

It's easy to get bogged down in discussions related to the internal minutia of the game space, but please remember, that that isn't what this discussion is about.

It's about the actions of the developers, above the game - which is a very real thing, and not fiction or fantasy.

If the developers made a game where you scored points for killing disabled people, well, yes, you could say that it's all fiction and none of it is real, and not to get upset over it, but that wouldn't be the point; it would be about the choices and behaviour of the developers, and the statement they are making, and selling to other (very much real) people, with the game... and generally, it would not be considered okay.

The issue being raised is that here we have a situation where Larian have arbitrarily stepped in to say: "This is a representation of a child, of a people whom we have depicted as sentient and intelligent, and who have language and society and culture. We are not allowing you to murder this representation."

And then,

They have created something just a few stones throws away that says: "Here, on the other hand, is a representation of a child, of a people whom we have depicted as sentient and intelligent, and who have language and society and culture. You can murder THESE children, and in fact it's encouraged, because they're [insert race here]"

This is an 'above game' decision that Larian have made, that creates the undertones of an 'above game' message being sent, whether intentional or not... and it's a steeply racist one, that the game passively encourages you to partake in. They could have depicted the monstrous races as sub-humanoid, as more dramatically monstrous, and as less worthy of moral concern. They didn't. They chose to depict them as fully sentient, fully intelligent, language-using, personable, culture-bearing entities. That matters, for how they then encourage you to treat them.

Yes, the game is not real, yes its fantasy.... If that is the defence, however, then we absolutely need to be allowed to murder with equality - either no children of races depicted as sentient and intelligent can be wantonly killed, or they all can. Don't discriminate at an above game level on this.

I don't think we can kill the Goblin children because they're GOBLINS. I think we can kill them because they're clearly already dangerous sociopathic killers themselves (or are just a tiny step away from being so), and represent a clear threat to the lives of the peaceable citizens of the land. The Goblin children in the game are obviously adolescents, already capable of wielding weapons and already demonstrating sadism and psychopathic tendencies. You notice we don't see any really small and helpless Goblin children, no Goblin toddlers, no Goblin babies. If any of THOSE were in the game, and we could kill them, then I'd agree with you.

That's a fair counter, sure... but overall I still find it worrying as a thing to see. One step away from a killer is not a killer; almost mature is not mature, and tendencies towards certain behaviours are not, themselves, ingrained behaviours... It doesn't feel like a good writing choice for them to have made, all told, and there's precious little purpose for it.

I'd also just want to add to that...

It's not as though Mol is any better. She's not. She absolutely doesn't care if she gets people killed pursuing her plans, as long as they aren't her friends, and she plans to get to baldur's gate and start a thieves guild of some sort - and if you think for a moment that isn't going to involve silencing unwanted voices and blinding unwanted eyes, it most certainly will. She's not just impulsively violent - she's calculatingly homicidal, at a premeditated level (or, is one tiny step away from being so, to use that argument)

Goblins in D&D 5th are a playable race as well....

I think at least from my perspective is the goblins and their dialog and stories are far more interesting and deep than the boring tieflings.. literally they stand around the druid grove complaining fighting and getting in the way.. The goblins are busy partying and destroying the evil humans like goblins do but Larion humanised them to such a point people have started to feel for them.. And rightly so they are a sentient race..

In Warhammer goblins and orcs are hugely popular races these days with customers.. I think D&D folks are behind the times fantasy wise.

Monsters also have their own cultures and sentience. Both the literal and metaphorical monsters. That doesn't stop them from being monsters.

Well, what is killing the refugees supposed to represent then? Refugees who are for the most part normal folk shunned and persecuted because of their race and looks.

I think trying to assign a moral reasoning to what appears to be a commercial decision (avoiding potential censorship issues in some countries) is not going to work. Not in a game where the developers actively advertised for players to try the evil path.

In my personal opinion: just don't throw kids in the middle of combat in games, like with the goblins at the fortress. Then the player won't be put into a situation where they are supposed to justify why it's seemingly ok - from the game's point of view, not the player's - to kill one group of kids and not the other.

Its a game and always has been.....and I am with Auntie Ethel..........Halfling kids are tender and sweet but bad on the teeth, Human kids,nice little dumplings but you have to watch the weight. Elf kids are your vegan option.....but you will be hungry 30 minutes after you eat one( Drow have a bit of a bitter taste). Dwarf kids ah......best Jerky in the world but takes awhile to chew. Now petal them Tieflings and goblins both are fast food.......easy to get but not so tasty .

The kids aren't though, are they? Are they born this way? Or is it the culture, the tribe that enforces that? What would happen if you raise a goblin child as a human and vice versa? And when does a child become a "killable" adult? 10 years, 12, 14 or when you are allowed to vote? I do not have answers to these questions.
And there is the precedence of M'Khiin in SoD. She is a true neutral. Not an unpleasant person at all. Certainly capable of caring. While she does say that she left her tribe because she was "too elevated in her mind" to accept the brutality of it, she does not hold a grudge and she never states that she is one in a thousand. There could be many more like this.
Plus there is the issue, that these are Goblins, but still kids. And they are throwing stones, which is a phenomenon not unknown to human childs either, I am sure everyone has seen, heard or partaken in something similar. They are also running away, if I recall correctly. So no immediate threat.
At the same time, the game is a representation of a very liberal western society. The same moral code as in the US or Europe (and technically all around the world) and that has not changed a whole lot over the last centuries either. So when you have no objections to same-sex sex, transgender people, refugees with a distinctly different phenotype etc.. killing kids becomes hard to justify. Heck, even killing the owlbear cub in this game is something that meets resistance, naturally, since when was the last time you drowned a kitten yourself? it is just not something people tend to do, even in extreme situations.

I am not objecting to the scene. I see the gameplay value in having an encounter that could alarm the goblin camp. I am objecting to being able to kill the kids at all. It is also a legal issue. I'd suspect that in some time the BPjM here in Germany could deal with this scene in the future, once someone files a complaint. In the light of such a trial an index could be happening, which would mean the removal from Steam (and possibly GoG and other digital platforms as well).

Gary gygax once had an article about pretty much this.
I dont know where your moral quandry is here.

"Lawfull good" is not your modern morals. Killing goblin children is lawfull good. Nits make lice, which is the quote gary gygax used. Its a debate as old as the game itself.

Yup.

"At the same time, the game is a representation of a very liberal western society. The same moral code as in the US or Europe (and technically all around the world) and that has not changed a whole lot over the last centuries either. So when you have no objections to same-sex sex, transgender people, refugees with a distinctly different phenotype etc.. killing kids becomes hard to justify. Heck, even killing the owlbear cub in this game is something that meets resistance, naturally, since when was the last time you drowned a kitten yourself? it is just not something people tend to do, even in extreme situations."

Good points again, however, we (in my opinion) REALLY need to understand that fantasy is not real life. I think its a huge step backwards to start censoring art/games/TV etc just because the content "might" offend a few people. I think the problem is that some players are finding it difficult to put reality aside and just see where the narrative is going. I mean, this is a "world" populated by demons and devils and owlbears and wizards...... Do we start taking the devils seriously?? This to me is a disturbing trend that is insidiously creeping into books, tv, games and it needs to be halted. On the other hand, those are the things that influence a lot of people many of whom are incapable of coming to an independant conclusion on their own... The game is meant for adults, its challenging but that is not a bad thing.

The entire point of the "good" path in Act 1 is to 'take the devils seriously' lol.

same sex acceptance is not because FR shares the same moral values as our modern world.
it is because Greenwood wanted everyone to be bisexual due to him imagining FR as a world of sexual debauchery.

Heres a pointer for you. I FR, incest is considerd a normal family pasttime. Hows that for modern western morals. and no, pornhub is not a standard reference guide for modern western morals.

Oh yeah, it is always a thin line between artistic freedom and legal or moral boundaries. I do not see a stepback here though. In 1998 Half-Life had to replace the Marines with Robots in Germany, in 2008 Fallout 3 had to remove dismemberment for the German version. In "No Russian" of CoD Modern Warfare 2 the devs had to change the mission, so you can not shoot anyone. The international versions were on the index, which is not equal to a ban, it just restricts advertising and open selling, and selling to underage people, hence the reason Steam usually does not sell games on the Index in one of the biggest markets. In 2008 also a game called KZ-manager got banned and forfeited. Two years ago the usage of Swastikas was allowed in games due to a new classification of a law. Games can now be considered art and for educational reasons the usage is allowed. So I have seen a constant liberalisation in all forms of media over the last 20 years.
The question that can be taken from it were: Does a Fallout game need dismemberment to work? Do you need to be able to kill civilians, just to polarize and make a point, if that point even exists? And I can not agree that these games are for adults, the first BG rating was 12 years. Divinity 2's rating was 16 in Germany, 17+ for PEGI. Same for BG3, although this is mostly due to partial nudity and strong language, I suppose. That is hardly adult territory, and even then people can be influenced by this, that is why we have those regulations in the first place. So it being fantasy does not really matter, as there are people that can not differentiate and/or can not put what was seen into context. And these trigger points are different for everyone.
In any case an encounter like this can serve a purpose in any game. But apparently the context is limited to the kids throwing stones at an animal and then running away when combat starts. So what is the purpose? Is it educational? Does the game tell you, you did something "wrong"? Companion interactions? Consequences, like aborted quests, NPCs and traders not talking to you, companions leaving, the world knowing you as child killer? That would be considered context in that regard that validated such an interaction, if you get my drift.

Yet, 20 years ago, same-sex romance in BG2 was unheard, I do not even recall, if there was a single gay NPC in that game, let alone the notion that "everyone was bisexual". Drow were only starting to become accepted, Tieflings apparently not so much. And now in the year 2020 we had goblin companions, transgender companions, we can make drow and tiefling characters and general of almost every phenotype and skintone. We can also bonk anyone and there might even be nipples. And that holds true for many, many games of the last ten years, be it Mass Effect, Dragon Age, PoE even the Fallout series (which naturally started out more liberal).
Political issues like segregation, suppression, dislocation, and especially racism plays a much larger role in the recent years, sometimes even central. As the whole society became more liberal and accepting (on these issues at least), so did it's media.
.
On the topic of incest, well I suppose then genetics work differently in FR, because there are existential drawbacks of bonking your family. Additionally you do not have to go back far, like 50 years, to see that marriages within the family were not unheard nor frowned upon and sometimes even the norm.

I could be entirely wrong but don't the goblin kids run away? If this is the case then you clearly don't have to attack them. If they attack you then knock them out maybe? Not like you ever have to go back in that room.

I made you laugh. Thats good. People should laugh more. My point though was ...its not real. Devils dont exist.

Well made points and some I agree with. I get that Germans (for the most part) are extremly sensitive about using swaztikas in games, books etc. For years even over here in the UK, it was hard to find a model kit of say an FW190 that was entirely historically accurate because of the exclusion of swaztikas. Dont get me wrong, that symbol is about nothing more than hate, exclusion and intolerance and I despise it and those that worship it. But in the context of historical exploration, it needs to be represented even if its just to allow an understanding of just why its so utterly vile. If we forget, history could very well repeat. As they say.

Your point about fantasy being put into context I think is the very essential essence of these debates though. Context is everything and to me at least, this is a fantasy game that should not be a reflection of real life. To me, the very inclusion of the option to kill the gobbo kids and not the others is actually pretty powerful. Look at the discussions it has generated. My position is I would not want the choice, I do not want to splat kids as my character is not that kind of ....... character.

I know. I hope I'm wrong about what I said about this in my Kagha thread, but it may be that Larian wanted to make a point with the Tieflings and just forgot to apply that to the Goblins as well.

I read you could kill children in previous BG games. I remember clearly wiping out all of Beregost just to see if i could do it, and noticing children didn't care about fireballs. Was it changed?

Also, those particular gobelins are killable because they're part of the fight. That's all. And children in general aren't killable because that's a convention in most games, nothing more. It's just one of those points where you realize it's a game and therefore not a fully consistent universe.

For me it's a game design debate, not a political one. Since Larian didn't decide this 'no killing children' rule in games. Once you decided they'll be children playing in that camp, what could you do? They could pop off once the fight start, very immersion breaking. They could be invincible all the time except once the fight start, even worse. Or you can make them part of the fight and tell them to run away warn adults, wich lead to more story telling and an interesting gameplay choice, since they're quite fast^^. Mine usually find an empty camp so i just don't care^^.

What would be the point to directly confront the 'no killing children' rule in the tieffling camp? Nothing except letting players who just want to wipe out the grove to do it 'completely'. It's not worth breaking the rule.

And no, in Faerun, noone would think badly of you because you killed two young goblins rushing to their tribe to stop you from saving a druid. And eat you afterwards. You'd probably be criticized by the more zealous for letting them run away actually. Tiefflings however, if some knight told in a random tavern how he one day slaughtered them children alike, you would end up with a raging debate :p But the knight would be considered a criminal by the law anyway.


About fantasy and real life. I'm tired of the 'it's not supposed to be a reflection of the real world' thing. It's supposed to be a reflection of what? A universe where nothing is alike? Aren't the farmers growing food in exchange for money they need to buy tools and clothing in a feodal society? There are no empires, state-cities, pioneers and refugees? Are the wars fought because people don't agree about which color is the prettiest instead of land, economy, belief, political power? Are the rules for moral, demographic, art, history, logic, whatever, in the FR totally made up and making no sense at all? All those fantastical beings, gods themselves, aren't they moved by the same needs and fellings that move any beings in our real world? Last time i checked, players made characters driven by cupidity, lust, power, love, loyalty, knowledge, culture... and wanted to play in a world they could understand, predict, one where the setting is different but the rules are the same. It's not like if any author could invent different rules anyway. Racism, sexism and all those things some seemingly want to forget had always have been a strong part of the FR, notions used to ground this world. It define entire societies (looking at you, drows). And it was always depicted as a bad thing. Sure you can play a righteous zelot who slay anything that is different and think very good about himself. It's fine. But we all know than if the group stumble upon, let's say, a drow being burned by religious fellow for no other reason than she is a drow, the good choice is to free her. Even if she's evil, i guess deontology beat consequentialism in the FR. And it has all to do with the moral and political belief of the society in wich the game was made at the moment it was made.

It's interesting to see how it's precisely the issues we collectively still struggle to deal with that have the more weight in the moral outcome of our characters choices. For an exemple, you will hardly find any quest that confront the political system of the country/city you play in. If the king must be removed, it's not because he's a king, but because he's a bad king. If the council must be fought, it's not because it's not a democracy, but because its members are blind, corrupt, whatever.. That's because it's assumed we're all democrats, the debate is settled, so it's not very interesting to deal with, there is no tension. Since it's med fan, there is mostly feodal systems, but since it's fictional, you can find or make almost any system here and there, even anarchism :p Nobody cares as long as it's not totally unconceivable in a med fan world. But when it's about slavery, letting little monsters live or not, oppression, women in charge, military or diplomatic policy, religious confrontations, the place of strangers in a community... Now there's tension, now players will pick different options, probably quarrel with the DM about the outcome of their choices, and generally feel like those choices can build how their character see the world.

I wouldn't find role playing games interesting if my characters didn't have to position themselve about issues i actually care about. And i love playing an aristocratic, imperialist, expansionist, power hungry, and kinda racist human wizard. If the DM says it's evil when my character really think it isn't, fine, i did my job

1. Since when did pixels on a screen become "real"?

2. What is the definition of "role-playing"?

3. If I accidentally or purposely have my character walk into a bonfire...should that character be arrested for attempted suicide? Should I, as the directing party, immediately be arrested for attempted murder?

This thread is funny...and ridiculous. Nobody is "killing" anyone.

I understand about immersion into a fiction...sure...but when you start applying our Earth societal morals and systems of belief onto a fantasy setting that obviously does not behave or share the same ruleset (as the above poster said)...then YOU are breaking the role-playing.

Oh, suicide too :o We get the swearing or not, sincerely or not, 'i'll take the poison if i change', to Nettie

...one last point:

Ok you have created a character and imbued him/her with "life" and a set of imposed moral code...you are now 'god'. 'god' has no restrictions and can manipulate a character as you see fit...think of yourself as zeus with his little chessboard...free to make them move and do as you please. kill the kids, rape the harlots, milk the goats with your mouth...you are omnipotent and above such petty mortal restrictions. oh sure...maybe THEY wouldn't tie a rock to a kitten and throw it in a lava-pool...but as 'god' you get to make them do whatever you whim. I suggest you role-play 'god'.

I don't remember any invincible children in BG1 or BG2, are you talking about the originals or enhanced editions? The only invincible npcs I remember were plot-related (those that were necessary for the plot later, like Imoen in the first dungeon) and Arkanis Gath. And they weren't quite immortal, because players came up with a way to kill them and the devs never patched that.

The original BG1 i think, computers screen were small and not flat yet :p And there was no entropist. But it's a very old memory, i wouldn't be surprised to be wrong. Although i remember that very clearly.. Maybe i'm going to search for the original game and try it :p

Internet seem to say you can in BG but not in ID. Weird^^

Yea good point, a really good example of morality among monsters is The Witcher universe which separates the sentient but good creatures from the sentient but evil ones. There is so much nuance on the monsters and their types that you discover that many of them are misunderstood and have redeeming qualities making siding with them an intelligent and sometimes evil maneuver. In Act 1 Goblins are represented with no redeeming qualities (except laughing at Volo) that the "new" fantasy stories like The Witcher (or 5e Dnd) would bring forth. Drow got a pass back in the day and became beloved by players because they had an awesome character representing them but they are still inherently evil but here they are supposed to be in control but also being controlled at the same time so it's a difficult narrative to work with motivation-wise. If we are going to make goblins as beloved as they are in other fantasy universes and for similar reasons we have to make their leaders smarter, or at least more willing to listen to a good plan, having Minthara this static quest giver is just awful not to mention the fact that only Dror Ragzlin tells you directly to go to her. Big oversight here.


I saw someone comparing the goblins to chimpanzees which is accurate except they are endowed with this sentience, personality and life for the first time in a DnD game and it just feels a bit awkward and haphazardly done. In sword coast legends (a recent but failed DnD game) you are introduced to a group of ratmen living in the sewers and they will give you some great rogue gear if you stop the city from exterminating them. I think a solution like this for the grove v. goblins issue where you stop the grove from being attacked and negotiate the release of Halsin with Minthara, explaining that wiping out the druids grove is reckless and they should just wait to ambush the Tieflings on the roads and then attack the grove (perhaps you could go and falsely claim you had gotten them safe passage from the gobs).

It would make the goblins a more compelling choice that makes a lot more sense and go along with the newer idea of the goblins as a chaotic, but still sentient race who can be controlled rather than just random baddies to fill dungeons and do dumb stuff. This could still follow with a battle on the road and sneak attack on the grove and of course, a concluding goblin party and sweet drow lovin' but you would already have persuaded Minthara that you are worth keeping by hatching this dastardly plan. OR you could turn her plan around on her and replace her.

Also I found the lack of a neutral solution a bit disturbing considering we are dealing with druids here who are inherently neutral (except shadow druids).

But to get at the question here, yes it is wrong to kill innocent goblin children, the problem is that the only innocent ones are orphans or ones that have turned against their race and traditions. I find this argument so compelling and a part of why fantasy has made a come back, these moral quandaries are infinitely relatable to the human situation. But DnD games are known to be on the lighter side of fantasy and considering that no other computer game has attempted something like this in the DnD universe and done it well I give Larian credit for going all out on the design of the baddies, I just want some more complexity in their motivations and actions I guess.

Regarding the original post: and so?

Does the aauthor of the thread get what he is playing? I mean the set and so on? There are plenty of games that don't are based on wars and fights between diferent factions (wheter they are races, social classes, or a bit of both).

This is a game based on a tabletop game wich is inspired by a subset of narrative called fantasy, a set that has its root in medieval european history (something a lot of people tend to forget, lets take for example tha so called afro haircuts post).

Ok, medieval ages weren't the dark ages certain narrative would love to be.

Nevertheless those where centuries in wich every and each population saw other nationalities as different and somehow less worth of living. So many wars, so many massacres and slaughters, so much prejudice, some prejudices against some ethnics groups saw light in those years (near the end of the Middle Age started the prejudice against Cinti and Roma, not to forget the emargination of Jews ), no matter how much we want the setting to reflect our modern values the fact that medieval ages were violent, full of prejudice, didn't care for lives of children remains.

Also in the game you play a role of a character that belongs to a certain faction, with their ideas and prejudices, not to forget, as I said in other replies, that Larian plays it in a subtle way that is if the player takes the time to talk to the goblins, specially the kids, to massacre them has a different taste, more bitter and maybe even a little rancid, the main characters and companions become more nuanced and there's no side that can be labelled as completely good or evil. I don't know if Larian did this in purpose, however to me is an amazing fact and shows how Larian doesn't ignore the ethic and moral values of our modern society, even if they don't do it in a explicit way (as I said to consider Goblins something more than cannibal pillagers there is the need to talk with them, adults and children).

On a last note: we have two paths, save the thieflings (killing the goblin leaders, and as far as i got reading the forum there is a strategy that allows not to slaughter all the camp), or save the goblins (killing the thieflings).

Vincent you realy dont get my point.
Real life morals influence game design, btu were talking about in universe morals. In universe, everyone was bisexual form the start, thats how Greenwood envisioned it. back then, people were afraid to show that (ToEE did it first i think).

Likewise, now the game would be afraid not to show ethnic minorities, for example. but thats the falvor of its time and not neccesarily reflecting the actual world.

Point is, killing Goblin children is probably fine and dandy in FR. They are followes of evil deities, they are evil creatures and they are pests. Kid goblins turn into adult goblins and thats why people kill them.
You CAN play almost anything in DnD, doesnt mean that they arent evil or arent hated by civilized people.

The point i was making about morality is that while FR might appear on the outisde to be a modern western liberal set of morals, thsi is simply not true. Just because theres same sex marriage doesnt mean that Palladins stringing up bandits and goblins on trees isnt also a thing that happens.

