Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Halsin isn't blameless

To be fair, monster attacks have been growing in frequency. We walk in on the first goblin attack on the grove but they mention other monsters. More than likely the harpies are a new addition.

Hag has probably been around a while though. They're pretty hard to get rid of.

Still, he promised that boar a mate. But what does he do? He goes off; gallavanting the Sword Coast.

I'm tempted to say that Silvanus is largely natural, and that harpies and hags are somewhat part of the natural order, but ...

Well, yeah, he isn't perfect. He probably doesn't have much time inbetween the mad reps he has to do to keep swole.

The Harpy's looked pretty well established though, Hdawg gets captured just after the Ship crashes. The Grove was already pretty much out of food at that point
The Harpy's looked pretty well established though, Hdawg gets captured just after the Ship crashes. The Grove was already pretty much out of food at that point he really messed up on the logistics i dont think he cut out for being grove head, he pretty much says he hated it after he bails to join you

Gotta leave some class interactions for druids i guess.

Halsin is only 4th level, clearly he lacks the necessary job experience to successfully run a druid circle.

5th level, but yeah, the story shows he clearly isnt cut out to lead the grove, i wonder if the Shadow Curse messed him up, or if the circle's leadership got decimated and he had to take over?

The game is very liberal with level and place in the world, even by 5E standards. I mean, Hells [literally], storywise this is not a low level campaign. All of the origin stories, including that of blank Tav, are way too epic for level one characters. If I were to come up with Wyll or Gale at the table, the DM would go; "Whoah, there cowboy. Tone it down a bit."

I still can't get over him slaughtering the goblin children. That is not the action of a good or even neutral person.

There were only a few harpies and a couple nests. They could've only appeared in the last month or so. Which would align with all the refugees who the druids seem to think are attracting more creatures to the grove than they've ever had to deal with before.

Which also makes sense. Harpies and gnolls like to eat sapient creatures. No large population of people on the roads no gnolls and harpies. Granted we know the gnolls, goblins, and drow seem to be a product of the Absolute, which Halsin had been studying for quite a while according to Nettie. So all this has been going on for longer than we've been in the area.

As for food, that is just kind of what happens when a huge population of foreign people move into a region without an abundance of farmlands. The druids likely lived off the land and what their magic could provide. Druid groves tend to be sparsely populated. They wouldn't be able to sustain however many tieflings showed up on their front door for long, and the food shortage is probably what encouraged Halsin to risk his life to get to the bottom of this sudden rise of monsters in his region in the first place.

He's a Druid. Circle of life.

I actually don't trust him. This game makes pretty darn sure that you don't easily trust people. A lot of people have hidden agendas. Too many, in fact.

Right, because good adventurers rarely go into dangerous areas to claim a magic artefact of worth and power.

Kagha is right about him, but Halsin is a normal person like everyone else.

He still is one of my favourite characters though <3.

When I saw the title I thought someone had read the crumbled note in his lab that

That many druids should easily be able to make enough goodberries to feed all those refugees with no real strain.

All his preaching of liberalism and tolerance got the druids nowhere! Vote Kagha today!

I was just going to say, Goodberries, and Create Food and Water. Problem solved. Low level spells, could keep everyone fed for a very long time. But, I guess they needed a reason to want to throw out the teiflings. It would be interesting if one of the druids mentioned about the spells though, and was like, "Hmmm... Wonder why Kagha doesn't just go that route?"

Can they just indefinitely conjure food with no input cost though?

I mean, in tabletop D&D they certainly could. Who knows in Baldur's Gate 3.

Edit: Side note. Why does Goodberry say "up to ten berries" but apparently it's the player's choice? Who is gonna cast it and be like "no thanks, I'd only like 4 berries please"?

If there really is only a dozen or so tieflings you'd be right, but populations are almost always dramatically scaled down in video games.

Plus Goodberry needs spell slots and we also see the druids making heavy use of Talk to Animal and Cure Wound as part of their regular druid duties. Any magic going into feeding and healing the tieflings is magic that can't be used to deal with the day to day maintenance of the grove and the surrounding wilderness and populace.

Not to mention they need those spell slots to fight too. The grove has been getting harassed by various monsters ever since the tieflings showed up. Feeding the tieflings literally makes it harder for the druids to defend their home. As anyone who's played a Moon Druid and had to sacrifice a perfectly healthy wildshape form to cast goodberry to save a party member can attest to.

Based on what I've seen, the Druids aren't even doing the defending. It's the Tieflings actually fighting, the Druids are hiding.

lets not forget Kagha is a Shadow Druid and had turned most of the grove to her side (read: xenophobic, exclusionist, insular) well before Halsin left and was probably planning to coup de grace his ass and then he left and she just proclaimed herself the new Archdruid and got the Rite started.

