The ferret familiar

thupes

I never noticed because I always played good alignments when I was younger, but now that I'm playing through this game again, something struck me as odd. Why is it that Lawful Neutral mages, people who by definition respect the local authority, get a familiar that is skilled in robbing civilians? Is this some sort of test of morality to give you an ability you are forbidden by alignment to make good use of? I'm not asking why Beamdog didn't change it, I just wanted to see if anyone here possibly has any insight into what Bioware was thinking when they made that decision.

magisensei

Consider this: as a lawful neutral character with a familiar that can steal from people - tells you that those people who are evil are your potential targets. Sometimes pick pocketing or stealing from those evil individuals is the way to solve a situation without getting into conflict that will lead to bloodshed. As a lawful neutral PC you don't have to use this skill but it provides you the option to solve problems (especially stolen goods) that will not lead to fighting.

thupes

That kind of makes sense, but why does a LN character want to avoid bloodshed? He isn't good (the alignment that values life) and as long as it's in self-defense and above board it's OK.

JumboWheat01

I never quite thought of it that way. And ferrets are definitely more chaotic creatures anyway.

Halfwise

"Ferrets spend 14–18 hours a day asleep and are most active around the hours of dawn and dusk, meaning they are crepuscular.[8] Unlike their polecat ancestors, which are solitary animals, most ferrets will live happily in social groups. A group of ferrets is commonly referred to as a "business".[9] They are territorial, like to burrow, and prefer to sleep in an enclosed area."

So they sleep a lot, live in tight-knit social communities, and are all "business". Sounds lawful to me! :P Ferrets in lore aren't necessarily shown as being chaotic, but as being sneaky or underhanded.

Maybe think of them as "Playing the system"... which would actually be very lawful. Knowing all the loopholes and how to jump through them. Burying bad laws in piles of legalese. A regular Saul Goodman, Lawful neutral in the worst way.

(Like "Lawful Good" can be a bad thing... if you get a pure zealot.)

PK2748

Not sure you can say a ferret is more chaotic than a cat. The other thing is lots of debate on what exactly Lawful Neutral stands for. It doesn't have to be standing with local authority it could just be firm personal convictions and code of honor that isn't altruistic. You could be lawful neutral and think it's fine to steal in service to a cause. Look how many of those memes identify James Bond, spy, thief and assassin as Lawful Neutral

thupes

Lawful characters tend to believe in a strong, organized society. If anyone could take anything they wanted whenever, that would undermine society as a whole. Now, if you were given permission to it by the government, that would be different. Taking a farmer's life savings would not be acceptable, but taking it as a tax for the crown would. James Bond, for example, is acting directly under the orders of M16 and through them, the government. He was literally given a license to kill, after all.

JumboWheat01

Halfwise said:

Maybe think of them as "Playing the system"... which would actually be very lawful. Knowing all the loopholes and how to jump through them. Burying bad laws in piles of legalese. A regular Saul Goodman, Lawful neutral in the worst way.

That almost sounds like the perfect description for someone who's Lawful Evil.

magisensei

thupes said:

That kind of makes sense, but why does a LN character want to avoid bloodshed? He isn't good (the alignment that values life) and as long as it's in self-defense and above board it's OK.

Again it is a possibility for a LN to exploit to solve problems against evil. The reason to use it is because getting into a battle is dangerous - you might lose - you might be out gunned or out powered - or even injured in some horrible way - not all crimes need to be punished with a death sentence; sometimes maintaining the peace in a simple way is easiest to balance the scales and perhaps a simple theft is away to do it.

PK2748

I'm curious why you keep talking about LN worrying about evil, Magisensei. If the LN individual was focused on evil they'd be LG. A character who is Lawful Neutral is probably more bothered by someone Chaotic Good than by someone Chaotic Evil in a stereotypical sense.

thupes

Even if some of your minions employees die, you can just get them raised at a church when you are done. Familiars, on the other hand, are irreplaceable as you share your very life essence to summon one. So it would make more sense to risk combat than risk your familiar being captured.

magisensei

PK2748 said:

I'm curious why you keep talking about LN worrying about evil, Magisensei. If the LN individual was focused on evil they'd be LG. A character who is Lawful Neutral is probably more bothered by someone Chaotic Good than by someone Chaotic Evil in a stereotypical sense.