To be honest Goblins are despicable creature by nature. Opportunist and most of the time even coward. Their Strenght comes with the number and they often attack in pack on easy target. During my playtrough i was put in between a choice to leave the Goblin children run and allow them to warn all the camp or get rid of them then deal with the adult. I chose the latter with no regrets. Goblins are evil. When you first meet the goblin childrens they not only playing with a corpse they also threaten you.
While i dislike absolutely invincible npcs. Childrens are often in videogames.

I won't make a comparsion between Tiefling child and Goblin child. Tiefling are born and often victim of a lot of prejudice due to their fiendish heritage but not all of them end to be evil.

Goblin on the other hand are a despicable evil race. So. The only good goblin is a dead goblin.

So you're telling me it's okay to kill a cute little scamp like this,



But not a literal spawn of a devil?
/s

That image is pro-goblin propaganda and I will not be deceived by it.

Have none of you read Snuff by Terry Pratchett!!!! And yes, that image is cute. Gobbo's are not cute. Are they?? I dont know any more.

If not the 'true soul' business those gobbos would probably kill our little party of adventurers. And then kick Laezel's body making her nose even more flat. It is really simple choice for me.

Absolutely! WIth fire!

he is just trolling

Time to kill goblin

I love how this thread has evolved from joke post to serious philosophical discussion about alignments back to jokes, good stuff.

People likely have read it yet tend to be rather quiet about it. Too much poo, snot and toenails. But, yeah it catches the essence of what we are discussing here.

I have most of his books Apart from some of the later ones about football and trains etc. This has indeed become an interesting discussion. I have a problem with cutefying DnD creatures though.. Where does it end? Aww poor mindflayers, just doing what they do poor wee things.... :O No!!!!!!! They are monsters!!!! Kill them with fire!!!!! And so on.

If I find a piano in one of the Goblin camps, I shall be highly suspicious.

And yet, they have ...poetry..... One step away from stringing words into song.

Steam and Unseen Academicals were good, but a slight shift of gear. They were evidently books that Pterry felt the need to write due to his own interest in the subjects, but you could easily skip them and not miss out on the wider Discworld Lore.

As for rehabilitation of fantasy monsters; yes, I think it is a dangerous slope to start on. If you have 'humanised' your main evil race, then your next Evil needs to be demonstrably worse. I prefer to give my campaign monsters good old-fashioned human prejudices and flaws, without making them human. In my GURPS Fantasy campaign, you can try to negotiate with goblins but they will likely just laugh and eat you - they see all other living things as food. Orcs are more 'civilised' and will trade, but are highly clannish and xenophobic and will start a fight at a moment's notice with the slightest excuse.

It doesn't have to be about cutifying them, just provide more context for why certain races are the way they are. Think about goblins specifically, their society is based entirely on survival. They have to be sneaky and cunning to not get eaten or smashed by everyone else. In comparison with the average humanoid nation goblins are at a massive disadvantage, hence why they'll group up with other monsters or evil leaning sorts for protection.

The goblins in BG3 aren't mindless killers, at several points in the game they have the opportunity to attack you but go for threats first instead, they will fight if they have to but generally seem to want to avoid it if they can.

They aren't good, but I would hesitate to call them totally evil either. I mean, Wyll for example tries to be pretty charming, but when the goblins come up he goes full on genocide mode. xD Truly man is the real monster. x)

Well, you coul argue the major plot point of the last books was the whole humanization of orcs and goblins thing. I was not a fan, but I got the gist of it, and I think it is worth noting. In the end, how do you find out about others if you do not ask nor try to understand?

There is this secluded tribe on the Andaman islands, just off the coast of India, that will attack anyone that comes close to them. They have been left alone for decades until two years ago an American got killed trying to talk to them about god. They are hostile on sight. Some tribes in South America are similar as well and might raid lumbercamps even. Japanese Holdouts after WWII also either lived isolatory and secluded or showed aggressive behaviour years after the war was over. Now obviously the right thing is not to annihilate these tribes and people, but to either leave them be or talk to them so one can come to some form of understanding. I do know that these comparisons are a bit shaky, but it begs the question if anyone ever saw it from the POV of the goblins or tried to understand what they are all about.

This rehabilitation happens all the time, though in many series and in real life. Former adversaries become neutral, become new allies, even if a mutual understanding was outrageous a couple of years ago. Again, 100 years in the past, the Bhaalspawn had a Goblin companion. Drow seem to have little issues walking above ground, except some small remarks and so forth. So it is nothing out of the ordinary to at least question their motives, yet there isn't really anyone asking these questions, beside Volo maybe.

Very fine points all. Do we need bad guys? Do we need something to kill???? Thats what it comes down to yeah? If we look for and find good, reason, purpose in everything, dont we essentially find......God? I'm far from religious but is that not the benchmark for morality?

Its a morale thing.. has nothing to do with pixels, humans are either good or evil, you wont change that.


Which is understandable really, if i met our companions in real life i'd kill them all on the spot as well.. and i'd be doing the world a justice, way more than killing some poor goblins.. Our companions are the most evil scum you'd ever meet, make a few goblins seem down right pleasant.

Sigh. You're missing the point.

It's not about "realism". It's about "immersion". Two very different things. Just because it't not real doesn't mean you can just go "Add anything in". It has to make sense.

A unircorn shitting muffins in Borderlands makes sense because that's the game it is.

But do that here... Well, if it's very cleverly done, maybe. But you know what I mean.

Fantasy exists BECAUSE of reality. Because people suffered and got traumatised and managed to turn those bad situations around into fun and games. But it's not always fun and games. So why should fantasy be any different?

The reason you don't want real merged with fantasy is because of people in REAL life having weak stomachs. But maybe that's exactly why it should be mixed. It's called oppression. We want our fun stuff and that should be fun as far as "real" is concerned.

Here's the thing. Real life people with weak stomachs go out of their way to make sure it's NOT fine. This makes it impossible to separate the two at times. You have to take sales figures into account. What "most people tend to enjoy and get put off by". And then you got the law poking it's ugly nose into your business. "This is fine. That's fine. I decide for you what should be enjoyed."

Personally I say "I got an iron stomach." I make more fun out of dark events in online roleplay (and real life for that matter. Both). It's given me a very good imagination.

Goblins? Kobolds? Gnomes? ; )

Agreed, and what really annoyed me about this questline is how heavy handedly Larian's writers railroad the player into supporting the Tieflings and turning against ALL the druids except Rath (that most tiresome of politically correct entities, the "noble majestic Black") and Halsin.

This IS a real life situation; because it's an example of how people are manipulated by media. Also if you've lived in Larian's Germany, you would realize that the Tieflngs here in this game (as opposed to Tieflings in D&D in general!) are stand ins for a real world Europe's despised and self excluded real world groups, particularly Europe's Roma (Gypsies).

Has anyone noticed that "the Druids" have and are providing the Tieflings with already scarce food as well as shelter from the Tiefs numerous enemies, only to be rewarded with theft of multiple items, including the "Idol" of Silvanus. It's an "idol", they're idol worshipping Pagans, they don't value an "effigy" or another more neutrally named entity.

Those Tieflings would have been slaughtered by goblinoids or hostile Humanoids were it not for the Druids' succor, and what do the Druids get in return for their charity and protection for criminal ingrates? We are repeatedly reminded that the Tieflings "would be slaughtered outside the Grove, because they are not fighters". To conceal the glaringly obvious fact that the Tieflings owe their lives to Druid compassion, the writers have Zelvor lead the defenses when Aradin flees to the Grove for shelter, even though many Druids are not engaged in "the ritual" (including Kagha, Loie, Marcoryl, Rath, Apikusis, Arron), and realistically would immediately come to the defense of the Grove in response to the goblinoid attack! Duuuuhhhh...


We are repeatedly presented with uber "humanized" Tieflings who love their families, squabble over familiar matters, and are friendly and welcoming fashionable "victims". A tiefling bard on the periphery of the grove delights us with an autobiographical account of her relationship with her teacher, and charms us with her as yet unpolished musical skills. Zevlor, their leader, is calm, noble, and the perfect "noble victim".

I completely missed the Mol and Thefling Hideout subplot when playing with patch 3, and only found it after reading a walkthrough. Nor did patch 3 Mattis and her accomplices steal anything from my Wizard, they only tried to sell useless items with non existent magical properties. I rescued Mino from his attempted robbery of the Harpy nest (but those Harpies stole first!) only to uncover the hideout, and the classic "child thief ring" was lacking only an apparent adult leader. When I tried to kill the child thieves, they proved unkillable, but very eventually reacted by threatening my PC with retaliation from their leader (broken/unfinished quest?). Just outside the hideout entrance, Arabella's loving, concerned parents were chastising their regrettably rescued daughter by louding berating her thieving over and over again non stop; are we to believe that in an entrenched subculture of childhood criminality, they were so naive and pure that they were utterly clueless that their daughter was already a long term career criminal?

The druids are pompous, self righteous, and speak in annoying nasal, geeky voices (Marcoryl, Loie), keep servants, are cold, hostile, and standoffish (a successful persuasion check with Apikusis, who most players only remember only as "the girl with the bird", reveals her hinted misgivings over the absence of Halsin, but most players are intentionally put off by her initial standoffishness and seeming coldness, and don't pursue the inquiry further). None of the Druids have children, and none appear to be married or in relationships, while thieving Tiefling children are present everywhere outside the sacred grove. Thus we don't need to worry about killing or orphaning non existent druidic children (unkillable or otherwise) or breaking druidic hearts if we have fun slaughtering Druids! Even the goblins have very cute but unredeemably malicious children who players can kill (encouraged by Wyll's thirst for "frontier justice" against other races). Moreover, given D&D's persistent trope about rapidly breeding Goblins that quickly overrun places they inhabit, it's odd that Goblin children are so rare in this game! But who cares, those Druids must be dull, sexless celibates (not part of D&D lore!) unlike that oh so hot Minthara who spreads her legs for us if we kill off Druids! It's so much fun to wipe out groups with differing religious beliefs from our own; let's make it even more enticing and rewarding!

Nettie, who under the surface is arguably the most honorable, dignified and level headed character in the game, is set up so that unless the player makes the correct and polite dialogue choices, she will attempt to poison him/her, thus triggering the writers' desired murderous or hostile response from the player. Should you speak politely and respectfully with her after you have railroaded into being dissed by the loudmouth dwarven druid guards and their bear so that you are thus more likely to choose the hostile dialog options with Nettie, you will find that she not only does not try to poison your Tav, but is willing to believe your word of honor that you will commit suicide if CONVENTIONAL ceremorphosis insues, both to spare yourself the agonies of transformation, and to prevent turning OTHERS into mindflayers or eating their brains as well.

The game reminds us, repeatedly and luridly, what conventional ceremorphosis involves: "excruciating agony"(Gale), "sundering skin and liquifying guts" (that charming devil), "worms eating us from within" (ad nauseam, from Shadowheart), "worms eating our brains out" (Astarion). Nettie, from her research with Halsin (she's a level headed proto scientist, not a frenzied unstable self obsessed emotion driven narcissist like Astarion) is the first character to point out to our PC that this does not appear to be conventional ceremorphosis, because "something" is altering or stopping the process, and because suddenly dozens of Mindflayer victims are turning up. She offers her knowledge to our Tav with the very responsible request that they spare themselves the risk of harming others if worse comes to worst and they start showing symptoms of conventional ceremorphosis.

Then there is Kagha, who is little more than a one dimensional plot device to further incite players against "the druids". She is a self righteous harsh featured (too bad, I found her far more attractive than blandly featured Shadowheart, or wicked witch Minthara, and so did my High Elf Druid Tav) stereotypical bitch as well as a misanthropic tree hugger (a stereotype that is too often painfully common in the REAL WORLD), representing every cliche available to set up the player to kill her, even more than obsessive player railroader Gaider's Keeper Zathrian. The cutesy sugar coated anthropomorphism of the Grove's non Humanoid inhabitants contrasts jarringly with Kagha's fierce stewardship of her Grove; the latter is a very realistic depiction of the harsh and usually merciless realities of "nature", those cute fluffy Wolves, bears, etc (the alpha females of which are in reality as obsessed with their social staus and power as Kagha) are not.

Players won't even discover that Kagha is a secret Shadow Druid unless they read a walkthrough, or open her conveniently non red chest and read its' contents. Somehow, other items that reveal historical and mundane Grove lore are red, and a stuffy snotty Druid will warn you against stealing them to read!

Kagha of course uses a viper to terrorize and potentially kill a thieving Tiefling child (Arabella), thus capitalizing on the Human player's REAL WORLD partially innate aversion to all snakes, to make her even more hateful. Not for us is the gristly mauling of children by a large predatory mammal such as a Tiger, or their trampling by an elephant, even though this happens to hundreds of children annually in nations outside of Europe that have not decimated their large, dangerous, and agriculture incompatible megafauna like Europe. Isolated from the often horrific real world consequences of living alongside Tigers (they're viewed in the developed West as great big beautiful moggies) and elephants (viewed as majestic gentle giant herbivores, bulls in the testosterone fueled hyperaggression of musth are misrepresented as having toothaches or seeking vengeance on Humans for poaching), these animals are not viewed as evil like serpents by players who overwhelmingly have a developed Western world perspective. No, we need a VIPER, a primally and innately terrifying animal, that unrealistically assumes the warning posture of an unrelated cobra displaying its' hood, and which engages in the mouth contortions of a snake with advanced mouth rot, while perceiving airborne speech that real vipers are incapable of hearing, much less understanding, because their "language" is chemical, thermal, and visual!


The cinematic that plays if you confront Kagha about her Shadow Druid affiliation is unintentionally hilarious; but underlines the fact that these 'racist' Druids include Gnomes, Halflings, Elves, Half Elves, and Humans of diverse subraces and ethnicities, while those "racism victimized" Tieflings include only Asmodeus and Mephistopheles Tieflings! It's also nearly meaningless, since after relentlessly steering the player into hating ir despising and attacking the Druids, the writers have also dangled the baits of idol theft, mass killing of a different religious group, riches from pillaging, and best of all, brief sex with a Drow hottie, to even more effectively encourage criminal and antisocial behavior!

Are so many people this clueless as to how they are manipulated and railroaded, in BOTH real and fantasy worlds? Or that the best fantasy bears enough resemblance to reality to be relatable?

Goblins have been anonymous, filthy, rapidly breeding menaces in all versions of D&D, albeit to varying degrees. Before Deekin and Shadows of Undrentide Kobolds were just killable creatures for low level adventurers. Read the often painfully unimaginative and repetitive Monster Manuals from earlier D&D; Kobolds are cowardly but very industrious creatures who worship Kurtelmak, who hates all non Kobolds, etc, etc, etc. Shadows finally gave Kobolds some depth, and around that time their draconic nature was stressed (BG1 made them into rat kangaroos for mass killing, the player's journal even refers to "the fine sport.of Kobold hunting" [killing for fun]). Don't even get me started about Gaider's Xvarts; all adult males, no children to present troubling issues, and their camps are strategically positioned to railroad the player into Xvart genocide.

Gnomes were and are a whole different story. Originally depicted as obscure and vaguely described Dwarven kin, they were subsequently expanded into eccentric but extremely intelligent, geeky, and super analytical but often pompous and arrogant small humanoid beings.

The only good goblin is a dead goblin. You're making them good!

Goblin kids are men eating monsters who grow up to be men eating adult monsters. If they didn't roast people on spits... Like poor Brian...

The worst thing anyone can do is humanize monsters in D&D. Part of the fun is killing bad things and not feeling guilty about it. Start making every dang race potentially good, and the fun is gone. Now I have to worry about what I kill, that they might have just been misunderstood.

There is a special circle of hell reserved for people who bump old and contentious threads.

Wow. Now THAT is how you necro a post.

SO what ... should he start the same topic over again?
Be glad that finaly someone who can use "search" appeared on this forum. -_-

ON topic ...
I dont care if goblins are or are not evil ... i just want to smack Mol over that damned smug face. :-/
That NPC seems to me like it knows its completely immortal and it honestly bothers me a lot. :-/

Tieflings in earlier versions of D&D were depicted as trending towards evil and reveling in destruction (like a certain bard in BG2). This was attributed to their fiendish ancestry, and their inability to resist (or willingness to follow) their innate evil predispositions. Their more recent depiction as occupational thieves and organized criminals is a "politically correct" revision of them as victims of non Tiefling prejudice, which forces them to live in the high crime areas of Humanoid cities, corrupted by non Tiefling criminal influence. Larian's writers have promoted them to "noble outcasts" and oh so fashionable victims. As part of this overhaul, they relentlessly smear Druids of all "races" and ethnicities except Arron and Halsin, because the Druids, too, are supposedly victimizing the noble and suffering Tieflings.

THAT IS why Tiefling children are unkillable. Larian's writers want you to like and support Tieflings, and hate and kill their enemies. They likely have an extended storyline coming up involving Tieflings that continues after the player reaches Baldur's Gate. The discussions I've seen on the internet don't even mention that the Tiefs have made enemies of the Druids who saved them from slaughter by goblinoids and humanoids by stealing compulsively and repeatedly from their saviors.

Goblins, though given more dept and complexity in BG3 than in earlier D&D based CRPGs, are still ugly, filthy, irredeemably evil subjects for mass killing to keep their rapidly multiplying hordes from increasing out of control. This is the first CRPG I've player that actually includes (very cute but still maliciously evil) Goblin children, who are nevertheless remarkably scarce in the camp and the Shattered Sanctum relative to the supposedly rodentlike fecundity of their elders.

I'm a professional biologist, a volunteer wildlife rehabber (like Nettie, with whom I had an instant bond, particularly since Blue Jays are my great favorites among North American birds). I'm also a hobbyist non venomous snake keeper who coexists with wild American Black Bears, Canadian Lynx, Bobcats, and Coywolves, and other potentially dangerous wildlife, none of which have any remaining equivalents in the wild in Larian's Germany because rhey were systematically exterminated centuries ago. This means that their writers' perspective on 'real world' Wolves, bears, etc is based on what they see safely confined in zoos or in entertainment mefia, NOT on their wild counterparts! Vipers do exist in Germany, in the fotm of the fairly rare Adder (Viper berus). However, Germany, despite the genocides of the Third Reich, still has many Roma, while they are very scarce to nonexistent in the neighborhoods of most of this thread's readers and commenters.

"Reality" is a product of surroundings based experience, and subjective perception!

I would disagree on the tiefling bard. Yes, he had destructive and self-destructive tendencies but he was no evil and not geared towards enjoying causing pain and etc. Actually, he was pretty fragile soul, if I recall correctly.

I can not talk about other editions of D&D but in other systems (namely the Pathfinder which is based on 3.5) they are also not inherently evil. Meaning you can not really blame 5e for not being overly harsh for one of the more interesting races to play.

On the druids: you have a choice there. My guess is that when the full game is released you will have the option to slaughter every single tiefling regardless of gender and age. Talking with the druids shows they are split between helping the refugees and keeping the intruders of the grove's peace away. Unless Kagha has some kind of a change of heart, there is no hope for the tieflings under her rule. I would say the fault is mostly with her and she is the one who is pretty negatively portrayed. Halsin on the other hand is one of the most likeable characters.


Nothing of what I have seen in the game supports the fact that Larian has a pet you can not touch (except for the talking skeleton but he likely has excellent lore reasons not to be killable; and he is very helpful). It is a bug without doubt.

Killing the druids is entirely optional. A more ruthless character will do it. However, it is clear not all the druids are bad so it is an alignment choice (good vs. neturalish or evil).


Well, they are evil judged by their actions (plunder, cruelty). Whether all of their members are irredeemable is beyond the scope of the game. You are under no obligation to slaughter every single goblin, you simply need to remove their leaders. You are forced to kill (some of) the goblin children, though. If you go against the tieflings, a similar fate expects the tiefling children. It is a cruel world. And I do not mind darker fantasy settings. Most of the players do not, either



The seat of Larian is Belgium, which to my knowledge is not great in biodiversity, sadly. But that does not mean it's bad to have friendly beasts. But I mean... I do not think we should be that strict towards wildlife portrayal. No viper would kill a child in seconds. There are no owlbears and etc. and animals do not talk in our world. Personal opinion, of course.

A final note: supporting the goblins does lead to the slaughter of both the tieflings and the druids. Goblins enjoy the process, no doubt but they only succeed because of their leaders.

Are there actually goblin children in the game? I had not seen any.

There are 3 goblin children infront of Helsin cage in Selune temple and they are throwing rocks on him as he is in bear form

Also there are another childern outside, kicking some corpse.
Probably another one of Aradin group ...

When you reach Crusher, just head left through the hole in the wall.

Halsin in his bear form is being teased by very cute but malicious Goblin children (named "One", "Two", and "Three"). You are not forced to kill them to rescue Halsin; in the latest version, at least, you can simply tell them to leave before you free Halsin (which conveniently opens the Worg cages so the player can and must engage in some killing).

A number of the Goblins appear to be adolescents, but given that Goblins are supposed to multiply like flies, actual Goblin children are oddly scarce even in this game.

Creepy, vaguely sinister children are a recurring trope in BG3; our Intellect Devourer companion, "Us" communicates with and thinks with the sweet voice of an innocent child. If you played the present form of the Mol subplot, you.would hear those Tief child thieves suddenly become sinister. They (very slowly) threaten you in a malevolent manner if you repeatedly try to kill them, and whether you turn on them or not, brag about going on a theft spree when they reach Baldur's Gate. Unlike the in your face depiction of the Druids, you won't encounter this unless you find and rescue Mino from the Harpies and visit the Tiefling hideout.

First, thanks for taking the time to read and THINK about some (not all) of my "walls of text".

Tieflings are explicitly described in the D&D 3 versions of the Monster Manual as predisposed towards evil because of their fiendish heritage, which is not the sane as depicting them as flat out evil like Lolth Sworn Drow. Haer'Dalis describes the destruction and razing of Saradush to an increasingly horrified Aerie as "a marvel to behold indeed. 'T would be rare to find something to compare even on the planes... I am a Doomguard, my dove. The forces of entropy seek to destroy all of the universe, and it is our place to hasten the process whenever we can,... and marvel at its' effect." Earlier, he in reference to CHARNAME's transformation into the Slayer comments: "I find myself unable to tear my eyes away. In the Doomguard, we appreciate the forces of entropy that bring destruction in their wake... and with each passing day, I see a personification of that force taking shape before me." A verbatim quote from BHAERD25, his banter file from Throne of Bhaal. Unless you played BG2 ToB with both Aerie and Haer'Dalis in your party, and a brief romance developed between the two, and you didn't have an ongoing romance with Aerie, you would never see this side of that Tiefling bard. It promptly ends their romance!

