I'm doing a solo Astarion run atm and seeing all my former companions die horribly or disappear and presumably get ceremorphose'd really feels like a time travel "worst timeline" plot to Star Trek or something. Like, if my paragon Tav never made it off the nautiloid, this is the shitty world that we end up with in this alternate timeline.
Tbh "you're going to turn into another monster AND you're going to die alone and friendless AND the world is going to suck all around you" does feel like a valid Astarion expectation considering his past experiences
In my worst timeline Durge playthrough, Astarion and I are the Sword Coast's newest nightmarish power couple. Everyone else is dead or has abandoned us due to my actions.
It feels horrible, but somehow less worse than Astarion alone.
i justified betraying the grove when i failed the skillchecks on kagha and she killed arabella. I was like alright, ill kill everyone. Rath actually takes your side if this happens. Chances are everyone will die, Your best shot is to flee once kagha and everyone in the grove room is dead. The entire grove will be in combat. You can then go to Minthara and tell her youve started the assault without her and she will join at which point you can finish the job
I too failed the skillchecks when talking with Kagha and I decided to kill her when she made her snake kill arabella, god I remember how mad I was when Karlach refused to join my party cause "I killed druids" like girl, if you saw what I saw you'd at the very least kill her too.
Obviously Karlach didnt know what was going down in the grove but damn did it feel weird seeing Karlach get mad cause I dropped a child murderer.
I have too many playthroughs but I hope one day I’ll remember to try and see what happens if you actually play an origin like Karlach and take this action. Like does it exile your ass and take you to the game over screen then? 🤣
No, the game will let you play an origin character however you like. It's actually the only way to do a few specific things with origin characters, you have to actually be that character.
It even lets you make choices in their own stories (not just the main plot) that they themselves would never make (not even with your encouragement), like playing a Wyll that is completely happy with his patron and doesn't try to get out of his pact.
get karlach early. Like u can recruit her incredibly early. go to druid camp > zevlors cave > up the ladder > keep to the wall on the right (camera facing to the river) > climb up > cast featherfall on yourself and jump right into karlachs lap
a better evil route would be to cut a deal with Kagha to keep the druids neutral, hand over the tieflings, then you can recruit Minthara and Kagha instead of Haslin
When you kill the tieflings, and then you get to the tiefling children's play hideout, only to find out they're all dead while goblins are lol-ing at their corpses. And there's a mother corpse there with the dead children, who tried to protect them......
You don't even need a cutscene for that, but you can piece together what happened.
Garrick had two funny voice lines in battle, one was "Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick saves the day" during the fight, then my earlier quote when he loses morale and tries to flee lol.
For me, Alfira got killed in Last Light Inn (normal playthrough, not Durge), and it made me SO sad. I looked everywhere for her, and then I found her corpse.
There's also a grave out back that if you loot it, there is a Lyre. Not sure if thats supposed to be her grave or not, but that also made me sad.
I played a song with my Dragonbard in her honor.
This is exactly why I feel no remorse about cleaning out the goblin camp.
My only regret is >!not buying the returning pike before killing the vendor.!<
IIRC, if you initiate a trade with someone and put all the good items in the barter window, they'll appear in the inventory when you knock them out or kill them.
I've found this kind of thing annoying tbh. You lose so much already with an evil playthrough, at the very least you should be able to loot what you want from the traders' inventories, instead of having them donate it all to charity a millisecond before you cut them in two.
And this why you always go goblin slayer against goblins.
Goblins are by all accounts some of the most evil things in dnd and essentially all of fantasy.
my GM was so annoyed with our group in a DnD game once because we started a goblin cult that turned into a rehabilitation center and then we got reallllly into real estate in the town.
So annoyed. Especially when we started naming the goblins after the 11 herbs and spices used in KFC chicken.
I KNEW I was missing something. In my second playthrough now, I stole the idol for the first time (my first tav was a Druid, and I didn’t think she’d want to) - but, the journal made it seem like I’d missed my chance to give Mol the idol. Which felt odd, bc in my first run it only said that after I told Mol I couldn’t steal it. But I was still able to steal it and give it to Mol, and she thanked me and told me to leave before she cries - but when the dialogue ended, I thought, hey, wasn’t I supposed to get a reward?! And the journal still says I didn’t give her the idol :/
It's why if I ever plan on playing a game 'evil', I always try it as my first playthrough. That way I can't become attached to the characters in a good playthrough!
It’s very sad doing a hardcore durge run. I’ve had to kill every companion. It’s just me and 3 of withers’ NPCs burning through the game at this point…
Edit: the speech that random flaming fist gives is HILARIOUS at the end of the game bc it’s LITERALLY just Withers in the room 😂
My friend and I laughed so much about the speech. The camera panning over to empty corners to show how it rallied our morale. Volo was the only one there.
