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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Quite the contrary, WoTC is purposefully moving away from identifying any faction/race/class as indisputably good or evil.
That's why they pressed Larian about not making alignment a thing in the game, to begin with.

But we are not talking about a faction, race or class. We are talking about characters. And 5e does have alignment for characters. And the Forgotten Realms setting does have "good" and "evil" as very real things. Shar is an "evil" deity, for example. There is no question about this.


Evil doesn't necessarily mean ax-crazy evil ala Joker tho. There is evil like Mr Freeze, or Talia al Ghul,

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Originally Posted by Zeraman

As for them feeling like edgy teenagers first characters... I wish my first DnD characters had been this good :'D


Haha yeah, my first character was Hector. He was a cleric, he had a mace, he went into dungeons, that was about his level of detail laugh

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The game does /seem/ to lack some traditional BG style good companions atm. In a couple of ways:
1) there is nowhere near enough party interaction, BG2 did party interaction very well so seeing more of that would be ideal.
2) literally, no "good" companions in the sense of alignment, lots of neutrals and at least one evil, possibly two depending on point of view for them. Complex isn't a bad thing, but "proper" good characters are painfully under represented in the game right now. Which is odd as most pnp groups I've played with have tended toward "good" on some level. It needs someone like Minsc, good and nothing but good. Or Aerie's innocent good or Imoens peppy good, i'd even go for a Kivan style Good but on a vengeance path good companion honestly. Maybe a Paladin of Devotion, dedicated to an unsual "good" deity would be a good addition.

Personally right now, none of the companions really do it for me, it's not that they're necessarily bad characters, but a "good" main character arguably wouldn't want to travel with most of them other than the fact the game literally isn't setup to allow you to not travel with them. Gail is a solid maybe, although personality wise he comes across a bit like Edwin, arrogant and egotistical, which is irksome if you're playing a PC who does indeed have skills that should mean he can talk on a similar intellectual level.

I also really don't like the whole origin characters as companions thing either, I'm not a huge fan of it in D:OS2 either, make them interesting companions, don't make them premade PCs that get more effort put into them than the custom made PC. Because in D:OS2, they're all pretty horrible too and it's irksome how little love the game gives a custom main character by comparison, so I really hope we don't get the same here..

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Quite the contrary, WoTC is purposefully moving away from identifying any faction/race/class as indisputably good or evil.
That's why they pressed Larian about not making alignment a thing in the game, to begin with.

But we are not talking about a faction, race or class. We are talking about characters. And 5e does have alignment for characters. And the Forgotten Realms setting does have "good" and "evil" as very real things. Shar is an "evil" deity, for example. There is no question about this.


Yes good and evil exist on a metaphysical level in FR, but that doesn't mean that a good character can't be thrown into a situation where they might have to work with evil people in order to survive.

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Originally Posted by Rlyeh
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Quite the contrary, WoTC is purposefully moving away from identifying any faction/race/class as indisputably good or evil.
That's why they pressed Larian about not making alignment a thing in the game, to begin with.

But we are not talking about a faction, race or class. We are talking about characters. And 5e does have alignment for characters. And the Forgotten Realms setting does have "good" and "evil" as very real things. Shar is an "evil" deity, for example. There is no question about this.


Yes good and evil exist on a metaphysical level in FR, but that doesn't mean that a good character can't be thrown into a situation where they might have to work with evil people in order to survive.

which is true, but there should be some good choices, in this it doesn't really feel like it right now. Choose from a bunch of questionable people, which isn't at all how things work in real life, and is typically something many GMs try to disuade at the table, usually groups tend to make PCs that are fairly compatible, perhaps with one player deciding to be edgy or awkward and going beyond that.

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Originally Posted by Dark_Ansem
Evil doesn't necessarily mean ax-crazy evil ala Joker tho. There is evil like Mr Freeze, or Talia al Ghul,

I agree, and I did not say anything in my post to suggest otherwise.
Originally Posted by Rlyeh
Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Quite the contrary, WoTC is purposefully moving away from identifying any faction/race/class as indisputably good or evil.
That's why they pressed Larian about not making alignment a thing in the game, to begin with.

