Evil just isn't as rewading...

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When I read some posts I get the following understanding about good and evil:

Good characters can lie, blackmail, steal, invade and plunder locked houses and disturb the dead without reason.
That's just the right way to roleplay a good character.

But if evil characters choose a diplomatic instead of crappy dialogue option or help someone for a reward, that's out of character and not roleplaying.


Good characters can do anything they want, while evil characters must act like brainless idiots. I always thought evil people do what they want.


Do you exspect a (non brain-damaged) evil character always to talk like this:

"Hey you useless crap, I despise you and if there weren't so many guards I would kill you ...
... would you please help me with my quest ?"

Sarevok probably gets nearly coronated in Part1 because he always throws insults when talking to the people in BG.
And Melissan must be good aligned, she doesn't choose a dialogue option which insults your party or threatens you all the time to get your help.


@Drew: Interesting argument, but ...
You keep the defenseless women as bound hostage for a long time just because she doesn't say nice things to you.
Revenge is evil, especially if you let her suffer so much for just a few words. This reminds me on people who rot in jail for telling the wrong jokes.

"I've helped you accidentally, I don't do anything for free so reward me or I'll take it by force" is also evil.
Good characters mainly help to make others happier, rewards are secondary. If you accidentally found a bound crime victim in real life, would you free her or demand a reward first ?
Doesn't this feel evil ?


@nataben1314:
Most arguments in my post weren't about playing like you suggested, else I would have just written that you can exactly play like a good character with an evil one and get CF and a few evil hell bonusses, proving the superiority of playing evil.

I wrote you CAN justify doing good deeds with an evil character with the hope for a better reward, but you DON'T HAVE TO.

This should mainly show that good deeds or dialogue options are less out ouf alignemt than stealing and blackmailing for good characters.
You cannot justify doing all advantageous evil deeds (like getting CF) with a good character.

You wrote "you CANNOT be evil the entire SoA/ToB", could you please be more specific ?
I know you have to to help a very evil guild, which requires bending the definition of good somewhat.


@killjoy:
You didn't really understand my post, did you ?

I haven't outlined the advantages of being evil, the advantages were told in prior posts and I even added another advantage.
The facts are clear, there's no need to write novels about them.

I looked at your arguments, proved them wrong or showed that you could change them into valid opposite arguments by mainly exchanging good and evil.

Your only remaining advantage was a little useless extra money because of better reputation, which can be obtained easily by stealing.
I thought it was obvious that the advantages I mentioned are more useful. Any of the mentioned advantages is more useful than a little gold. So I don't see a need to defend all advantages mentioned in my prior posts, which I'll repeat just for you:

- Improved mace of disruption
- Celestial Fury
- Ring of Gaxx
- Human Flesh Armor
- Blackrazor
- far better reward from the Sarevok Hell Trial

Your new reputation arguments don't change the balance.

Playing a F/T (or nearly any other class) is more rewarding than playing a paladin, I already wrote more than enough reasons why paladins aren't great for roleplaying in BG2.(no stealing, no lying, no house raiding, considerable chance to become fallen permanently if you don't use preknowledge or many reloads, ...)

You call the human flesh armor useless because the holy avenger is better, but I already told you that you can use the sword with an evil character like F/T (UAI) as well.

I already wrote that --no alignment shift or falling paladins/rangers-- doesn't really show anything about evilness, since you could wipe out the whole city without this happening. I don't know why you still use it as an important fact.

You actually didn't answer the really interesting questions.

You still didn't tell your "easily explainable" good roleplaying way to get CF.

If you have preknowledge nothing is hypothetical, else you'll meet at least some of the items like celestial fury or blackrazor.

"the game will severly punish you" - You didn't tell any situation where playing evil (not crazy)really yields worse penalties than a little less money or other crap only worth selling.
So there just isn't any substance behind your words.
You won't convince me unless you are able to back them up with examples.