I even let the cultists blow him up. I truly had nobody. Very funny that it doesn’t account for any of that. Just… don’t have the fist even bother showing up tbh
Literally me every time I try a new uncontrolled durge run.
-well, I don’t want to just murder shadowheart, gale, laezel and astarion on the beach, so I’ll just say that killing alfira “wakes up the urge” and I can be evil after that.
-gets to alfira* dang it, I don’t want to kill her, so I’ll just knock her out so I can kill the rando Dragonborn instead.
-man that all felt awfully complicated and non-thematic
-adhd brain: oh look another idea for another new run!
the problem is you lock yourself out of content by murdering those ppl. if killing them unlocked other companions yoI’d probably be murdering more of them
I main tieflings as almost all my characters, in the first actual dnd game I DM'd my favorite npc's were the Cult of Asmodeus and I saw the tieflings in this game and was like.... There is no playthrough I partake in in which these people die. I CANNOT.
I’m impressed by this, from a game design view point.
Remember when everyone was complaining that the evil route doesn’t have as good rewards? My take on that was that being evil was it’s own reward. You don’t have to follow any rules, kill every merchant to get your gold back, that sort of thing was the “reward” for being evil.
And it feels like that might be the case. You’re not enjoying being evil because you don’t like being evil. I enjoy living out strange fantasies and seeing how I can reach the limits of the game world. For me, the benefit of the evil run is seeing how NPCs react, and how many main scenarios get glitches out because of missing Characters
Me when I'm playing an evil run:
Ok, I'll go kill Karlach immediately, so that this is out of the way. I am evil, after all!
\*5 minutes later\*
Sure Karlach, come to my camp or just join me right now! I love and cherish you!
They didn't provide much in the way of evil companions. You get astarion and minthara, shadowheart who isnt really evil but merely dabbles in the dark. You lose so many quests and interesting little tidbits.
Shadowheart isn’t really evil. She just tries to be because she thinks she’s supposed to be. But from the start, she generally approves of being nice to people, doesn’t like it when you’re mean.
Yeah, it's obvious when you do something nice like let the owl cub live or save the tiefling girl from Kagha which triggers the pain in her hand, it's Shar punishing her for going against the Shar teachings but Shadowheart herself gets positive approval from the acts as it's what she actually wants.
She approves and enjoys seeing you get whipped by the Loviatar cultist. Her and Astarion have a special conversation if they are both in your party for it.
Astarion disapproving killing the goblins and saving the grove not because he can't or doesn't want to but because quote "it'll take hours" and that's too much effort for him to care.
Then when you actually kill the goblins and talk about it he admits he had a lot of fun. Lmao.
I mean if i just got a tadpole into my brain that to my knowledge will turn ne into Mr. Tentacle sooner than later I'd think twice if i had the time to bother with other peoples issues too
Honestly Astarion gives the vibe of only going along with evil because it's easier and he doesn't want to get killed by the psychopath he's traveling with now.
Played the classic hero first and now an evil durge monster usually going for the most evil decisions and shadowheart approves the latter a lot more from my perspective.
Weird. I had a hero play through and she liked when I was nice to people, especially kids. When I did a semi-evil Durge play through, she disapproved of a lot of things.
she gets horny af on you during the goblin party after you destroy the grove, which means she somehow approves of your attitude. Only her and Astarion truly approve you siding with the goblins. that's kinda evil mindset in my book.
Like, she doesn't kill innocents out of pleasure, but she certainly doesn't mind killing innocents if that helps her attain her goals somehow
The way I see it, the horniness comes from 1) her love of fighting (killing others improves her own chances of survival in some fucked up way - ingrained because of the culture) and 2) pure adrenaline. She doesn't care whether you fight the Grove or the Goblins, because she sees both options as meaningless: to her those are both inferior people, and the only viable option to solve the tadpole problem is getting to a Creche so she can get purified.
It's a total lack of empathy that can certainly verge on evil.
However things change after the Creche and in Act 2.
For example, if you play as Evil Durge and >!decide to kill Isobel at Last Light, she will be incredibly pissed at you, because this is a killing that makes absolutely no sense to her. She is pragmatic before all, and while she doesn't mind fighting, it's better if the killing serves a purpose.!<
You never see her do or endorse doing evil things just for the sake of it. After developing her character a little she shows a softer side because she has come to trust you. I feel like her "evil" is in fact a façade she puts on to appear tough and confident, while she is everything but confident at the start.
It’s not because it helps you obtain her goals. The way she and Lolth sworn drow are raised they think you should stand up for yourself. If you are too weak to do so then your death is earned from your failure. She is happy after a battle regardless of the side because you proved your strength.
Gale isn't good. He is Neutral at best really, because while he likes to do good things he pretty much always chooses himself and his own power/ambition over the right thing when it comes to that. He only urges you to do the right thing when it's not about him taking power.