But we are not talking about a faction, race or class. We are talking about characters. And 5e does have alignment for characters. And the Forgotten Realms setting does have "good" and "evil" as very real things. Shar is an "evil" deity, for example. There is no question about this.


Yes good and evil exist on a metaphysical level in FR, but that doesn't mean that a good character can't be thrown into a situation where they might have to work with evil people in order to survive.

Sure. Absolutely. But that argument goes only so far. It cannot be the basis for party composition and companion interactions for the whole game, or even for a good chunk of the game. For example, I can see this argument at play for the short bit at the beginning when the PC is stranded in Hell and facing some potentially very dangerous conditions. But the moment the PC returns to Faerun that situation *should* end. And if the game then, somehow, continues to insist that the PC has to stick with companions they despise because of "survival," that would clearly be railroading the player.

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Originally Posted by kanisatha

Sure. Absolutely. But that argument goes only so far. It cannot be the basis for party composition and companion interactions for the whole game, or even for a good chunk of the game. For example, I can see this argument at play for the short bit at the beginning when the PC is stranded in Hell and facing some potentially very dangerous conditions. But the moment the PC returns to Faerun that situation *should* end. And if the game then, somehow, continues to insist that the PC has to stick with companions they despise because of "survival," that would clearly be railroading the player.


+1

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Originally Posted by Abits
I've been hanging around steam and Reddit for the last couple of days, and the one criticism I just can't agree with so far is regarding the companions.

The main things people say about them is that they are too evil. And this claim is super strange to me. There are a total of five party members so far. Let's go over them.

Layzel - Okey layzel is super evil, bitchy and angry. First of all I don't think it's so wrong to have one of those. Aside from that, I don't know what did you expect. I know almost nothing about the forgotten realms and the bit of knowledge I do have comes from bg1 and 2. And based on the githenki in bg2 Layzel is just right, scheming, evil, and follows a rigid code of honour to the letter. So she is not a good character, but she is not badly written.

Shadowheart - the reception for shadowheart is really confusing for me. Now based on her deity I assume she is an evil character, but in the game itself she doesn't really strikes me as particularly evil. She is selfish and secretive, but that's about it. In the part of the game we have she mostly cares about the tadpole, which is fair. Most of all she reminds me of Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins, but she is more subtle, less flirty and less over the top. Most of all, I see a lot of potential for growth with her.

Astorian - aside from the very flashy (and super buggy) introduction, Astorian strikes me as kind of a cool gay guy. The only evil thing he did in my playthrough was to try to feed on me, and afterwards he claimed that he usually only feeds on animals which is Eduard level good. He seems to me like chaotic neutral at the most.

Gail & Wyll - these two are good, not much room for speculation. I'll just say that all the companions are not "Jesus good" or "Lucifer bad", and all of them are more complexed than that, which is a good thing.

So to summarize - we have one evil party member, 2 who are possibly bad but the jury is out right now, and two good party members. and all of the characters are fun and interesting, even though we haven't seen much of them yet.


Honestly while I don't like most of their characters (as in if I met them in real life I would not associate with them) there are very few things that annoy me about the writing of the characters.

The main thing that bothers me is that for some reason you can't tell Gale to stuff it when he goes "oh yeah, I trust you, now I need you to trust me and not ask any questions and promise to help... HOW DARE YOU not trust me when I have revealed absolutely nothing about myself thus far?"

That guy is either the most arrogant manipulative turd you've ever laid eyes on (thinking you don't have the basic intellect to question what he wants) or that entire section should be rewritten. Yeah, you eat magic items, big deal, you don't need me to pinky promise to help you, ask for it...

Edit for clarity, first post was a mess

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I love all of them, but Shadowheart is absolutely my favorite.

She's just entertaining and her snide remarks are hilarious as hell. Overall, she seems rather reasonable enough in her judgement.

Lae'zel reminds me quite a bit of Jaheira, but more out of sheer pride rather than the naturally stoic nature of a harper. Jaheira was stern, but she wasn't quite as harsh as Lae'Zel can be. I don't hate Lae'Zel, but she's probably my least favorite companion.

