Which companion is the most good?
Gatekeep3r
Member Posts: 123
Methinks this is more difficult than the 'most evil' question.
I would definitely go for Imoen. Good natured, loyal to a fault, honest and kind to others. She treats evil NPC's more with wit than outright hostility.
I have doubts about:
- Aerie. Her goodness seems to be the result of abuse and trauma, which makes her timid and desire order and safety. She has a great desire to do good, but is it really the result of internal morality?
- Minsc. The man is not just dumb, he is insane. He revels in bloodshed, slaughter and violence, as long as the victims are 'evil'. Very chaotic indeed, but 100% good? Hardly in my book.
- Sir Anomen.
I would definitely go for Imoen. Good natured, loyal to a fault, honest and kind to others. She treats evil NPC's more with wit than outright hostility.
I have doubts about:
- Aerie. Her goodness seems to be the result of abuse and trauma, which makes her timid and desire order and safety. She has a great desire to do good, but is it really the result of internal morality?
- Minsc. The man is not just dumb, he is insane. He revels in bloodshed, slaughter and violence, as long as the victims are 'evil'. Very chaotic indeed, but 100% good? Hardly in my book.
- Sir Anomen.
Starting out as lawful neutral, in my opinion he stays that way. He just becomes even more arrogant and lawful to the max. He doesn't really seem interested in 'wasting time' on side quests even when they are plainly good.
- Mr. ToB.
The shift from CE to CG just seems to much. His banter is still evil after the alignment shift and his epilogue is definitely CN
.- Which companion is the most good?34 votes
- Aerie (LG)41.18%
- Imoen (NG)8.82%
- Keldorn (LG)14.71%
- Minsc (CG)5.88%
- Nalia (CG)8.82%
- Rasaad (LG)14.71%
- Sir Anomen (LG)0.00%
- Valygar (NG)5.88%
- Mr. ToB (CG)0.00%
3
Comments
I've just always seen Aerie as only LG because she's too afraid to be anything else. She craves the protection of order because she considers herself weak and frail. I almost never get her in my party because it annoys me greatly, while other LG's like Ajantis, Keldorn and Mazzy don't.
I used to think Aerie was up there until I had her and Jaheira in the party and Aerie started dissing dead Khalid to his widow
Yeah, I completely forgot about Mazzy. Very ironic, since she'd be in my top 3.
1. Imoen
2. Mazzy
3. Keldorn
Only thing that bugs me about Keldorn is that he's so lawful that he's almost evil when it comes to certain judgments.
I have serious doubts about Valygar's goodness as well. In some ways he is more true neutral than neutral good.
Evil 'round every corner. Careful not to step in any.
Cities always teem with evil and decay. Let's give it a good shake and see what falls out!
Jump on my sword while you can, evil... I won't be as gentle!
A den of stinking evil. Cover your nose Boo! We will leave no crevice untouched!
Make way evil! I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hamster!
I see your point, but that would make her more NG than LG, no?
aerie has an evolution in the time she remain with you, and if you romance her this is even more evident.
at the beginning she is the frail, wining little aerie always needing of protection, in end game she is a mature and very courageous woman
i would probably have voted mazzy, if it would be an option.
minsc, for the reasons outlined by @JuliusBorisov and aerie would have been 2 other good candidates for me.
my choice is nalia, she is a thief, but has learned thieving abilities to be free to do what is important for her, help the needy.
to help the needy is a sign of not be selfish and to care about other people, 2 important characteristics of being good oriented.
also she has an evolution, but maintain intact her reason to be good trough the evolution she has.
from the naive robin hood she is at the beginning to actively politically working for her goal at the highest levels as we know by her epilogue.
in the process she does not dislike to help charname to deal with his problems and kill some evil dragons and demons she find on their road.
Trailing a bit behind those five are Jaheira and Valygar, who generally put others before themselves but sometimes profess concerns about balance or their reputation.
Considerably behind them would be Nalia, who does good-aligned actions partly because that's what she thinks high-stature people like herself should do. That's not her only reason but it's enough of an evil tinge to make her weakly rather than strongly good.
Considerably behind her would be Anomen and Rasaad, who have sizable egos and are easily turned from benevolence when their egos are bruised.
Nope. At no point does she advocate breaking any laws, and even in instances where she sees no alternative, she still voices displeasure over it.
They would all play different parts in a good society ideally: Aerie (post trauma) would make a fantastic orphanage keeper, Keldorn could make an excellent judge were he excused from being a paladin, and Mazzy would make a wonderful captain of the guard.
Maybe is the right task for her when she retires from adventuring, not necessarily right at the end of the saga when she is an archmage at the peak of her power and still young.
Yeah, I remember the last play through where my PC was romancing her and she commented on how she was still treated like a child despite being one of the most powerful casters in all of Faerun. At first I was like "wait, aren't you about 3 or 4 levels behind me?", then I realized that if you add up both her cleric and mage level, she would be level 36. She could choose whether she wanted to summon a Planetar or a Deva depending on her mood that day, and send it out with a squad of hideously powerful creatures, all without even bothering my conjurer PC. She could create contingencies that merged arcane and divine spells. In short, by the time we got to the end game, she could take out a room all by herself.
