Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Permanent party after Act 1

Maybe the party is only going to be locked in for Moonrise Towers as it has been for Spellhold and and you'll meet the others again in Baldur's Gates or something? If you had to sacrifice them that would really kinda suck (well except for Lae'zal I could sacrifice her anytime I guess)

That would make sense, yes. Kinda forgot you couldn't swap out party members at Spellhold (I never tried doing that anyway).

A very long way to prove my point - it's more complicated than simply putting characters into categories

The alignment system really only worked for the Pen and Paper, and I would like it if Larian left it out for a system more rooted in the real world. I mean everybody generally falls in the same category, where he is "good" and abides to the rules until the conditions make him break out of it. Some just do it earlier than others. People living totally outside of the social norms are really rare.

As far as the permanent party I do not know. I mean they have this camp mechanic, where most interactions happen, similar to the Normandy in Mass Effect or the campsite in Dragon Age, so it makes little sense to just remove a significant portion of the NPCs and therefore interactions.
It also narrows the possible choices for the casual players, that have not extensive knowledge of the game mechanics, so they will just stick to the basic with no experiments. So rogue, fighter, cleric, caster (most likely the mage). So the hybrids and specialists are most likely to be left out.
Now what I find more likely is that certain origin characters drop out, for whatever reason they come up with. And I would not mind that at all, since all of them are so edgy and have a story to tell that makes me roll my eyes constantly. I bet they all are the Chosen One in some way. I would very much rather have "normal" people as my companions. Mercenaries, wandering minstrels, a ranger trying to slay evil, and so forth. Stories attached to the real world and therefore drawing their personality instead of secret heirs to thrones, possessed by a demon, vampire lord or whatelse they dream up. These are not really deep characters, they are just shallow characters with a main quest attached, like any PC.
So if two of them are gone, I would not mind, as long as I get other people to join me, that I can phase in and out and try new builds on. I am also not a fan of replayability through locking content, I do more playthroughs with often the same character where the general playthrough only changes in nuances. I very much more like the game making me sink 80 hours in one playthrough, than making me spend 40 hours in two playthroughs.

Eh, if you tried really hard you could put Anakin into lawful good and Darth Vader into lawful evil categories tho. Your idea that the alignment system is stupid is a bit overreaching? You can make all the alignments as nuanced or shallow as you want. It's up to you as a player. What I personally hated about the original BG1/2 is that your alignment could only switch to evil, never from neutral or evil to good (without mods anyway). Now that was unrealistic. Like in my opinion, NWN1/2 had it perfect. You pick an alignment, but the actions you took could heavily change it. You could realistically speaking start with a paladin, murder innocents, become one greedy chaotic force of evil and your alignment would reflect that over time. Or you could play a rogue who becomes an assassin (in D&D 3-3.5e assassins could only be taken by evil alignments btw) and then have a change of heart and slowly become good. The possibilities were endless.

It's that type of alignment people want and I agree with them. Anyone and everyone is capable of change, for good or bad. But I also recall you saying in this topic or in another one that you never really played much D&D, so I can understand why the entire idea is so alien to you and you dislike it. But truth be told? It's not as restrictive as you think it is.

I have nothing against alignments if it is the way you describe it. But I've seen in a lot of places how people don't intend to play it in the way you describe, but in the opposite way - a player who is lawful good will never take shadowheart simply because she is a priestess of Shar. It doesn't matter to him what she says and does, from his lawful good perspective she is evil period

Like I said, it's all up for interpretation. Some people don't really roleplay but metagame, so they come into conclusion long before they give a character a chance. Technically speaking, from the get go they don't know that Shadowheart is a cleric of Shar, that's a revelation that comes later. They don't know whether or not she's evil (and I say fuck those character tags 'evil cleric' pfft), now after she comes clean it would a roleplaying moment to either stick to the 'lawful good purge all evil shtick' (commonly referred as 'lawful stupid' btw.) or give her a chance, and make it your life's mission to influence her away from the darkness.

People who don't take characters into their group cause 'oh no, Astarion is a vamp spawn/tried to knife me, therefore he is evil' or 'Shadowheart follows Shar, therefore she must be evil' are either ignorant, or choose to role play their characters in a shallow way and I say let them. It's a video game after all. I'm totally not affected by the way other people are playing it, am I now?

PS: Btw. on final release I honestly would take Shadowheart over Lae'zel, even though I always play lawful/neutral/chaotic good (I'm one of those players willing to give others the benefit of the doubt, you don't 'defeat' evil by murdering all you perceive as evil on sight, you try to reason with it make it see the error of it's ways - at least it's how I love playing it). I just really don't like Lae'zel's personality, like I will recruit her but she's just gonna be a standing statue at my camp, part of the scenery. Of all the characters, she's got the least amount of layers honestly. I understand why she's the way she is, but I don't like her regardless. She's just a well written githyanki through and through.

yeah alright I agree with everything you said

Yes I agree. It is no longer a feature in the rules because it is left up to DMs and players to determine them. But in D&D/FR lore it is very much still a thing, and justifiably so. And a video game like BG3 is not just about the rules and mechanics but also about the lore. And Swen has repeatedly said BG3 will be faithful to FR lore.