Gale is freakin' great. There's not much more to say about that, especially without avoiding spoilers.

Wyll's pretty cool so far. I think he's awesome based off first impressions, but I just met him in my second playthrough where I actually managed to keep him alive. That said, my main character is a Warlock, so I'll probably save his party space for my Ranger when I get around playing her.

Astarion's cool. I was mildly turned off of him at first, but he grew on me rather fast. Still don't like him quite as much as Shadowheart, Gale, or even Wyll, but I fully expect to enjoy a playthrough with him in my party.

Overall, Shadowheart > Gale > Wyll > Astarion > Lae'Zel

That's my personal ranking based off what I've played. It's hard to compare them to the NPCs of the original series, but people have to remember that aside from the obvious standouts, there was a lot of NPCs across both games that were quite bland and didn't have a lot to them. I have no doubt in my mind that Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion will prove worthwhile companions that can stand the test of time alongside the likes of Imoen, Khalid, Jaheira, Kivan, Edwin, etc.

Obviously not Minsc, but he's a special case. Not even my favorite of the companions, but I don't think there's a single other character who's name is as synonymous with "Baldur's Gate".

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Now, it is absolutely possible that their story arc will eventually lead to some form of change or redemption thing. But as the PC, in the present, you don't know that. So, short of meta-gaming, if your PC is good-aligned, there is no way to justify keeping a vampire or a Sharan as your party companions. Your response to this may then be: Okay, so I won't be a good-aligned PC. Fair enough. But for anyone who does want to play "good," and that is exclusively the ONLY way I would ever play, there is no way to spin or justify (if you are going to truly role-play being a good-aligned PC) having those two companions in your party.

Next up, Wyll and the githyanki. These companions may well be neutral or even good (Wyll). But again from a role-playing standpoint, if you are playing a good PC, I don't see how you can have them in your party either. The githyanki character constantly expresses offense at any good actions the PC takes. So at some point there has to be a falling out with her. And Wyll may be "good" all he wants, but he made a pact with a devil and that too for the most superficial of reasons. How can that be justified?

That leaves only Gail as a companion that any good-aligned PC can reasonably and legitimately justify having in their party from among this first group of companions. And that really sucks.

I don't really get this. A good-aligned character can still treat the situation as a daunting, but necessary alliance, even if only temporary. Even while they're in your party, the game gives you plenty of room to not be on friendly terms with them.

The only archetype where that would be an issue is the case of a Paladin-type character or something to that extent. Even then, Keldorn would tolerate the likes of Viconia for an extended period of time before the two inevitably came to blows.

I do understand the desire for variance among the playable party members.

Last edited by Kr0w93; 11/10/20 03:21 AM.
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I honestly have already settled on my three favorites based on their personalities. I haven't delved much into the lore of Forgotten Realm in a very long time so this is strictly from what I've seen so far.

Astarion: Not a huge fan of this one. He's not a flat character but the fact that he starts off putting a knife to my character's throat, I don't bring him along on the adventures. He can't be trusted.
Shadowheart: Her only redeeming feature is the fact that she can cast healing spells and even that makes it tough to justify keeping her in the party longer than I need to. Her banter with Lae'zel can be pretty humorous at times and it's nice to see her get verbally slapped but, she comes off as a pain through and through. She's rude, insulting and kind of weak in a fight. Her healing is her only pro feature.
Lae'zel: Lae'zel is a realist and a self-preservationist but I would not say she's evil. She sees a threat and is rushing to take care of it by any means and, she's actually pretty open-minded compared to most githyanki that I've read about. They'd rather slit your throat than work with you so I wouldn't say she's evil so far, more like she's just trying to make best of a bad situation.
Wyll: I just found this guy and I'm already loving him so far. His sense of justice matches up very well with my characters and they tend to agree across the board. I mean, he doesn't have a bit of a secret that gets spoiled by the loading screens but, who doesn't expect that from a warlock anymore?
Gale: By far, my favorite character, no holds barred. He's humorous, conceited and hiding a few nifty little secrets of his own. Honestly, they did an amazing job with Gale's secret and makes me a little sad that they didn't give Wyll the same treatment because finding out Gale's secret was pretty shocking and almost caused me to get my whole party killed without realizing the cause.