I just categorized all monsters/enemies/foes / someone breaking the law as evil (I really shouldn't have done that)- but they don't have to be evil. If a LN can be considered a 'judge' (I recall reading somewhere about LN) then a balance must be maintained in the law. So having a ferret that can steal is a way that LN might balance the scales without resorting to bloodshed and death.

Nimran

Okay, imagine you are a Lawful Neutral mage or sorcerer who is investigating a criminal, and you're looking for evidence. If you have a ferret familiar, you can acquire that evidence without arousing suspicion. You can then do two things: either you confront the man yourself, or (most likely) you can go to the authorities and present the evidence that your familiar found to them. They can then make an arrest without fear of losing credibility by arresting the wrong suspect.

DevardKrown

Sadly the Whole Familiar/Alignment thing in the Baldurs Gate saga is annoying at best , odd the Most.
later installments of D&D just had you pick one you fancy.

also i understand Lawful Neutral as your Average Citizen .. not really caring who runs the Show , good or evil , just wanting to Life and walk down the road not being Murdered by Bandits or the Guard on a Whim.

as for your ferret....its a ferret ! .. it doesn't care for the Delicate things like Ownership of an item and maybe just wanted to brighten your day ! ... with hat shiny coin it "found" ...


I personally love the Pseudo Dragon , they have this happy demeanor and care about you ... the Neutral pets seem like to not give a crap and the evil ones are just rude...

JumboWheat01

I never knew the familiars had different chats based on their alignments. I've only ever made good characters who could cast Find Familiar.

DevardKrown

JumboWheat01 said:

I never knew the familiars had different chats based on their alignments. I've only ever made good characters who could cast Find Familiar.

The 3 Good , Evil and Neutral Familiars share one Dialog each. also in every Chapter if you ask them " You have any advice for me" they say something New. they even added new lines for Baldurs Gate 1 since you couldn't Summon one before BG TuTu or BGEE, and the moment you could they Nerved the IMP from lawful evil since his Polymorph Self(spell level 4!) on lvl 1 is a Crazy, That hasted Gnoll/Swordspider did go to town.

JumboWheat01

Huh, didn't know they had a hint dialogue either. I tend to just shove them in my backpack and forget about them for the rest of the game. That extra HP is so handy, losing 1 CON for good because of a stray fireball (or trap) is not.

DevardKrown

JumboWheat01 said:

Huh, didn't know they had a hint dialogue either. I tend to just shove them in my backpack and forget about them for the rest of the game. That extra HP is so handy, losing 1 CON for good because of a stray fireball (or trap) is not.

well you can unpack them anytime , have a chat and stuff them back ^^

FinnTheHuman

Interesting. Indeed, why would a lawful character have pickpocketing as their (familiar's) skill? I guess thieves can be lawful neutral, so at least there is consistency there. From this discussion, it makes more sense to me if the ferret was true neutral's familiar and the bunny, with its detect traps ability, the lawful familiar.

@DevardKrown, Since a familiar is something akin to a soul mate or shared soul, I don't think you can discount it's thievery as just being a ferret. Sure, a ferret is just being a ferriet, but how can a lawful character share a soul with a non-lawful familiar? It seems that if a character is lawful than so should be the familiar. Or is saying they share a soul going too far? Sure, there is the empathic link but maybe that only ensures a coarse level of similarity?

I also don't like the argument justifying thievery as a way to avoid bloodshed, collect evidence, bring lawbreakers to justice. In lawful societies we expect our police to obey the law, not break and enter to collect evidence. Indeed, we often hear stories where known criminals were never convicted because improperly obtained evidence.

[Deleted User]

By normal 2e rules, aren't animals all true neutral anyway? That would indicate that certain animal familiars being "lawful" or "chaotic" is fairly arbitrary to begin with. I would think of it this way: Your average, nonmagical ferrets is good at picking pockets and is true neutral, as it lacks the capacity to make decisions on a moral or ethical basis. Now, if you turn one of those ferrets into a familiar, it gains intelligence and with it moral reasoning and an alignment, but it does not lose the skills it previously had. So a LN ferret familiar has pick pocketing from its time as a normal animal, but may well refrain from using those skills given its newfound perspective.

Alternately you define "Lawful" as something other than "in favor of following laws," which makes maintaining consistent behavior as you travel between kingdoms easier and doesn't end up implying that chaotic societies have laws just so that they can ignore them.

Eadwyn_G8keeper

Last time playing BG2 ~ I think I was Chaotic Good FMT ~ found that my tiny Dragon familiar could not be transferred to my Backpack. Not good at ALL!! Slightly misjudged Imoen's Fireball casting for the Duergar fight in Chateau Irenicus [the guys with the acorns] and POOF! 1 point of Constitution gone forever!!