 

I'm pretty sure you're all wrong. For one thing, good vs. evil isn't that simple. If it were, we'd only need three alignments and you wouldn't have to bother with the Law/Chaos axis.

That said, playing NE is the most rewarding way in the game; primarily because NE is directly biased towards rewards. If you're unabashedly selfish (which is NE, not evil in general), you will do what is best for you, which equates with what is most rewarding.

LE sticks to the laws as much as they bend them, only occasionally breaking them when they're sure they won't get caught (this is where Sarevok belongs, IMO). And CE, don't get me started on the stuff they do that's not in their best interest. The "evil" insult options in dialogue are actually chaotic options. Whether CE, CN on a bad day, or CG when they just plain snap.

RE: Item examples

-IMoD: While it may be selfish to keep the illithium and give Sarles the substitute, evil characters do not have a monopoly on being selfish. For one, Sarles is an arrogant **** who doesn't deserve a single gold piece spent on him, much less your time in hunting down the illithium. Some alignments, like LG, might find no adequate reason not to give Sarles the illithium, but I can assure you that the act of depriving a spoiled brat of what he's throwing a tantrum for is not evil.

-Celestial Fury: This is not evil, just chaotic. Again, they are being absolute ****s to you, and indeed to the entire neighbourhood! I mean, how evil is it to put a deadly trap on your front door? The first time I heard them, I immediately imagined someone from out of town knocking on the door and suddenly getting hit with an Ice Storm spell. (And what's worse, that's an area effect spell; innocent bystanders, anyone?)

-Ring of Gaxx: Not evil, just astoundingly stupid. Another place where the game makes you play the patsy to get your quest. Good or evil, you'd have to be an idiot to release someone who was locked away for all eternity. It could be as powerful as Demogorgon, for all you know.

-Human Flesh Armor: Okay, now that one's evil, but not for the reason you would think. Killing a good dragon is evil; killing Adalon is not quite. She's a ***** to you for no reason, not unlike the majority of allied NPCs in the game. Most good PCs should have a definite problem with this, but anyone can be pushed too far and a dragon's strength can do a lot of pushing. The evil part is keeping armor made out of human flesh. It's disgusting. I'm not surprised they made it unusable by non-evil characters.

- Blackrazor: Again could just be stupidity, though it is primarily evil. Can you imagine Minsc figuring out that you could just give the sword to the genie after that biased speech of the Greed demon? Fighting is the natural thing that pops to mind when you're given a sword and told it's the solution to your problem. So unless you're a complete pacifist (pretty much impossible in this game), you'll be looking for something to kill too, and the genie even says it would be a wanted release. It takes at least 5 brain cells to try to find another way.

As for the Hell Trials, "better" is a matter of opinion. I, for one, find the STR bonus absolutely positively worthless. Why? STR belts and other STR-enhancing items. There's loads of them. WIS & CHA, OTOH, can be quite useful. Well okay, CHA helps things that you won't need by ToB, but WIS can help a priest for extra spells. So in the end you're comparing one worthless thing with another worthless thing.

Come to think about it, I bet the general NE attitude of most powergamers is why they had one evil act drop you to NE no matter what your alignment was. A little joke on the punks who go for the "best" option regardless, forcing them to finally choose an appropriate alignment.

 

I disagree with this. Sarevok used the iron throne, his father, Tamoko, the man who trained him (the one you meet in the undercity) and others for only as long as they were useful. He then betrayed each and every one of them when they were no longer useful. He killed his father who, a man who took him in when he had no one and seemed to have genuine feelings for him, to set up charname in Candlekeep. He allowed the Iron Throne to disintegrate when it was no longer useful (in fact he aided its demise) and he even betrayed his own lover by ordering her to face charname in battle.....a battle he knew she would lose. A lawful character wouldn't have betrayed his family, his organisation, his lover, and his mentor. Sarevok did just that.

 

True enough. Everything except Tamoko, anyway; she did that of her own volition AFAIK.

