Opinions on RPing the following CHARNAME

TheArtisan

I want to roleplay a slightly different PC through BG1 to ToB, and I don't really have any experience in playing evil characters. I generally play neutral characters. I won't play a character who's straight up irredeemably evil because not only can I not stand it but also the game doesn't really have the suitable options for roleplaying in the dialogue options given. Anyways:

He's a human Lawful Evil Blackguard, however his powers aren't from a sort of higher power like Dorn's, but

his inherent Bhaalspawn powers developed early on.

.

His attributes are: STR:14 DEX:15 CON:17 INT:11 WIS:15 CHA:18 Total: 90

He's evil in the sense that he has a distaste for letting things like compassion get in his way, but he's not devoid of redeemable traits. He respects honor and bravery, as well as men with the strength to overcome difficulties. He strongly believes in sacrifices for the greater good.

He would respect characters like Keldorn and Jaheira as peers, even though they have opposing ideologies. His favorite NPC would probably be Viconia.

Between a choice of Minsc and Korgan, he sees them as similar; strong fighters with weaker minds who could be useful to him, but he would choose Minsc. Even though he acknowledges Korgan as the stronger fighter, he believes Minsc is more predictable and less likely to be a dangerous enemy if he plays his cards right. He would prefer a party of slightly less powerful men he can trust rather than dangerous but powerful allies. Those with simplistic and shallow personalities such as Minsc he will abuse to the maximum, but he would put himself to risk if they were to be endangered in battle because he does feel responsibility for those he chooses as allies, and the fact that he needs them. If he were unable to stop them from, say, being crippled, however, he would abandon them as they are no longer of use to him.

Does anyone think that this is a good fit for LE or just a very extreme LN? So far I'm considering the following party for BG1:

PC, Minsc, Dynaheir, Kagain, Viconia, Imoen

And for BG2: PC, Keldorn, Minsc, Imoen, Viconia, (space for *******)

I don't actually know if Keldorn will accept an evil PC purely from alignment alone. If he doesn't I'll use Jaheira instead.

In ToB:

He will make Sarevok swear an oath to join. I'm still divided on whether he'd redeem him at that point. My PC may or may not become LN by ToB since I have the Expanded Hell Tests from Quest Pack installed. I know from reading the scripts that Sarevok will refuse to redeem if PC is evil (being a hypocrite and all)

How do you think the PC would act to the following (or would he do it where appropriate):

- Meeting Prism without knowing of his bounty
- Meeting Prism knowing of his bounty
- Killing the Iron Throne leaders
- Allowing Yoshimo to join the party
- Running the Fighter Stronghold
- Working for the Shadow Thieves or Bodhi
- Slavery in the Copper Coronet
- Killing Firkraag or helping him
- The entire Trademeet difficulty
- Hunting Valygar (really divided on this one)
- Killing Saemon Havarian (or trying to)
- Helping either side of the Sahuagin civil war or just killing everyone
- Killing Solaufein in the drow city
- Ascending or staying mortal

Mostly SoA, because imo BG1 and ToB are really lacking in significant alignment RP options.

Heindrich

Firstly, welldone on a non-min/max character

I look at the two alignment axis separately.

On the Good => Evil axis, your character sounds more Neutral than Evil. Being selfish and power-hungry is not necessarily Evil. For example I roleplayed my Good=>Neutral character as good pretty power-hungry and occasionally ruthless. He wants power because he has suffered so much and lost so much at the hands of more powerful adversaries. He wants power to protect those he loves and defend what he cares about. This would be Neutral/Good.

However selfishly seeking power in order to enrich one self and seeking power for power's sake, unrestrained by moral constraints, would be Neutral at best, depending on the means through which power is obtained.

Selfishly seeking power in order to enable you to take pleasure from harming others, for no good reason, is clearly evil.

On the Lawful => Chaotic axis, you have not provided much information about your character. It simply represents his attitude to Order vs Anarchy, Organisation vs Individualism.

vangoat

I'd find it hard to do Trademeet the evil way unless you're CE.

Blackraven

Congratulations, your Blackguard sounds very interesting and real! He's opportunistic, calculating and abusive of weaker others (such as Minsc). These are traits that lend themselves to playing evil. I'm "developing" a calculating neutral evil cleric/thief I'm going to play, and I figured that he too will only associate with evil NPCs if he thinks they can be relied upon such as Edwin, Vicky, or Kagain rather than the likes of Montaron, Shar-Teel, or Korgan.

Remember that being evil doesn't mean choosing the evil options all the time. In your case I'd take into account the fact that you're lawful. Lawfulness may keep you from taking the evil path (even if you desire to). Maybe you could define whether your lawfulness is based on fear of / respect for the government and other powerful institutions or based on honouring your word (which you won't readily give to others as it limits your freedom), or both. For example if your lawfulness is more about obeying the powers that be than about honouring your word, you could kill the entire Sahuagin city without any reservations since you have no repercussions to fear (other than resistance by the remaining Sahuagin faction), but you would leave the Iron Throne leaders in peace. If you always honour your word but have no respect/fear for powerful institutions you would probably side with one of the factions in the Sahuagin city, and on the other hand happily honour your promise to yourself or to whomever to slaughter the Iron Throne leaders.

TheArtisan

More depth of my character's moral standing. (Warning: contains spoilers not on Baldur's Gate but on other franchise)

He's Lawful because he upholds a code which he adheres strictly to, unlike Neutral or Chaotic characters who may be more flexible with their own 'rules'. He will only break his word, for example, if whom he made it to has proven similarly dishonorable (e.g. Tolgerias). He also believes in a 'one for all' system in which the greatest good can be achieved through everyone upholding similar, if not the exact same beliefs.

