122 réponses à ce sujet

[Pipboy3billion]

Currently playing a Paladin/Cav through the series, I'm having a tough time with the LG alignment. I mean, yeah, technically, you can pretty much ignore alignments and do what you want in most cases, but I'm playing legit, so the protagonist's alignment affects dialogue choices.

Case in point, I'm stuck on the Prism/Greywolf quest. Some of the options are:

1) Collect the bounty yourself.
2) Leave Prism to his fate.
3) Defend Prism from Greywolf.
4) Try to reason with Greywolf.

If it was just a simple criminal vs. bounty hunter situation, it would be pretty cut and dry, but there are a few things that complicate this for me. First, Prism confesses to his crime. Second, he offers restitution. And, third, he's unarmed and defenseless. #1 is not very LG. It's one thing if you say that you're taking him in to face his crimes, but all the dialogue options are oriented around collecting a bounty. It seems more LE to me. #2 seems to be more LN, or even TN, than LG to me. You know there will eventually be a confrontation between the two and bounty hunters don't have the respect for life as held by a Paladin. The main difference between #3 and #4 are the dialogue options when Greywolf shows up. One, you just flat out hold your ground and defend Prism (#3) and the other you just try to get Greywolf to cut him some slack (and end up having to fight him anyway). To me, #3 is CG and #4 is NG.

I don't think any option that involves cutting Prism some slack is Lawful. The protagnist is not a legal entity in Nashkel, and therefore doesn't have the right to accept Prism's offer. However, none of the Lawful options seem to be terribly Good, either. I know, t know, this is the typical dilemma of the Lawful Good character...those many situations where one has to choose between law and goodness. But what do you do? Flip a coin? Well, you can't do that, as that would be CN.

Side note, I am aware that not confronting Greywolf would lose my party one of the best weapons in the game, but that's irrelevant.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Can't you choose the 3. or 4. choice and interpret it as: "I'm gonna make sure that you do not die before you are brought before a proper court"?

[Pipboy3billion]

I don't know if that works. Perhaps in Candlekeep, everyone gets their day in court, but in Nashkel it's a perfectly legal open bounty. In a sense, the bounty system is their "court".

Right now, I'm leaning towards accepting Prism's confession/restitution and letting him finish his work before bringing him in. As for Greywolf, I'll probably try reasoning with him. I might know that he's going to attack, but "the party" doesn't. Sure this lets me collect the bounty and get the weapon. However, I figure I can donate the bounty to the church (my rep is already 20 so I have nothing to gain), and I might even sell the sword and do the same.

Is there a more LG resolution?

[Humanoid_Taifun]

If the bounty system is their court, then killing the bounty hunter should be a legal way of proving one's innocence (so in short, all you're doing is aiding the law).

I thought LG didn't mean following the law so much as following one's own strict (and good) moral code. If the law is questionable (like a criminal law not including something like hearing out the suspect before delivering punishment) then an LG character should not be following it. Right?

[devSin]

Isn't the bounty for the emeralds? They just want those back, not Prism's head.

[Pipboy3billion]

I thought LG didn't mean following the law so much as following one's own strict (and good) moral code.

Isn't the bounty for the emeralds? They just want those back, not Prism's head.

I totally agree on both counts. The problem is that Prism's offer is to give what little he has left to finish his sculpture. However, he needs to use the stolen emeralds (presumably for the eyes) to finish it. I'm not even sure why you get the emeralds back after he finishes. But letting him retain stolen property doesn't seem LG to me.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Well, it's possible you allowed him to insert them into the face so he could die a happy death, but removed them again afterwards. It's likely not what the writers wanted this to mean, and it is not a very nice thought for people who are actually trying to advance art in general and art of elven queens in particular.

[devSin]

It's unclear how you come upon the emeralds. They're enough to collect the bounty, so I'm sure it's all on the up-and-up.