My bad about Larian's location in Ghent. I'm actually half Belgian (Wallonian) by ancestry. NO Western European nation, even in prehistorical times even approached the extraordinary biodiversity of present day SE Asia, South and Central America, and even subtropical and most of temperate East Asia today, and roughly half of Western Europe's biodiversity has been lost since industrialization. Belgian consistently rated at the very bottom of measures of environmental safeguards and biodiversity among EU prior to the admission of former Soviet Bloc nations such as Poland and Lithuania.

I referred to Kagha as a "stereotypical misanthropic tree hugger", because they really exist in great numbers, and they have and continue to use conservation as a neocolonial weapon against demonized "other"people. Those who are unwilling to tolerate the ugly realities of bears, Wolves, etc as destroyers of crops and livestock are often quite willing to overlook the impact of Tigers, Lions, African Wild Dogs, Dholes, and Asian and African Elephants on the livelihoods and very lives of the Human inhabitants of other nations. PART of that process is the depiction of these animals in anthropomorphic, sentimentalized, and sugar coated and even romanticized ways.

I have NO problems with anthropomorphic animals in fantasy per se, and loved Okku, the very unrealistic magical talking male bear in NWN2. Many others did not. What I criticized in this game were the use of an anthropomorphic viper, an animal we are INNATELY predisposed to fear and hate (vipers kill, maim, cripple, and permanently disfigure thousands of people worldwide annually, and people in less developed nations suffer the most) and which as a consequence has been linked with Original Sin in Abrahamic religions, as a plot device to further incite us against a Druid who is already a one dimensional cliche collection plot device.

There is a huge difference between manipulation of players and forcing them to do things. David Gaider tried to force us to take Imoen (a thieving, lazy, vapid, dim witted, underachieving slacker) with us in Spellhold by turning our party against us. He tried to manipulate us into killing Zathrian and effecting regime change among the Dalish, or gleefully engaging in genocide, with his (angry white male) Werewolves, ham fisted sob story about the Dalish victim of lycanthropy, and his truly bizarre "Lady of the Forest" (a display of his contempt for straight males, like boorish philistine belching Ogrim), and even branded Dalish supporters who killed Witherfang and the 'weres as "Poachers" in the achievements. He also refused to develop a "comrades in arms" ending for the fight between Zathrian and Witherfang for a Dalish Warden. But he did not force us to support the Shemlen Werewolves!

I told Zevlor that I would escort him and his people to safety, which made him and Tilsis turn hostile, so I killed both. I was not give the possibility of explaining that I was risking my own life to escort them to Baldur's Gate, but it's still EA! Kagha grinned makuciously whrn informed of Zevlor's death, but that was that, and after I defeated (killed) Gut, Minthara, and Raghslin, Asharak briefly referred to Zevlor's "passing", then announced forthcoming festivities, as if nothing had happened to Zevlor. Earlier, I was railroaded (FORCED) into fighting the Druids, when I slept at camp, then returned to the Grove; a cutscene featurin Gnomish Druid Halah started and all of the Druids except Rath turned hostile. Likewise, if I put Arabella's parents out of their misery after Teela killed their darling thief, the Druids guarding the Sacred Grove and their bear turned hostile. If I killed Tiefs in the hollow, Arron (?) immediately tried to arrest my Tav.

I was able to kill Asharek, then talk my way out of arrest, leaving his bloody corpse while Tiefling trainees worked alongside with Wyll as if nothing had happened! I NEVER claimed that Larian's writers prevent the player from killing adult Tieflings, as I had killed over a dozen before putting up my first post on this thread. What I affirmed was the FIRST and starting comment by Twinkle Toes; Larian lets you kill Goblin children but Tiefling children are unkillable.

I explained in painstaking detail how Larian's writers MANIPULATE AND RAILROAD, not FORCE, players to side with EITHER the Tieflings or the Goblins (and the Goblins leg spreader ally Minthara) against the Druids. Apparently your reading overlooked this! As for "darker fantasy", it's very much a feature of French and Gallic children's tales as compared to their Anglo equivalents, as my Wallonian mother explained to me during my childhood. Within limits, I like it, too. What I hate is being manipulated into choices that in a real world are antisocial, decadent, and ultimately self destructive.

Oh, no Druid would tolerate a Sharran cleric, because enclosing Toril in shadow would kill all photosynthetic plants and the ecosystems that depend on them! Fantasy has its' limits; all of Toril's higher vascular plants have leaves and chlorophyll for a reason! Are the "Leaflord" and the "Great Oak" mere euphemisms?

Well, while I get it's not the point, the snake is one of the most reasonable characters in that room (if the main character is a druid from what I have seen)



I must clarify myself. That path is certainly underdeveloped in the current stage. However, what you have described does strike me as an half-cooked plot rather than an option that won't exist at full release. INMHO, they should even give an opportunity to join the Shadow Druids, though I am not sure they would go that far.


I do consider that a truly good character will try to strike some compromise between the druids and the tieflings. The tieflings have been chased from their homes with their families and in the 5e lore there is nothing about the fact they will become evil at one point or another of their life. I see nothing self destructive about the tieflings as they are now. Well, there is some theft involved but a capital punishment is way too harsh.

Once we depart from the most common idea of a good hero, it starts to get complicated. Neither choosing the druids only (which is underdeveloped), nor choosing only the tieflings is the ideal choice for a truly good character.

In my playthrough, I played a drow with few scruples. The point is that he saw the tieflings as something similar to him: an escapee from his world into a new hostile one (his tragic story is not really the point here). In a way, he felt the tieflings close. Petty crime is not an issue as he was doing very shady things to survive. He does like music so Alfira did seal the deal. Then he went into the druid grove. He is not the psycho like Minthara so he did save the child from Kagha. He did engage in a dialogue with Nettie. In the latest patch Nettie was civil and she did not try to poison him. Had she tried, that could have triggered a chain reaction -> I killed Halsin's apprentice -> Halsin would not believe him it was self defense (as they always do) -> he would no longer care about the druids -> they have that idol his ally needs not to explode; AND they are rich... You get it. Pile of druid corpses. Well, as of the latest patch, Nettie behaved well. Just some civil chat. A result -> he needs a healer and has done nothing wrong to the druids -> no need to strain his relationship with a healer he desperately needs... A psycho such as Minthara and the primitive goblins worshipping the very reason his freedom has been violated... they were no option. Not for this character, at least.

If there is some tipping of the scale, it is towards choosing both the tieflings and the druids. You have good reasons not to attack the druids and some reasons not to attack tiefling families. I wonder if the attack by Zevlor against you was a result of another half-ready plot or it was simply a sheer desperation (for which your character does not have fault but could have foreseen). However, this starts to change when you go towards neutral or evil alignment. Maybe your character has some issues with the influence of the hells on the Prime Material Plane? Or maybe he considers the presence of tieflings a sacrilege on the holy ground of Sylvanus? In my case, I might have been lucky with Nettie... what if I were not?

I slightly digressed but I see nothing that could have strongly motivated me to attack the druids even as a drow with dubious morals. The more of a good alignment your character is, the easier it will be to not attack the druids.



Well, it does depend on the character. It is a dire situation. I can imagine a more practical druid not killing a Sharran cleric as he might need every ally to survive. After all, what is a single cleric in the cosmic fight between the gods? But it does depend on your character.

Thanks! I played through completion of the "saving Halsin" quest 2X, first with patch 3, then with patch 6. In patch 3 Nettie reached for a bundle of "Kelemvor's Blessing"(?), which my Druid immediately recognized as a lethally toxic plant. He explained through available dialog options to Nettie that he was still hoping for a cure, wherein her explanation of how the current outbreak differed from past isolated cases started. At the end of their conversation I agreed to her request that my Druid pledge to kill himself if symptoms developed; I saw it as a far more honorable and ethical response than ANYTHING I had seen from Astarion (who I could barely tolerate, and killed after he revealed his painfully obvious vampirism) or from generally neutral Shadowheart. Larian's writers have significantly improved as well as expanded their BG3 characters, or in the case of Shadowheart, made them far less opinionated and abrasive, largely in response to player complaints! Except for his horrific "frontier justice" comment (I'm from the US, and frontier justice was John Wayne glamorized mass genocide against Native Americans!) Wyll was very likable and proved to be the most useful member of my party (I mistook him for a ranger on the basis of the fight with the Goblins at the Grove Gates), though I suspect that his unwanted relationship with Mizora will spawn more Tieflings. Gale was interesting and well written but keeping him required the lost of multiple magical items, and as a Druid, I bristled at his request that I steal that Idol of Silvanus.

I never played a Druid in versions 2 through 4 of D&D, because their weapons limitation made them so useless. Playing as a High Elf solves this problem, as I favor Longbows and Longswords as weapons.They are a blast to play in BG3, just as bards were a blast to play as the most overpowered class in 3.5 D&D. Druids still suffer from the ecological.and science illiteracy of most D&D and Pathfinder writers, who too often confuse "animal rights" with environmentalism and traditional European Druidic belief systems.

I'm enjoying this game immensely, but too many aspects of the Druids vs Tieflings plot seem to have been inspired or stolen from DAO, which I intensely hated on nearly every level! I did resolve the "Saving the Refugees" quest in favor of both Druids and Tieflings in both full EA playthroughs, but felt that what happens when you confront Kagha about her Shadow Druid involvement was extremely heavy handed and quite unbelievable, so I skip it entirely; and agree with Halsin that she is redeemable and still potentially a fine Druid.

Sorry for slightly changing the topic but did you find any difference between Nettie in patch 3 and in patch 6 when playing as a druid?

In patch 6 she did not poison my drow (he did reply to her questions politely), at the end she just asked him to swear he would kill himself if he would turn. He did shamelessly lie to avoid complications and needless bloodshed.

Well, about "frontier justice" it was an unintended choice of words stemming from the general meaning of the term and the Wyll's nickname. It is an unpleasant association (mildly put) but I hope you will be able to separate the current context from the horrific historical event.

I'm going to test this out; I've liked Nettie right from our first meeting, since I'm also a bird and wildlife rehabber, and have thus always spoken politely and respectfully to her! Plus, she IS the resident temporarily High Druid, and comes across as more stable and sensible than.the more excitable Halsin! I've been just the opposite with Astarion; I love the arts (especially music) but despise the narcissistic, affected, immature people they attract in droves.

This is continuation from Cyberpunk. Trolls are here.

Just some quick information bites to supply some extra background here:


They are not described such in 5e, which is our current setting. In fact, in 5e tieflings have no inherent good/evil axis alignment leaning at all – though they often end up pushed into selfish or more evil lifestyles as a result of undue ostracism and prejudice directed towards them by others...

Which, I hesitate to add but feel compelled to... your language indicates that you're the sort to be directly contributing to ^.^


An interesting quote but one which is entirely unrelated to the individual's race, and is solely circling around their being a Doomguard, which is a completely race independent thing.

(https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Doomguard)
Specifically: “Alignment: Any | Races: All”


To be clear.... You literally committed murder in broad daylight, and the residents of the grove who were charged with those people's protection take issue with you for doing this.

Let me say it again: You. Murdered. Innocent. People. In. Front. Of. Them.

If you expected *Anything* to come of that but to be put down like a rabid animal by the other residents of the grove, that's on you. They might not be happy about it, but these refugees are formally guests of, and under the protection of, the druids of this grove. And you attacked and murdered them. Yes: the druids will take issue with that. It would make zero sense for them not to.


This is not an issue of druids and refugees – this is just plain and simple Larian's poor world system. It occurs literally everywhere in all of their games and is not at all related to the thing you're discussing.



As long as you side with the goblins, Mol and her crew get very murdered and you can go and poke their dead bodies with sticks if you want to. You're right that the game doesn't let you do it, specifically; I agree that it's a poor form choice that lets you fight and kill goblin children, but flags the refugee children as KO only, for you... but they certain can be killed, and will be, if you make certain choices.

==

More personally:


You ranted quite heavily, I'm afraid. While your points themselves had some decent amount of merit (and I will be very quick to say and agree that Larian's writing is ham-fisted, crude and poorly executed...), you mostly come off as a hateful and spiteful person who played the game a certain way, and then resented it; that may not have been your intention, I fully expect it wasn't, but your choice of language and phrasing created that impression. You could have made your points very well without resorting to the derogatory language and forms you opted to use (and are still using). The result was that it wasn't very convincing, on the whole. (And on a personal note, I'm especially not appreciating the sex-shaming – it's exceptionally uncalled for and inappropriate, so if you could stop that, I'd appreciate it)

You're strong contention seems to be that the game brow-beats you into hating the druids and pitting you against them and disliking them... well... No, it doesn't, I don't feel. That's on you. I've played through the game a number of times and I haven't ever found myself feeling inclined against the druids in any way, nor have I felt like the game has been trying to make me feel that way. It's pitted me very specifically against Kagha, but not against the druid grove as a whole.

To be honest, natureboy, you just come off as one of the handful of people here who are fundamentally racist against tieflings on principle, and are resenting that the refugees in this picture are being painted in a sympathetic light (because, what do you know – they're dispossessed refugees fleeing the near destruction of their former home and who have now been ostracised from it for nothing more than their appearance and race), and are also tieflings.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike the post-3e Tieflings? Gee, someone that looks like a literal devil or demon in a setting where devils and demons are very real and very much dangerous is going to be suspected of wrongdoing, feared or even hounded? What a shock. Trying to compare them to real-world ethnic/racial groups is foolish because the context between the latter and the former is radically disparate.

5e doesn't try to remove those prejudices or mistrusts - they ARE there and present, and teiflings are often mistrusted, ostracised or maligned, that's still there - it's just been made clearer that it's mostly unjustified, and that they are (in reality) no more naturally or intrinsically disposed towards evil alignments than any other mortal creature.... though as with anyone who is often treated that way, they often find themselves pushed into those sectors of society as a result, so you do find a lot of cruel, selfish and mistrustful teiflings, but it is, specifically noted, not because of their blood, and not inherent to their being.

It all depends on the setting.

Goblins in Faerun = eat people like Brian. Evil, malicious monsters. Fun for adventurers to kill without feeling guilty. Same is true with gnolls.

Goblins in Eberron = neutral race that coexist with others. Not necessarily fun for adventurers to kill because you might have killed someone not necessarily bad. Now, you have to wonder. Did I just kill this goblin because he made enemies of the guy who hired me? What if he was a good guy who was working down at the refugee center helping war-torn victims of the Mourning?

If they make every race not evil and "realistic" with some good and some bad, it ruins the fun. Let me kill baddies without worrying about real life politics and social issues.

Eberron is a setting designed to turn everything Dungeons & Dragons on its head: amusing if you like being immersed in subversions, but far from classic fantasy.

While I enjoy the deeper characterisation of things like goblin tribes, and having elements that let us see their 'real-person' culture and practices, etc., it's still a valid point that we very much need elements that CAN just be an evil to fight, without shades of grey. Shades of grey is fun and compelling ,when that's what you're looking for, and it does make a lot of PnP campaigns a lot more nuanced and interesting... but in a video game format, where combat will be the largest of the three pillars, the need for a simple evil that *doesn't* raise questions of moral quandary is still essential. It's a difficult balance at times.

"Grey only" is far from my tastes; at the end of the day - be it on a table or on a computer - this is an escapist fantasy hobby and more of the same depressingly familiar murkiness we're subjected to in reality is thoroughly unappetizing.

One of the worst things Star Wars did was start making this same mistake. What was fun in the original movies was that the Empire was evil and bad. The Rebels were good. What was so fun was that Stormtroopers were inhuman bad guys you could kill without remorse, like shooting endless armies of battle droids. Luke Skywalker killed millions of Imperials by blowing up the Death Star, and it was awesome because he killed millions of bad guys.

Then they made the Empire maybe not so bad, humanizing Stormtroopers and making it all more realistic. Suddenly, Stormtroopers were people with families and such. Imperials might be people just fighting for legit peace and justice. They just aren't on the side of the Rebels. So who's bad or good anymore?

And just like that, it's not as much fun because now a single Stormtrooper death makes one wonder. Did I kill someone good who is just not on my side with my agenda? Where once I could run around in my backyard shooting stormtroopers for pretend and hacking them all down with a lightsaber and I'd feel like a superhero, now I must question the morality of my fantasy story. Was Luke actually the good guy or the bad guy? He murdered millions with one shot. These were people who had no say whatsoever about the decision of some murder hobo Moff. They were government employees just trying to work for a living.

Now, all my childhood heroes are villains because people want to make the fantasy story more realistic. Han, Luke, Leia... They're now all murderers butchering innocent people just because they want democracy instead of a monarchy.

That is what will eventually happen to D&D if people keep pursuing this "no race is really good or evil" line of thinking. This is not reality. That's why it's fun. Real war sucks. It's not fun. It's tragic and terrible. I don't want my fantasy adventure game to be too much like it or it will suck too.

We want to play a game where we don't have to feel bad for murdering countless monsters. I know a goblin is evil and baby monsters will eventually grow up to be adults who will eat people. No question. Kill the vermin. Wipe them out without remorse before they come and get you or others. I am a hero for exterminating them all because I know they're all bad without question. In fact, I can feel good about killing as many as possible because they are all bad. The world is a better place because I butchered the bad monsters and saved lots of people.

As for tieflings, yeah. Never evil. Neeshka from Neverwinter Nights 2 was the first tiefling I ever encountered. Never evil. Mischievous and devious, maybe, with a splash of moral ambiguity, yes, but not evil. There's quite a difference. Never were they man-eating vile murderous monsters as a race.

And finally, a one-off is fine. Kobalds like Deekin are rare. They certainly aren't the norm. So, although you might encounter a single decent goblin at some point, making for a fun and interesting companion, it isn't by far the norm, making killing other goblins or kobalds still good.

Admiral Piett might disagree, the Empire is full of evil people to be sure, but it rules through fear, people are cowed into evil because they live under a regime that normalizes it. This is actually a important aspect of the lore because its the actual manifestation of the conflict between the dark and light sides of the force, as the Empire's power grows it's influence on the people of the galaxy does so as well, and with that so does the dark side.

More apropos is a little fellow named Jabba the Hutt. We meet exactly one Hutt in all the (original) movies, he happens to be a big gangster, but because one-out-of-one of the Hutts we meet is a gangster, it means that %100 of all Hutts are now kingpins of the galactic underworld. So really he should be called Jabba the Tatooiner because calling him Hutt is a bit redundant. Assuming that Hutt was his species anyway. I wouldn't have an issue with this in most fantasy settings because morality can be inherent, it can be magically something you're preordained to, or it can just be something you are naturally predisposed of, like goblins and gnolls; but in Star Wars being good and evil is all about something called the Force, so having entire races of gangsters kind of doesn't totally jibe with it. It would have been better if the Hutts were a race of super mercantile types among whom the less scrupulous could easily fit into such underworld roles. Considering most of this is still just EU lore, that could still end up being the case.

As for killing goblin children, you interact enough with them and are shown enough of their rearing to understand that they're as ruthless and bloodthirsty as their elders to make it not seem so outrageous (I do K.O. them to be honest).

Yeah but that's my point. Today, in many Star Wars video game and stories, Imperials aren't so evil anymore. Gone are the days when this was true: the Empire is full of evil people to be sure, but it rules through fear, people are cowed into evil because they live under a regime that normalizes it. This is actually a important aspect of the lore because its the actual manifestation of the conflict between the dark and light sides of the force, as the Empire's power grows it's influence on the people of the galaxy does so as well, and with that so does the dark side."

The directions Star Wars is heading in is that sure there were leaders in the Empire who were evil, but there were also many people who served the Empire who didn't realize just how bad it was. Take the Battlefront 2 video game. . There are more and more Star Wars stories like this popping up. Even look know how they are humanizing Boba Fett. He was once this terrible ruthless cold-blooded mercenary bounty hunter, and now they're turning him into someone who wants to rule with respect in Jabba's place. What the crap is that? He was one of the most iconic villains. He was ruthless and the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, and now they are turning him into a good guy.

As for the Hutts, you are right. They made a vast majority of them gangsters. It is rare to find a Hutt in any story that isn't a vile gangster. I did always think that was stupid. I created a Force using Hutt one time while playing the Star Wars RPG. Now that was fun. The players also seem to like it a lot. This big old Hutt wielding a lightsaber and lifting things with the Force. Slow as could be, but quite effective nevertheless because the Force was his ally.

Anyway, I felt guilty at first killing goblin kids, but then I thought about it and realized that they are little monsters who eat people. So then I was fine with it. Still, just the fact that they do exist in the game does make it a bit of a moral question that springs up in your mind whether you want it to or not. I'm okay with them leaving it in the game because they are flesh eating monsters, but I certainly wouldn't mind if they took it out so that people don't have to have some sort of moral conscience issue when playing a video game. It's one thing to murder a bunch of goblin warriors and such. It's another thing to kill kids even if they are monsters.

I think the issue at play here is really that the concept of "monster" is considered antiquated.

As you know, the ability to speak makes you intelligent. And being intelligent means you are human, so inherently True Neutral...I mean something something Free Will something something Pelagius.

But let's let Qui-Gon weigh in.

My interest in the Star Wars franchise sharply dropped when...

...The Empire started to become more "misunderstood" and less "malicious".

...The Republic (Old or New, take your pick) became surprisingly corrupt or even no better than The Empire.

...the Jedi became religious fundamentalists terrified of the prospect of losing their influence.

..."The Force" was split into "The Light Side of The Force" and "The Dark Side of The Force" and darkness somehow became equally as important; this is probably my biggest bugaboo with modern Star Wars. The "Dark Side" is a corrupting presence one needs about as much as an otherwise healthy individual needs a concentration of cancerous cells.

Most of these changes began and remained in the Expanded Universe, but some of them have been brought to the silver screen and/or smaller screens (i.e., over media streaming services).