Actually I agree with this. But at the same time the game should also honor FR lore, and specifically in this case lore about Shar. Choosing to be a priestess of a god and faithfully following that god's dictates is not some casual thing a person takes on for themselves. It says something fundamental about a person. It's not in the same category as behaviors like choosing to pet a puppy or kick a beggar.

In SH's case, yes. Because being a priestess of an evil god is not something casually done. Becoming a priestess is the result of some deepseated commitment you have made to that god, which includes fully accepting that god's ways, and you have spent years building yourself up in that role. So yes, someone says they are a priestess of Shar, I would absolutely write them off. If someone kicks a beggar, however, I would not write them off as evil and will instead look for ways to get them to behave differently. There are clear qualitative differences.

Way to kill your credibility. Anyone who doesn't do things your way is ignorant and shallow. What a load of bull.

I might've worded it better, english being about my 4th language learned. But still, it's up to the person to roleplay how they see fit, I'm not here to pass judgement on people 'not doing things my way', hell it wasn't even the intention of my post, but it also shows quite a bit of your character that you grasp at anything possibly perceived as negative/offensive to try to insult someone. All I was doing was trying to explain it to Abits that there are different ways of playing with alignments, more nuanced or less so.

To me, murdering people in games, for the sake of 'goodness' is still murder. Whenever I play D&D games I like to think things through (like 'what would my character do in this situation?') and I do my best to try to talk my way out of difficulties rather than attack on sight (that's what zealots do), or in case of characters like Astarion/Shadowheart give them the benefit of doubt.

You, as the player, know that Astarion is a vamp spawn or that Shadow is a priestess of Shar, but your character doesn't. Astarion doesn't introduce himself as 'hi there, I'm Astarion, a vamp spawn and I'd like to suck your blood' or Shadow doesn't say 'I'm Shadowheart, priestess of Shar' it's up to your character to figure that out. Altho, I still think the name 'Shadowheart' is such a stupid name. And on top of that, she doesn't really act like a classic priestess of Shar, you can tell she's quite conflicted inside. My prediction is, if you let her live and don't murder or toss her away for being a Shar priestess, that she might somewhere down the line be swayed to the light.

from the way she intreduces herself I'm pretty sure it's not her real name. The game itself heavily implies it when it let you have the dialog option "what is this name".

about alignments and shit - I stand by what I said before, It might be a very good system if we are starting a game and want to summarise what a character did before. but once the game starts it is kinda hard to predict what will happen to a character. By the way I agree with you about what you said about BG not enabling players the option to start bad and become good, while to opposite is possible.

Oh yes, if I recall correctly, Shar's priests go through some weird rite giving them amnesia, but they usually do it when they get old and senile, they give up their memories to Shar. So it could be the reason why she might've entirely forgotten herself, name included. What puzzles me, is that Shadowheart seems to be a too young to have gone through that particular rite. Maybe she knew too much? I dunno.

She says Shar is her mother but It doesn't seem like she means it figuratively. She says "she took me in". it could be figurative but I'm not 100% sure. perhaps she was adopted into a tample or something like that

I always assumed it was figuratively, her being an urchin makes sense that some Shar clergy saw the potential in her and took her in. Also, in FR lore, there was that sect that thought that Selune and Shar are just two sides of the same goddess, two sides of the same coin. I wonder if that will play some part in the story. Especially with the temple of Selune being abandoned... and there are quite a lot of texts pointing that Selune's clergy has gone weird some time before our main characters capture by the mind flayers.

Personally, I was never so disappointed in a game as when I discovered half of my party was gone in DOS2. Just like that.
Even if I'm going to replay the game no matter what, I find really annoying to cut half of your party just to "force" you to replay. Maybe I have not the time to play an 80+ hours game more than once or maybe I just like to explore the personal quest of all my companions with the same character.
I understand that Larian can't please everyone, so my preferences are inconsequential. At least I hope they are going to make the separation from half of your party sensible and credible, not like in DOS2.

For example, in the first Mass Effect, you need to choose between Kaidan and Ashley. It breaks my heart every single time but at least is a good scene, not just a message "You are changing zone, are you sure you want to keep this party? You may not be able to change it for a while".

Considering the events of the day with an abduction by mindflayers and a little trip to avernus? My character is really not in the mood to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
My mage has studied the arcane and the various gods and their symbols. Why would it be metagaming for him to recognize the sharran symbolism on Shadowhearts armor?

fair enough. it's called roleplaying for a reason I guess.

You can choose to play the suspicious type of person, all the more power to you. You are free to play however you wish. All I said was my reasoning behind my decisions. But to be honest, there should be some arcane/religion/other skill checks to figure out Shadowheart, Astarion and Wyll (mkay in Wyll's case if you are playing a warlock yourself you can confront him about it) long before they open their mouths about their secrets.

I think this is more a problem of marketing and the origin character concept than a problem with the game itself. In the game itself all these details about our companions played out like some mystery that gets revealed as the game progresses (true for all the companions, but especially true in the case of shadowheart, Wyll and Astarion). But the marketing spoiled them completely and when the game treats these revelations as big surprises it's just jarring

I'm fine with the party being set in stone, somewhat as if it was an actual tabletop campaign (with players you can count on). It will be a difficult choice but I don't mind it at all.