I could see an argument for both. You're either so rigid that you kill him right on the spot to retrieve the stolen property (I'm not sure that's really an LG attitude, though) or you let him finish his obsession and return the property he stole (I don't know if that's lawful enough, though). This is the sort of thing that would be up to your DM.

I'd probably allow mercy to override duty (as long as you return the emeralds, there's no sense in cutting him down like a dog); otherwise, I'd make you leave him with Greywolf (he's a criminal; it's a lawful bounty; and Greywolf is the contracted hunter).

If you're that hung up about it, I recommend immediately donating the money you get to the church.

[morbidest2]

My problem with playing LG is that it makes me feel guilty about supporting my local black market merchants. In a world where being a thief is considered at least a quasi-legitimate profession, LG just seems out of place. To hades with the Flaming Fist and all other pompous do-gooders (except for Mazzy).

[Seagloom]

A character does not need to strictly adhere to their alignment in every situation. If they did, they would inevitably encounter dilemmas where a standard alignment approach is nonsensical.

A paladin follows their code above all else. That excludes the laws of a land they feel are unjust. She will try to act within the law when possible, but will choose to act in the best interests of promoting her cause if it the law seems unfair or capricious.

Given BG's limited options here, I vote number four. A paladin would try to reason with Greywolf to let Prism complete his work and die peacefully. Greywolf can still collect his bounty in a few hours, and the paladin is obviously not going to fleece him. He is a freakin' paladin. That Greywolf chooses to be an arrogant jerk and tries killing everyone instead of waiting is his fault. It may not be a neatly LG solution, and is certainly not a desirable outcome, but is closer to LG than any of the other choices.

Now, there are paladins who are more lawful than good and might allow Greywolf to kill Prism if their deity is the rigid type. A worshipper of Helm or Tyr is an excellent example of that. But an out of the box bog standard paladin, or a follower of a deity such as Ilmater or Lathander is likelier to be more good than lawful. They will try to appeal for forgiveness and mercy, and only react violently if left with no other recourse.

Just my two coppers.

Modifié par Seagloom, 18 septembre 2011 - 09:48 .

[Humanoid_Taifun]

morbidest2 wrote...
In a world where being a thief is considered at least a quasi-legitimate profession, LG just seems out of place.

You imply it makes sense in this world?

[Seagloom]

I think lawful good can work perfectly fine in a D&D setting. There is a difference between standard lawful good, and a paladin's lawful good. Compare The Order of the Stick's Roy Greenhilt to Hinjo or O-Chul. All three are lawful good. The latter two are paladins, and consequently way more rigid because of their code.

Modifié par Seagloom, 18 septembre 2011 - 10:01 .

[morbidest2]

Humanoid_Taifun wrote...

morbidest2 wrote...
In a world where being a thief is considered at least a quasi-legitimate profession, LG just seems out of place.

You imply it makes sense in this world?

Well, there was always St. Francis of Assissi [sp]. The problem, as Seagloom pointed out, is what do you do if the Laws are unjust.  

[morbidest2]

Seagloom wrote...

I think lawful good can work perfectly fine in a D&D setting. There is a difference between standard lawful good, and a paladin's lawful good. Compare The Order of the Stick's Roy Greenhilt to Hinjo or O-Chul. All three are lawful good. The latter two are paladins, and consequently way more rigid because of their code.

Frankly, I think the whole TSR G/N/E  and L/N/C 3x3 array has never worked. The quickest way to illustrate the point  is to look at Jaheira's script. She keeps talking about BALANCE (NN) while her actions (unless the PC has robbed a lot of widows and orphans and gotten poor reputation) are always CG. At a minimum Gary Gygax needed a 4x4 array to sort out humanoid behavior, but it's 30+ years too late to work the issue.

Your examples of how different paladins have different interpretations of LG IMHO just boils down to "I AM DA LAW". Which is fine for a medieval world where Might was Right. To slightly misquote the ultimate and great Wisdom of Minsc (and Boo): Sword, meet Evil. Evil, meet Sworddddd!!!!"