I have no love for real monarchies, though my characters would support a just king and a peaceable kingdom.

I have no desire to scavenge cemeteries, loot mausoleums or plumb crypts, though my characters will explore such places and likely obtain treasure from them at some point.

I have never considered traveling into primeval forests while armed, armored and laden with supplies in search of purpose, though my characters engage in this sort of behavior on a regular basis.

I have little bravery, though my characters will battle all manner of mundane animals and mythological monsters while holding fast to their courage.

I have no religious belief, though my characters worshiped and will worship gods.

--- --- ---

At a certain point and on some level, learning how to differentiate between the romanticized adventures you explore with others and the realities you must take into account in order to live a healthy life becomes vital.


The original Tiefling Alignment was "Any Neutral or Evil", so it was theoretically possible to find a Tiefling upholding the law (Lawful Neutral) in addition to a Tiefling that just wanted to be left alone (Neutral -> "Live and let live."). Outright heroic Tieflings were out, unless you counted "heroic by comparison" (i.e., any being of Neutral Alignment is heroic when compared to those that are Evil).

3e's Tieflings were "Usually evil". Good-aligned Tieflings became possible, though they were generally malevolent.

Now that it's hip to play a character demonic in appearance, however, they're pretty much any Alignment and not predisposed to any particular (im)moral or (un)ethical behavior. Over the course of their published history, Tieflings were typically Evil, infrequently Neutral and rarely Good.

Note how this fabricated quandary mostly applies to humanoid monsters. Few people are going to lose sleep if, say, a Hatchling/Wyrmling Green Dragon (i.e., an intelligent, man-sized, armored and aerial chlorine-spewing engine of devastation) is killed.

We can thank missinterpretting Revan for this shit. -_-

I think it goes back further than Revan, though he was a big contributor.

Well the phylosophy about "grey jedi" was mostly presented in KotOR series ...
First there was Jolee Bindo ... and in second Kreia ...
Of course Revan, as one of most famous characters pushed it a lot ... im honestly not quite sure why so many people believe that he was so "incredibly powerfull" ...
I mean sure, we is known for "walking both Dark and Light path" ... even tho originaly it was first one and then the other, not both at once ... but still, it seems much more understandable that moral around Light and Dark is something like ... dunno, seesaw(?) ... either you are incredibly strong on one side, but completely useless on the other, or other way around ... and yes, theoreticaly it is possible to ballance things out and stand right in the middle, but then you should not be able to reach top of either.

Sadly since KotOR (or at least that is when i first heared about this) people start to think that once you reach your full potential in Light side, you can go study Dark side and earn absolute mastery in both. :-/
Wich by the way, was exactly Revan case ... especialy in the book.
And wich by the way is exactly the reason i hate this guy. (This and that undearned overhype around him ... i mean what did he achieve anyway?)

---

I think the same case can be used in Baldur's Gate ...
While multiclassing is possibility (think about it as trying to play Grey Jedi, taking just the best of every part) ... you should never be able to reach potential power of pure Class.
At least that is my opinion ...

---

And just so i dont purely offtopic ...
I sill dont care about moral question of killing Tiefling kids ... i dont even care how inocent, or contextualy forced they are to live like criminals ... i just want to have option to hit Mol in the face, bcs in the whole game there is nobody who would deserve it more ... well, maybe Shadowheart ... and Astarion ... sometimes Wyll ... Kagha ... ok, there are others, but i want to hit them all.

I was referring to expanded universe books and comics for Star Wars. Before KOTOR, there were many EU publications that started to move towards the whole "Bad is not necessarily bad" thing.

The irony is that Lucas said he originally created Star Wars as a black/white story of good vs. evil. The original intent was good is good and bad is bad. The Empire was to be like Space Nazis, and the Rebels were fighting against the evil regime.

But people started moving it further and further from the original intent, making it just like so many other stories; everything is gray and there is no such thing as good and evil.

And D&D is doing the same thing. It started as you play a hero vanquishing evil and saving people. Even if you played a Raistlin character (from Dragonlance), you still were a hero fighting evil.

Now, you can be the bad guy if you want. You don't need to be a hero at all. You could even play a flesh eating orc or whatever and go around being totally bad. Although that allows for more variety and freedom, it turns the original concept of the game on its head, making it gray and confused and muddled and a bit too real for my tastes.

But, unfortunately, that's how the majority like it, it seems.

Well ...
Its all about perspective.

Rebells are still freedom fighters and Empire is still Space Nazis ...
But also Rebells are in fact just terorists, and Empire (no matter how strict) is still legal goverment.

I was thinking that you are criticising the "mastery in everything" kind of attitude that KotOR bringed.

---

I dont think that "bad is not necesarily bad" is wrong attitude ...
After all perspectives of things being bad or wrong are changing over time, that is how our society i evolving in general matter ... thinks like gender or religion prejustice, racism, or slavery was just several decades moraly okey, since society concidered them normal, and today we concider them being bad ...

I dont want to imply that our fathers and grandfathers was easy ...
But one have to objectively agreed that plot in stories back then was to say at least "not much complex".

Sure, in old stories there was allways "evil sorcerer" or "evil king" or "evil race" ... but society moved from there, now people are asking why would that "evil *XY*" do what he did ...
And just "because they are evil" is no longer acceptable. :P

After all, if i remember corectly even you were complaining that you would like to see some better reasons for our characters for acting evil, than "just being evil". :P

So i think this isnt matter of Star Wars, nor DnD ... that is just society evolving and genre reflecting that evolution.

I realize society is changing. My point is just that the more you make everything gray, the less the story is about good vs. evil. The less the story is about good versus evil, the more real it becomes and the more complicated and less simple and just plain fun.

Sure, dark fantasy that is more complex and real has its place. BG3 is a dark fantasy, so it should have elements that are more complex and real. I'm not saying that it shouldn't. That's why I said that I don't necessarily have a problem with them leaving the whole goblin kids thing in the game.

But my point is that by leaving the goblin kids element in the game, you are going to have a more complicated moral dilemma that you are putting your players in. Naturally, there will be players who feel guilty about killing goblin kids just because their kids. If you do that, then you need to expect that there are going to be players who are not only uncomfortable with it, but they straight up hate it.

So, in my mind, wouldn't it be better to just remove the children from the equation so that players don't have to make that moral choice, just like with the tiefling children? That was the main reason I was bringing up this whole thing about the more gray you make everything the less fun it is. I am speaking in generalities.

Of course there are going to be some people who think that such a moral dilemma is actually really fun. Those people are going to like the realism of it, and they're going to justify the killings the way I did by saying kid goblins are going to grow up to be flesh eating adult goblins who prey upon people. I don't really have a problem with it myself. Do I like killing kids of any race in the game? No. That is not really fun to me. Do I accept it because they are monster evil kids who are going to eat people when they grow up? Yes.

The main point I'm trying to make is that part of what made D&D so fun when it first started, and Star Wars, was that you didn't have to make such moral dilemma choices. It was more black and white, good versus evil, and you didn't have to worry about whether the monster, Imperial, you were killing might actually be a good person. I wasn't necessarily criticizing the game. Just trying to make a point that the more you make things gray the more you're going to have people upset about it, and rightly so.

So the question is, is it worth leaving it in the game? Is it worth upsetting players who have a guilty conscience about killing goblin kids? Or would it be better to make it more black and white, good versus evil, so that players don't have to feel guilty about killing all the goblins?

All this having been said, do I think leaving the kids in the story fits with the rest of the story? Yes. This game is full of these kind of moral choices. Even the hag sub story is full of moral dilemma. If you really think about it, are you really the good guy for going in and killing the hag? Did she really do anything to you? The entire subplot is really about you invading her home and budding your nose in to other people's business. Did anyone even ask you to help? Not a single person asks you to help, and the entire time they tell you to get lost in mind your own business. So are you the good guy?

The point is that it fits with the rest of the game. If you want to start chucking elements because of morality, because you feel guilty, you'd have to start chucking a lot of other elements that are just as, or more so, morally ambiguous.

I believe Qui-Gon would say, that the ability to speak does NOT make you intelligent. I think that was actually the proper line that he said to jar jar.

And oh how right he was! 😃

Again, racial issues come up. Why tieflings are better than goblins.

Why the rationale that goblins are the lowest race in this game gives us the right to kill their children, and the children of tieflings are immortal. ONE RIGHTS AND STANDARDS FOR ALL!

#GoblinsRightsWatch #GoblinsArePeopleToo

After so much serious talk...

Whenever people start talking about how the dark side of the force is important for 'balance' just remember:

The way people seem to have sublimated the message of the Emperor as some kind of response to Star Wars' 'simplistic' morality is kind of impressive

Do we need to start a Star Wars thread?

Lol. I lied to you. But that's okay, because the truth I cling to comes from a certain point of view.

I murdered goblin children, but that's okay, because the truth I cling to comes from a certain point of view.

There. Tied it back to the topic. 😁

This trend of forcing guilt trips into escapism is exhausting.

Halsin might be able to answer that question for you, because he understands "nature".

Goblins multiply at astronomical rates, and this characteristic has persisted through each version of D&D. If the anthropogenic and abstract concept of "value" can be applied to life, it is inversely proportional to the ease with which that individual life can and is likely to be replaced. The life of a vole or Deer Mouse is more readily replaced than that of the rodent eating snakes that eat them, so in "nature's" economy has less value that that of a rodent eating snake. This despite the fact that Deer Mice and voles are vastly more intelligent than snakes, are far more perceptive of pain and fear, and the widely overlooked fact that predators depend on their staple prey, while contrary to the popular fiction, most predators DON'T significantly limited population densities of their prey in natural ecosystems. Voles and Deer Mice go through boom and bust cycles even when rodent eating predators are abundant; they crash when populations exceed the carrying capacity of rheir habitat due yo food shortages, stress related outbreaks of disease, territorial aggression, etc. Because rodent dependent predators depend on rodent prey for long term ecological success, rodent populations are paradoxically nore important to rodent predators than rodent predators are to rodent population "health".

Tieflings multiply at rates comparable to Humans but faster than Elves, and their period of parental dependency is similar. Goblins have far higher reproductive potentials and evidently far shorter periods of parental dependency. Thus Goblin lives are individually far less valuable than those of Humanoids. Surfacer Elves by the same criteria have more "valuable" lives than Humans and Half-Elves. D&D is filled with logical contraditions; if the Lolth Sworn Drow are so ruthless and murderous towards each other, how do they avoid killing themselves off and dying out? Similarly Red Wizards have the same reproductive potentials as other Humans; why don't they kill themselves off, and in such a chaotic and murderous society where treachery is so paramount over leatning and skill, how do they even learn to become highly skilled spellcasters? They and Lolth Sworn Drow don't augment their populations by recruiting outsiders!

As anyone who studies wildlife (that means plants, fungi, and bacteria as well as animals!) population dynamics knows, "the balance of nature" doesn't exist. In stable or naturally successive ecosystems approximations of temporary equilibrium alternate with periods of instability and change. That's why ammonites, Calamites, and giant dinosaurs no longer exist.

I just replayed the Nettie scene trying out the disrespectful options in patch 6. Nettie doesn't try to secretly poison the PC even if they are rude or hostile. The player is given the option of recognizing the plant as toxic, but Nettie will refer to it's use only as what she as "a last resort" if the player choses to kill themselves. She will follow on her earlier dialog of asking for the player's oath and taking her Wyvern Poison IF CONVENTIONAL ceremorphosis starts. If they refuse after 2 requests, she will turn hostile. Big improvement!

Oh, dear... I started playing D&D in 1979, 2 years after they expanded to D&D and AD&D, and likely years before you were born.

1. My comments about Tieflings in BG2 and the 3.0 and expansions Monster Manual were part of a discussion with "Scales and Fangs" about how D&D depictions of "monsters" have evolved with and between different versions of D&D. Please cite a quotation from my.post where I claimed or suggested that BG3 is an attempt to depict 3.0 "monsters", or is based on 3.0 depictions of "monsters". I'm well aware that 3.0 does not equal either 4.0 or 5e, even if in your rush to judgement you assumed otherwise.

2. I killed Arabella's parents, Dammon, Zevlor, Tilsis, Asharak, the members of Dammon's caravan (who went hostile after I killed Dammon to test the responses of the Druids), and other Tieflings near Arron. After I killed Zevlor and Tilsis, but before I killed other Tiefs, I spoke to Kagha; she grinned and said: "Then you should have no difficulty in dealing with the rest of them". The Druids that YOU claim are guards are under HER rule, most support her, and their reaction to killing Tieflings is an example of unchanged and obsolete scripting, NOT their role as guards. Kagha WANTS you to kill off the Tieflings, but the coders haven't rescripted the Druids. By cheating and boosting my Druid's charisma to 30, I was able to pass every persuasion check, and those bloody Tiefling corpses lay where they fell, as the other Tiefs and Druids went about their scripted business.

3. I also killed off a Xvart settlement in self defense after Gaider deliberately railroaded me into getting too close to their home in BG1, wiped out the entire Drow city of Ust N'atha after a bug caused the inhabitants to turn hostile before Matron Mother Ardulace's summoning ritual (even Solaufein turned hostile and attacked my party), and rescripted and rewrote BG2 so that my party members remained with me after I told Imoen to shove it. I also rescripted the game so that she did not respawn at the Copper Coronet afterwards, and so that I could kill Saemon Havarian. In a fit of murderous glee, I wiped out Candlekeep's inhabitants, from Firebead Elvenhair to Phylidia with my mana augmented mage, until Gorion justifiably killed me with a non legit spell that the devs gave him to stop murderous player psychopaths like me who KILL. INNOCENT. PEOPLE.

In real life, I'm a loving husband and father of 2 who saves hundreds of otherwise doomed wild birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians each year, and teaches hundreds of students about biology and mathematics annually. So go hang me from a tree because "You. KILLED INNOCENT. PEOPLE."

4. I lived in and grew up in over 39 different nations and also in former colonies that were still colonies when I lived there. The difference between living in and growing up in different societies is that a formative child or adolescent is more readily influenced by growing up in different cultures, but an adult with a fairly open mind can observe things that children and adolescents usually overlook or fail to understand. I observed the effects of colonialism and colonial mindsets and how they harm former colonies and persist after independence. I also observed firsthand how differing rates of street and organized crime (thieves' guilds) and government corruption affect societies. I despise thieves, and routinely download and install mods that let me destroy them and their guild members. Contrary to Gaider's insistence, Imoen is my cousin only because we are the offspring of Bhaal; I always played BG1 and BG2 as an Elven Bhaalspawn, so she is less my 'cousin' than any of hundreds of Elven and Drow Bhaalspawn. I hated colonial minded self hater regime change Lanaya, and greatly admired fiercely independent, traditional knowledge preserving, Shemlen defying Zathrian. Gaider has a serious problem with highly intelligent, highly educated people (usually male mages), and loves dumb, infantile, mediocre, easily deceived people such as Alistair ("Goooolllddaaaannnaa!") and Imoen. He also is a blatant misogynist (see Anora's senseless MANIPULATIVE treachery after you free her from inprisonment), but let's pretend he isn't.

5. You are so blinded by instinctive anger that you can't distinguish between manipulation and forcing choices. I also see little ability on your part to read carefully or recognize nuance and complexity. BG 3 rarely forces choices, but even with the many improvements in patch 6, they still manipulate players far more than the Elder Scrolls and Pathfinder/Owlcat games do. Your anger is resentment over a newcomer who has disturbed an established and fairly stable existing order in which you occupy a prominent position, by posting a "wall of text" rant. It's a rant, and so was your response. Any online gamer runs into the same anger from established players high in the power hierarchy after joining a new server. It's the same in all of the more intelligent social animals and it's in our genes.

6. In patch 6, you DO NOT need to steal the Idol of Silvanus to save Gale. He was alive and kicking after receiving only 2 magical items from my Druid when he was killed by an undetected trap near the Selune statue under the Shattered Sanctum. My complaint was that as a Druid, I could not castigate him for making such an offensive request. It's called I-M-M-E-R-S-I-O-N and lore fidelity.

7. Larian has multiple writers for BG3, of varying ability, and values and perspectives. Most of the heavy handed writing results from efforts to quickly change unpopular subplots and companion personalities. They can do better, and they can do worse. Their patch 6 changes to Nettie (my favorite character in the game so far, I liked her better than Halsin) are great. Their painfully forced and badly written "Kagha's revelation and redemption" subplot is awful.

I am someone who greatly prefers shades of grey. For me black and white is just boring. If I already know what is going to happen then I don't see the point of playing the game unless I have absolutely nothing else to do. I get no enjoyment out of being told what path to follow, plus there is absolutely no replayability if there is only the one "correct" way to do things. With shades of grey, each decision can lead to different things and I can immerse myself in my character better because there are more options to grow and change.

I especially don't like it when the black and white is due to people trying to force current real world views into fiction without understanding that they need to see the fictional world from the viewpoint of someone living in it, and even from the different types of viewpoints in the world rather than just the one they agree with the most. Looking from the different perspectives would make many things shades of grey.

As for the goblin and tiefling kids, I think both should be able to be killed, but maybe it should be a clear decision you have to make since it is apparently bothersome or offensive for some people. The choice to kill them or not would be correct or incorrect from any point of view - black, white, and grey.

A false dichotomy in the context of moral/ethical choices is that there can only ever be shades of grey or black and white. There is a third option: black, grey and white.

Going to put this in spoiler tags, since it's more a discussion of tone and delivery than anything else, and is getting a little bit off topic, but I still wanted to offer it just in case it helps ^.^

I dunno ...
Stormtroopers was allways humans (except that part where they was clones) ... so they kinda allways had families, life, and their own dreams ... they were just serving, wich was not even a choice by the way ... we just ignored it for whole time. :-/
Doesnt seems so hard to me to ignore it once again ... but i would personaly feel like im passing out significant part of the story.

Sure there still can be simple story about "good versus evil" ...
All you need to do is artificialy create an army ... in Star Wars, it would be clones, or droids ... in DnD i can think about Draconians from Dragonlance ...
But once you use any "regular" race, you just get moral dilema about some soldiers who were just doing their job ... no matter wich race you pick, even between Lolthsworn Drow there is chance (small one tho) to meet someone who dont necesarily agree with the way their society works, but cant do anything about it.

Maybe that is the purpose?
To kinda force player to ask himself such deep question. (In that case i failed btw)

I mean as far as i know, you dont *need* to kill litteraly even a single kid ... they are insignificant NPCs, so you can easily knock them out and still have quest complete.

IM not sure about this, but i think that you dont need to kill litteraly anyone (i believe quest completed for me when i knocked out Minthara).
But havent tryed on last patch, so even if i remember that corectly, this also can allready be changed.

I believe the problem here isnt that Goblin kids are mechanicaly killable ...
But that Tiefling kids are not ... so you kinda cant do any moral choice there.

Phylosophicaly speaking ...
It seems much more interesting question to ask if leaving only kids alive is acutaly act of kindness, or more like cruelity.

Nah, you would just aswell make the other group of people upset if your story would be too black and white ...
You just need to pick your target group thats all.

From pure moral perspective? Yes.

If you would be looking for real life example here ... i think that domestic violence would be perfect example.
Many persons (at least in my experience) dont want to report it and are even upset if you find out, since as you said "you poke your nose in someone else business and nobody asked for your help" ... but that is not the question here, important part is that you know that someone is being harmed and therefore morally you should at least try to stop it.

The funny thing about morality is that if you feel bad about your choices, you should reconcider making them.
It would be indeed bad if all choices you get offered would be morally questionable ... but this isnt the case.

#JusticeForThePriestessGut

I am True Soul, I told her everything as it is and I do not want to kill her! Do we have to kill her because she is a goblin, Larian ??

Also, why can't I kill those nasty teen thief tieflings?

#FreeGoblinSazza

#DeathToThieves

I see the real world in the terms of good and evil, with very little gray area. Which is why I prefer my entertainment to have little good and evil, with many shades of gray. The Infinity War being an exception. One of my top 10 favorite sci-fi series was Continuum. Here you had terrorists who killed thousands of innocents. But as the story unfolded, it wasn't all that black and white. The "terrorists" were fighting an oppressive corporate dictatorship. In the real world I have no tolerance for terrorists, they're evil and need to be wiped out. But in that sci-fi series, I actually sympathized with what they were fighting for. I still hated most of their methods though, shades of gray.


I'm playing an "evil playthrough" my next time, where I'm going to side with the Goblins. It will be my 1st time, I've always sided with the Tieflings, even with my morally gray characters. So I'm not as well informed as some of you; but there is a video from WolfheartFPS on YouTube, where he sides with the Goblins. In the video he goes into a house during the Goblin attack. It's full of Tiefling children, he wipes them out. He kept saying how bad he felt, while he was killing them. So you can kill them, just I guess only during the attack. I won't kill children in a game period; whether Goblin, Tiefling, or Martian. Though I love my entertainment gray, I just can't do it.

I find that really interesting. I find pretty much everything in real life to be shades of grey once examined from all sides, whether I agree with it or not. This is why I have a hard time with absolute good or absolute evil in anything else, because all the mental gymnastics I have to do to fit something into a box makes me frustrated unless I am attempting to roleplay a fanatic.

Personally I have no emotional reaction one way or the other, but I think for people like you they maybe could add something where the tiefling children run past you (like with the goblin ones) and the goblins kill them instead or they just disappear. If someone wants to personally kill them then it still can be done.

Same (replying to Merlex).

My choice to abstain from kid slaughtering is unswayed by ham fisted argument about ecological principles and population size (a slippery slope argument if I have ever heard one, as applied to sentient beings). Perhaps a pure neutral druid Tav might do it based on that that logic —- much like a Salarian. But my own Druid Tav is more of a geologist than an ecologist, and is pretty dubious about the effectiveness of over managing ecosystems (lol).

In terms of morality, I find it hard to lump kids into categories of good and evil. Tiefling kids steal, goblin kids torture animals…they are all little shits, but evil? Hmm. And even if they are…why should my character kill any of them? Unless I am playing a warrior priest or something, sworn to cleanse the land of evil, how is this my job? If they don’t attack me, why should I kill any of them?