Never had that problem with the Ferret although I found that using the Ferret's Pickpocket ability as a stand-in for Bag of Holding was irksome/tedious at best. Perhaps more valuable for Solo runs.

Skatan

Kaigen said:

I would think of it this way: Your average, nonmagical ferrets is good at picking pockets and is true neutral, as it lacks the capacity to make decisions on a moral or ethical basis. Now, if you turn one of those ferrets into a familiar, it gains intelligence and with it moral reasoning and an alignment, but it does not lose the skills it previously had. So a LN ferret familiar has pick pocketing from its time as a normal animal, but may well refrain from using those skills given its newfound perspective.

Best one so far!

alceryes

Eadwyn_G8keeper said:

Last time playing BG2 ~ I think I was Chaotic Good FMT ~ found that my tiny Dragon familiar could not be transferred to my Backpack.

Did you happen to change alignment at some point (even if you changed it back)? If so, all sorts of strangeness can occur, including not being able to put him away or him just disappearing. You also become unable to summon another one.

[Deleted User]

FinnTheHuman said:

I also don't like the argument justifying thievery as a way to avoid bloodshed, collect evidence, bring lawbreakers to justice. In lawful societies we expect our police to obey the law, not break and enter to collect evidence. Indeed, we often hear stories where known criminals were never convicted because improperly obtained evidence.

Circling back to this one despite being a little off-topic because it's an opportunity to show the malleability of Law vs. Chaos depending on how you define them.

By the common conception of Lawful as "following the rules/code" and Chaotic as "Screw the rules, I get results," you're absolutely right. If Law vs. Chaos is about the importance of an orderly society vs. the needs of individuals, on the other hand, then the script flips. The cop who follows the rules is the Chaotic one, as he considers individual rights paramount and won't invade someone's privacy or coerce a suspect just to get a criminal off the street. The cop who's willing to falsify evidence or break and enter is the Lawful one, because he's not about to let a little thing like individual liberty get in the way of removing a threat to the social order.

FinnTheHuman

@Kaigen,
If it is lawful for someone to do unlawful things, then their every action is lawful. The laws restrict nothing. There are, in effect, no laws. Law=Chaos. This is a degenerate case, there is no distinction. You cant say a person is one and not the other in that case. You didn't flip the definitions, you destroyed them.

[Deleted User]

You're equivocating over the term "lawful." You're right that it cannot be "lawful" meaning "conforming to or permitted by law" to commit unlawful acts, but the Lawful alignment is not the same thing as conforming to rules. If it were, then the Chaotic alignment would be defined by performing unlawful acts, and we have examples of Chaotic governments. You can't have a system of laws and rules defined by not conforming to laws and rules, therefore Chaotic does not equal unlawful, and its opposite, Lawful, cannot equal lawful.

Not to mention all the class-based alignment restrictions which become nonsensical, such as Druids having to break their own rules of behavior to ensure they don't become too Lawful and thus lose their Druid powers. Followers of Chaotic deities would have to break their own precepts or else lose favor, and so on.

Limiting the Lawful alignment to following rules leads to impossible definitions, so Lawful behavior must encompass something broader than that, which creates the possibility that one might break rules to achieve Lawful aims.

Skatan

Isn't being lawful about following a set of 'laws' which can be equal to, but also different from, the actual laws of whatever society you are in? Thus, you don't break "your" laws even when you perhaps break the laws of the society. I've been wrong before, but that's how I've interpreted it.

So a lawful character who follows a strict code of some order or whatever goes to another county to hunt a criminal or whatever. In order to catch the criminal, she breaks the laws of the city the criminal is in, but not her own code and ethics. So, in the eyes of the ctiy guard she may be breaking the laws, but she's not breaking her alignment.

Or is that interpretation wrong?

FinnTheHuman

Kaigen said:

You're equivocating over the term "lawful." [...]

Well, I was trying to say that is what you were doing when you flip the definitions. I guess i misunderstood your point.

Kaigen said:

[..] but the Lawful alignment is not the same thing as conforming to rules. If it were, then the Chaotic alignment would be defined by performing unlawful acts [...]

Maybe the lawful alignment is not the same thing as conforming to rules, you bring up good points below, but chaotic alignment purposfully rulebreaking doesn't follow. Chaos is random, sometimes rules will be followed by chance. To have a definite direction (do whatever rules say not to do) is not chaos.