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Originally Posted by Dark_Ansem

What? the original evil? Wasn't Tharizdun that?


The Forgotten Realms' creation myth starts with Selune and Shar floating in darkness. The two were presumably created by Ao. Tharizdun is one of many interloper gods in the Realms, and didn't have anything to do with the creation of Toril. He's from Oerth originally.

Originally Posted by Khorvale

Don't worry, there'll be more NPCs in the future


I keep seeing this assertion, but I haven't been able to find any more information about them. If there are more NPCs, they must be incidental since they're going all out with the Origin characters in the marketing. (IIRC DOS2 only had companions that were origin characters (or self created mercenaries with no story/personality), and the only romances were with the origin characters.)

Z.

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Of the five, here's my take. As an overview, I don't like the trend of D&D and gaming culture shifting further and further into extremes, edgelords, and characters with whom it is impossible to identify. I like grounded characters, and in Forgotten Realms, I really like grounded characters moreso. Now I'm aware that ever since 3rd edition (and Pathfinder really did a lot of damage here), there has been a steady march into characters that resemble MMO's moreso than Tolkien inspired fantasy. That isn't the end of the world, as long as there is moderation. For every Drizzt, you need a dozen grounded characters of the classical races. So on and so forth. That's just my opinion of course, and I am well aware of how many people disagree with me. With that out of the way, here's my one or two sentence view of each character.

Lae'Zel is voiced well and seems like a decent representation of a Githyanki. I don't have a problem with Lae'Zel as a companion due to the direct tie into the opening sequence, it is perfectly well explained why there's a Githyanki wandering the material plane and joining you.

Shadowheart's name is terrible and made me groan until the first time I met her and I had the option of actually pointing out in-character that her name was weird, this won me over. Shadowheart manages (so far in the EA) to come across as a relatively believable evil cleric in the realms, having views that don't always revolve around carnage, chaos, and generally being a monster, which is a flaw of most western RPGs, including the classics.

Astarion is a pretty cliche pouty snob boy, but I feel he's performed well enough that it doesn't bother me much. In fact, the character sometimes wins me over despite my overall dislike of the entire design. We've already goth a Githyanki and Gale's deal, why did we also need a vampire spawn? Why did the vampire spawn also have to be an elf? This is a human character that was made into an elf, who never displays any elven qualities. It's added unnecessary templates onto a character.

Gale, and his aforementioned 'deal' are a lot of fun to me, and are quirky and original without being edgelordy and without me feeling as though the setting is losing its grounding. Gale seems like the most well done character concept, although his design, in appearance and voice choices is somewhat forgettable. Fortunately, his actual scenes are among the more memorable I can recall in western RPG's for a while.

Wyll has a lot of potential I think, but he's a bit more annoying than I thought he would be. He is definitely well grounded in the lore, and his opening quests are very low-stakes, and plunge into low level D&D, which is always the best form of D&D. I suspect he will become more endearing as the game goes on, with more exposure to his cocksure style.

I don't think we're going to see 1 of every class, as that'd be quite a large number of big personalities to develop and voice. Hoping that we get solid prototypical dwarf dwarf and halfling still. Though given what I've seen, we'll probably end up with a dwarf like Grimgnaw again.

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I feel like we are in Pirates of the Caribbean and some if you try to stick to a code that is more of a guidelines than actual rules. I don't presume to be an expert on DND, I know of DND only from Playing BG 1 and 2 and some NWN. But I have eyes and ears and I from what I see and hear the characters are not categorically evil or good. I don't care what it means in DND when a character is following Shar, I can only judge the action Shadowheart makes during the game, not some hypothetical things she supposed to do based on her faith.. Same with Astarion.


Larian's Biggest Oversight, what to do about it, and My personal review of BG3 EA
"74.85% of you stood with the Tieflings, and 25.15% of you sided with Minthara. Good outweighs evil, it seems."
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Originally Posted by Abits
I've been hanging around steam and Reddit for the last couple of days, and the one criticism I just can't agree with so far is regarding the companions.