But in all honesty, it just makes me (the me in the chair) feel like an arsehole to have my Tav kill kids. It makes me dislike the character I am playing. I don’t consider that a good time, so I let the wee ones live when I can. Tiefling and goblins alike.

Not to bring this back to Star Wars but this scenario with the children is pretty much what Anakin does to the younglings and I have a similar disassociation with the impetus and the action. Our motivations to side with the goblins could be a lot of things, but I don't think any of the ones presented adequately build up to that kind of action. Though I've only done the evil route all the way through once before and I only recall going to the hideout and finding their bodies.

Not to tumble down a slippery slope but I think I might understand the ecological point (maybe, it's difficult to know sometimes) about how a species of vermin who eventually evolve intelligence might have a different understanding of the value of life. Part of this also deals with how I don't think the concept of sentience has to be binary. If any of you have played Mass Effect, their equivalent of goblins the Vorcha kind of play into this as well, they're a race that has very short lifespans as well as high breeding rate, so they never really mature, nor do they have many 'longterm' goals, and their concept of 'self' is very different from a human's, almost a hive society.


A little off-topic but this is something I've viewed as a shortcoming in video games, and player driven narratives for some time. I found that in games like God of War and The Last of Us, that after a certain point I stopped being interested in playing the game because I was no longer sympathetic to the main character. But I know that it was mostly because I was in part responsible for their actions, whereas had they been films or books I don't think my interest would have lagged. It's one of the reasons making a compelling reason for being 'evil' in games like BG:3 is important to me, beyond the knowledge that there is 'content' there for you to see.

Agree. I can play characters that are evil if they are charming or charismatic. Or self serving ones if they are witty or super cool or or have an interesting back story. Or even horror-show turd munchers if the writing is amazing (Disco Eleysium). Ie, I need *something* to like.

And if there is a morality gut punch, then it needs to be worth it. Like KOTOR2. I came so close to being swayed by Krei’s darkside arguments, which almost seemed like a more honest continuation of Jolee Bindo’s reasonable grey jedi stance. Then baam…I find out the real result of what such actions cost my character in the first place ! So good (loved that game).

Killing wee’uns just…because? They steal too much or reproduce too quickly? Nah. Not a compelling enough narrative reason to sell my digital soul! Lol

They're monsters because they're monsters. It really is that simple. As was said before, the more you humanize monsters, the more fun you take out of the escapism; however, you also make them less monstrous in the process.

There's what I like to call "nuance overload", where attempts to inject complexity (genuine or superficial) to a race/species eventually results in a boring homogeneity across the board.

It's simple. If this game at any point makes players feel bad and not have fun, it's doing a bad job. Games are meant to be fun.

Regardless of how many people might enjoy a certain element, if it has a lot of potential to make players feel guilty or feel bad, they should come up with another solution. You can have fun in other ways. It doesn't have to be killing goblin kids.

I felt bad, and do feel bad each time and have to talk myself into it being okay. Others don't even try to talk themselves into it being okay. They just feel bad.

So, that's not good. They should come up with another solution.

Oh, wait. They did. Not being sarcastic here, but it just came to me. Set the attack to knock out. Then when you 0 the goblin kids, they are unconscious. Not dead.

Ah, but then again, here lies the real life dilemma. What is more cruel? Knock out the kids but kill their entire tribe, or just kill the kids with their families so they don't wake up and discover their all alone?

I suppose you could play total pacifist and kill no one, but that would solve nothing. The goblins are hard core fanatics of the Absolute and just love to kill. They're not going to leave people alone if you let them live.

Hmmm. Yeah. Just remove the kids from the setting and it wouldn't be so bad. End of story. In order to save Halsin, you are confronted with killing kids, and that just presents enough of a conscience dilemma for too many. For the sake of conscience, it should just be removed. It's not fun playing a game that makes you feel guilty. Period. As long as you have a legit choice, that's not a problem, but with the goblin kids, you have to kill them or they bring reinforcements, and knockout is more cruel than death.

Not trying to derail the thread, but I am curious how many of you who have issues with killing children in the game are roleplaying as mostly yourselves? If you were to put yourselves completely in the shoes of someone who grew up thinking all goblins are evil and need to be wiped out, or someone who hates thieves and wants to see them all executed or is following orders in a combat situation, would you still have a similar emotional response?

Maybe they could change it so they run out a side tunnel instead of getting reinforcements? Just throwing out ideas that should give options for both the kill and no kill types. I do not care one way or the other personally.

I normally rescue Halsin after I dealt with the Goblins and their Leader, so I just let the kids run away.
I don't want to kill children either and normally don't like playing evil, so I don't need the option to kill children, no matter the race.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but if you're serious, that is a very slippery slope stance to take. People get upset for the most insignificant, nonsense reasons, and if we take out anything and everything that may make someone feel bad, we'll not have any game left by the end.

Conflict is the core of storytelling. Characters in stories face obstacles and setbacks, and they have to make hard decisions and sacrifices. Otherwise, there is no story. Feeling bad, conflicted, uncertain is necessary, because you cannot have release without building up tension first. Even children's entertainment, which by its nature skews towards more simplistic morality, will have plotlines and ask questions that can upset its target audience. Surely games as a medium can aspire to that level at least?

Of course, storytelling is not always the main focus in videogames, but with this particular one, I think it's fairly obvious it's at least on the same level of importance as the other aspects. If you don't want to think at all about what you're doing, there are plenty of dungeon crawlers with minimal or no plot on the market. Kill monsters, collect loot, have fun. This is not meant to be disparaging, we all look for different things in our entertainment.

By the way, you don't have to kill the goblin kids. Get rid of the three leaders, then go report back to the tieflings. Halsin will be waiting at the grove, having freed himself without your aid. There, no dead kids on your conscience, monstrous or otherwise.

I feel like you're being overly reductionist in your view of what games should be. I think that games should always be engaging and entertaining, but that's not the same thing as fun. It's the same with any form of media, from books to movies. I think those things only truly fail in one of two ways; either they fail to make the audience care about what they're depicting, or they inspire a reaction that goes against what they intended to create. Some people are engaged and entertained when they feel bad, when they have to grapple with moral dillema's. If Larian doesn't want to inspire this feeling in players then yeah, they should change something. And honestly I don't think they do want this reaction. The presence of the goblin children aren't framed as them being much different from their older counterparts. When I last played, I don't think I even realized they were children.



I won't dig into the issues I personally have with the idea of escapism and fun mixed with guiltlessly killing thinking, sapient beings, but I will address your "nuance overload" point. Because if adding nuance makes things boring and homogenous then the problem isn't the nuance itself, it's just bad writing and probably isn't actually nuanced. I fail to see how fleshing out a species that's traditionally labeled as monstrous and giving them depth and personalities could make them homogenous. I'd argue that the idea that "they're monsters because they're monsters" is even more likely to make things boring and homogenous.

I wonder if anybody ever made a good game ...
Including times before computer games ...

Cant find any.

I believe they did, you listed some of those youreself.

Indeed sweet, sweet moral question.
The only problem is that you dont *need* to kill their entire tribe ... you can only choose to, just as with everything else in this game.

Just the same way as you knock out those kids, you can knock out litteraly anyone else aswell. :P

Also, there are ways to kill just leaders and dont even cause alarm.
And yes, all 3 ... even tho it require huge metagaming, will to use almost every gimmick(?) Larian provided, and also you will loose all your loot.
Anyway: Here is video guide. :P

This is simply not true ...
If you knock out whole Goblin camp, and kill just Ragzlin, MInthara and Gut ... all your quests will mark as complete, and no futher attack ever happens ... once you long rest they will all disappear. :P

I mean even from story perspective ... sure, Goblins are fanatics ... but they are also cowards, and when they will see on their own eyes that group of FOUR (wich kinda means that they were outnumbered in aproximately 10:1 ratio) adventurers decimated their whole army and killed their "Goddesschosen leaders" ... they will dig so deep to the ground so nobody will hear about them ever again.

If we start removing things that could potentialy insult, or trigger someone ...
We can aswell just go play Pony Adventure Quest.

Eh ... no, you are are not.
Its an option, but hardly anything more. :P

Either you can let them run (and have consequences) ... or you can let Halsin kill them (sure, they are dead, but your hands are clean of this particular crime) ... or you can kill them ... also, using a bit of metagaming, you can ignore this scene (room) whole and you will never learn their fate. :P

Then dont ... also period. :P

Oh but there IS a choice ... you just listed two of your many options.
Sure, kinds will bring reinforcements ... but that is the ugly side of every choice, they tend to have consequences.

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Oh yes, orders ... the oldest excuse in the world.

I believe the problem (and core reason for this topic to exist) is that if you are the character you are describing here (Tiefling hater) ... you have no way to harm those kids, no matter how much s/he would want to ... bcs its not morally corect to harm a child no matter how evil, twisted and sadistic character you play.
But once you enter goblin camp, you can litteraly slaughter whole groups (there are 2) of childern with no real reason at all (you dont even need to talk to them, just can just start shooting out of noting).

That was the original point ...
Either allow us to attack both, or none ... but dont make system differences just bcs you want us to hate one side and simpatize with the other ... its cheap, its lame, and we dislike it. :P

I dislike this option honestly ...
I mean its kinda honorable from certain point of view to *not harm* childern, no matter how bloodthirsty, twisted and sadistic they are ... and i bet my Paladin (once aviable) will think about this question a lot ...

But still our choices should have consequences ... removing those just so you can play your Goldstar and whole camp of bloodthirsty Goblins is not standing in your way seems to me like choice just as poor as making Tieflings kids imortal ...
After all, lets be honest for a second ... those reinforcements are shit anyway, you kill them in two rounds top.

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That bird is right. :3
+1!

Boiled down to its most essential elements, D&D is a game centered around combat (i.e., violence and death). Sooner or later, thinking beings are going to meet their end by steel or spell...well, unless you're only slaying skeletons and oozes, anyhow. Surprisingly, you can indulge in a session of tabletop roleplaying where unabashed bad guys are getting killed while your character neglects/forgets to display remorse and not be a homicidal maniac in your everyday life. If one is incapable of keeping a barrier between reality and fantasy (e.g., they find it impossible to not view monsters as humans), that is an issue they need to address; the alternative is to abandon roleplaying.




Nup. Taking all the classic (evil) monsters* and essentially reframing them as misunderstood humans with fangs/green skin/bloodshot eyes/et cetera is boring. There's nothing wrong with throwing alien and completely inimical mindsets into the mix.

* Or the humanoid monsters, at the very least. Again, hardly anyone will lose sleep over the death of a young Chromatic dragon.

Double

+ 1 for giving us options to kill children. I do not enjoy it but it does happen. Many reasons for that. It can trigger some conflicts in character or stir some emotions in the players.

It's also part of D&D. By the way, how do you think a drow clan exterminates a whole other clan?

In addition it is something that has happened a lot in human history. Sacking a city, overthrowing a dynasty. Why should you wear pink glasses all the time?


Thanks for the info!

Remember that these folks grew up in a world where goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears and the like were constant scourges to civilization.

I have no issue with killing thinking beings in a tabletop game. Having villains The only time it rubs me the wrong way is the idea of just having a sapient race that can always be evil and exist to just be killed without any question of morality. Killing bandits? Sure. Killing evil wizards and their minions? Sure. (though I do find it kind of eye-rolling that such thugs would all choose to fight to the death, and when I GM a game, I usually have it that after a couple thugs have been taken down, the rest will either surrender or run away unless circumstances make sense for them not to). Also, I'm totally fine with things like devils and demons in games. Beings who are supernaturally evil because being evil is as much a part of what makes them what they are as being made of meat and bone is to making us what we are. And from what I understand about D&D lore, that goes for chromatic dragons as well. They're evil because that's supernaturally part of their nature.

You are right that making all the classic monsters misunderstood humans is dull and samey, but that's bad writing, not a product of nuance just in principle. They don't actually have to be misunderstood. Orcs and goblins can still be hostile to humans, elves, etc. And if in your setting orcs and goblins and other such monsters are all evil because of supernatural shenanigans, or because biologically they're such that they cannot coexist with elves, humans, halflings, gnomes, etc, then that's an interesting angle I'm happy to see explored. But personally, I find it hard to buy that a species that's perfectly sapient and has free will that allows them to make choices and think for themselves, would ALL be flat evil that can only be dealt with by killing them. I find that boring and unbelievable, since if they're sapient, then they can want things other than just to kill people, and if they can want things other than that, then it's possible to negotiate and come to agreements with them. It doesn't even have to be friendly. It can be a deal that comes down to "hey, this fighting is bad for both our forces. You stay away from us, we'll stay away from you." If they only exist to be hostile and kill and cannot be more than that within the setting, then they're just animals that walk on two legs.

And I also agree with you that since I'm the one that takes an issue with the idea of sapient beings being portrayed as unfailingly evil monsters, I'm the one that should be addressing it. I'm happy to see games moving away from the idea of other sapient species being just evil and I think that as a rule that's better and more interesting, but if a group wants to stick to that idea, then I just won't play with them. We just have different ideas of what we find fun, and if I tried to impose my ideas on a group that didn't share them, I would be a jerk. I have no problem finding other groups and other games that suit my playstyle better. Everything I laid out above, those are just my feelings. You feel different and that's fine. I hope you continue to find games that you can enjoy, just like I hope I continue to find games I enjoy. I don't think you're bad or wrong for your preference, I just disagree.

Whereas I see the abandonment/denial of another tool in the DM's toolbox as a tragedy. Certain games will go one way and others will head in the other direction, but there's room for both interpretations and everything in-between. Finally, I feel it necessary to point out that no one is lesser/dumber or morally suspect for featuring unambiguous (thinking) monsters in their campaign.

Honestly, was just thinking out loud, trying to look at it from various points of view.

I see both sides. On the one hand, I don't want to play a game that makes me feel like I am the monster.

On the other hand, having children in the game is realistic from a Faerun world-building perspective. I mean, they are vermin, essentially, who breed like rats and eat people. You would expect to find them in huge numbers in a goblin camp. Like Wyll, you should probably hate them, if you truly grew up in Faerun.

But I tend to steer in the direction of being sensitive to the feelings of others. At the same time, I get that people are sensitive... About EVERYTHING.

I'm glad I'm not a video game developer. Geez. I do not envy Larian at all. Every little element is debated and picked apart.

This. Some really great things have been ruined in other games I have played because offended people complained too much.

I mentioned the following orders part for the people who feel bad to be able to use it as an excuse.
I agree both groups should be equally killable
Would rather see something like this than to have the option to kill them completely removed because some people have a problem with it.

Have to agree with this. It is boring to know that you will kill something because it is a monster. If I wanted that I would be playing pve in an MMO. For any rpg type games I want to have to think about my actions and have "nice monsters" sometimes to break up the tedium of always killing them.

I'd be willing to bet that, when we do finally get our "zombie apocalypse", some of the posters here will be out protesting for zombie rights.

So many examples from our own history come to my mind right now.

You know you would potentialy be right, IF and only if both sides would be even willing to negotiate ...
Take Drow for example, or Githyanki ... no matter the situation, they both see themselves as superior to anyone and anything ... why would they even bother with negotiating?

Well i would rather see this as it is ...
After all, as mentioned abowe (and i also compeltely agree) once we start removing things bcs someone could get offended, or feel uncomfortable around that ... we can aswell cancel whole game. :-/

But yes, as a matter of some middle ground it is acceptable ...
Even tho i still believe that fact that they are calling for reinforcements give your benevolence to keep them alive the right value ... you know what it will cost, but you spare them anyway. :P

Do you know World of Darkness setting?
Especialy Vampire: The Masquerade?

Basic rule of game says that Vampires are suppose to hide their supernatural powers from humans.
But there are groups (usualy descendant of old inquisitors) that know about their existence and fight against them ... in older rulesets people often asted why Society of Leopold (Vampire hunters group, one of those more sucessfull) never revealed existence of supernatural to the world ...

Just recently (2 or 3 years back i believe?) they released 5v of rules, where this question is finaly answered.
They are equaly affraid of mass panic and people who would be fighting for their rights, and willingly offer themselves as a meal ... wich would both make their job much harder.

Oh, I know exactly what you're thinking. And you are quite right. Note that I only said that it's possible to negotiate, not that it's easy or even likely. But Gith and Drow aren't monsters, they're simply part of a culture that won't allow peaceful co-existence with any other group. But that's because of culture, not because of anything truly inherent to them as a species (I might be wrong about the Gith though, I'd never heard of them before BG3). If you raised a baby in some other society, they'd grow up and not just be evil as a function of their existence. A society that's culturally incompatible with others is a different dynamic to an entire species being such.

I think this thread could only be improved by a derailment.
Killing children isn't my hang up per se, it's that even in D&D I think most people would consider it a particularly heinous act. Like the child 'predator' you meet in prison in one of the previous games.
I've killed the goblin children while rescuing Halsin before because they're running away to warn the entire camp, I've seen a spit with human and dwarf bits on it, I've spoken to others before who said they'd kill me in my sleep and they take pleasure in being cruel to animals. Couple that with my preexisting knowledge of goblins as cruel venal creatures at the bottom of the goblinoid totem pole, and I can cobble together a good enough reason for most of my characters to kill them.

As opposed to what I know about the Tiefling children. They're scared. Some are being trained to fight, which made me dislike the adults a little, but which I interpreted as an act of desperation. There's also a group of moppets who steal trinkets from everyone to survive, and want to steal an idol to stop a ritual that will force them into the wilderness, where they will most likely die. So another act of desperation. Me, the player, doesn't have a preconceived notion about a Tiefling's infernal heritage, and seemingly neither does my character, at least I can't recall it coming up. So that angle doesn't work. So in order for my character to kill these children without compunction, he'll need either a compelling reason from the goblin camp, or he needs to be a character who is just that evil. Being a character who is that evil is fine to me but I would appreciate some kind of build-up to it, a conversation here or there about what kind of person I am to do such a thing.

I think this is a little pertinent SNL skit

Has anyone knocked out the tiefling children, taken a long rest, and returned to see if they're still alive. Almost everyone I knocked out in this game bleeds out after one long rest anyway.

At least that was the case when I last tested.

Just throwing this out there…I personally do *not* think the option to go Anakin Skywalker on kids should be removed from the game at all. By all means, more options are always better imho. I also have no judgment on how anyone plays their games.

Just for me, personally, I try not to kill kids.

Perhaps it is the way they are presented in the game, and the fact that I am new to Forgotten Realms…but the goblins have their own language, religion, culture, magic, and individual personalities. You can even work with them if you choose to. As presented in this game, I find it hard to buy into “goblins are pure evil and a scourge and should always be destroyed”. They just seem like a warrior society with questionable morals (canabilism? Yech) to me (as a newb). Perhaps that is why it feels icky to kill goblin children.

But overall, I would rather these types of morally dark things be in the game than have it turn into My Little Pony. It is an adult game after all.

I think the reason for it was already broached before the thread was necro'd. Killing children is censored in many countries, like when Fallout had to remove all of them in Europe.

I don't think we should be debating what to remove from a game either, especially one that is supposedly about giving you the freedom to play how thou wilt.

So many examples of (literal) monsters in our own history? Fascinating. I'll continue to harp on the inability to differentiate between reality and fantasy.

You should start reading whole post ... you know, including that quoted part.

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Im not aware that goblins are camnibals ... O_o
They were only eating other speacies after all.

Or at least i dont recall even single example of Goblin eating another Goblin, or at least Goblinoid ... they were supposedly roasting Dwarf (i mean you can still take it as if they are roasting Pork, and just messing with you), and were talking about eating PC (Human/Elf/...), and Halsin (whom they considered a bear).

Goblins are survivalists (generally, though there are exceptions). Things like morality, pride, honour, all these take a back seat to the survival of the tribe, it's why Goblins are far more likely to take an opportunity to flee and save themselves, than they are to make a stand against overwhelming odds. It's also why they might eat what meat is available, even if that meat was their friend two minutes ago. The ends justify the means when it comes to living another day.

In Germany, iirc. Not the rest of Europe.

Man, I remember they made a goddawful abrupt job about it, too.
Children were just made invisible while their ghost-chatting was still visible in several areas and few quests that involved finding a child or similar stuff got broken.
Of course an unofficial patch could be applied to solve the issue, but still.

Never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Never get involved in a thread on D&D morality.

I would say this is more matter of missing option ...
Its every player business if they will care about moral questions or not ... not Larians.

Instead of addressing just the goblins themselves (which I will) I'm going to address all games that play it too safe as well as games that show the "harsher" side of things.

First, "People"? Already there's a flaw with this argument. It's so easy for people to lie to themselves without even realising it (all too common). To think they know "better" yet do not. "Different" yes. But "Goblins are freaks"? But then so are people so often. If you look hard enough and get to know them. Everyone has their reasons for lashing out and being violent (there's worse things then attempted murder. I defuse people in real life). The vioelnce you see may not even be the worst of it. What are people doing? At least with goblins they show it clearly. No excuses or pretence (unless of course Specific X goblin is lying). Are their lives worth "less" because people look down on them? I find this way of thinking unhealthy and destructive. This does affect real life. Make no mistake though, if anything I want to see more pain suffering and despair in games. At the same time there has to be contrast. Reasons. Why. Logic. Without the "You're wrong to exist because you exist" (And with it) which is, frankly, flawed and incorrect.

BG3 is not the kind of game that is "just played to just enjoy it casually without a brain". No, it's an RPG game and as such the "why" and "reasons" for events is important. It's more then "Just because you exist". That is not a good counter argument. It is easily debunked.

Here's the flaw with that argument. "Good and evil" are subjective (Things are more "grey" in reality). The goblins, while more violent, are also more ignorant. They're victims of their own fear and stupidity. Every kid to ever exist at that point (baring violence. Getting to that). This is dangious but I can see bigger dangers. Are their lives "less worthy" then that of another race just for the soul reason that "They're goblins"? Even orcs in LOTR get more respect (partly because they make it about strength more. That's actually very important). Orcs wage war over and over. But hey, goblins are small even if adult sized. It's not hard to fit the pieces together. They're easy targets. Humans will pick on them. Take one look at them and go "Stabby stabby" on first sight. Why would a goblin ever be nice to a human if they're treated like that? They will learn to fear. They will learn to hate. They will learn to make targets because that is what they were taught. But just who teaches them?

