Hell Tests and Evil Characters

Wraithguard

I took the hell tests as a Lawful Evil Blackguard. I took the good solution everytime, but my alignment did not change. Is this normal? I thought I was supposed to turn good.
I searched on the forums, as well as the interwebz, but I found no same question, and I apologize in advance if there are same questions and I was just too dumb to find them.

CaloNord

If I'm not much mistaken, do they not only turn you evil if you are good and choose evil options? They don't work both ways?

lolien

When you choose the good path your aligment don't change. When you change evil path even one time your alignment change to chaotic evil.

Edit: you can find a similar discussion here: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/30757/go-ing-to-hell/p1

Wraithguard

I saw that. I don't see if it includes a situation where you start as Evil(in my case Lawful Evil) then take only Good choices.

lolien

It includes. Lawful evil remains LE with good choices, and becames CE with evil choice(s).

Wraithguard

On my last play through with a True Neutral char it retained my Law-axis alignment and turned me NE.

meagloth

I though it always turned you NE

Wraithguard

They fix'd it in the EE i think.

lolien

Yeah, @Wraithguard‌, you must be right. I have experiences only from the vanilla game, in EE i'm still in Bg1.

Eudaemonium

lolien said:

Yeah, @Wraithguard‌, you must be right. I have experiences only from the vanilla game, in EE i'm still in Bg1.

In EE it changes you to Evil, but you keep your Law/Chaos alignment now, so LG characters become LE, CG characters CE, etc.

Wraithguard

Yeah. But why does my LE char stay LE when I make all the good choices?

tennisgolfboll

Inconsistency

CamDawg

I'm not sure taking the good path necessarily dictates an alignment change. Two items to consider--the trials are set up to tempt the PC to give in to their evil taint; not to make a case for redemption. Also, evil characters should be expected to take the outcomes that provides a greater advantage. Taking the good path in, say, the Selfish trial could be justified because you can't afford to lose the party member selected by the demon, or maybe it's faster to just ignore the challenge in the Pride trial. The inverse, justifying evil choices for a good character, is a little more difficult.

And yeah, the preservation of the lawful/chaos aspect of alignment is something altered by a ton of mods, including the BG2FP, which is how it made its way into BGIIEE. vBG2 just dumped everyone into NE, IIRC.

tennisgolfboll

Its abit absurd that you can murder innocents left and right but if you get angry at the shade of the man that murdered your only family you are evil.

I get it, its a game mechanic. Which is fine, but the fluff behind it is absurd. The above quote and the stuff about its on another plane, in your soul yada yada.

Wraithguard

@CamDawg‌ I thought it was my a reflection of my character's inner self, made into a hellish place by his father's tainted essence, and that it was the time for me to choose if I was going to be a good or evil deity.

CamDawg

Wraithguard said:

@CamDawg‌ I thought it was my a reflection of my character's inner self, made into a hellish place by his father's tainted essence, and that it was the time for me to choose if I was going to be a good or evil deity.

It is, but throughout the entire series the PC's struggles with the taint are typically structured so that he/she has to resist being evil instead of an outright affirmation of their goodness. I guess I look at it as you can choose to be evil or not evil, instead of choosing to be evil or good.

It's a subtle difference, but that's my take on it at least.

Wraithguard

Yeah, I guess so. So I guess for my char I'll just take it as choosing being mainstream evil and hipster evil.

CamDawg

Wraithguard said:

hipster evil

Heh. "My kind of evil is obscure. You've probably never heard of it."