  

[Pipboy3billion]

A paladin follows their code above all else. That excludes the laws of a land they feel are unjust. She will try to act within the law when possible, but will choose to act in the best interests of promoting her cause if it the law seems unfair or capricious.

For some reason, "codes", as would be defined by the player comes off as CG to me. It would have been nice if, in the prologue, the protagonist came across a book that would outline some kind of code for paladins...maybe in the book you get for Phlydia. Sure, you can go with the typical defend the innocent and helpless/uphold the law/etc. kind of thing, but it's all a little vague.

But an out of the box bog standard paladin, or a follower of a deity such as Ilmater or Lathander is likelier to be more good than lawful.

That's how I'm trying to think about it, and why I rationalized choosing option #4. Had I been playing a cleric, I would be opting for a cleric of Lathander for BG2, so I'm treating this paladin as a paladin of Lathander.

Of course, this now raises another question. When importing to BG2, should he kit to a Cav or an Undead Hunter. I was originally thinking Cav, as growing up in Candlekeep would expose him to all the traditional paladin stories. However, I would think the church of Lathander would lean towards the UH. Any thoughts?

Frankly, I think the whole TSR G/N/E and L/N/C 3x3 array has never worked.

Yeah, I never liked it much myself. It was too internally inconsistent.

[Seagloom]

You could go either way. Lathander does not only focus on slaying undead.

Technically any character can have a code. A paladin merely adheres to theirs closely, as any lawful character would if they had a code. A chaotic good character might have a set of general guidelines he believes in, but he will merrily discard them if they do not apply to his current situation, or hamper his options. A paladin who wants to stay a paladin would never do that.

Baldur's Gate is a terrible game to play a paladin in, though. There are too many quests lacking a proper path for them. Often the choices boil down to neutral/chaotic good, true neutral, or chaotic evil. It is way easier to play another class if you are concerned with authenticity. Otherwise, you are constantly fighting against the dialogue choices. :/

@morbidest

I agree it never worked as written. Personally, I sprinkle a whole lot of 3e alignment interpretations into my role-playing. I don't care if the BG series is 2e. 2e alignments as written were as nonsensical as they were confining. I mean, true neutral's switching sides bit for example, is insane. 3e alignments are still limiting, but allow for more varied interpretations within them. Jaheira in 3e could have been something other than TN, and would've made more sense.

In any case, this is why I generally discard alignment when playing tabletop. As long as my DM agrees and we throw out alignment targeting spells, it's all golden.

Modifié par Seagloom, 18 septembre 2011 - 05:30 .

[Pipboy3billion]

Technically any character can have a code.

Granted, but I don't see a CG character tossing out their code. Instead, I see their code being more aligned with their own personal value system and not society's. Then again, the two are not necessarily going to conflict with LG in a lot of cases.

Baldur's Gate is a terrible game to play a paladin in, though. There are too many quests lacking a proper path for them.

Yeah, I'm already thinking ahead to BG2 where I have to side with either a Thieves' Guild or vampires. A paladin isn't exactly optimal for me due to the alignment restriction, but I want to play through the series with a pure class charismatic front-line fighter type that has some specials to keep it interesting. It was either this or a ranger, but the ranger kits are pretty lame and the specials are just meh. I also considered a fighter turned pure Kensai, but they're really just paper tigers with no good specials. A paladin just seemed like the closest thing.

Regarding Greywolf, I sold his sword and gave the money to the church. I may not be able to resolve that quest LG with the dialogue choices, but I can in other ways I suppose.

Still, I'm pretty screwed (morally) for BG2.

Personally, I sprinkle a whole lot of 3e alignment interpretations into my role-playing.

Are they that different? I played a little 3e a while back and remember thinking it was more of the same. 4e, on the other hand, is quite different from what I hear. I believe it goes something like Lawful Good, Good, Neutral, Evil, and Chaotic Evil.

[Seagloom]

The Player's Handbook descriptions are bit less silly in 3e, yes. More importantly they go over alignments in other books. Some not as good as others, but at least they made an effort to explain them beyond a small paragraph.