Honestly, when you take into account we're creating the monsters, stabbing a blue little kid in the eye might be the least of peoples concerns. Btw, I also want the option of stabbing a blue little kid in the eye even if I would rather be diplomatic. Options are options. That's what it boils down too.

Neverwinter Nights 1 actually makes a good case for kobolds. "Paladins seeing the worst too easily and being the first to act out of fear/anger". P.S: Do that to an ice dragon in their own lair and no wonder they freeze you. That's defending your home after being threatened at that point. So I assure you, covering such events and reasons in a game does add to entertaint value while also getting people to consider their real selves (even if they don't realise they do it). The games that show "the ugly truth" are the ones that have helped make me a better person. Options. Choices. Consequences. Most importantly of all player choice. Any "restriction" is basically going "You don't get too. I decided for you because my beliefs are superior to yours." (taking into account it's an intended restriction in this case). It also indicates "I'm afaid of having my game taken down if it's viewed as too extreme".

Let's cover entertainment value.

One of the reasons people "cry" about goblins is because it's been "done to death". It's the "expected result". Boring. Why not a playful good alligned race for once? Can't I stab a race of Azata worshippers? I'm playing pathfinder: wrath of the rightous where characters have eyeballs removed and flesh eaten (not even joking. Love that it does that) but I can't stab a blue kid here? WOTR isn't getting taken down. The blue kid in BG3 can die to a snake though. So there's that. Is that snake "Good" or "evil" for doing what their owner wants? I would say loyal. You can also have a chat with that snake. So this is something. Now what if the player could influence that snake to bite the kid more easily? Roll for diplomacy (actually, please just show me the result with the dice roll. I prefer that. BG3 got that as an option btw?)

I think the devs just don't have enough expreince on the "dark/depraved" side to really consider it enough to show on screen. Impressive that WOTR did. While at the same time able to provide counters to balance things out. In order to truely understand something like that one must understand pain, suffering and depsair to extremes and be able to adapt to the worst of events quickly. The average preson does not have that kind of expreince to have the necessarily imagination for being able to display such events on a game. Oneline roleplay (think of it like typing a stroy together) helps to serve as a controlled environment for such things. Which in turn can lead to games. In order to really "master" it though one must know it "first hand". So the lack of "Extremes of the dark side" can be because the devs lack such experience. It's my strong suit. If I was adding story/plot to a theme I would be able to do that. Though in the case of BG3 I think I'd only do that in an expansion to start with a character from scratch. I've been inspired by some lawful evil characters lately. I think chaotic evil needs more understanding though (got a good head cannon for other settings there).

Once we introduce fear it gets more complicated. It's easy to see the worst. But what if that's the problem? Rather, specifically, what if what people see/believe isn't the truth? There's a reason we all need to be challenged. Even degraded. To leave weakness unchallenged and under the guise of strength is to allow weakness. Of the self. Which affects others. The goblins are weak. What affected the goblins? We'd probably have to go far back in their history to find the answer.

"Goblins are evil. They're monsters". PEOPLE are often monsters. It's simply a quesiton of wherever one is honest about it and can claim responsibility (and many people and monsters alike do not). Anyone that can't do that is a danger/threat to me. It's a matter of awareness/honesty/trust. In that order. You might call that "lawful evil". It can as easily be viewed as "Chaos theory". And thus apply to a chaotic evil character. It matters not if people intend or seek out. The pattern will be followed or you will suffer and continue to suffer. Suffering itself not the worst part. Worst part is "Living a lie". An honest situation even if painful can be worth the suffering.

Because of the awareness factor (both eyes open) this is why the "why" of context and individials is important. Even when it comes to green nosed little snots. There's also envirnoment and upbringing to take into account. If you do the same thing over and over then you get used to it. It's insanity. But you're used to it. May as well make the best of it and enjoy what you can. If you didn't do what's expected of you then you wouldn't fit in. If you don't hurt that big bear in the cage the your breathen might shun you and see you as a freak. Where would you go? Who would you turn too?

The goblins are in a catch 22 situation there. At the same time "Do what's expected when you're an elf. Warcraft 3 makes a good point of how that's counter productive and leads to violence when diplomacy works better (Hellscrem and Thrall). What is said about goblins right now? That was said of orcs before. Before that it was drow, who actually have quite the interesting culture. So on and so forth. Do we want more interesting goblins that have more going on for them then "Because goblin" or do we want "Because goblin"?

I also argue that the races with good intentions and moral high grounds cause more harm then good then any honest evil race. I actually can see Sauron in LOTR in a "Postive" light when I take into account that even if his methods are harsh he'll still want you and put you to use even if you stand against everything he beleives in (there's a certain "coexistence" behind that). Which is more then a back turner or coward would do when they have good intentions and leave you to bleed to death as they toss you aside like you're garbage and not even worth breaking. I WANT to see more of this with more elaboration in games. It's good story and lore. Seeing Talions family being murdered, kid included, in shadow of mordor was a sight to see. It shows how far Talion has been broken and fallen by the time he's descending into a state of apathy in shadow of war and giving reason for that. With reasons and why. Instead of "just because". The story in Shadow of War is flawed but it displays events where "good" can be why "evil" exists. The logic makes sense too. Fight that long and at some point you side with the devil you know. Sauron if nothing else is not a back turner. He killed your family but he's always been one co confront and knows control and strength. Something to learn from. Something people want and desire. If you wallow, keep attacking out of fear and anger and continue in that then that is your weakness. Sauron recruits the nazgul by simply not going "I tell you what to think. I know best." Instead he's turn your life upside down and you will consume yourself. Your own weakness. Even if devoid of all meaning and purpose, even if he is the reason for that at first, in the end he's giving you that reason and purpose. It's very effective. If such lore was expanded on even more then it might be enjoyed by more players. We know Sauron's "methods" yet little to nothing of his reasons. This can easily set up a evil character that's along the same lines in D&D.

It could as easily be a D&D setting where a dragon consumes souls yet spares you if you're entertaining/useful. I'd also be courting that dragon if they're female and sleeping with it, as long as they're honest and not one to hide. While gaining the ability to turn into a dragon myself. Do you think this sick and twisted? Judge if you like. I and whatever dragon I would be with would be focusing on being happy without putting each other in danger. My mindset when facing any character (game or life alike) is "are they a threat to ME?" And if so "Why?" Cue communicaiton/diplomacy/debate. THEN let's further take into account the options (if that sounds like a lot of work, it means work more until it becomes second nature). Are the optionsin a game "Black or white"? If the answer to this is yes then the issue is more to do with those black and white options where a player is shoe horned down one path or another. Do we "have" to kill the goblins at the bear? Can we do a distraction to lure them away instead? Can the player talk around things with high enough diplomacy? It's about the "options". The more there are the less a player feels "constrained". If a person in real life is sick and tired of being "the good guy" then they want to have that choice in a game. If they don't get that in a game (or some other way) this willl affect their real life. Without some outlet then someone could get hurt when the pressure of "I was never allowed" kicks in which leads to lash outs. You already might have a parent doing it to you. Add a game doing it on top of that and it's added stress. At some point... Boom. Like a boiler that can't let off steam. This is why it's very important for games to have as much freedom as possible. Unless the design of the game is to be restrictive (let's say SWAT 4. Ruels of engagement. BUT the player can CHOOSE not to follow them and shoot people unarmed people that surrender. Still one of the best games ever made).

There's also not much entertaintment value in "Oh look yet another goblin to kill" when it's been done to death 1000 times over. We get it D&D. You can do goblins and make them bad guys. In some games you can even SAVE a goblin. Who can then become a cook in your kitchen. It's different. So it's "more fun" because of this. Surely this is more entertaining (and useful) then "yet another goblin to kill". "Just being goblins for the sake of being goblins" isn't a good enough reason for the goblins to be there IMO. At least the game Shadow of War gives personality to the orcs. One that want to be friendly. Ones that sing. Ones that have great comebacks. Ones that actually really are insane and can't even form a setence. Variety. Is. Key. Context is key. It makes the in game world come to life.

The entertainment from games is there BECAUSE it reflects real life. In the Witcher 3 for example one of the points it makes is that "Humans are monsters". We all are. Some are just honest about it. Batman would say it. Going to argue with Batman? he knows he used go "I know best for you" too much. He says it when he's odler and wiser. it's a nice touch to the character. I like it when games and TV display this. The "self reflection". It gets us to relate to them.

In Nevewinter Nights 1 I also get to see the other side of the kobolds when I don't kill them (which you can). The CHOICE is there. The OPTION is there. This is back around the year 2000. It might be one of the first games that put kobolds in a "Don't just kill them" light. Now we got kobolds being pretty popular. So take that for what it's worth. If kobolds started becoming more populer around the year 2000 then Neverwinter Nights 1 might have had a hand in it. One was even a pet to a dragon. That you're not forced to kill and can convinced to be peaceful. Options. If I want to turn into a frost giant and attack him then that option is there too (it's even tying in with a quest). When a player has options upon options suddenly they're more and more in control of it all. Best. Feeling. Ever.

In the game Pathfinder: Wrath of the RIghtious, if I want to kill angels trapped inside of a crystal and uneleash fallen ones devoid of hope that are angry I can do that. If I want to kill them all I can do that. If I want to save them all I can do that. The CHOICE is there. On all accounts. This is religion here. representing christianity. So if we're talking morals I'm talking morals. If I want to be a genoicidal swarm that walks and consume everyone I come across then even that option is there. It's not the most fun because it lacks more communication then other ways I can play. But it's an option. It's basically the "I've played the game so often I'm just going to clean house" mythic. Why do people kill everyone in Skyrim? Same reason.

Course, if you kill everyone you come across then there's a lack of plot. So the game has to take this into account too. Which is why the swarm thing I mentioned above is done much later in the game. Still, any reason a game can't basically do a Undertale genocide run? We ARE the kid there. Murdering everything in our path.

After typing all this out I've suddenly got a newfound respect for games that show the darker side of events. So yes, I want more of that in BG3 too. Make dark have a point. Make light flawed. And just for laughs have a snot nosed goblin bake me a pie in the kitchen. I'll keep you save from the wrath of humans if you're useful you little welp. Mush!

In the real world, people are people and actions are evil, good or (most often) somewhere in-between. Goblins are actual monsters; monsters are fictional creations not bound by reality. Stop pushing this "monsters are human too" agenda.

A popular take, but utterly wrong. Goblins aren't the victims, they are the perps. It's not humans who pick on goblins, it's goblins who target humans. It's not humans who can't live with goblins, it's goblins who rove off of humans. It's like blaming the sheep for shunning the wolf. It's humans who fear goblins, not the other way around.

The post is much too dense to respond to fully, so I will focus on this part.

If you believe casting a monster in a sympathetic light is in any way bold or new, you haven't been paying attention to entertainment for the past 30 years. "[Insert monster here] is actually misunderstood and a victim and the REAL aggressors are the humans" is about as stock a trope as it gets. It came about as a subversion of the "evil monster" trope, true, but it's been done so many times it became a generic trope unto itself.

Similarly, saying that humans can be monstrous is not some "ugly truth" or enlightened wisdom, it's something most people realize by the time they hit 15. If someone needs a game to make them realize that and look into themselves, I dare say they are extremely sheltered and have bigger problems than the way monsters are handled in fictional narratives.

None of this is controversial whatsoever. Gratuitous gore or sympathetic monsters or putting the blame on humans isn't going to get anything taken down, they've been entertainment staples for decades. On the contrary, I would argue that having an inherently, irredemably evil race is what's truly subversive in the current year. After all, this is why the lore is being changed in the first place. Because of social pressures. People say it's "bigoted" to have an evil race because they look for parallels where there are none, and so to avoid making this vocal minority mad, the idea of evil races is being done away with. Not some attempt to add depth. Not to make you ask questions. Pure peer pressure.

Oh dear. Each time people bring up "but PEOPLE are the real evil!" like it is some kind of hot new thing, I get reminded of that this was revolutionary about... Well, early 19th century when Frankenstein was written. The vast majority of modern horror focuses on the evil of man instead of including monsters, so yeah. Most people probably got the message by now.


I am with Ragitsu on this one tbh. Constantly trying to frame man/humanoids as the evil-doers (excluding obvious humanoid antagonists) in universes where there clearly are monsters that seek to harm humans/humanoids/other living things for no particularly good reason is really not revolutionary in any way, and - in my personal opinion - it is quite boring.

Like Dexai said -

Goblins are not afraid of humans - they chase down both humans and other living beings. There are even multiple in-game notes on this from Halsin and some other NPCs. We are not hunting peaceful goblins that are trying to exist in their own little village without harming anyone, we are hunting goblins that are terrorizing human settlements, travelers and other living beings for sports.

I mean, you obviously do find enjoyment in all the shades of grey aspects that could possibly fit into the story - which obviously is fine and all - but some people do not. Personally I am so extremely tired of movies, books, games and whatnot trying to push the "but is the hero REALLY a hero? HMMM?"-setting that by now I simply roll my eyes when I see it. Small bits and pieces, sure. That can work as pretty good character development. But constantly trying to push character that obviously try their best to be good towards the grey or even evil spectrum is just so very boring and has been done in every single possible way there is as that take is very popular in modern entertainment because some people find it so "compelling" and "realistic".

Btw.


I don't think any fantasy fan would find your wishes for a romance with a dragon very "sick and twisted" (I mean, what? Why would we? Dragon and human romance has been a thing for ages) - especially not in the DnD setting where there are so many different dragons. The idea of dragons having humanoid lovers is not really revolutionary either - although I am not quite sure about the "gaining the ability turn into a dragon myself"-part... But I suppose fantasy is fantasy so if that is what you'd feel compelled by then by all means. Go you!

And options - absolutely. I agree. Options are great - the more the better (as long as the game can "handle" the options and respond accordingly). Not sure what to think about the statement behind "If a person in real life is sick and tired of being "the good guy" then they want to have that choice in a game. If they don't get that in a game (or some other way) this willl affect their real life"-part. I know venting is important and have proven very healthy for gamers in general - as you say, having an outlet is good - but let's not pretend like there is a lack of games (and irl physical activities) where you can have your outlet (in so many varying shapes and forms). That said, if the argument you're trying to push is "it's important to have a functional and satisfying evil path" then sure. Most people here have already argued for Larian to improve their evil path. In a RPG, the entire point is being able to roleplay as different characters, obviously this would include evil characters.

TL;DR - There's a lot of text in your comment, and I agree in some things that you say, while disagreeing with other things you say. Much of what you say is just opinion-based - which is fine, obviously, most of us just have opinions here. All in all, I prefer having a balance to it all. Some good alignment, some evil alignment. Evil monsters are fine, redeemable/misunderstood monsters are fine. It's all about moderation.

I dunno ...
I bet there isnt as much Goblin Heroes who would travel to Human Village and slaughter those dangerous Humans ...
As there is Human Heroes who would travel to Goblin Village (tribe?) and slaugher those dangerous Goblins ...

Dont get me wrong, i would never say that Goblins are good race ... nor are Humans tho.

I dunno why so many people in this matter need to see either A or B ... while middle ground is so easily to find here.
There simply isnt race of victims and race of agressors ... once there are Humans and Goblins within grasp of each other, they are both attacking and killing each other ... sometimes out of fear, sometimes for resources, sometimes bcs they simply want to, and sometimes preventively so the other dont have enough time to create too strong army to decimate the other (and im sure there is plenty other options im too lazy to find) ...

Trying to choose if Goblins or Humans are better race seems to me like choosing if you want to be shoot into right, or left knee ...
I would preffer no shooting at all, thank you.

---

//Edit:
Now ... how about return to actual problem of this topic? :P
We demand more sexy(?) options to kill Tieflings kids!

Because it's not a thing goblin heroes do, it's a thing the average goblin does. Whereas humans need help from exceptional people to protect themselves.

cite your sources, and don't tell me Palpatine. It could be that you're treating as subjective, something that is merely unknowable. What is good and evil, and whether or not they are subjective, is the fodder of most philosophy. Furthermore in my experience most philosophy is really about one question: "What gives value to human life?"

None of this is pertinent in D&D because good and evil are explicitly objective in this setting, and unlike in our world, those 'people' aren't human. One of the reasons I brought up Mass Effect is because science-fiction deals with this dynamic in a slightly less fraught way. Stories about heroes dealing with icons from folklore are already going to be easily seen as allegory for the real world, but spacemen making first contact with an entirely new form of life are easier to treat for what they are, something completely alien to our own experience. It's very pithy to think that everyone is human, if they are sentient how can they not be, but what if sentience is a concept that we take for granted in this way. Even with free will your essential makeup in D&D can be inherently good or evil, there's no way getting around that.

Also I'm not an expert in Tolkien cosmology but I do think Sauron is in league with or is continuing the work of literal Satan, and not cool neopagan Satan either.

As for the Witcher, I think this brings up a concept I haven't seen too much around here. The idea that not only can individuals, races, and societies have alignments, but also worlds. Or in D&D, planes of existence. The Material Plane is tabula rasa but it is influenced by every plane of existence, among these are the planes where lawful chaotic good and evil stem from, think on that the next time WotC tries to downplay alignment.

And the most important take away of all...give us a romanceable dragon please. I'll also accept a mermaid~but I've said too much.

Larian is DM. DM decides what is good and evil. Goblins are painted as bad. Tieflings good. Join goblins. You're bad. Join Tieflings, you're good.

Therefore, based on DM's choice, kill all goblins. Good. Kill all Tieflings. Bad.

Just ask Gale, Wyll and Shadowheart. They all don't like helping the goblins.

The reason I felt the need to push back against that statement is because I knew someone that called the Nazis "monsters". I pointed out that the actions of the Nazis and their sympathizers were certainly monstrous, but they themselves were people...incredibly desperate and living in a time of greater ignorance (when certain propaganda was easier to propagate), but still people. There was nothing special about them. It is dangerous to assume another group of people (humans) in another place and another time couldn't be persuaded to commit similar atrocities.

However, that is reality. If you want to represent that sort of social rot in your tabletop gaming campaign, that is fine, but don't cut yourself off from escapism because entertainment at large has convinced you that escapism is "wrong" or "dumb". As Sigmund Freud once said, "Sometimes, an orc is just an orc."

P.S. Should you desire standoffish beings that aren't human, consider making them universally some flavor of Neutral; there's nothing that says a Lawful Neutral/Neutral/Chaotic Neutral group can't be initially hostile/aggressive until they're convinced to calm down.

So as someone who isn't a fan of the stance that goblins, orcs, bugbears, etc are all monsters and are only ever evil...I do not have any issue at all with the goblins presented in BG3. They're part of an evil cult, of course they're evil and I'm not gonna feel bad about killing them. The presence of goblin children that I can kill? Yeah, that's pretty iffy to me, but keep it in the game, I don't care. Hell, I liked the little bit about the goblins having turned away from their prior god and I actually hope that comes up again later because it's an interesting idea of one flavor of evil vs another flavor of evil.

Ultimately, even though I don't like races that are pure evil without the intervention of some kind of magic and I'm glad that that's becoming less and less the default assumption in settings and games, because I think it's an inferior default...it doesn't really matter. The changes are happening, but the DM can make any choice at their table and that's fine, as long as they aren't being a dick to their players. And likewise the players shouldn't be dicks to their DM. I get it, we're all passionate about this hobby and we want as many people to enjoy it as possible. But ultimately...this is just a game. And really, the issue of good goblins and bad goblins isn't an issue that BG3 is even trying to ask.


I will bring up something about escapism that I think has kind of gotten lost in this thread. For some people, having an entire species that is unfailingly and unchangeably evil that they can kill guiltlessly regardless of context isn't escapsim. It certainly isn't for me. For plenty of people, being able to play as that race and force the acknowledgement of their personhood from others who deny it is escapism. Or having a world where that personhood isn't even a question and they can just go off and do cool stuff is escapism for them.

Basically, there's no such thing as doing escapism wrong, and different people have different ideas of it.

Spare me. As of late, the entertainment industry as a whole has thoroughly convinced people that heroes that aren't really heroes and monsters/bad guys that aren't monstrous/bad is fun; once you take a step back, you realize that this assumption as the norm is exhausting rather than enjoyable. Where's the pull? What is the incentive to jump from a muddled reality to a muddled "fantasy" full of humans in funny suits in addition to regular humans? Why does the lion's share of media have to be constrained by a soul-sucking palette of grey and gray? What should have been an interesting occasional twist (i.e., "Monsters as analogies for real-world human minority groups.") - particularly as a method for teaching children about bias recognition - has overtaken fiction. The pushback against people that want simple literal monsters to vanquish is incredibly inane and I will continue to maintain that a narrow inability to separate reality from fiction (or vice versa) is at the heart of the matter.

I simply think that there's a difference between "there are sapient beings who are as a species irredeemably evil as a function of their species" and "there are bad guys that you don't have to feel bad about fighting and killing." I fully support the idea of bad guys being bad and good guys being good, with some complexity thrown in for variety. I won't argue that always assuming monstrous races are an analogy for oppressed minorities isn't the way to go about things. I just also don't think that "sapient species that can be written off as murder fodder" is the only alternative. And that being the norm for so long ends up being just as inane and dull. I'm all about vanquishing monsters. Killing owlbears and evil cults, overthrowing evil empires and slaying wicked witches and evil warlocks? Bring all that on! the Darkspawn from Dragon Age? Oh yeah, I can kill those all day. Same with the myriad monsters in The Witcher games, or the various demons and devils in Pathfinder. I love villains who are unappologetically evil and wicked, and do their thing with glee and not a shred of remorse. Those guys are fun and killing them are absolutely my preferred type of escapism. And none of it requires assuming that a sapient race is just evil. You can even still have a race be the antagonists because that's what their culture, leadership, etc leads them to being.

It's not an assumption. Take your pick ->

They're evil because they were created by an evil god.
They're evil because they were formed from "immoral residue" that was cast off when the world was young and still changing.
They're evil because they were tainted by corrupting magic.
They're evil because...they're evil. Hooray for the tautology: steadfast savior of escapism.

