NPC observations re alignment
FrdNwsm
Member Posts: 1,069
After a couple of adventures with my "evil" crew, I'm starting to think that NPC alignment is a matter of the words on the character screen; it doesn't seem to play much role in how they behave. They're all talk and no action.
Korgan wants to get his silly book and have revenge on his treacherous buds; OK, sounds reasonable.
Edwin was working for some unscrupulous thieves and wants some obscure scroll. Big deal.
Viconia doesn't seem to have any issues at all; she's just a cleric with high magic resistance and blue skin AFAIK.
Hexxat is closest to being truly evil, she uses and discards that servant girl and drinks blood. But it never seems to impact her behavior when on a group quest.
It's not like they periodically go out and kill and eat babies or murder old ladies for their few coins, and cheese off the local law enforcement (such as it is). They are more like "evil lite". Well, when I'm watching them anyway; I can't answer for how they spend their free time. MyChar doesn't care as long as they don't bring the cops down on HIS head.
Contrast this with something like the Slaver ring, or the Bridge district killer, or the Beholder cult cutting folks eyes out. Now, those guys are REALLY evil, with a capital E. I suspect the designers decided "Hey, a party with Edwin, Hexxat, Keldorn, Viconia and Anomen would be too OP, let's make it so they can't all work together. Oh I know! Alignment conflicts!". And for good measure, throw in some discontent if the party gets too good a reputation.
So, I am going to keep this bunch together for a while. Hexxat still has some quest to do, which apparently involves going to China (or someplace with an oriental sounding name, anyway) and I need to break Haer Dalis out of prison on another dimension. Jaheira seems to have no problem working with this bunch, and I dare say Yoshimo and Neera could function in the group as well, if I decide I need their various skills.
On the other hand, my good crew is probably more hard core tough. Difficult to say which way to finally go as far as a core group goes. Or is it important to develop such a group? Is there enough experience floating around to keep a number of extra NPCs more or less up to level? 8,000,000 experience to get to cap seems pretty high.
Korgan wants to get his silly book and have revenge on his treacherous buds; OK, sounds reasonable.
Edwin was working for some unscrupulous thieves and wants some obscure scroll. Big deal.
Viconia doesn't seem to have any issues at all; she's just a cleric with high magic resistance and blue skin AFAIK.
Hexxat is closest to being truly evil, she uses and discards that servant girl and drinks blood. But it never seems to impact her behavior when on a group quest.
It's not like they periodically go out and kill and eat babies or murder old ladies for their few coins, and cheese off the local law enforcement (such as it is). They are more like "evil lite". Well, when I'm watching them anyway; I can't answer for how they spend their free time. MyChar doesn't care as long as they don't bring the cops down on HIS head.
Contrast this with something like the Slaver ring, or the Bridge district killer, or the Beholder cult cutting folks eyes out. Now, those guys are REALLY evil, with a capital E. I suspect the designers decided "Hey, a party with Edwin, Hexxat, Keldorn, Viconia and Anomen would be too OP, let's make it so they can't all work together. Oh I know! Alignment conflicts!". And for good measure, throw in some discontent if the party gets too good a reputation.
So, I am going to keep this bunch together for a while. Hexxat still has some quest to do, which apparently involves going to China (or someplace with an oriental sounding name, anyway) and I need to break Haer Dalis out of prison on another dimension. Jaheira seems to have no problem working with this bunch, and I dare say Yoshimo and Neera could function in the group as well, if I decide I need their various skills.
On the other hand, my good crew is probably more hard core tough. Difficult to say which way to finally go as far as a core group goes. Or is it important to develop such a group? Is there enough experience floating around to keep a number of extra NPCs more or less up to level? 8,000,000 experience to get to cap seems pretty high.
Post edited by FrdNwsm on
1
Comments
(2) Edwin. You meet a Liche who wants to keep a scroll safe. A liche who is undead merely because someone was hunting him and his students. When he demands the scroll, the liche's response is that nobody should have like it. Edwin straight up murders the guy.
Edwin also has you murder a cowled wizard, asks you to murder a merchant for his documents, and is more than happy to be the right hand man for a man like Mae'Var...until Mae'Var stops being useful. That is pretty darn evil.
(3) Viconia, unless she is redeemed, is pretty evil as well. She is a devout follower of Shar. Just look how Sharites act in the Baldur's Gate series! She encourages Charname to take the less moral path when she talks. Sure, she's not a mass-murdering psycopath...but then again, she is redeemable.
Well, that's interesting, and certainly makes him less benign in my eyes, but when does all this happen? Hasn't occurred yet on my watch.
"When he demands the scroll, the lich's response is that nobody should have like it. Edwin straight up murders the guy. "
Ah; we never even got to that point. As soon as we got to the room, we opened up with all the firepower we had. I mean ... LICH! ... my basic reaction was "kill it before it gets a spell off". There was zero chance for any dialogue. Guess I'm even meaner than Edwin.
"Edwin also has you murder a cowled wizard,"
And this is bad ... how? I wiped out a whole coven of Red Wizards, and IMO the cowl wearing dudes aren't much better. They claim to want to regulate magic use, and then turn around and sell you permits to use spells? Sounds like a Mafia protection racket to me.
>>Just look how Sharites act in the Baldur's Gate series! She encourages Charname to take the less moral path when she talks<<
Labels, labels, labels. I pay no attention to them. I haven't seen her do anything bad myself. As a Bhaalspawn, I am not about to condemn someone because of some blanket stereotype. Been there myself; look at that whole Harper persecution thing.
I lol'd
Seriously, this has been beaten to death on here the topic of alignments. You don't have to go around eating babies and skinning kittens alive to be evil, nor do you have to never tell a lie or not have stolen that pack of bubble gum when you were 10 to be good.
People think you have to be Vlad the Impaler or Charles Manson to be Evil.... we're using a scale with 9 points on it to try to generalize an incredibly complex set of values.
Finished?? I'm probably not even 1/4 through it. I have two quests left over from Chapter 2 that I haven't had a chance to do yet. I also have a ton of gold piling up in my keep, but I haven't gone to pick it up, despite being low on coin, because I have heard that this sets still more plots into action. Not to mention there are a couple of NPCs I haven't even met yet. I am sure they have things they want me to do also.
Her comments here and there, and also the dialogues, perfectly reflect her alignment and her background, in my opinion. In general, I think Bioware did a splendid job in this field.
And yes, it might well affect how they can be used later on. But when they ARE with me, they do what I say. If I want them to attack someone, they do. If I want them to refrain from attacking, they do that also. (As opposed to Keldorn who will attack certain evil beings on sight). At least, that's been my experience so far. As I said, the entire Edwin vs Lich thing never got a chance to happen. It does prove an exception to my rule, I will admit.
But generally speaking, they may SAY provocative things, but don't act out on them. ::crosses his fat blue fingers::
But, I guess, it's for the best...