Charname Ethics
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This discussion was created from comments split from: I...HATE...you...(companion edition).
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As for what she was doing, you do realize the majority of the Flaming Fist were mobilizing for all-out war with Amn and they had been infiltrated by Sarevok's conspiracy, right? During the events of BG1, Corwin was probably preparing an invasion force to march south. What she "has to be proud of" is being a high-ranking officer in Baldur's Gate's defense forces who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time because the Grand Dukes are not psychic and could not read Sarevok's mind.
Hell, if you're an evil-aligned CHARNAME, Corwin's biggest mistake is not shooting you in the back with Arrows of Biting while you're shopping at Sorcerous Sundries and putting you down for good.
E: in fact one of the things I like about BG1 is that the world doesn't revolve around you, you aren't a legendary adventurer, and the final boss battle where you face truly overwhelming odds is against what is basically a mid-high level adventuring party. Not dragons, not gods, not the Prince of Demons, a bunch of guys who've just been at this adventuring thing a lot longer than you have, and were it not for your gigantic hoard of potions and/or cheesy AI exploits, would have easily kicked your ass.
You have taken my critisism of a NPC, one who I am perfectly entitled to dislike, especially in the thread we are posting in.
And used it as a reason to attack charnames?
What's your problem, you in love with her or something?
- cleared mines of Nashkel, basically saving economy of Baldur's Gate;
- put an end to bandits rides;
- destroyed entire local branch of Iron Throne;
- saved THREE DUKES OF BALDUR'S GATE from death;
- killed a guy responsible for that mess, and corrupted head of FF and leader of bandits as well.
So yes, you are absolutely right to demand respect and to be treated as hero. You earned that. You *are* special, because no one else saved Baldur's Gate. What *exactly* Corwin did to be deserve to be treated as equal to CHARNAME? Shot some bandits in the woods? Stopped some idiot who tried to steal wand from Sorcerous Sundries?
And if Corwin is so powerful, then I wonder why dukes even need CHARNAME for crusade, if they have that prodigy at their disposal. So this is excuse for Flaming Fist that they were infiltrated? Is it excuse gofor that "high-ranking officer" that she either couldn't see what was going on, or couldn't do anything about it?
And as far as I can tell, CHARNAME can't read Sarevok mind's either. But CHARNAME actually did *something*, while Corwin was listening to orders from Angelo. So no, she has nothing to be proud of - or at least not much. How can you seriously tell that you can be proud of being officer in organization that got easilly infiltrated by agent of madman, who intended to start a war just for carnage? Yeah, sure, and letting Sarevok gain control over Baldur's Gate. Or are you suggesting that Corwin is so cool that she could do CHARNAME's work herself? Speak for yourself and your CHARNAME.
CHARNAME is a blood-soaked murderer, no matter his/her alignment, class, whatever. He/she is the child of the Lord of Murder and the sibling of the man who planned to send thousands of troops to their death as a blood sacrifice to said Lord. No matter what you think of yourself, you kill, and kill, and kill because it is in your very nature. People are justified in fearing and not trusting you. She's a high-ranking officer in the Flaming Fist. You see, in civilized society, there's this thing called authority, where certain people are given special rights to commit limited violence to preserve the safety and security of society. Corwin is a soldier and an authority figure. Who knows what her career before 1368 DR was, but she's probably been serving for many years. And remember, part of her job is basically as a leash that the Grand Dukes have put you on, because they cannot fully trust you.
And as for why CHARNAME is brought along, I can see a number of reasons:
1. CHARNAME is not yet the all-conquering demigod he/she will become by Throne of Bhaal, but CHARNAME and their party are still a useful military asset, albeit one that needs to be kept under control (see above).
2. The whole Child of Murder thing also makes CHARNAME a useful psychological warfare asset, as CHARNAME's presence damages Crusader morale.
3. Quite a few people in Baldur's Gate are secretly hoping you die during the battle against the crusaders and see sending you out as a possible way to get rid of you before you cause any more trouble. Yes, because she isn't the highest ranking officer. Even if she did sense something going on, she would still have to go through official channels because that's how militaries work. Societies like stability, order, and hierarchy. They like their soldiers and agents to respect authority and follow orders. They do not like armed thugs running around killing "evildoers" with no accountability, which is how much of the Sword Coast sees CHARNAME--as an out-of-control brutish vigilante in need of restraint.
