Chapter 2: Port Llast Bounty Hunt and the Alignment Penalty
Ragnarök81
Member Posts: 6
I don't get it, why killing the half Orc Yesgar during the Bounty Hunt quest earns your character an alignment shift towards evil. Normally I wouldn't care, but since my char is a Paladin it actually matters.
According to the in-game dialogues, I found out, that Yesgar convinced Shaldrissa to go with him by making her drunk. Her father claims, she was kidnapped, which isn't entirely true. But the half Orc took advantage of the naivety of the young woman.
Yesgar himself reveals after a successful speech/convincing check that he gave her that much alcohol, so that she agreed to everything he proposed to her.
Shaldrissa tells your character after being freed, how she was mistreated and beaten by Yesgar and he most likely raped her (“she doesn’t want to talk about it further, but says: “he did things to me…”). She is clearly ashamed.
So if you decide to kill Yesgar after all, as some kind of quick frontier justice, you get an alignment shift towards evil. I really don’t get this and the strange moral compass of the original developers at Bioware.
First of all, this half Orc is an escaped prisoner and criminal, secondly he hid in a cave with a band of aggressive Orcs – certainly up for no good, planning to pillage and plunder as Orcs do. Thirdly at least he took advantage of the naivety of Shaldrissa, made her drunk (her going with him deliberately or not deliberately in the first place doesn’t matter at this point), beat her and raped her. She also is held captive in a cell.
Therefore Yesgar is an evil character for me and not letting him go, but punishing him on the spot is a good deed as a Paladin. The alignment penalty bothers me, because, I think, it's very much undeserved.
According to the in-game dialogues, I found out, that Yesgar convinced Shaldrissa to go with him by making her drunk. Her father claims, she was kidnapped, which isn't entirely true. But the half Orc took advantage of the naivety of the young woman.
Yesgar himself reveals after a successful speech/convincing check that he gave her that much alcohol, so that she agreed to everything he proposed to her.
Shaldrissa tells your character after being freed, how she was mistreated and beaten by Yesgar and he most likely raped her (“she doesn’t want to talk about it further, but says: “he did things to me…”). She is clearly ashamed.
So if you decide to kill Yesgar after all, as some kind of quick frontier justice, you get an alignment shift towards evil. I really don’t get this and the strange moral compass of the original developers at Bioware.
First of all, this half Orc is an escaped prisoner and criminal, secondly he hid in a cave with a band of aggressive Orcs – certainly up for no good, planning to pillage and plunder as Orcs do. Thirdly at least he took advantage of the naivety of Shaldrissa, made her drunk (her going with him deliberately or not deliberately in the first place doesn’t matter at this point), beat her and raped her. She also is held captive in a cell.
Therefore Yesgar is an evil character for me and not letting him go, but punishing him on the spot is a good deed as a Paladin. The alignment penalty bothers me, because, I think, it's very much undeserved.
Post edited by Ragnarök81 on
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Comments
If you deny her the money, she doesn't speak any more to your character until she is kidnapped. Strangely enough her hair color changes, in Port Llast she got blonde hair, after the kidnap and when you return her to her father, she suddenly got black hair.
In her inventory she is carrying a journal, which reveals that she fell in love with Yesgar in the first place and planned to blackmail her father for her dowry by kidnapping people.
But it doesn’t change much in my opinion. She might have been a willing accomplice in the first place, but she soon regretted it, when she arrived in Yesgar's hideout in the mines of Port Llast. I'm not defending her actions, actually they don't matter much for deciding the fate of Yesgar in my opinion.
He is trouble, an escaped convict up for no good and in general an evil character. So why should it earn you negative alignment points to kill him? Why should the player spare him?
But in any case, I do agree that the Evil points for killing Yesgar is perhaps not truly warranted. For one thing, he still has his weapons and can defend himself to the death, so it's not like you're killing a helpless, unarmed opponent. He's also guilty of previous crimes in the past (which he freely admits to), so it's not like you're striking down an innocent either.
Thanks.
Depends on the one surrendering. If he is a real scumbag I have no objections killing him after the surrender. In this case it's a bounty hunt and nobody wants the escaped convicts alive. You're supposed to bring their tattooed ears back as a proof. It might not be exactly good, but at least it's lawful. So in my opinion taking Yesgar's life should earn you rather lawful points, than good/evil alignment shifts.
That's the way I see it, too.
Completely agree, these are my thoughts, too.
That's what I meant when I said that Bioware might be using a strict definition of Lawful Good. Killing an enemy who has surrendered is NEVER a Good act. It can be a justified action (as you said, if they were a real scumbag), in which case you would usually not gain Evil points as a result, but you wouldn't gain Good points either. Not when there were other options like bringing him back alive and turning him over to the Lawful authorities.
It's worth noting too that Good characters generally do not undertake bounty hunts. The idea of killing someone for money, even if the target is Evil, is pretty morally grey at best.
Which isn't an option in the game.
A good character going over a murderer on the loose is plenty within the alignment, though. There's a huge difference between going after a dangerous criminal and getting some money to cover your expenses vs only going to kill someone for the money, nothing else matters. And an evil character might just be looking to an excuse to legally kill someone with the money just being a nice cover. Same action, three different motivations.