That's because like half the druids are working on Kagha's ritual. Before she started up that ritual there would've been druids defending the place.

Plus if you go down that secret passage you find a druid who had been captured by goblins while patrolling. That same passage also has a statue that shoots fireballs and other traps the druids set up.




I don't think Kagha ever wanted to overthrow Halsin. When he returns she pretty meekly accepts her punishment of being downgraded to a novice.

Kagha us certainly being influenced by the shadow druids but I don't think she is full fledged in their camp quite yet either.She was just scared and looking for an easy escape from the grove's problems. She also probably thought Halsin was dead and not coming back.

Continuously conjuring food and water clearly upsets the natural balance of the world.

Goodberries are a different matter. They're just magically nutritious and requires real berries to turn into good berries.

But really I think most druids should not be classed Druids if you know what I'm saying. People able to cast cantrips and maybe ritual magic at best.

Which is the likely reality for the vast majority of magically talented people. Characters with adventuring classes are exceedingly rare in universe. Even running across a level 5 anything is pretty rare. That first chapter does a good job at showing the best of "mundane" D&D. I think we're in for a wild af ride.

From what Halsin himself tells you after you defeat the goblins and recruit him the Grove had deep internal political issues running well before the nautiloid crash and the goblin incursion.



I think it's fair to say Halsin is not great at politics (and being an ex adventurer that might actually be reasonable) and a let issues fester so much that more than a few druids started considering joining the shadow faction. This is not to say Halsin is evil, he's just not perfect and considering his later actions he was probably not well suited for a leadership role.

Halsin is like Conan. He's happy when he's out kicking ass. Super bored when you put him on a throne.

Like Robert Baratheon then? There goes my PC's hopes and dreams - he might get fat too...

No. Circle of life in nature means you kill in order to eat, or when you are threatened, not for sport.

Well he did kill them in bear (well TBH he killed one, I killed the other) form and warns you he cannot surpress his rage when seeing a goblin in that form. He was held captive there for quite some time, stoned and possibly seen the dwarf hacked to pieces since the butcher is in the same room, sooooo

"Your honour! Yes, I did kill the two children, but in my defence, I was drunk!"

"What does a dragon even eat?"

"Whatever it wants."

Ahem... the goblin children are throwing Halsin/bear stones with the express purpose to cause him pain. The goblins mention loudly they plan on feeding him to the worgs. AND actually Halsin is not guaranteed to kill the goblin children. He kills the grown goblin near the cage but then the 2 children have a good chance of escaping (disengae without causing AoOs and then dash).

Personally I see no issue with Halsin reacting the way he does as the little sadists express delight at the suffering of other living beings.

Yeah, all evidence we see in this game shows that even these goblin children, which seem more like goblin adolescents, are already murderous psychopaths.

Try with: "your honour I was held captive with no food or drink, stoned, watched as they hacked my companion to pieces to roast on a spit, while they planned to feed me to dogs."

I for one think that's a pretty legit excuse to kill anything on your way out while escaping, but that's just me, you obviously don't hold grudges - very christian of you.

Pretty much. Goblins have a deep sadistic streak. We see goblin kids in the camp who have tortured a person to death. For funsies.

They may be children but they aren't exactly innocent. Goblins function on an entirely different system of morality than the non-evil aligned races.

That said I still feel bad for having to kill them, but it very much is self defense at that point.

I don't think a goblin HAS to be evil. Like, I don't think it's literally baked into their DNA. But a goblin who is raised among normal goblin society is almost certainly going to be evil. If some good and kind people raised a goblin in a loving, nurturing, moral environment, they could probably be just as good as anyone else.

But the goblins we see in BG3 are absolute shitlords, even the kids.

Yah, goblins CAN be good. It is just highly unusual and counter to their culture. A good goblin is like a good drow. Unlikely but not physically impossible.

I don't know if they have the inherent pull to evil orcs have either. But they definitely aren't like gnolls that are just balls of hate in fur suits.

Not only am I not a Christian (or even live in a Christian country) confusing morality with Christianity is more than a little offensive.

I honestly think the grove is better off without him, but I think the grove's problem are related to how druid hierarchy or chain of command works. I don't get how someone like kagha became his second and why the other druid didn't kick her out once they discovered what a bitch she is

It's not so simple. I talked with the goblin whelps and as annoying, to me and thus my character, as they actions were, they have reasons. The ones in the outside replied to my toon objections highlighting how the dead adventurer had killed their parents and rightfully ask if they parents deserved to be killed (and it's a vicious cicle: the goblins raid, the other species kill them, the goblin feel even more justified to raid and so on), the kids stoning Haslins's bear form had a similar background.