 

She did it of her own volition, but on Sarevok's command. I agree that whether or not that constitutes a betrayal is debatable. The other betrayals, however, were pretty cut and dry.

 

See, that's the thing. I don't remember hearing about this "command" you're talking about; I always thought it was just someone in love defending the one they cared for. I'll look through the dialog file to see what I can find.

Betrayals fit just fine into the LE template, but I think it's the fact that some of them were so unnecessary that tips him to CE. I do agree on that.

EDIT: "He has forsaken me, left me to die in your path."
I suppose that could be taken as him having ordered her to fight you, but I always took it as him just discarding her and her taking the initiative to fight you to redeem herself in his eyes.

[ July 10, 2006, 05:44: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

I disagree. 2 of the strength bonus is added after the equipment bonusses. If you wear the girdle of fire giant strength for example you have 24 instead of 22 strength, increasing the damage potential considerably.
It's only useless if you are using the CF hammer, but other party members can benefit from CF as well and there are better weapons.

About killing Adalon:
"She isn't nice to me, so she must die" is evil logic.
You know that she's a good dragon who helped the outside world against the drow.
She's a mother whose children are in danger, so there's a reason why she isn't calm and diplomatic.
She doesn't hurt you, she just commands you around.
Killing someone good just because of rough words is something I would exspect from a bloodthirsty CE maniac, not from a good character.

 

Unless the good character is an idiot.
Adalon is pretty tense (and intense) and it's possible a heated arguement between her and a good pc could very well escalate into a fight.

 

I'm quite convinced by kmonster's argumentation.

IMO it is not whether good is more advantageous than evil, it's whether you like to powergame or roleplay.

Good is simpler if you consider your PC is going to go out of his way to accomplish quests and help the widow and her orphans: pally types have to follow certain rules. Hence trying to justify getting the silver pantaloons or killing Andalon seems (to me) farfetched/irrelevant for a good party.

Evil characters (and chaotic neutral ones "on a bad day") are bound to have more latitude in their actions (something that in itself can be rewarding).

Evil characters don't have to worry about loyalty, paying taxes, childcare and alimonies, they don't care about friends or innocent bystanders getting hurt, they don't have to do the right thing all/most of the time.

The Child of Bhaal is nevertheless the hero, not the villain so in order to make him/her interesting it can be worthwile to flesh out the reasons why he/she would fall/join the dark side and embrace the taint.

Evil like good is not an absolute but a relative notion. Most characters (including Korgan and Edwin for instance) are not nearly as evil as Rejiek or Demogorgon. The Child of Bhaal can yield to the taint and embrace evil nevertheless.
I believe evil can be rewarding and interesting to play if you endeavour to build up a background story to explain a character's motivations and justify a certain pattern of behaviour: a reedeming feature (an undeclared but genuine brotherly affection for Imoen for instance) or a weakness (a certain degree of self consciousness or an inferiority complex leading to a need for self-assertion and an overbearing attitude for instance) can be great in order to give more depth to an evil PC -think about Raistlin Majere for instance.

 

Isn't that what people do on a matter of opinion? I'm obviously not going to convince you, and I'm sure you're not going to convince me.

For the last time, evil is not one alignment. It cannot be so easily categorized. The logic smacks much more of chaos than evil, and CE of course embraces it completely.

As I said, most good characters would have a significant problem with killing a good dragon. But Bioware never got the alignment system and it shows. Adalon, despite being a silver dragon, is not any kind of good I know; she's a lot closer to Miko from OotS. Most of my neutral characters would have no trouble killing her if she stepped obviously beyond the line, but she never quite does (though I've had a CN haul off once on an imagined slight). Even most of my evil characters don't off her, simply because the Human Flesh Armor sucks compared to the alternatives, and killing a dragon for it isn't worth it.

But the real problem is how unnecessarily she's rude. I mean, come on! She's seen your actions, you're clearly more goody-goody than the rotting teeth of Alora, and still she dumps on you?! Being an a** to an evil character I can see, even being wary of a neutral character if for some reason she decided to cast Know Alignment (which is unwarranted), but a paladin having to put up with that ****? Adalon may wear the colors, but she's not good.