How would you feel if a group of six armed dudes started wandering your country killing criminals and other people they think need killing? Wouldn't you feel rather alarmed and threatened by these people who have decided to make themselves judge, jury, and executioner over the entire country? No. What I'm suggesting is that Evil!CHARNAME is exactly the same as Sarevok. In fact, at the end of Throne of Bhaal, Evil!CHARNAME does exactly what Sarevok intended to do at the end of BG1--take up Bhaal's portfolio and become the new Lord of Murder spreading slaughter and mayhem throughout Faerun. So you have beaten Sarevok and his entire party with all the following conditions to put you and Sarevok on equal footing:
1. Core Rules or harder.
2. No magical arrows with special effects that are appropriate to the fight (i.e. not having your archer have Arrows of Dispelling ready at the start, which I always do).
3. No potions.
4. No taking advantages of mistakes the AI makes that a real player wouldn't if they controlled Sarevok's party.
5. No Tutu or EE features like kits.
and most importantly...
6. No foreknowledge of what Sarevok or his minions will do during the fight. You would have to entirely forget how Semaj's teleport ambush works, or that Angelo has Arrows of Detonation, or let someone else completely alter everything about the encounter without telling you beforehand.
I don't believe you could do it. Sarevok and his goons are more powerful, much more powerful, than an endgame BG1 party. This makes the encounter more fun, and finally putting Sarevok down more satisfying (see disappointing modern CRPG boss battles where the boss is only one or two levels higher than the player character), but it means CHARNAME is not as powerful as Sarevok at the end of BG1 and has to rely on guile rather than brute force to defeat him.
It may have just slipped your mind, but Officer Vai OF the FF pays you good money for every bandit scalp you bring her.
Later, Commander Scar, again OF the FF pays you a lot more good money when you wipe out various people at his direction.
Duke Eltan is pretty generous as well.
And this,
"The game actually takes on the inherent tension between the supposedly heroic nature of RPG protagonists and the trail of broken bodies they leave behind with the whole concept of the Bhaalspawn, people driven by their blood to kill whether they want to or not, but you seem like you never fully understood this."
is explored in TOB when the Solar explains that although you may have killed, the prophecy tells of you as a savior who stops the much worse slaughter that could happen without you.
At no point does the game ever use the idea that you, Gorion's ward, foretold by Allundro, is as other Bhaalspawn driven by blood to kill.
It even suggests that had Sarevok been the child chosen by Gorion, he would play the role of savior instead of you.
Playing evil shouldn't really work because that does not fulfil the prophecy. And prophecies have to come true.
Sorry, and I know it sounds petty, but I really wasn't the one who started on about Charnames.
I was happily slagging off Corwin, the uptight, up herself NPC with a badly behaved child.
Ultimately the entire first game is about defending yourself and uncovering greater and greater plots that involving killing you to get you out of the way as you become more and more entangled with them. How many assassins come after you? I had to stop carrying the bounty notices, there were too many.
You are invited to clear the Nashkel mines by the local mayor (assuming you go with J+K like I always do as a NG character). You then have to clear the bandit blockade, and get paid well to do it by an officer of the Flaming Fist.
The people manning the Cloakwood mines are scum, traitors to the city-state of Baldur's Gate.
There is plenty of killing to be done, but you're not exactly killing innocents.
I really can't guess at the number of humans I kill in BG1, but discounting the many, many, many bandits, especially the bandit camp, I doubt it could be more than 100. 150 at the most. I just don't go around picking that many fights with humans.
Now, the number of NON-humans I kill...
(and on that note, I wish they hadn't used the thing with Skie and the Soultaker as a pretext to start the trial. They could have easily tried you for things you did earlier in BG1 and SoD and found plenty of reasons to execute or exile you.)
Correct me if I wrong, but I assumed that the topic isn't "Is CHARNAME good guy". but "Does CHARNAME deserve Corwin's respect"?. Because if the latter, then you just said random things now. Yes, CHARNAME is a killer, but that killer prevent full-scale war and save Baldur's Gate, doing Flaming Fist's job. So he deserve praise from her.
And aren't you aware that being a "hero" is usually about killing someone? Achilles wasn't praised for his love towards Partocles, you know.
"CHARNAME is a blood-soaked murderer, no matter his/her alignment, class, whatever. He/she is the child of the Lord of Murder and the sibling of the man who planned to send thousands of troops to their death as a blood sacrifice to said Lord. No matter what you think of yourself, you kill, and kill, and kill because it is in your very nature. People are justified in fearing and not trusting you."