So yeah, it would be a total waste to put her in charge of an orphanage - unless the orphanage was in a war-torn area prone to battles outside the front door.
Some particular characters I want to notice.
Imoen is pretty good, but pickpocketing people is not moral by any means, even if it was for fun without malicious intent.
Minsc has a heart in right place, but his idea of goodness is essentialy kicking arse, so I won't choose him as top tier-good.
Anomen and Raasad are both very interesting. They strive to do good, but they struggle on that path and both can succumb to personal grudges. Both can even abandon you for them. I haven't played with Raasad nearly as much as with Anomen, so I can't say much for him. But Anomen's character development is really interesting and grounded in reality. Having an alcoholic in family is all but easy and as for Anomen himself, seeing someone deeply flawed still trying to do good and in the end becoming a truly better person is very satisfying. (I do think that some of his dialogues should be changed to reflect his alignment change better).
But, due to their flaws I can't consider them the most good characters.
As for TOB guy, his alignment change balances on arsepull due to how drastic it is.
Keldorn put the Order of the Radiant Heart ahead of his family to the extent that his wife ended up falling out of love with him and feeling so emotionally neglected that she sought solace in the arms of another man. And when he finds out about how his wife feels, Keldorn’s reaction is to claim that ‘honour’ demands that his wife get put in gaol and that the other man ends up swinging from a rope, and it’s a course of action Keldorn is perfectly willing to go along with. That doesn't strike me as particularly good behaviour so scratch Keldorn from consideration.
Imoen comes off as someone who has a hard time taking people’s feelings and emotions into account, and, if confronted with any pain or distress she’s caused, would simply tell the person to lighten up. She’s the type of person whose logic is that because they didn't mean to cause offence, any offence taken is your fault and not hers, so why should be apologize.
Mazzy is way too standoffish, and she lacks the ability to see things in any other way but in terms of black and white. Sometimes there are shades of grey, and Mazzy doesn't seem to grasp that.
Minsc is wholesome to the core. I’ve only played with Rasaad once and I don’t remember anything about his personality, so I can’t judge it. Nalia is fairly wholesome, like Minsc but with more intelligence.
Anomen is a complete tool. Whilst he genuinely wants to be force for good, Anomen simply doesn't care about people. A more accurate alignment for him would be Lawful Evil.
Valyger is generally good but is too quick to mistrust, and Mr. ToB is pure nasty.
1. Aerie was my choice here (although like many others, Mazzy would have been a very close contender). I believe she does possess genuine compassion for others, as evidenced by the fact that she got captured in the first place trying to rescue a human boy from slavers. Coming back and playing the game again after nearly 20 years, I was actually struck by how close her depiction is to someone who's struggling with PTSD and depression. Despite that, she still keeps trying to look out for other people, noticing if they're down or dispirited and trying to reach out to them.
Aerie's one flaw perhaps is that she seems to have trouble empathizing with people who have come from drastically different backgrounds and how that might affect their moral compass. She clashes constantly with Viconia and I get the feeling she never quite fully lets go of her ingrained distrust of drow.
2. I think that Imoen is one of the rare few people who truly doesn't hate anyone. (Except perhaps Irenicus.) She fights to defend herself, those she loves, and people who can't defend themselves, but like most other NG characters, they do not make it a "crusade". They simply do the best they can for people they encounter, as and when it happens.
3. Nalia didn't get my vote because while I think she does look at the wealth and class divide and see how unfair it is, she still has trouble truly seeing "lesser folk" as her equals. For all of her compassion, she still sees herself as separate, possibly better, to the peasantry and commonfolk. This attitude still seems to persist into ToB too, although her methods for trying to correct injustice have shifted.
4. As others mentioned above, Minsc does have his heart in the right place, but his low Int and Wis means he's essentially still clinging to a "You're mean! I'm gonna kick your butt till you stop being mean!" approach to fighting evil. It has its place, but it's not a true solution to entrenched or intrinsic evil.
I've yet to bring along Anomen, Rasaad and Keldorn for their personal quests so far in this playthrough, so I'll have to come back to them at a later date. And yes, I agree that Mr ToB's alignment shift was TOO drastic, considering that kind of diametric shift is usually only possible through magical or deific intervention. I think he should have been shifted to CN or TN instead.
those are very special experiences that can give a different insight about the purpose of life and the goal that he has in it.
when you meet him he clearly states that he has no more desire of personal power, that he has changed from how he was in the past. the adventures he lives with you, this time as ally and not as enemy, can make him "cross the bridge".
he may discover that your way (giving for granted that charname is good) can be also a good way for him to spend his life.
is this enough to shift from evil to good? probably not.
all i want to say is that he has more valid reasons to change then every other npc.
Since he never actually gets to act on his new belief system in the confines of the game (permitting you to actually witness it), I do not know if I find the shift too drastic.