The main things people say about them is that they are too evil. And this claim is super strange to me. There are a total of five party members so far. Let's go over them.

Layzel - Okey layzel is super evil, bitchy and angry. First of all I don't think it's so wrong to have one of those. Aside from that, I don't know what did you expect. I know almost nothing about the forgotten realms and the bit of knowledge I do have comes from bg1 and 2. And based on the githenki in bg2 Layzel is just right, scheming, evil, and follows a rigid code of honour to the letter. So she is not a good character, but she is not badly written.

Shadowheart - the reception for shadowheart is really confusing for me. Now based on her deity I assume she is an evil character, but in the game itself she doesn't really strikes me as particularly evil. She is selfish and secretive, but that's about it. In the part of the game we have she mostly cares about the tadpole, which is fair. Most of all she reminds me of Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins, but she is more subtle, less flirty and less over the top. Most of all, I see a lot of potential for growth with her.

Astorian - aside from the very flashy (and super buggy) introduction, Astorian strikes me as kind of a cool gay guy. The only evil thing he did in my playthrough was to try to feed on me, and afterwards he claimed that he usually only feeds on animals which is Eduard level good. He seems to me like chaotic neutral at the most.

Gail & Wyll - these two are good, not much room for speculation. I'll just say that all the companions are not "Jesus good" or "Lucifer bad", and all of them are more complexed than that, which is a good thing.

So to summarize - we have one evil party member, 2 who are possibly bad but the jury is out right now, and two good party members. and all of the characters are fun and interesting, even though we haven't seen much of them yet.



Just the woman are evil and selfish, as in they disprove every time that you make a decision that shows you are still a human being.

Lae'zel is very well written and she makes sense as a Gith. Shadowheart is in my group because she is handy in battle, but I find her, personality-wise, the most pointless of all characters (unless your evil).

I will replace Shadowheart with a hireling cleric as soon as I find one...hey, I gave her a try.


Lae'zel is an awesome fighter, but she is sitting in camp in favor of Wyll. Even though she makes sense as a character, she doesn't fit in with my party's ideals...she is on the chopping block.

Gale and Wyll are both great characters...Gale does love himself, but surprisingly has room in his heart for others. Wyll is also unselfish and will go to war for others.


Future characters:

My gut says the bard becomes an option.

Guessing one of the druids.

It would be nice to have female cleric that is actual pleasant company. Clerics are so handy to have, so this would make sense for Larian to round things out. The reason being that most people who don't want Shadowheart, but want a cleric, will choose a hireling over a voiced character. Half-elf or wood-elf make sense (stat-wise) for cleric, perhaps a Harper with an Elvin patron.





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Originally Posted by golw
Of the five, here's my take. As an overview, I don't like the trend of D&D and gaming culture shifting further and further into extremes, edgelords, and characters with whom it is impossible to identify. I like grounded characters, and in Forgotten Realms, I really like grounded characters moreso. Now I'm aware that ever since 3rd edition (and Pathfinder really did a lot of damage here), there has been a steady march into characters that resemble MMO's moreso than Tolkien inspired fantasy. That isn't the end of the world, as long as there is moderation. For every Drizzt, you need a dozen grounded characters of the classical races. So on and so forth. That's just my opinion of course, and I am well aware of how many people disagree with me.


I totally agree with your statement. 100% Even though I never played Pathfinder, it's been on my possible games to play in the future list.


Now it's time to interject some of my opinions on the entire cast we got in EA.

Lae'zel - she's an overzealous githyanki, what a unique concept (mind the sarcasm please). Really reminds me of all the githyanki that I've fought in NWN2. Still, she's like golw stated a decent representation of a githyanki, nothing more or less. I still don't really like her, but it has to do with me pretty much always playing lawful good, chaotic good at worst. Let's just say that Lae is absolutely incompatible with do-gooders. She will bitch, she will moan, and she will hate you. I swear, if she wasn't the only fighter available, she would've gotten sent to the camp immediately. At the end of EA, my relationship with her was at 'moderate' and it was neutral the entire time up until her personal quest completion.
Basically, you meet her people, let her talk to them and she'll like that.