As above. Also, I really appreciate how you happly ignore that:
- Flaming Fist officer is eager to kill Viconia with no trial whatsoever;
- that when your reputation is low, Flaming Fist also will kill you, without even telling "you have right to remain silent";
- that south of Beregost Flaming Fist soldiers are okay with killing you AFTER YOU SURRENDER!
It's almost as a world of Baldur's Gate games is brutal and murders aren't as a big deal as in real world...! Nah, just kidding, it's just that awful, bad CHARNAME who is killer, not those nice gentlemen from Flaming Fist, and it's not like Corwin is just being massive hipocryte for playing all holier-than-thou and being part of such a murderous organization at the same time.
Really, that entire point is ridiculous. In those games even farmer like Marle is ready to kill you after snark remark, and you are telling that Bhaalspawn has killing problem? Freaking Duke of Baldur's Gate executes CHARNAME on the spot if they won't agree to go to Candlekeep, and you have nerve to say that they are okay no to trust CHARNAME?
What have you done up to the end of SOD, if playing "good" alignment, that would cause them to execute/exile you?
I agree the Skie business is nonsense and bad writing, but I don't think the majority of players kill half as much as you seem to think.
* Killing the paladin (who attacked me for having Edwin in my party) in the inn instead of running away
* Burgling unoccupied homes or floors of homes
* Trespassing onto hundreds of pieces of private property even if I didn't take anything
* Having Edwin in my party in BG1 and having Baeloth in my party in SoD, both of whom are obviously horrible people, and the former of whom meets you by attempting to negotiate a hit on Dynaheir
* Murdering Greywolf, who was working for the lawful authorities of Nashkel, and then taking the emeralds from the Nashkel mines statue and essentially stealing Greywolf's bounty
* Deliberately inserting myself into fights I could have walked away from with Silke and the Red Wizards on the streets of Beregost and killing them.
* Killing guards who try to run away in Cloakwood for the EXP
* Intruding on the Shadow Druid ritual site and killing them when they attacked me for trespassing
* Committing genocide against the Xvart Village when they attacked me for trespassing
* Killing Tenya (literally a child) at the behest of the fishermen
* Killing clergy of Umberlee in their own temple during the poison quest
* Walking up to and killing wild animals just for more EXP
* Barging into the home of that creature in the sewers and killing him when he (once again) attacked me for trespassing
* Any time I could have possibly avoided killing someone and chose to do so anyway, even if running away or avoiding them would have meant underleveling myself (no excuses!)
I did all these things and personally killed over 300 creatures (with my entire party the count was well into four digits) and finished BG1 as an LG paladin with a reputation of 20 because BG1's roleplaying really sucks. Sorry, it does--it's almost entirely "roll-playing" and at most 10% roleplaying. SoD is a major improvement because it acknowledges that such extreme violence is not something most people accept, regardless of how noble your cause is. A competent DM could have found dozens and dozens of reasons to make my paladin fall. With the added options of tabletop roleplaying, completing the BG campaign in the most noble, high-minded way your average player could possibly manage on the computer would probably not be good enough to be truly LG in a tabletop conversion if your DM really wants to make you work to be a good person.
And even without those, in a medieval society, there is no due process in legal proceedings, so if your presence makes the people of a city feel uncomfortable, they will get rid of you, one way or another.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." --Cardinal Richelieu
As for "the less Greywolves there are in this world the better", you do not have the right according to the laws of Amn to make that determination. You are a vigilante and, again, a murderer for killing him. Greywolf, on the other hand, is legally empowered by a bounty from Oublek to collect the emeralds, by hook or by crook, so you are also obstructing justice. Your personal feelings about Greywolf are, to legal authorities, totally irrelevant.
Ed Greenwood, creator of the entire setting, also commented on this sort of thing, specifically about Elminster and the Chosen of Mystra, but the implications for the Bhaalspawn are obvious. In short:
The only problem is that, even if you try to go for a peaceful solution, Greywolf decide to attack you. You're merely defending yourself against him.
Other than that, yes, you make few good points that shows that, even if you play Lawful Good, there are countless events that make you quite the mass murderer...
Isn't "trespass" a crime only if you refuse to leave after being asked/instructed to?
There's no way that "trespass" allows a person to attack without evidence that they felt their lives were in danger.
And even then, you come up against whether you used "reasonable force".
So the Xvarts are in the wrong, they attack on sight, there's no insisting from the party, they never get that choice.
Have they even established they have ownership of the land or any roads that run through it?
Some of the other things on the list.
You are attacked by Silke after you refuse to kill the group with the gems, no inserting yourself in a fight.