 

Yeah, whatever. She bosses you around, and even if tell her to go **** herself (to "Get another lackey"), she forces you to go into the Drow city anyway (which is truly a ****ing boring part of the game). I honestly prefer killing her right there and now than suffering the ****ing Drow quests. If that makes me CE, then what do I care? No one bosses me around, not even a ****ing dragon.

 

I always thought Adalon was a perfectly valid target for a good- or law-aligned zealot type of character. She has *chosen* to neglect her vitally important duty for personal reasons and *extorts* help from the party to fix the problems caused by her own bad decisions.

 

A "zealot" is self-righteous, not good... Fanaticism is not a defining element of goodness. After all some baddies and villains actually believe they are the good guys. Irenicus for instance claims he has been wronged. According to this logic Galvarey's actions towards the Child of Bhaal could be interpreted as being good...

If we compare Tolgerias and Adalon, what I mean by that should be pretty obvious.

I always thought Keldorn was a hypocrite and a fanatic more LN than LG (consider his attack on Viccy). Pally types (Fel referred to Miko from the OOTS) often seem to be self centred and domineering.

It is nevertheless possible to RP a Paladin who would be more intent on doing good things rather than enforcing some sort of precepts on others or going berserk because detect evil just went PING!

LG is not just a class requisite of a Paladin's character screen.

Actually trying to RP a more caring Pally (one who would only rely on violence as a last resort) could be quite a challenge.

 

Actually, I see Keldorn as more mellow than paladins typically are, and quite the good role model. His attack on Viconia is perfectly fine for a paladin: she's evil, she's a drow (almost never redeemable), and she's a murderer (citing BG1). What I'm surprised about is that he tolerates Edwin. Edwin is evil, a Red Wizard of Thay (wish I knew more about FR, but it seems like they'd be almost never redeemable), and even insane, if his talking to himself while standing directly in front of you is any indication. Keldorn getting along with Korgan, for some reason, doesn't puzzle me as much, and I think that might be because he might actually be redeemable. Korgan loves killing, but that could potentially be harnessed into smiting evil.

That's a common misconception. Paladins do not kill things strictly because they are evil; they have to have actually done something wrong first to deserve death. That's the lawful part of the Lawful Good alignment, and any good DM would penalize a paladin for killing every "PING!" As a result of this restriction, paladins would have a hard time justifying killing most LE characters, since they tend to only bend the law to their advantage, or the times when they break it they make sure they can get away with it.

Try a pally of Ilmater. Though non-violence doesn't really work in such a combat-filled game.

 

I'm not convinced by the murder explanation. If you check Korgan's bio you'll notice the reference to a necklace of ears... Now that would be a giveaway!
Using Korgan as a tool to fight evil is an application of the old saying "the end justifies the means" not really THAT good IMHO.
Keldorn (a family man by the way, which always struck me as something weird) only attacks Viconia because she is a Drow:

-Viconia is a Dark Elf, Dark Elves are evil, hence Viconia is evil.-

Can't beat that logic... What about Drizz't then?

Fel, there is no DM in BG2... This is not Pnp. When I mentioned the "PING" thing I was thinking of somebody who would play BG2 that way, getting ready to "smite" every red thing in the screen (nothing wrong with that either I'm not judging, the important thing is to enjoy the game).
I think you'll agree with me that in BG2 you can get away with things that no DM in his right mind would allow. But that is not the point.

This is a video game it uses some elements of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition, it is not a simulation of the Pnp game. You may agree that RPing in BG2 is limited to a certain extent but nevertheless trying to RP can enhance the gaming experience.