Shadowheart - I've got little experience with her, mostly because I played a cleric myself (so she got yeeted off to the camp), but my 2nd playthrough is gonna be dedicated to learning about the companions I haven't taken with me the first time around. But her being a priestess of Shar already puts me off, not gonna lie, cause again, nothing against her as a character, but I'm pretty sure a priestess of Shar is rather incompatible with do-gooders, although, from my first playthrough I noticed that she approves of a lot of actions normally considered to be good, so I dunno. Shall see. She's at least not as blood thirsty as Lae'zel.

Wyll - another character I yeeted off to the camp upon meeting him, but from what I've seen from his conversations, he seems a nice enough chap, deffo a hero-wannabe with a dark secret. I think on my 2nd playthrough I will end up being besties with him, cause he and Gale seem to be the most decent of the lot.

Gale - now there is a character I like, quite a lot really, basically a much nicer Edwin.
I do like it a lot that he actually learns from his mistakes, you can really tell that his entire ordeal with the netherese timebomb that killed Mystryl had changed him a lot, like I imagine his younger self to have been much more cocky, selfish and power-hungry pos like Edwin, but yeah our experiences are what makes us - well, us after all, glad to see at least one character who chose the 'higher-road' so to speak.


And at last, my personal favorite - Astarion. I know, I know, he's a vamp spawn, therefore he should be evil. With the emphasis on should be. He technically should be absolutely incompatible with good characters, right? Well, kinda. Totally depends how you handle him. I said it before and I will say it again - he really, really reminds me of Gann from NWN2, MotB (I do hope that there are some of you that played that game, that expansion is real good, 10/10 in my books), another seemingly selfish self-obsessed pretty boy and also he reminds me of Haer'Dalis a little bit as well, the entire shtick of 'living in the now', now what do Gann and Haer'Dalis have in common? They're both chaotic neutral. So, personally, I'm not really sure where I would place Astarion, cause he's not really as evil as I thought he was gonna be, I would peg him as chaotic neutral and maybe chaotic evil, totally depending on how you handle him. And I thought he would absolutely disapprove of everything my good cleric did, but surprisingly, if you just let him be himself, without calling him a monster and try to understand where he's coming from, he's quite endearing. There were quite a lot of things any good character would do that he approved of. Took me quite by surprise. Of course, I still don't see how a good aligned cleric would get along with Astarion, well, being a vampire and good clerics having sworn to destroy the undead, but then again, I generally play clerics very rarely, so I guess I haven't roleplayed my cleric correctly when it came to Astarion, not that I care, I was quite curious... for future playthroughs of course. My fav classes are sadly unavailable right now - sorcerer and bard. But also, like golw I don't quite understand why Larian chose to make him an elf. like he displays 0 elfiness in the entire EA. None. He might just as well have been a human or a half-elf and nothing would change.


Also, where da hell do y'all get the notion that Astarion is gay? Cause of the way he dresses? His overall demeanor of being a shameless flirt?
Is it because Cazador comes to him in his dreams if you choose to abuse the tadpole powers? If y'all had been in his shoes, you would've most likely dreamed about your vampiric masters too and destroying them in various ways, just saying.

Like I said, he's not the first 'pretty boy' character in D&D lore, like hell there are examples of 'selfish pricks' who care about their looks all over the place, who also happen to be into women. Should I remind y'all of Anomen (aka Annoyman) from BG2? Do we really need to revisit that nightmare?
Sorry to break y'alls bubbles, but all the companions of BG3 are kinda gay, kinda straight, they're all bi. Do I wish Larian took a page off of Bioware and made some characters strictly gay, straight or bi? Helm yes. Would there have been a massive outcry of 'why can't I romance x? this game sucks'? Helm... yes, sadly... so I understand why they did it the way they did.

