(BIG SPOILERS) Does alignment change anything?
SomeOnesBody
Member Posts: 25
So I went to hell to purge Irenicus from my soul and while I took the moral high ground in all my tests, the test of fear I decided to take the cloak on. After all, I'm chaotic good, and while I find the cloak repulsive, there's no one who'd be harmed if I used it... Thing is, this changes alignment to chaotic EVIL and while I want to keep the choice I roleplayed, I'm kind of undecided as to what this'll affect later on. I can deal with paying more in stores and having to drop my robe of the good archmagi, but what other changes will there be? Will Keldorn and Anomen turn on me? Will characters treat me differently? Should I just fudge my roleplaying a little to fit this game's interpretation of "good"? Is alignment just a badge on my character or does it also change the story?
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plus, holy smite ( the level 3 cleric spell ) will now be able to affect you
also, it's beneficial to be evil in watcher's keep for this reason;
plus when it comes to role playing choices in the game, i believe the dialogue choices you choose have more to do with evil/good outcomes than alignment does
plus to be honest, i think accepting the cloak is more of an evil choice than not, remember the skins of lovely nymphs who were no doubt alive had to be flayed to make the cloak and your character even says they can smell the evil coming off of the cloak from where they are standing
Well, yeah but they were already flayed, me accepting the cloak doesn't change anything. Maybe it's not Lawful good, but chaotic good would definitely take the cloak, as leaving it behind doesn't help the nymphs at all.
Wrong. It's more complicated than that, and depends on which bunch you're dealing with. The demons will immediately attack a party led by a lawful good paladin or cleric, but talk otherwise. If the party member they're talking to (probably whoever's in the front position) is good or lawful neutral, it's a fight; otherwise, it's a deal.
The devils are less restrictive. They'll only attack on sight if the protagonist is a lawful good paladin, and they're willing to make a deal if the character they talk to is anything other than lawful good or neutral good.
On the Watcher's Keep, even Lawful Good Paladin protagonists can get the Thieves' Hood if they have a party member with an accepted alignment. All that's needed is to play with the detection range of Tahazzar or Ka'rashur to hide the protagonist and ensure the right party member is closest to them.
If you played a modded game, there's all kinds of npc mods that react on alignment but the base game itself doesn't really make much of a fuss about it.
Edit: Oh and Turn Undead.. Good/Neutral will Fear/Destroy undead, where as Evil can Fear/Control - basically make minions outa them.. but good/neutral turning really is better in most cases.
Hard disagree.
*edit*
To clarify, Nymphs are a sentient race on par with any other. This is like having a known serial killer walk up to you and say, "Hey I just murdered someone the other day, do you want their skin? I made it into a snazzy cloak."
Accepting is not only evil, but very evil.
If I was trapped in a desert island with 2 other people and one died, I'd doubtlessly cannibalize his corpse... No amount of not eating it will bring him back to life. The example you gave would be evil only if I were giving the serial killer reason to go kill someone else in order to sell cloaks, but I'm not rewarding the demons by simply taking it.
For a real life example, I'd never BUY leather or fur, but I wouldn't turn down a free fur coat in winter.
I don't think playing any of the good alignments is for you. Especially since you're comparing the skin of a murdered sapient race to animal fur.
Well, I'm vegetarian, killing an animal OR a human for food is morally repulsive to me either way. But I don't understand how it's "evil" to do something that harms no one... Isn't chaotic good all about being a good ol' John Mill type utilitarian? Well, there's utility in taking the cloak and absolutely none in leaving it, as doing so won't un-flay the nymphs... Surely the deontological imperative of not using it is on the lawful-chaotic axis, not good or evil.
Spoken like a True Neutral.
Okay, now I'm actually curious on how you draw the good/evil line.
I love @ThacoBell to death, but let's just say the odds of a character like him surviving to the end of ToB would be approximately nil. On the other hand, bards'd be singing songs about his glorious self-sacrifice for generations!
The Quest Pack mod has neutral outcomes for the hell trials... and the reasoning for the neutral option is worded almost exactly like this.
Well before I'm wearing the flayed skin of murdered people.
@Balrog99 Hey now, this IS high fantasy.
In the matter of the Nymph Cloak, it's a matter of condoning the cruelty necessary. There's not a lot of room for nuance in the responses so the assumed attitude isn't "I am only accepting this out of pragmatism and I do not like how it was made" but rather "GIMME GIMME GIMME!"
Also, the good reward is much better than the evil one.
Whether it should be enough to redefine that person's inner alignment to evil on its own is a different topic that has to do with the influence of the planes, increased in this case by the weight of this test. The protagonist's already weakened mind is trying to fight off the influence of the plane and Bhaal's blood, with an outcome where it loses itself and an outcome where it resists.
As for surviving in ToB, I'm not sure accepting gifts from devils shows wisdom that would increase odds of survival. I'm not sure either that recklessly showing devils any kind of weakness (like a propensity to give in to fear that is large enough you'd be desperate to do something as reckless as accepting a magical protection from a devil) is an act committed by someone who would be more likely to survive