Larian simply stated that the kids behaviour was the result of the environment they grew up, that in itself was a result of the global environment.

As far as I get until the arrive of the Absolute no race, bugbear, drows, and other ones, did even thought of start a conversation with the goblins to find a way to resolve the conflict, that is in line and coherent with the low middleage set (those were times were prejudices were more deep rooted and influencial than they are in our times).

About the cicle of life, it can not be translated as it is from the animal kingdom (made of beings that don't have the complexity of thoughts, emotions, logic and so on that characterizes humans) to the sentient species of Fareun.

Maybe it could be applied to trolls, giants, gnolls and some of the more feral monster races.

Furthermore in nature there are a lot of behaviours that to our eyes are not ethic or moral (for example the acclaimed bonobo apes indeed use sex as form of comunication but they do it without any regard of age, dolphins isolate and force females to mate, male lions kill the pups to make the females enter heat, a female cat in heat does not choose the male to mate with, some species of ants raid another species kidnap the larvae and eggs to make them slaves, etc etc.. ...).

Haslin indeed killed the goblin kids but when you talk with him he doesn't suggest a massacre of the enclave, he instead is in favor of Wyll's plan of make the goblins disperse by killing their leaders.

[This post highlight one of the problems that can arise with a middleage, but it goes the same for any setting that is not modern days based, set: the moral values of those times were quite different than ours, there were no ideas like human rights, war regulations and so on, european history is full of massacres, without care for the children and so on.]

You raise some good points but let me remind you that when you talk with the goblin kids who are kicking the dead aventurer who killed their parents and you suggest that perhaps their parents deserved to be killed those same goblin kids agree with you and say they deserved to be killed because they were weak and therefore unworthy of life... hardly an endearing justification I'd say. Also the goblin kids throwing rocks at Halsin in bear for express delight when he flinches because he's been hit by a rock, akin to children who torture insects or little animals for fun.

D&D is changing and the developers are removing mandatory allignment for races yet as it is now some races are overwhelmingly evil. Goblins, Orcs, Drows and the like can be good on an individual basis but usually are not. The goblins presented in BG3 thus far are all evil if petty in their deeds. Doesn't mean they need to be killed on sight by good characters... but being evil those same goblins will probably try to kill you on sight which will give your characters justification to defend themselves.

Nah. Goblins aren't just a result of their environment on anything like that (if anything their cruel environment is a result of their cruel nature). They're not humans, there's fundamental differences in what they are and how they think.

That's not to say *all* goblins are inherently like that. But nine in ten would be. If you raised those goblins in a nurturing and moral environment all you'd get are a bunch of cruel assholes who at best have learnt that loyalty to their community is important and channel their sadism at "acceptable" targets like unimportant outsiders, beggars, animals, and the like.

The last one in ten might grow up to be a good member of a good society. But they also don't fit into goblin society. If they grew up in gobville they'd likely be shunned, or stabbed in the back, or eaten.

For the record I am deeply agnostic and while I do have certain respect of religion per se I profoundly despise it's institutionalization and anti-democratic dogmas. "Turn the other cheek" is just a moral construct rooted in my particular culture that applied to this specific situation and was in no way meant to be offensive to anyone's beliefs.

Now that we've cleared that up, how come someone so deeply amoral as Halsin (according to you) still suggested to only kill the leaders, hopefully disbanding the horde after everything he's been through and not burning the place to the ground?

It's the easiest, most efficient way to achieve his goals.

Halsin is cool. He seems more morally centered than any of our actual companions. In these circumstances, killing goblin children is not an evil act. Typically, we would see killing helpless noncombatants as evil. And in our world, children are usually helpless noncombatants. But these goblin children are not. They are dangerous, vicious, and either have already murdered, or will almost certainly do so soon.

Now we're going in circles, let's just agree to disagree and call it a day.



Agree 100% He might be slightly reckless leaving the grove amidst it's refugee crisis and chasing off with random adventurers, but judging by his correspondence in the library he's tried to get outside help and is genuinely worried about them tadpoles (with a good reason too)

Unless he secretly wants the Nightsong for some sinister reason we don't know about yet. But if that's the case, he's a very good actor.

Halsin seems like a guy who sees the forest but misses the obvious trees. He's good about the big picture, and misses evil intent and weakness right in his own grove. Maybe he is very wise, but massively stupid? His character is really interesting and likeable, but I bet he would make a very frustrating leader. He desperately needs a good, smart, practical, 2nd in command in the worst way.

Hes actually a voe of the ancient's paladin dumping wis