But I agree with the overall notion that we do indeed more companions and good aligned ones with some shades of gray thrown in for good measure (which I bet will come with more classes added). Now imagine the cluster-f*** of a scenario where you get a paladin companion and keep Astarion around... *cue evil laughter* now that would be something to see.

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Originally Posted by Kr0w93
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Now, it is absolutely possible that their story arc will eventually lead to some form of change or redemption thing. But as the PC, in the present, you don't know that. So, short of meta-gaming, if your PC is good-aligned, there is no way to justify keeping a vampire or a Sharan as your party companions. Your response to this may then be: Okay, so I won't be a good-aligned PC. Fair enough. But for anyone who does want to play "good," and that is exclusively the ONLY way I would ever play, there is no way to spin or justify (if you are going to truly role-play being a good-aligned PC) having those two companions in your party.

Next up, Wyll and the githyanki. These companions may well be neutral or even good (Wyll). But again from a role-playing standpoint, if you are playing a good PC, I don't see how you can have them in your party either. The githyanki character constantly expresses offense at any good actions the PC takes. So at some point there has to be a falling out with her. And Wyll may be "good" all he wants, but he made a pact with a devil and that too for the most superficial of reasons. How can that be justified?

That leaves only Gail as a companion that any good-aligned PC can reasonably and legitimately justify having in their party from among this first group of companions. And that really sucks.

I don't really get this. A good-aligned character can still treat the situation as a daunting, but necessary alliance, even if only temporary. Even while they're in your party, the game gives you plenty of room to not be on friendly terms with them.

The only archetype where that would be an issue is the case of a Paladin-type character or something to that extent. Even then, Keldorn would tolerate the likes of Viconia for an extended period of time before the two inevitably came to blows.

I do understand the desire for variance among the playable party members.

This has been addressed several times already, but I'll repeat myself again here. Yes I do agree that the player can be expected, temporarily, to tolerate companions they consider to be unsavory for the sake of one's own survival. But that rationale cannot be used by the game to force a player to play with companions they dislike for the whole game or even for a good chunk of the game. The whole point of a party-based game is to put together a party of companions that you LIKE and whom you ENJOY adventuring with. But because Larian is so very one-dimensional with all of their companion characters (i.e. they are all morally-questionable, unlikable, edgy, flamboyant, and comfortable doing evil things), then if you are a player who wants to very seriously ROLE-PLAY being good-aligned, you don't have a viable party (and NO, generic mercs do not count).

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Originally Posted by kanisatha
Originally Posted by Tuco
Originally Posted by kanisatha
For anyone truly role-playing a good-aligned PC ...

Characters who are a vampire or a Sharan priestess are indisputably evil. There is no possible counterargument. You can try to spin these two characters this way or that, but you cannot escape the fact that they are evil. In the Forgotten Realms setting, there is no such things as a "good" vampire spawn or a "good" priestess of Shar.

Quite the contrary, WoTC is purposefully moving away from identifying any faction/race/class as indisputably good or evil.
That's why they pressed Larian about not making alignment a thing in the game, to begin with.

But we are not talking about a faction, race or class. We are talking about characters. And 5e does have alignment for characters. And the Forgotten Realms setting does have "good" and "evil" as very real things. Shar is an "evil" deity, for example. There is no question about this.


If you're going to start talking about rules and alignment, you're wrong on both counts. Forgotten Realms has had both good/neutral vampire spawn (Jander Sunstar), and priests of evil gods can be neutral so long as their alignment is no more than one step away from their god.

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Originally Posted by Ramien
If you're going to start talking about rules and alignment, you're wrong on both counts. Forgotten Realms has had both good/neutral vampire spawn (Jander Sunstar), and priests of evil gods can be neutral so long as their alignment is no more than one step away from their god.

I'm talking about both FR lore and rules. Jander Sunstar was created as a character to precisely be an exception to the rules. And FR lore is very clear about the kind of control Shar exerts over her clergy. So the only way you could argue this is to claim that all of the BG3 companions are *special* exceptions to FR lore and rules. And if that is the case, then we would have a whole other huge complaint about the game.

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talking of Jander, I wonder if he might appear in this, considering his appearance in descent into avernus

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