Kaigen said:

You can't have a system of laws and rules defined by not conforming to laws and rules[...]

Yes, exactly.

Kaigen said:

therefore Chaotic does not equal unlawful, [...]

Only when you define unlawful as rulebreaking, not when you define it as without laws. In that sense, the sense of "with and without", then lawful is opposite to chaos. When it is defined in terms as "for and against" then we have an inconsistent definition.

Kaigen said:

Not to mention all the class-based alignment restrictions which become nonsensical, such as Druids having to break their own rules of behavior to ensure they don't become too Lawful and thus lose their Druid powers. Followers of Chaotic deities would have to break their own precepts or else lose favor, and so on.

Limiting the Lawful alignment to following rules leads to impossible definitions, so Lawful behavior must encompass something broader than that, which creates the possibility that one might break rules to achieve Lawful aims.

Good points. Especially about the druids. Shouldn't they be lawful (by my definition), but those laws are the laws of nature. Also about followers of chaotic dieties. If they are followers they are doing what someone says, kinda following rules. Not so much rules though, since those rules are subject to change at the whim of the chaotic diety. I also don't know what a chaotic society is, but I guess its one where they follow the leader of the moment, as opposed to eternal laws bigger than any one individual.

I still don't agree that limiting the lawful alignment to following rules must lead to impossible definitions. The imposibility comes comes from the definition of chaos as "must not" follow rules.

FinnTheHuman

Kaigen said:

By the common conception of Lawful as "following the rules/code" and Chaotic as "Screw the rules, I get results," you're absolutely right. If Law vs. Chaos is about the importance of an orderly society vs. the needs of individuals, on the other hand, then the script flips. The cop who follows the rules is the Chaotic one, as he considers individual rights paramount and won't invade someone's privacy or coerce a suspect just to get a criminal off the street. The cop who's willing to falsify evidence or break and enter is the Lawful one, because he's not about to let a little thing like individual liberty get in the way of removing a threat to the social order.

Hi @kaigen, I hope I'm not coming across rude. I probably am. I'm just really excited about these kinds of discussions.

Ok, with your premise, Lawful is for the promotion of a society, and chaotic is individuals reign supreme. In my previous post I must have confused Lawful.a for Lawful.b, leading to the equivocation discussion, which we are apparently in violent agreement over. So I apologize for that.

I'll rename the alignment system so I don't get hung up on labels this time: Social Good, Neutral Good, Individualistic Good, ... Individualistic Evil. This works pretty good so far. Your cop example checks out. It also makes Individualistic Evil make just as much sense as Chaotic Evil.

I'm not sure it works out so well for Social Evil--they put importance on the society for their own selfish means. Also druids as True Neutral; usually they nature before themselves as opposed to striving to become one with nature.

In any case, now that I understand this concept better, I agree. Social/Individualistic makes at least as much sense as Lawful/Chaotic.

[Deleted User]

In hindsight "equivocation" was probably the wrong word to use, as it implies negative motives that I did not intend to attribute to you.

I think the social/individualistic take on the lawful/chaos axis makes more sense than other interpretations, although it's still not perfectly consistent with what we see in the rules. If Lawful and Chaotic were not positioned as opposites, it would probably be a lot easier to reconcile the different aspects we see portrayed, but being opposed on an axis of the alignment scale implies that what is central to one is anathema to another, and that can make it difficult to jive alignment-based rules (such as class restrictions) with working definitions.

All of which comes back around to say that I think pick-pocket skills are not necessarily inconsistent with a Lawful Neutral alignment, but I would agree that such a being probably would not pick pockets habitually or without good reason.

FinnTheHuman

Yes @kaigen, I took equivocation negatively, but looking at what it was a response to I believe i was asking for it; so no harm done. It goes to show that one shouldn't go firing off a counter point in a rush before one leaves--which is what i did. It's a small thing, but I thought my terseness led to your less careful choice of words.

I certainly have come around to the social/individualistic take on alignments. Setting up Lawful/Chaotic as polar opposites is not the best fit, and saying neutral is somewhere in-between even more problematic.

To finally address the OP, I don't know what Bioware was thinking about making the Ferret familiar. Its possible that they didn't put much thought into it. (too much in the game already). With the same animals choices for the three neutral alignments, Lawful/True/Chaotic, I would put, Rabbit/Cat/Ferret.

Another take might be that opposites attract. Give the lawful mage a loophole.