And which are Goblins?
I've been think about this a little and I wonder if this is more of a sticking point for people because the goblins we meet all speak common. When building a world I always like to take into account language as a major factor in shaping societies, regions and races. Goblins who speak common, and speak it pretty well, are already on a level well above my personal baseline expectation. The goblin language, as I understand it, if translated into English would sound like a series of verbs and nouns that only make sense in context, because it's a reflection the level of concepts possible to its average speaker.

Also Ragitsu, a little more politesse might be in order. GG isn't wrong to feel this way, these concepts are present in genre fiction. If we're going to have a conversation on this topic, it should attempt to intersect with how races are depicted in D&D and in BG:3. Otherwise this thread is just going to be a place for people to rant.

Sozzy, but my intention isn't to sway folks to my point of view; I came here to counter the notion that "Universally evil race/species in tabletop gaming = stupid and/or dubious." and to display solidarity with anyone else sympathetic to this refutation.

And as I've said a couple times before, all of those things other than the last one are justifications I'm totally fine and happy with, you won't see me complaining about those first three. Again, I point out the various races of devils, the corruption inherent in becoming a Lich. Furthermore, if a game sends me to kill a tribe of orcs that have recently raided and destroyed a small village, I'm not gonna raise moral complaints, because they did something evil. If I enconter a goblin that has been lurking in the sewers of a city, mugging and killing remorselessly for food, I'm also not gonna feel bad about killing them. You can have unquestionably evil antagonists without resorting to tautalogical "evil because this species is evil and there's no other justification why" language. And frankly, those first three ideas are all way more interesting and imply really cool lore stuff that I almost always love to get into, whereas evil because evil is dull and kinda lazy from a creative standpoint. And again, I will counter the notion of escapism being just one thing that requires some specific things to count as escapism, which you're implying whether you intend to or not.

Ultimately though, I respect that you have your opinion and that it differs from mine. As I've said before, your approach to enjoying games is valid and doesn't make you stupid or dubious.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Goblin

https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/goblin

Alignment = ???

Description
Goblins are small, black-hearted humanoids that lair in despoiled dungeons and other dismal settings. Individually weak, they gather in large numbers to torment other creatures.

Personality
Like other goblinoids, goblins often had a short temper,[7] and were more easily provoked than individuals of most other races. They often found it difficult to overcome this short fuse, and had a sense of greed that made it difficult for them to act altruistically.[14] They also generally took sadistic pleasure in exacting revenge once crossed.[14]

Young goblins were taught from an early age to rely only on themselves, and that to survive, they needed to be aggressive and ruthless. To a goblin, it didn't seem logical to treat others as well or better than you would treat yourself; rather, they believed in preemptively removing potential rivals before they could become a threat. Expatriated goblins would sometimes try to recreate the circumstances of their culture, preying on the weaknesses of others in non-goblin communities.[9]

Despite their generally poor reputation however, not all goblins were dim-witted or evil. Some goblins have risen to become heroes, gaining enough renown to be accepted into the civilized world of other, more commonly good races. Those goblins seeking this path may have found it difficult to overcome their temper and greed, as well as the cultural influence of their brethren, but those who did often found it could be more rewarding, in the long run at least, to serve good rather than to serve evil.[14] Those that did often made use of their ill-gained talents as rogues or fighters.

Can there be good goblins? Yes. Are they uncommon and even the young are standardly evil? Yes. Would the young in BG3 fall into evil category. Yes.

Just ask Brian.

I cant quite shake the idea that you are totally offtopic. :-/

A little hint from OP:

Who is off topic? We're discussing why it's okay to kill goblin kids but not tieflings.

"Young goblins were taught from an early age to rely only on themselves, and that to survive, they needed to be aggressive and ruthless."

So, most are evil like their adults. Therefore, killing goblin young is killing evil young.

You can't tell me those kids in the gobbo camp weren't going to partake in eating victims like Brian and those taken from Waukeen's Rest and such.

Tiefling kids, on the other hand, unless I missed something, weren't eating people.

Hmmm…so they are *taught* to be evil. This implies the evil is learned, not innate. As does the fact that some goblins can be civilized. Based on this…I am definitely going to try not to kill goblin kiddos unless I play a char that hates all gobbos (like Wyll). It is interesting that we come to opposite conclusions reading the same text! Lol

As I understand what u posted…even in DnD lore, they are not considered pure evil. They just are conditioned by their innate poor tempers and cultural pack-like norms to do evil things. At least, that is how I read this.

They are not like, say, orcs in Tolkien who are innately evil from corruption.

Not really, no. This idea that the evil humanoid monsters are "Evil because of culture" would have to be a recent addition/retcon. If you look at the original Goblin (AD&D and AD&D 2e), you don't see anything about goblins being "driven to evil" because of peer pressure; they are evil and whatever society of theirs is encountered was formed around that malevolence.

Description
Goblins are small, black-hearted humanoids that lair in despoiled dungeons and other dismal settings.

This is from D&D Beyond.

All sources say their alignment is Neutral Evil.

FR wiki's explanation for their evil alignment is: "goblins often had a short temper,[7] and were more easily provoked than individuals of most other races.They often found it difficult to overcome this short fuse, and had a sense of greed that made it difficult for them to act altruistically.They also generally took sadistic pleasure in exacting revenge once crossed."

So, their very nature drives them with desires towards evil, making them, in general, an evil race. Are their exceptions? Yes. But the goblins in BG3 are obviously not the exceptions. They are evil, for they are killing and eating people. Their kids are partaking in the killing and eating of people. Therefore, they are all evil.

As is the case with orcs, goblins used to be Lawful Evil. It makes sense that a race collectively driven to visit depredations upon civilized lands would tend towards an authoritarian mentality (and a frequently petty one at that). Somewhere along the line, it appears that hobgoblins became the goblinoid poster boys for Lawful Evil.


Furthermore, you can use these exceptions...or you can ignore them entirely (it wouldn't be the first time an element of The Forgotten Realms were omitted from a campaign). Hell, some people are steadily working to make the exceptions the standard; what used to be a surprising subversion is no longer sexy or daring.

Why people compare humans to creatures. If your dog bite everything he can, they will kill him, some dogs are raised to be evil, when society find them, sometimes its too late.

Help me out here ...
Relation to the problem that we are by engine unable to harm Tiefling kids is ... ?

People on the thread are talking about more than just that one aspect of the issue. They are talking about the morality of killing goblin kids as opposed to tiefling kids. Why you picking on me? I'm not the only person out here having this conversation.

You are the person who claimed that he is totally on topic ...
So i want to understand how is descriptio of evilness of Goblinoids related to topic.

It is entirely on topic. The point is that we can kill goblin kids but not tiefling kids. Why should that be the case? The logic of why that may be so is innately tied into DnD concept of evil as it applies to goblins. I don’t know how much more “on point” it can be.

In any case, I think the discussion is interesting and I am learning alot about DnD alignment system (personally, as a newb).

I also think the notion is of creating a pure evil race as something you can kill without regret (something Tolkien was adamant was a key part of fantasy writing and the history of the genre) is also an interesting side topic that naturally has come out of this.

I will say that if you can kill goblin kids, you probably should be able to kill the tiefling children. I mean, if you're going to play an evil character, you probably don't feel guilty about killing any of the tieflings and druids. So why would killing tiefling kids bother you? I personally don't like to play the "evil" path. I don't like going around killing anyone in the grove. I have no problems killing everyone in the goblin camp because they're trying to kill me and/or everyone in the grove that I'm trying to save. They're cooking people and torturing them and so on and so forth, so killing them makes me feel like I'm being a hero and purging the region of evil people/monsters. That goes for Andrick and Brynna too, and any other non-goblins in the goblin camp. If the Zhents attack me because I'm killing the goblins, then I'm going to kill them too because they're trying to help the evil goblins.

But killing the tiefling kids, to me, makes me feel crappy, but only a bit more crappy than killing all their adults and the druids and so forth. I mean, I feel like a monster and a jerk if I play that route and kill them all, regardless of children or not. So, I'm not 100% sure why they don't allow you to kill the kids too other than maybe they felt that was just a bit too far and a bit too evil. But then, if that's how the developers feel, should we demand that they feel guilty and make it so people can kill the tiefling kids too? It's their game. If they feel guilty about making it so you can kill tiefling kids - or they think it will cause people to get really upset - then it makes sense that they don't allow it. People can generally come to terms with killing evil monster kids who are killing and torturing and eating people. People might have more issues with killing a bunch of mischievous tiefling kids. So, they may not want players to be able to kill the tiefling children because they may just not want the backlash for allowing such a thing.

Either way, I don't enjoy killing kids, goblin or tiefling, and I don't like killing characters who are good. I have no problems killing characters who are evil: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Goblin, Troll, Ogre, or whatever.

That said, I can reconcile killing goblin kids because I can say to myself, "They are evil and they will grow up to be even more evil." Start making them gray and not evil, and then I have a problem. If you tell me that goblins aren't evil in general and they are just misunderstood and not necessarily bad but just taught to be bad and they could be redeemed and good, I'm gonna have a REAL big problem killing goblins and ESPECIALLY goblin kids.

So, yes. It is VERY much related to the topic.

Ideally, it should be possible to kill anybody. It should also be possible to decide NOT to kill anybody, if you are willing to put up with whatever hassles that involves.

I'd prefer not to have a "Little Lamplight" situation where children troll you with dumb quests and then are completely invulnerable.

+1! +1! +1!

You know what? I will say, even if they just allowed you to knock the kids out, that would be better than making them invulnerable. I will admit that. My evil playthrough, my drow sorcerer would have secretly slipped into their little Dragon's Lair and butchered them all while they slept, especially since the one kid actually did rob him of some gold and I failed to convince Mol to give it back.

So, I will agree with you there. As much as I don't like evil playthroughs and killing kids and good people, if you are going to make a game so you can play an evil character, you should at least allow players to play evil.

Puzzling: no one addressed my dragon in the room.

Lol...you mean how no one cares about killing dragon wyrmlings?

Or Hatchlings, yeah. They are "kids", right? Oh, I'm sure there are many advocates of all things draconic, but I've noticed far less hand-wringing over the slaying of the fire-breathing, lightning-hurling, acid-spewing, poison-belching and cold-exhaling menaces even when they are merely man-sized.

You're wrong. We just haven't gotten to it yet. 🤣

But while we're on the subject... Dragons ARE intelligent and not all Chromatic have to be evil. Right? Oh. But they have four legs, so it's okay. 😁

Actually, I'm pretty sure dragons fall into the same existence styling as fiends and celestials here - Just as a fiend who ceases to be evil also, at that time, ceases to be a fiend and is changed by it, and a celestial who ceases to be good is also changed physically by that shift: the same goes for dragon, if a little differently - metallics that lose their goodness tarnish and cease to be true metallics, and, similarly, a chromatic that genuinely becomes no longer evil in their essence undergoes a shift and will no longer resemble a chromatic.

I'm, er, not really sure where the new crystals from Fizban's fall into all of this...

They are Evil (Lawful or Chaotic) in AD&D/AD&D 2e and "Always lawful evil"/"Always chaotic evil" in 3e/3.5e. Starting with 4e, D&D started to go soft on monster Alignment in general.

One of the reasons 4e didn't do so well perhaps?

The game is Dungeons and Dragons. The epitome of final bosses, the highlight of every quest, is to fight an evil dragon. As Volo said, "Every story benefits from having a dragon."

NOW I'm fully off topic. 😁

You can do this; that's how they avoid you killing them, if you engage in forced combat with the refugee children in their hideout. You hit them, and they go to 'unconscious' as though you'd used non-lethal, and no amount of extra thwaks will push them past unconscious.

Which, as a side note... shows that Larian are perfectly capable of fixing the bug that causes non-lethal strikes to do lethal damage with additional follow-up damage on the same strike (extra damage die from other sources, etc). They just haven't yet.

Is it good time to mention Tadpoles ...
Or are we not quite ready yet to mix another sensitive matter from real life to this topic?

People can be very sensitive about killing (what looks like) baby animals, so I wouldn't be so sure nobody except dragon enthusiasts would have a problem with killing a hatchling, chromatic or no, as long as it acts/talks like a kid. I'd wager quite a few would be displeased if killing it was the only way, with no option to leave it alone or let it go. Hell, many would probably want to "adopt" it like the owlbear cub instead

This is what years of Disney movies gets you. I particularly liked the moment when, if you spare the owlbear cub, it tentatively goes to it's mother's body...and starts eating it.

As a dragon enthusiast myself I can tell you I avoided killing dragons in Dragon Age as much as possible because...dragons are cool...and endangered? Listen my rationalization isn't great but what can I say. So I'm maybe not qualified to speak on the morality of culling the nest.

Like with a lot D&D lore, I've never been too enthusiastic about the dragons they give us, so I never knew that if they went against their inherent alignment it is physically manifested. Very interesting. If that's true of Devils and Fiends too, why doesn't that manifest in Tieflings? I'm always confused when the metaphysical translate into the physical in situations like this. Or doesn't not happen with Devils? That's interesting too.

It used to be that tieflings couldn't be of Good alignment due to their heritage, but that was changed in later editions. Makes no sense to me, they are planetouched after all, they should be influenced by the evil planes, but I suppose too many people wanted to play a good unjustly persecuted underdog. It's a shame because tieflings don't have a culture of their own, so without the influence of their bloodline they don't have much to set them apart lore-wise. You have this cool evil heritage, but the only thing it does is give you horns, a tail, and a couple spells. Boring!

(Note, this isn't directed specifically at you, Sozz, the quote is just the springboard because I keep seeing this and it bugs me...)

Tieflings suffer from an incredibly mixed origin, in terms of writing, not lore. The writing has changed wildly over the years, and been retconned (looking at you Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes).

In 3e, widely considered to be the golden age of planetouched, they were either locked to evil, or locked to chaotic, depending on your specific source. But, at the same time, Tieflings were also not that far removed from their fiendish ancestor, at this time it was possible to breed out the fiendish blood, so you could have people looking entirely human with this distant ancestry, and Tieflings suddenly born to normal human parents because they had a fiend way back in their family tree. And, just for clarification, the most fiendish blood a Tiefling could have was around a quarter, too much more and they would be born as a Cambion instead.

Contrast this with Tieflings today. Due to God shenanigans, it's no longer possible to breed out the fiendish blood, the offspring of a Tiefling is always a Tiefling, but at the same time no Tiefling we meet has a true fiendish ancestor within ten generations of them. This goes extra for the Tieflings in this game, because they are refugees of Elturgard, which fell into Avernus, and some of the people who were living in the city were transformed by the ambient energy of the place. They actually have NO fiendish ancestor, they are what we call spontaneous planetouched. Given the way things like this work, I imagine there was also a number of Tieflings born to non-planetouched parents in Elturgard, also spontaneous planetouched.

Now the special thing about planar energy is that it only really affects people when they are on that plane, or are near a planar incursion involving that plane, so some of the transformed people might have had an alignment change, but it's just as likely that that alignment change was reverted when they came back to the material, even if their appearance wasn't. There are many planes that work like this, they change you while you are on that plane, but leaving that plane will revert some of the changes, it's why traveling the planes is serious business, there's the possibility that you won't be the same person on your return trip.

But, what I'm getting at, is that despite the more dramatic and demonic appearances of Tieflings going from 4e onwards, most of them are not at all closely related to their fiendish ancestor, if they even have one at all. They have all the looks, but none of the actual fire and brimstone. They are like a selzter water version of a fiend, vaguely fiend flavoured, but not actually fiendish at all.

They are man-sized and almost or equally as intelligent as an average human...yet still a "kid".

But tieflings look like devils. Therefore, they are. Right? Devils = Evil. Therefore, tieflings = evil.

JK! JK! NOT IN THE FACE! NOT IN THE FACE!

:P

As for dragons:

Red or Blue Dragon Wyrmling has Int 12 (+1).

Average Human Int? 10 (0)

Black Dragon Wyrmling is 10 (0).

Green Dragon Wyrmlings have 14 (+2). Whoa! Why Green Dragon Wyrmlings be so smart? Dang! Even as kids, they're super smart. Green Dragons are the kings of dragonkin. I thought it was the reds. Maybe they're just the scholars and teachers.

White Dragon Wyrmling has 5 (-3). Lol. So White Dragon Wyrmlings are okay to kill. They're stupid. They're not much smarter than animals.

Right, that's why I specified "as long as it acts/talks like a kid". Or a teenager. If a hatchling acts like we would expect an adult, then yeah, less people will have a problem with killing it, but that's to be expected. If someone can't recognize a kid as a kid, they won't treat it like they would a kid.


Ah, I didn't know that, it definitely changes things. I stll think taking away alignment restrictions makes tieflings blander ('vaguely fiend flavoured' is an apt description), but it makes more sense.

In 3e, when I was most on top of the lore, Tieflings were tainted by a infernal bloodline, it didn't make them inherently evil, it only meant they had to deal, more than their base race, with the inclinations of that bloodline, I remember in Dragon mag and maybe elsewhere these things were expanded on a little for all the different flavors of plane-touched templates. In 5e, they've all been 'claimed' by one or two bloodlines or something like that, sure, but my question was really about how alignment affects the physical aspects of certain races. Similar to this, I learned (or maybe relearned) in the EA that Lolthsworn Drows' eyes turn red, is that from birth? Do they change when you renounce Lolth?

I remember in 3e that in the MM tieflings and aasimar weren't alignment restricted, looking up 3.5 they're "usually evil/good (any)". Of course what I remember most about them is the artwork, I've wanted to make that mustachioed aasimar in a game for ages. WotR came close.

Having physical attributes completely at odds with your personality or out of your direct control is an interesting wrinkle to a race/character.

Come to think of it, in a low-level campaign designed to end at a low-level, I can see a group of adventures fighting a Wyrmling/Hatchling as their capstone encounter.

"Though I learned many things - including the extent of my mettle - I decided that an adventuring life was not for me."

Sunless Citadel, a very famed 1-4 adventure module brought forward into 5e in Tales from the Yawning Portal, has an ice dragon wrymling in it, towards the end. It's not actually the final encounter, and the adventurers are gently pushed towards subduing it rather than killing it, for in-story reasons.

For the record, yes, Whites are brutish and dumb, as far as dragons go. Comparatively, Greens are the schemers and enjoy plans and plots more than any other chromatic type.

You may be conflating maturity with intelligence; just as it is possible to find a manifestly stupid adult who possesses enough survival skills to scrape on by, you can find a brilliant kid that nevertheless has many lessons on practicality ahead of them. I dislike anthropomorphizing monsters any more than is absolutely necessary, but I imagine a Hatchling Chromatic Dragon (sans the White variety) would behave like a genuinely smart human child with a firmly exaggerated sadistic/brutish streak.


That reminds me...



^ At first blush, the depicted scene is slightly amusing; once you learn the deadly nature of even the youngest dragons, you recognize the difficulty of such an achievement.

Now that's a kill😁

Regarding dragons of any age, the fact that dragons are metaphysically evil does shift things in my opinion. Chromatic dragons are magical beings that are evil at their very core, and for them to be good would require, in my very limited understanding, some degree of magical intervention. And as for a wyrmling, I've never had to fight one in a campaign, but while I'd feel kinda weird about it, I don't think I'd mind that much unless the GM really leaned into it acting like a child. And even then, a chromatic dragon would probably act like a child the same way a serial killer is a child. Naive, maybe not fully understanding what they're doing, but still eager to hurt things, enjoying hurting things, and with no regard for the pain they're causing.

Regarding tieflings, I personally think alignment locking player races is the less interesting way of doing things. It takes away options rather than adding them. If you want to have it be that tieflings still feel an internal urge to do bad things because of their fiendish heritage, sure. That makes for interesting story. And to flip the script, aasimar feeling the internal urge to good automatically is an interesting direction. You can play an aasimar that wants to be evil, who does selfish, cruel acts, but is always dogged by an inherent, unwavering sense of conscience. The potential of that for a player is incredibly interesting, a villain who can never FULLY justify what they're doing to themselves, who no matter what will always know the difference between right and wrong, and be pulled towards right just like a tiefling will be pulled towards wrong. Both can ignore those urges, but they're still there and they still have to deal with them somehow. But those stories are cut out if you lock alignment.

This is definitely a "my opinion" type of thing, but I dislike the concept of metaphysically evil (or metaphysically good) in the first place. I recognize that this IS a concept in D&D, I'm just saying that I don't like it.

I prefer to say that dragons have tendencies that put them at odds with other creatures (and with each other) and end up acting in a way that we would agree is basically evil*. You could probably still justify killing a wyrmling with by saying that as an adult it will be too late to kill it, and it will be a menace then. I don't think I buy that argument in all cases, but you could certainly make it, and most people in a society ravaged by chromatic dragon attacks would kill the wyrmling as a matter of habit.

*the primary reason I prefer this is that it gives dragons "free will" that is clearly lacking if you assume that they are metaphysically evil.

*eye roll*

I tend to see alignment through the eyes of society and or the PC. A dragon, Orc, Goblin amongst themselves may be considered an honorable warrior, etc; however, they may look at other or “lesser” races as rivals for resources or even as a resource. For an extreme example, amongst us humans we may consider someone as “good” but a cow being raised for food would see us a bad. A Goblin that eats other sentient beings, may be a good provider for it’s clan and a hero.

A white dragon may not be innately evil per say, but will see other beings like a cat sees a rat. To the rat the cat is evil, to cat the rat is food.

An aasimar may tend towards good but one that feels betrayed by their patron god could very well be a darker shade of evil than basically an evil born Tiefling. And the reverse is true of a Tiefling. Humm may have to create an oath of the ancient Tiefling now…

I personally don’t mind beings that are innate in alignment, but I love redemption and execration story lines.

To quote the great sage Paarthurnax

“What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

As to the subject of the thread - sentient children killing does leave a bad taste in my mouth overall. How to approach it in a game I would rather knock them out or they “escape” somehow…. If it’s my PC or them, they die.

The more I hear/read that line, the more I loathe what it represents. Being good is not a competition; the world is better with both people that are kind without a second thought and people who are perpetually on the path of self-improvement. Indeed, one can learn from the other: the innately good being can be thankful that they never had to struggle and the evil being struggling to rise in morality sees the unfailingly altruistic/benevolent individual as a source of inspiration.