Additionally, his lawful nature also affects the way he draws allies. When he takes in a comrade, he considers it a binding contract - betray the other, and there will be no mercy. Because of this, he will risk his life to save his comrade, but if as I said his ally is unable to perform the terms of his contract (i.e. unable to serve as a party member) he would feel no remorse in abandoning them. He demands loyalty from his comrades, without exception. To put it into perspective, I once wrote a small (crappy) fanfic in which Xzar and Montaron

betray the party to the Zhentarim

In that situation, my PC would slaughter them both without hesitation regardless of past history.

Yoshimo's betrayal is an interesting one, and a bit ambiguous for me to know exactly how to respond. iirc the terms behind his geas were that he obey Irenicus's orders and not specifically that he betray the PC. I still think that he would put the ultimate blame on Yoshimo for accepting the deal, and thus will refuse to honor his last wish as a result.

He's Evil partially because the rules of the Blackguard class demands it, but I did try to twist his character around to make it more darkly flavored. It's true that he can be argued to be LN. A man with no moral stance on torture could still be argued to be LN if his motives for torture were justified. I'd compare my PC to Ra's Al Ghul in Nolan's Batman Begins. Ra's, I consider to be LE in alignment. He's cruel, merciless and vengeful, and his end goal was to raze the foundations of Gotham City and rebuild anew. Personally, I consider this an evil action, as he wants to destroy Gotham in its entirety, including all the innocent people and even characters like Gordon and Dent (pre-Two-Face). However, Ra's doesn't want to do this out of a satisfaction or enjoyment, but sees it as 'necessary evil', as a result of him being disillusioned from goodness. My PC isn't exactly like Ra's, but his goal to destroy Gotham would be something he would agree with.

(this example might not be exact, it's been a while since I watched BB and my interpretation may be wonky, the idea stands though)

I personally dislike the in-game description of LE as self-serving characters who abuse the law, and the 'greedy merchant' archetype. Some of my favorite characters in different worlds I consider Lawful Evil, but don't fit the description at all. Ra's is one. For those into Metal Gear, I consider Big Boss and Steven Armstrong LE. I believe Lawful Evil isn't necessarily 'evilness for evil's sake', though examples certainly do exist. The best way to put this would be to use the NWN style -100 to 100 meter for alignment. On the Law-Chaos scale, my PC would rate about 80-90, only making exceptions to his personal code for extreme conditions (again, example being a dishonorable dealing) whereas on the Good-Evil scale he'd only rate about -50 (or whatever the border between neutral and evil is)

Also, on a different note I wanted to make this PC because I was tired of my Good PCs being 'hero of justice BG1, hero of justice SoA, uber OP hero of justice ToB', and the game's options for properly neutral PCs are honestly horrible. RPing a character with actual development seemed interesting.

Blackraven

Ok so your charname is one who honours his word. Well that will help you decide on the dilemmas you were asking about. Pick any evil options that make sense to, and benefit your character. You can be quite ruthless in this respect, fits your character description.
However you'll refrain from undertaking any actions, be it good or evil, that go against your word, unless (as you stated already) those you're dealing with are dishonorable themselves.
You'l be more lawful than evil, but still sufficiently ruthless, abusive and self-serving to be called evil.
Have fun!
PS I can't comment on your Batman reference as I haven't seen that one. Besides I've no knowledge of Metal Gear.

Musigny

I tend to agree with Heindrich.
This sounds more neutral than evil. And perhaps a little more neutral (or even chaotic) than lawful (after all it seems that your very own interest will prevail).

Please cross-check with someone else but I believe you will fail to redeem Sarevok if he swears an oath.

TheArtisan

I just checked the dialogue through Infinity Explorer. Granted, it's the original BG2, but I doubt the EE has changed the required global for Sarevok's redemption path to succeed. Turns out I was wrong, from what I can tell of the script you can redeem him regardless of your alignment, and if he swears an oath it only changes certain lines in his dialogues. This is one of the lines Sarevok delivers if PC's alignment is evil in the second-to-last talk:

"Your own plans, however, are mostly unknown to me... although your evil nature is apparent enough and leads me to believe my overtures may not be unwelcome."

Redeeming Sarevok is tied to a global increment, "IncrementGlobal("SarevokChange","GLOBAL",1)" which is affected by the things you say to him. Being lenient with him, telling him you don't want power, etc. will increase this increment, and will affect whether he chooses to redeem or not. He may say one of the following:

"I believe you are a liar, . The taint will swallow you, no matter your claims over our birthright. I cannot wait to see how this all ends, personally."

"I don't believe you are sincere in your words, . But perhaps you are more deserving of our birthright, we shall see. I shall stand by your side and we shall see how this ends."

"I believe your words may have merit, . My own methods did not end well... and I have no desire to return to the Abyss when I perish, next."

Only the last dialogue branch will allow Sarevok to turn Chaotic Good. Afaik swearing an oath and PC's alignment has nothing to do with it.

Also apparently if you change Sarevok's alignment manually via EEKeeper or otherwise he'll act as though the redemption talk succeeded.

Edit: actually thinking about it, it's possible one of the mods I installed on my original version may have changed the conditions for Sarevok's redemption path... but I've had him swear an oath several times to no change in the path in the past, so I think it's still the vanilla path.

I'm still fleshing out my PC right now. I agree he's not so much LE as an extreme LN... but right now I'm trying to get my Fighter/Mage PC through a trilogy run first.