As far as tossing out a code, it depends on the individual chaotic person. However, chaos by its nature promotes individuality and change over adhering to tradition and stability. A chaotic good character would totally toss out his code if he felt that was the best option.

This explains it better than I can: Lawful and Chaotic

4e didn't change much. It's as you wrote, except Good encompasses neutral good and chaotic good. Unaligned covers all three neutral alignments. Evil represents lawful and neutral evil. In short, they condensed them. That's both good and bad depending on the situation. 4e did get rid of alignment based powers, however. At least that was true in the beginning. I haven't kept up with it. That makes it easy to toss out the entire mess without affecting gameplay.

Modifié par Seagloom, 18 septembre 2011 - 07:44 .

[Pipboy3billion]

This explains it better than I can

That was helpful. Thanks. As for 4e, I haven't played any of it (actually, I haven't played any tabletop in, like, 5+ years), I just heard things. I always thought an alignment mechanic in an RPG was somewhat backwards. That's the domain of the "RP" of RPG, not the "G".

Anyway, I'm thinking ahead to BG2. I don't remember much of it, but I do remember that the PC has to basically choose between thieves' and vampires. I can't see a paladin consorting with either, and I think a choosing-the-lesser-of-two-evils approach is a cop out.

Is there a legit LG path in BG2?

[Humanoid_Taifun]

There are mods that offer third options. It has also been argued (incorrectly) that since, if you side with the vampires, you end up destroying both fractions that would be the good path.

Modifié par Humanoid_Taifun, 19 septembre 2011 - 06:09 .

[Pipboy3billion]

Do you know of any in particular? I went through the lists at the IE mod site, but nothing seemed to explicitly address this issue.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

http://www.gibberlin...ternatives.html

http://mods.chosenof....net/saerileth/

Both of them introduce the paladins as 3rd route. Saerileth is a romancable character of 15 years and there has been a lot of critic of that. I have not tried Alternatives yet.

[Pipboy3billion]

Are you f*cking serious? A romance with a minor? Ok, that's seriously disturbing on two counts. First, she's a minor. Second, someone designed a mod where (I'm sure) it would have been totally acceptable if they had just made her, like, 25, instead. But no, the dev explicitly chose to make a child that is romance-able by someone who is at least in his 20s.

Then again, maybe it's a joke, right. Like, you download the mod, go to some house in the Bridge district where you're to pick her up, but instead are greeted by an NPC bard who says, "Hi, I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story about adults who try to meet young teens in video games..."

But, thanks for the tip on Alternatives. I'll have to check it out.

[Mana Garn]

Pipboy3billion wrote...

Are you f*cking serious? A romance with a minor? Ok, that's seriously disturbing on two counts. First, she's a minor. Second, someone designed a mod where (I'm sure) it would have been totally acceptable if they had just made her, like, 25, instead. But no, the dev explicitly chose to make a child that is romance-able by someone who is at least in his 20s.

Then again, maybe it's a joke, right. Like, you download the mod, go to some house in the Bridge district where you're to pick her up, but instead are greeted by an NPC bard who says, "Hi, I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC, and we're doing a story about adults who try to meet young teens in video games..."

But, thanks for the tip on Alternatives. I'll have to check it out.

aint gonna say pedophilia is okay or am i trying to defend the authors but in medieval time they were pretty much considered already a woman near that age. Also the pc(depending on your picture or your bio it might be more) is maybe 20-21(+1 year for BG1) years old which doesnt give such a huge age disparity. Anyway even with the pedophilia aside saerilith mod just plainly suck and the text make you want to cringe your teeth and gouge your eyes out.

[Seagloom]

Fifteen is the age of majority in several territories along the Sword Coast. I'm not sure if that applies in Amn, but it does in Tethyr; Amn's nearby southern neighbor. I have no idea if the author of that mod had any inkling of this when he wrote it, however. Personally, I put that mod alongside the Imoen romance as add-ons I will never try.