By the way, this outlook doesn't preclude the possibility of evil beings (i.e., monsters) that cannot change.

This seems like false example ...

Even the best among Good beings hunt, eat, and kill ... sometimes even without remorse, or second thougths. And it never made them anymore Evil.

If you would like to use Cow raised for food as example ...

Good character would give her as full life as possible, enough space, good food, proper medical care, and kill her as clean and painless as possible.

Evil character on the other hand would probably keep her in some dark, deep, depresive shed, surounded by remains of other cows, almost starved to death and most likely will even torture her just for fun, before he kill her.

Being a hero in eyes of your Evil race doesnt make you much less Evil.

The point of Alignments isnt to determine if your character is popular among his own people, but to determine if those people have higher chance to help you (good), harm you (evil), or ignore you (neutral).

That said, Goblin who provided sentient beings as food for his own clan is still Evil, even tho he helped "technically" his own ...
For one, he sees other races as lesser, that is one of signs for Evil character.
For two, he attacked them and get their bodies to be eaten ... if he would be Good, he would search for option to feed his own while make minimal harm to the others ... wich would probably mean gather some wildberries, or (presuming Goblins are purely carnivous) even steal some meat from those sentient beings rather than just kill and eat them.
And finaly, the fact that other Goblins eat here is just side effect, they didnt attacked to feed others, they just attacked and then there was meat that could be eaten.

But they are ...
That is difference between DnD and Reality ... in our world we are beings of free will, capable of anything on scale between Lawfull Good and Chaotic Evil ...

In DnD tho, there are beings who dont have such luxury ...
- Either they "tend to ne G/E", that is still better option, since they can willingly fight it if they want to, but still its not so easy for them as for others who dont "ted to G/E" ... example would be Half-Orcs
- Or (and that is also quite common), they simply "are G/E", wich basicaly mean that they cannot understand the concept of other Alingment ... such being isnt Evil bcs it choose to, its simply its nature, just as we tend to think about this, just as wild animal either runs or attack ... in the same manner they Destroy, kill, torture, and do all those Evil stuff ... their heads (or souls if you wish) are simply unable to grip any other concept.

To put it simply ...
If you use wounded animal as an example ...

Good character see someone who needs help.
Neutral character see wounded animal.
Evil character see a toy.

And they all can see food.

Sometimes it is cultural (then there is possibility for redemption, but it is hard and long road), sometimes it is their nature (then they are basicaly lost).
There are exceptions tho, but as Niara (i believe) allready said here ... being who manage to change his aligment ceases to exist, and is shaped to its new form fitting the new alignment.
I mean have you ever seen Zariel (celestial / fiend) ?

They pisses me off to be honest ...
Redemption stories are so often theese days it almost feels like a propaganda ... it has ben ages since i enjoyed good corruption story in game.

I believe there should be ballance in this.

This quote have few important problems why it cant be used for DnD ...

For one, in Elder Scrolls there are not "Good Dragons" and "Evil Dragons" by their nature ... there are just "Dragons" who work on entirely different system.

For two, if you talked with him properly he explain to you that all that he managed to change was just some aspects of his nature ...
He claim that he dont tendencies to rule over humans ... yet he is practicaly leader of Graybeards, who worship him almost like a God.
He claim that he rejected his tendencies to destroy others ... yet he helps you to defeat Anduin.

Basicaly you can say that he never actualy overcomed his nature ... he just distanced from everyone so his nature, he was unable to change, dont manifest. :P O_o

And last but not least ...
While the situation with Paarthurnax may seem deep and philosophical ... he isnt Good at all.
All he can hope for is some kind of Neutral.
IF he would actualy become Good (in matter of Alignment), he would actively try to help others, and i dont mean just Greybeards (even tho they would probably be first) ... instead just sleep on his mountain and think about clouds and stars, meditating about words in Dragon language and ocassionaly learn some Dragonborn traveler (or Greybeard) word of power.

---

Anyway i still want option to kill Tiefling childs ...
I dont care about their Alignment, that is totally irellevant. :P

So what you are saying is that you sided with the blades how evil of you LoL.

I do find it interesting reading all these and getting a hint as to the real life alignments of the group. You can tell the lawful from the chaotic and those that tend to G/E. It’s easier to see the L/C nature online than actual G/E. My whole point above was written in a True Neutral tone. In my many trips around the sun, these debates have always been the same and no conclusions are ever made.

I am going to age myself a bit, but if you ever get a chance, try the old Reverse Dungeon 2e adventure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Dungeon

Reality check.

Our world = Evil people are those who like evil actions and/or are addicted to them. They can change at any time, but they don't because they like evil actions. There is no nature or dark energy making them crave evil. They chose to enjoy it, and they continue to enjoy it.

Fantasy worlds = Evil is represented by actual forces such as evil spirits, the Shadow Weave, gods and evil creatures, like dragons. Evil magic can corrupt and literally change people so they have no choice but to become evil. This was literally the premise of BG1 and 2. You were fighting the powerful corruption heritage within you.

D&D is built upon alignment systems. As you aquire items, you atune yourself to them, but only if you share the alignment. A good person carrying a corrupt artifact may find themselves being corrupted.

So, in fantasy, an entire race can literally be evil because the race as a whole is attuned to evil.

Except and unfortunately they WOTC appears to be moving away from that. I hate the fact that the protection from good or evil spell has been combined to a watered down anti creature type spell.

WOTC has caved to people with a stupid agenda.

You are certainly welcome to your opinion of what makes good fantasy. I personally find the notion of "metaphysical evil" to be incoherent and I welcome changes that move away from this. Sapient beings can choose their actions, and should therefor be held responsible for what they do or do not do and not for some idealized concept of evil that is associated with their lineage.

You are certainly welcome to misrepresent the posts of others.

Wait a minute...

Well ... basicaly, maybe ...
But for Evil being (like Fiend for example) "choose" to be Good from now on, is something like for us to "decide to go on a hunger strike" ...
It might seem easy at first, but with every next hour it becomes harder and harder ... and eventualy it either breaks your will, or irreversibly damage the body.

The essence of fantasy is that it is LIKE reality, but it is not reality. Each fantasy world is built on certain fantastic elements. "The Light Side creates life. The Dark Side destroys and corrupts."

In D&D, Alignment has ALWAYS been what the worlds have been built on. Even the gods are subject to alignment. They do not rule the alignments. They are locked into them. It is the foundation of the entire game system's stories across various worlds, not just Forgotten Realms. Take this away, and you tear out the foundation for the entire game.

Again, this is not Star Wars or Star Trek or Skyrim or whatever where every race is capable of being good or evil. That's one of the things that has always set D&D apart. You have good, evil and neutral, and those alignments set the foundation for gameplay. If I'm good, and I encounter evil, I know I can just kill it because it's evil. I don't have to worry about whether I'm killing someone's dad or brother or cousin or whatever. It's bad. End of story. Cast a spell to know alignment, learn it's bad, kill it.

Start making every monster sentient with the potential to be redeemed or good and I will certainly have a problem wanting to purge the world of anything because, well, "they might just be misunderstood."

Baby dragon is eating children in a local village. I go to kill it. It tells me, "But, I have no food, Sir.". Big soulful eyes. "Please Sir. I'm just so hungry. Please don't kill me."

"Lying wyrm! Eat chickens and cows. Not people. Die!"

"I didn't know better. I'm just a kid. Please Sir."

What the flip do I do? Let it live just because it's "misunderstood?". It was eating children!

But it's just so child-like and seems good, and, well, it could be good if raised right.

Well. Sucks to be the parents of those dead kids. I'm gonna keep the monster and raise it myself, cause it MIGHT be good. Maybe.

Or it will eat you in your sleep.

The bottom line is that this sort of constant moral ambiguity and perpetual hesitation is not the albatross every player wants to carry in their escapism. However, there is room for both sorts of encounters if you desire them; for example, human bandits waylaying travelers are - in actuality - former knights without a king who have become driven to extreme measures (they can be convinced to stop their harassment and possibly eventually redeemed) whereas hobgoblin irregulars tearing up the village a few miles down the road are a scourge that needs to be eliminated, plain and simple.

Right. D&D has always been based on mythological lore and folk tales. In those stories, good and evil exist. They are defined. They are broken out. Please let's not strip D&D from its foundations. Please don't try to mold and craft D&D into yet another ambiguous fantasy world(s) where these foundational things don't exist.

Literally, the entire world of Forgotten Realms is built on alignment of good, evil and neutral. You have entire planes of existence that exist within these alignments. You have your good realms with your good gods and your evil realms with your evil gods. Each has their good or evil minions. The Material Plane is neutral where everything comes together. Good, evil and neutral all exist within the Material Plane. That is why it is the way it is. It is the entire premise for the entire story. Good and evil are warring in the neutral zone, and neutral is trying to balance them out to make it so that it is even livable.

Seriously. If you strip alignment from D&D, you turn it into every other fantasy sci-fi world/universe. Goblins become aliens, like Twi'leks in Star Wars or Romulans in Star Trek. No. Goblins are an evil race because they are aligned with evil and do evil things like eat and torture people. Same with mind flayers. What, are we to assume, as someone previously said in this thread, that we shouldn't necessarily kill the Illithid tadpoles in our heads because they are technically the offspring of mind flayers? Should we feel guilty about killing them because they are technically children? If attacked by a baby intellect devourer (which apparently most of them in the game right now are maybe supposed to be since they are SO much weaker than true intellect devourers), should we feel bad about killing them?

This is exactly why the game is designed to specifically designate evil as evil. It's so that you can know killing this monster or that is okay and good. You don't have to question it. You don't have to have a moral dilemma about it. Goblins are evil aligned. Their children are evil aligned. They will all grow up to be evil monster adults. There may be exceptions here or there that are REALLY few and far between, but the baseline truth in FR is that goblins are bad. Kill them like vermin before they kill you.

As for tieflings, they may look like devils but they aren't. There is no evil alignment attunement in them. That is one of the main points of the race. They are viewed as evil, but they aren't. That's one of the things that makes them unique as a race from a story perspective. BG3 actually plays upon this rather well. They are letting you know that this entire group of tieflings isn't bad. The kids might be mischievous and thieves, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad or evil. Goblins, on the other hand, ARE EATING PEOPLE. Even the kids. They are kicking corpses and laughing about it and throwing stones at Halsin and talking about killing him, and their adults are cooking Brian the dwarf on a spit, along with others they captured and killed from Waukeen's Rest, and so forth, and the kids are going to partake in it all because they're evil. It's a HUGE difference, and it is all differentiated and split out for us via alignment so we don't have to have moral dilemmas in regards to killing the goblin children. They're evil, like mind flayer tadpoles, dragon wyrmlings, intellect devourer spawn, and any other evil alignment race's children.

We disagree. There is no need to be a dick about it.

As you say, Goblins are evil because they do evil things like eat and torture people. There is no need to invoke "aligned with evil" here. As soon as they start eating and torturing people they are evil, full stop. It is the torture and the murder that makes them evil.

In any case, I suspect that this is a fundamental disagreement that isn't likely to be resolved in an internet forum. I am content to leave it at agree to disagree.

Well, you could at least ask the cows and chickens in your story how they feel about being eaten, before offering them to the baby dragon.

I have to say, D&D doesn't make humans look that good. You have spells that let you communicate with animals, which would let you easily find out how sentient they are.

The animals aren't necessarily sentient (sapient?) though. Magic helps bridge the gap between the caster and beast, allowing the caster to gain information from beasts' experiences, but it's usually not taken as Larian's "the beast speak in full sentences and show a human-like level of intelligence." Otherwise, the spells Comprehend Languages, Detect Thoughts, and Tongues would allow animals to communicate with you - but they don't because beasts don't actually have a language and/or high enough intelligence.

Also, irl we eat pigs and pigs are pretty smart.

@dwig. It's not about agreeing or disagreeing. I'm talking about foundational story elements. In D&D, goblins are evil because they are aligned with evil. They do evil things BECAUSE evil courses through their veins. To NOT do evil goes against their nature.

The difference is that irl, our nature isn't driving us to be evil. We choose it. In D&D, alignment drives good and evil. It is like the light and dark sides of the Force except entire races can be aligned to one side or the other.

Nah ... it works exactly the other way around.

Its not "they eat, kill and torture other sentient beings, therefore they are Evil" ...
Its "they are Evil, therefore they kill, eat and torture other sentient beings".

It might not seem like huge difference at first sight, but it is!
A imply B does not mean B imply A.

To put it in different perspective here is example:
Animal is a fish, therefore it swims.
Animal swims, therefore it is a fish. (Nah, its just swimming mamal. :P )

See?

And in real life there is an ongoing discussion about animal sentience too. If you add magic to the mix, even if you'd not be able to hold a conversation with livestock, you should be able to tell how sentient they are and how they feel about being fed to that baby dragon. Of course, the question becomes even more complicated if the dragons are on average as (or more) intelligent than humans. Because if it is fine to kill a dragon simply because they are evil, would then killing humans simply because they are evil (easy to tell with that detection spells) be also ok? There was a paladin like that in BG1.

Was M'Khiin evil?
In the Forgotten Realms, goblins are evil due to the fact that they grew up in an imperialistic and militaristic society whose main goal is conquest in the name of Maglubiyet. And they are also in positions of cannon fodder and laborers, so yes, under such conditions they became the insidious opportunists that we know.

I and other folks of like mind couldn't give a toss whether featuring unambiguously evil monsters constitutes "good" fantasy, "bad" fantasy or something in-between; we don't strive for accolades and we aren't beholden to arbitrary metrics of quality.

I believe M'Khiin was true neutral. So not exactly good. It's kinda like, at best, she managed to resist her evil alignment enough to graduate from neutral evil to true neutral, but she certainly wasn't good.

And again, goblins are evil due to being attuned to evil alignment. By nature, they desire to do evil, just like chromatic dragons.

Out of curiosity, are drow also inherently evil?

Yes. They have been evil for most of D&D history, but because of Drizzt, suddenly they became popular as heroes. So, they decided to have Eilistraee betray her mother Lolth and become the good goddess of the Drow race, providing a way for Drow to now be good. Thus, you have Seldarine Drow who are good and Lolthsworn who are evil.

"Drow are cool; we want to play them, but they are evil." -> Drow are no longer universally evil.
"Demons and Devils are cool; we want to play them, but they are overpowered and evil." -> Tieflings are invented; they are far weaker and not universally evil.
"Dragons are cool; we want to play them, but they are overpowered." -> Dragonborn are invented; they are far weaker.

Noticing a trend here?

It actually started with the Orc thus the Half Orc.

In 5e arnt Kobolds now no longer innately evil?

Just to be completely clear here, Goblins and Drow are Not inherently evil in the same way that fiends and chromatic dragons are. They are not, at all. Do not conflate the two.

A goblin that abandons its society or finds it can no longer live within it due to a burgeoning conscience or desire for better life, and who thus ceases to be evil, does NOT suddenly stop being a goblin. Evil isn't baked into their very essence.

Drow are just drow - following Lolth or another deity is purely a matter of personal religion, and, as with goblins, a drow that finds they can no longer live in their strongly evil society and ceases too be evil, does NOT suddenly stop being a drow. They are not magically transformed into something else because of this shift. Evil is not inherently in their essence.

A devil that stops being evil is literally and physically transformed and is No Longer A fiend, because to be a fiend is to be evil.

Goblins do not stop being goblins, and they do not suddenly turn into a different creature or undergo a transformation if they stop being evil, because evil is not an inherent part of their being.

This is not new; it's been like this for a long time. Creautres like goblins are listed as evil in the monster manual because most are, and most organised goblin societies are, and so it is natural that most of the goblins that players come into conflict with will be, but it isn't a built in part of them any more than it is any other mortal humanoid.

Drow are the same - this whole red-eyed lolth-worshiper rubbish is not backed up by any official book source, anywhere - it's an invention that actually detracts very heavily from the entire point behind what it means to BE a surface drow trying to leave the evils of their society behind... and for the record, populations of non-lolth-follwoing drow have existed for a very long time. Drizt was not the first, just the one that made them the most famous and visible to other races and cultures. Eilistrae is also not new, and has been the patron of good-aligned drow for many, many years.

And to the comment above, the same is true of kobolds. A kobold that abandons the lawful evil society of most normal kobold clans, and who stops being evil is not transformed and does not stop being a kobold; evil was never baked into their very essence in the same way that it is for fiends and chromatics; they are the scions of dragons, but they are not dragons themselves, and it is only their culture and society that makes them evil overall, not anything in their literal essence.

*eye roll*

Thanks Niara! That’s a good way of putting it. I feel like 5e is watering down the alignment system to much, but I have always felt like innate evil in humanoids (pretty much anything that can be a PC) was to far the other way. I don’t have an issue with innate temptation, but outright no choice but to be good or evil…

Never really got into anything after 3.5e so some of these changes are big for me. I agree that D&D is built on knowing what is or is not the “bad guy”; however, with BG3 not even having an alignment system feels so un D&D to me…. I have never pen and papered anything past 3e so I am coming at this with quite abit of bias. The reality is that those past editions are gone and I need to readjusted my perspective it seems.

This is a modern way of interpreting religion and morality. It can be considered anachronistic to a fantasy setting, including D&D.

Without getting into the trap of free will, I think a good point has been raised. We know what a world without magic looks like, so it's easy for me to consider any aspect of the D&D world that isn't the same as ours to be in some way influenced by magic. Any creature that isn't an 'animal' likely wasn't naturally selected to exist, this includes elves and goblins, meaning that some part of their essential make up doesn't need to conform to our own preconception on what it means to be completely free of alignment restrictions.

Look. It all boils down to this:

"The move to redact entire lore sections (including paragraphs describing all Orcs as “tribal” creatures with a “culturally ingrained tendency to bow before superior strength”) are seemingly the firm’s latest steps to address tougher criticisms – namely, that its fantasy races (many of which date back to the game’s 1970s origins) evoke harmful real-world racial prejudices."

In other words, because people can't separate fantasy from reality, they have made many changes to D&D races. That and popularity. When Drow we're first invented, they were evil. Their backstory even says they were corrupted by Lloth and twisted into what they are. Over time, people fell in love with them and more and more they are good. As stated, the same happened with tieflings and such.

Now, real world politics and racism are stripping things away even more so that we can't call any fantasy race good or evil. Monsters are no longer monsters. Their just different races.

Tolkien basically sparked all this. Elves, humans, dwarves and hobbits good. Orc-kind and monsters bad. Dragons bad. Giant spiders bad. It all stems from LOTR. Even dark elves were invented by Tolkien in the Silmarillion. Dark elf was evil elf. End of story.

Now, even zombies and vampires are being turned into good guys or just misunderstood. The only thing that's left is devil's and demons. Why not make them good too?

Other way around: they are evil and the society that coalesces around them is evil as a result. Exceptions are exceptions...not an excuse to imply that "Well, if some of them can be good, surely they're just misunderstood and can all be good."

It's much of a muchness; a two way street, if you will, or a more or less self-perpetuating circle between individuals that make up a society and a society that is the upbringing and social pressure upon the individuals within it.

It doesn't change the fact that a goblin that stops being evil doesn't suddenly also stop being a goblin or undergo a transformation into something else because they shed their evil; That doesn't happen. It DOES happen in all-and-only creatures that are inherently and intrinsically evil in their very essence. It does not happen to goblins. Therefore, goblins do not fall into that category. Q.E.D.

I'm not saying that the majority of goblins aren't evil - they absolutely are!
I'm not saying that the majority of goblin societies aren't evil - they absolutely are!

I'm just saying don't conflate their simple mortal evil tendencies that are tied up in part with their circumstance and culture, with actual inherent evil, such as is found in fiends. They are two completely different things, and should not be confused.

To GM4Him.... about zombies... have you ever watched Warm Bodies? Good film!

https://5thsrd.org/character/alignment/

Alignment in the Multiverse
For many thinking creatures, alignment is a moral choice. Humans, dwarves, elves, and other humanoid races can choose whether to follow the paths of good or evil, law or chaos. According to myth, the good-aligned gods who created these races gave them free will to choose their moral paths, knowing that good without free will is slavery.

The evil deities who created other races, though, made those races to serve them. Those races have strong inborn tendencies that match the nature of their gods. Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc gods, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god's influence.)

Alignment is an essential part of the nature of celestials and fiends. A devil does not choose to be lawful evil, and it doesn't tend toward lawful evil, but rather it is lawful evil in its essence. If it somehow ceased to be lawful evil, it would cease to be a devil.

Most creatures that lack the capacity for rational thought do not have alignments - they are unaligned. Such a creature is incapable of making a moral or ethical choice and acts according to its bestial nature. Sharks are savage predators, for example, but they are not evil; they have no alignment.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/44-alignment-and-your-place-in-the-d-d-multiverse


So, as you can see, they are starting to change how alignment works. Why? Because the past alignment system is becoming unpopular. Nevermind that "it's very useful just to say, "Orcs are Chaotic Evil. That means you can beat them up and not feel guilty." And I think in D&D's history, that worked." People are bringing their real life issues into the game, and making a stink over it, and so they're changing it to be "As a DM, you can decide, is alignment ... like, does it describe someone, or does it define someone? And you can say, "I'm Lawful Good, because I act lawful and good." Or you can say, "I've chosen to be lawful and good, so now I have to act lawful and good." And we actually don't try to answer that in the game, because I think that's something that's really up to the players and dungeon masters."

So, in other words, to try to make everyone happy now, they are not taking a firm stance on anything. Let the DM decide. That's their stance on pretty much everything.

It's because the devs of D&D 5e and beyond are Chaotic in alignment. Lol. They are changing their alignment from Lawful and firmly placing it in Chaotic because there are those who don't like solid rules to govern things and put things in order. Now, D&D for one person may be a WHOLE lot different than for another, almost like you aren't even playing the same game.

And BG3 and all it's homebrew rules is EXACTLY the result you get, as is this entire thread.

Understood your position.
Wait, what about ondonti?
They are full-blooded orcs, but also pacifist farmers who hate violence and shed blood only during the slaughter of cattle.
Even those ondochi that were captured and indoctrinated by the Zhentarim retain some of their peacefulness and are much less evil than other orcs.