You don't murder Greywolf, you act in self defence (and you have a witness).
The Red Wizards as far as I know have no jurisdiction over the sword coast (and if you have Edwin in party, you don't have to fight them anyway). It's Neera who teleports the leader not you.
No guards try to run away, they attack and if they do offer to surrender, it's up to that individual Charname so why is that extended to all Charnames?
Sewers are public/municiple authority property, they don't belong to squatters. It's the squatters who are trespassing.
Killing the Paladin, again self defense and I reckon Scar would help defend you as he has been asking you to work for the FF.
Edwin asks you to kill Dynaheir but you don't have to and can keep both in party until the end of the game.
Killing Tenya?
Who the hell kills Tenya?
Edwin and Baeloth are not horrible people (both much nicer than Corwin).
Also just remember that you can skip things like the battle with Silke by saying "no" to the guy who wants to hire mercenaries for a private contract. Which ties into my greater point that the nobles of Baldur's Gate could concoct an excuse to get rid of CHARNAME no matter what you do. One of the principal themes of SoD is that the people of the city are kind of terrified of you, especially now that your heritage has become known, and many of them think you need to be either stopped or made someone else's problem.
For both the Red Wizards and the squatters, you do not have the legal right to kill them (I'm harping on legal rights because this is the perspective of the Flaming Fist and by extension Corwin). Going around killing people without legal sanction is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Edwin's not a horrible person? DUDE. THE FIRST. THING. he does in the game is attempt to hire you to assassinate Dynaheir! The guy is a total sociopath whose only saving grace is that he's so socially incompetent that he cannot actually pull off any of his schemes.
As for Baeloth, the guy ran a full-on lethal blood sport event in the Underdark. He used the deaths of slaves to amuse himself and his audience. Baeloth is evil.
And if this is valid representation of Corwin's view of world, then she is simply despicable, amoral monster, much worse than Edwin, Xzar or Tiax.
"Oh, that evil CHARNAME kills people! He is so unlike me, because I have *permission from dukes* to murder!".
@Artona do you consider it despicable that soldiers and police officers can do their jobs, but if you tried to go to Iraq to shoot at ISIS fighters (or people you think are ISIS fighters) or grab criminals (or people you think are criminals) off the streets of your own neighborhood and lock them in your basement, the authorities would try to stop you?
So, if authorities are like that, then yes.
They might not even extend that much courtesy to adventurers, because the term for people who made money fighting that weren't employed by a lord in the real Middle Ages was "highwaymen", and they were outlaws who were killed on sight and hated by nearly everyone.
Corwin and the Flaming Fist are nice by comparison. Corwin will even come to respect you fairly quickly if you behave lawfully and don't cooperate with the Crusaders (whom she hates for pretty obvious and straightforward reasons).
And it also dovetailed well with the LG paladin I played, because such a person would want to make himself useful to Baldur's Gate, would accept that people are suspicious of him because of his heritage, and would try to make up for it with redoubled efforts. Corwin even sympathized with me when I was put on trial. Not enough to risk her career and her neck, though (not that I expected her to, her one truly unbreakable loyalty is to Baldur's Gate after all).
But the thing I like about Corwin and the city segments of Siege of Dragonspear that it's the one time in the entire series (except perhaps some parts of Throne of Bhaal) where what TVTropes calls "protagonist-centered morality" is suspended. Her character, and the way the dukes and the rest of the city leadership are conflicted about whether the Bhaalspawn should be welcome in the city, move the moral center of the story outside of CHARNAME and examine his/her deeds from a totally different point of view. This is good! It explores the implications of the Bhaalspawn prophecy and the fact that no matter how you might play the game, CHARNAME still manages to carry on Bhaal's legacy by killing hundreds and hundreds of people. You are still the Lord of Murder's offspring. Killing runs through your veins. Chaos is sown from your passage. You are destined to bring slaughter and destruction with you wherever you go. This is philosophically interesting stuff, the sort of stuff cRPGs have always promised since Richard Gariott started exploring morality in the Ultima series. And it also works as a meta-commentary on the actual player and the nature of violent video games without falling into fourth-wall breaking hipster "self-awareness". Beamdog's only problem is, as I stated, they didn't go far enough in pursuing these themes.
So if any Beamdog employees are reading this, you almost created something truly brilliant. For your next original RPG, go whole hog, explore the thorny political, philosophical, and ethical questions and challenge the player intellectually. You are on to something, you've got Chris Avellone and David Gaider to help you write, do not let this opportunity go!