I was trying to point out some sort of alternative to play a different type of Paladins in BG2.
There is a line between a humane character who would only fight in self defence or to protect others (no Gandhi in that game, the only game I know which could be finished without killing anybody was Fallout 1 & 2) and a bloodthirsty berserker.
Playing an intelligent, open-minded and articulate Paladin can be interesting and REWARDING.
I'd rather pick Mystra, Helm, Tyr or Torm... Suffering may be chivalric, but dragonslaying is more fun (not Adalon of course!).

 

--- A "zealot" is self-righteous, not good... Fanaticism is not a defining element of goodness. After all some baddies and villains actually believe they are the good guys. Irenicus for instance claims he has been wronged. According to this logic Galvarey's actions towards the Child of Bhaal could be interpreted as being good... ---

Almost but not quite. The zealot believes they are doing the good and/or lawful out of adherence to a higher moral principle or authority.

So, re: Adalon: Killing a good-aligned (*1) creature who is exhibiting "fallen" behaviour (*2) with catastrophic consequences fits the bill for a zealot.

*1 - Actually, I always thought (I don't know why) that Adalon was supposed to be LN (a guardian of the gate and all that), but the Lawful-to-Chaotic slide works just as well for the zealot to act upon; at least when the neglected duty was of such importance.

*2 - yeah, paladin terminology; it seems to fit.

But, as far as Galvarey is concerned: his behaviour's still pretty clearly NE or LE (and not that of a "misunderstood zealot") because his primarily motivation appears to be self-interest (self-advancement), not a higher moral authority or principle.

 

Good point about Galvarey; self-advancement and a holier-than-thou attitude.

Exactly, the key word here is "believes", it doesn't mean that this character is actually upholding the good.

 

Alignment do not necessarily reflect what the caracter believe, but it reflect more what the caracter do. For example, there an (anti)paladin darklord in Ravenloft who think she is lawful good (ok, the alignemnt doesn't really exist but bat she belive to act like a true lawful good paladin) but in fact she is lawful evil because she just act like so (and still think she does the good thing).

 

I'm not convinced what Adalon does is evil.....or even that it isn't good. Good =/= Nice. Remember, disguising you as a drow is a mutually beneficial thing to do. You help her by bringing her the eggs and she helps you by allowing you to get closer to Irenicus (whose last known location was inside the drow city) and showing you the way out of the underdark. Frankly, a good aligned character would likely never even know that Adalon will force him to enter the drow city, since a good aligned character wouldn't refuse to help her. She also doesn't make you go......she just disguises you as a drow. If you decided to try and find another way to the surface (just because the game doesn't provide you one doesn't mean there isn't another way)being disguised as a drow will only help you.....and the disguise will even conveniently go away as soon as it is clear that you aren't helping Adalon out.

 

Korgan's...erm...kinda nuts. Keldorn may think he's only CN instead of CE, and even if he does there's always the opportunity for redemption with such an unbalanced soul. I'm not talking about letting a CE Korgan loose on evil like a hunting dog, I'm talking about a Sarevok kind of conversion. Boosting him up to CG or something.

There's also the "cute" syndrome prevalent in the game, where evil characters don't act quite so evil under your direction. You hear Korgan's story about killing his comrades when they became useless to him, but does he ever show even an ounce of that kind of behaviour in-game? Even Aerie is only driven away by insults, not the blade of his axe. CN Anomen is much more evil in that sense, chasing Aerie around for no reason or trying to kill other characters.

A few things in here to discuss...

1. I always thought the family man thing was mostly a front, because aside from one little bit in the game, which is even caused by his negligence, Keldorn doesn't make a single peep about it. In fact, I rather think he fancies Anomen instead...

2. Keldorn may refer to her only as drow, but that doesn't mean he went straight from Drow to evil. Most drow are evil, Viconia does nothing to dissuade that notion, and it's likely he would've cast a Detect Evil spell at her to make sure (especially if he's heard of aberrations like Drizzt). After all, it's not like he isn't positively loaded with them.

3. Yeah, he probably would've done the same to Drizzt (if he hadn't heard of him, anyway), but I think he'd back off as soon as the Detect Evil was negative.