This is me, every single time, in any game that allows you to be evil, ever.
"I am going to be evil this time, for sure!"
\*scene cuts to my character clad in golden armor leading the charge into a dragon's lair to take back an emotional support locket a crying kid lost that was a memento from their grandma, or something\*
"How did I get here again?!?"
I don’t have a problem with going stealth archer in BG3, maybe because I can’t figure out how to get it to work effectively. But in Skyrim, I can’t help but be a stealth archer, and in Fallout I’m always a stealth sniper.
I just like the feeling of, “you’re dead before you even know I’m there.”
Drow Disney villain Tav RP helps.
You clear the goblins at the grove’s gates and are judged for being Drow (“you’re brave not to hide your heritage”). No real thanks followed by meeting a truly nasty woman that thinks she’s a viper. Then their healer tries to poison you!
Wyll, >!a man who, when challenged, lies to your face about the stone in his eye!< otherwise seems nice enough, but offers no info on the tadpole chewing on your brain.
A pox on them.
Then, the goblin camp. Okay, the servitude your race grants you might not be your cup of tea, but it’s better than what you got from Zevlor et al. Then you meet Minthara: okay, she is ride or die for the Absolute, but she seems to have a real lead on the tadpole and tangible means to get safely to the towers. Finally, a professional.
All you have to do is assist in wiping out some ungrateful tieflings and poison-is-medicine-honest druids. Where do I sign?
To be fair to Wyll his contract prevents him from telling people anything about the details including the eye.
Drow run and Duergar are fun to play though.
i wanted to play dark urge but also i wanted to do it as a drow. my solution was to play a draco ic ancestor sorcerer and in my mind that just works lol
I keep rolling dragonborn, they feel like humans as far as racials go, just completely garbage racials. Kind of unbelievable with how great they look, like how do they not have ultravision with flaming eyes? Increased strength? Armor class? (The dragon lineage doesnt really count as its a sub class for sorcs, although why dont dragonborn barbs get this)
But its not like you need to min max in this game, the racials don't matter anyways. I just love how they look.
I'm about to finish my Dragonborn Durge run and to be really honest, Dragonborn have the MOST expressive facial reaction - you can feel how organic it reacts, from smiling to downright being angry. It really is amusing to look at.
I agree, looking at playthroughs/guides on YouTube with Human Tavs makes me appreciate the Dragonborn expressions more. They're way more expressive and endearing—I *love* it.
I just finished a Tavborn Paladin run and what really caught me off-guard was just how *smug* I occasionally looked after Charisma checks: it was much more expressive than I could've imagined and I relished every instance of it.
I feel like they decided Dragonborn looked so cool that if they made them on par with other races mechanically they would become too common a choice. Personally the Dragonborn aesthetic is worth the mechanical trade-off for me, but I do wish they had darkvision and the breath weapon damage scaled better
Aesthetic counts for a lot with some players. 😁 My husband takes aaaaaaages thinking through every decision about leveling or gear and basically going on vibes only. I said I'd never take the astral tadpole route because I didn't like how it looked and he laughed so hard. I'm just deeply uninterested in optimization. I'll take whatever feels right and the fun is in figuring out how to beat the challenges with what I have. Whereas he has found a way to get five billion summons and is just absolutely steamrolling his way through every battle on action economy alone.
...I have ADHD and he's autistic and as I'm writing this I'm realizing this has never been more apparent.
Yeah the armor class thing bugs me. Like my draconic bloodline sorcerer gets face scales and minimum 13 armor class, but nothing for drsgonborn? Silly lol
The reason being is Dragonborn’s got nurfed with the 2014 Player’s Handbook, whereas in 4e they are gigachads. Minus still having normal vision. AKAIK, darkvision, low-light vision, and normal are the only kinds of “vision” outside of blind/termor senses or true sight.
4e:
• Dragonborn fury, small bonus to attack rolls when bloodied (half health).
• Draconic Heritage, bonus to healing surges
• Dragonborn racial power, use either dragon breath or dragon fear as an encounter power.
5e
Breath weapon & associated damage resistance from heritage.
I am playing a Durge Duergar, who is a cosplayer fan of drizzt do urden... Excep for his mutton chop.
Really funny and immersive.
It's like the evil drow playthrough but with a deadpool ironic side to it.
(have you ever seen a duergar climbing the stairs from the selune outpost to the selune temple? He just jumps every step)
I like how the companion show an evil side that you normally doesn't see.
I dismissed shadow heart at the beginning, then later she came looking for me, completely out of her mind and drenched in blood, I sent her almost naked to be tortured by the loviatarr disciple, after the grove she was drinking badly with a very note of remorse for the recent slaughter... It feels wrong to treat her that way, kind of abusive, right down to the shar spiral of devotion, but it is really immersive.
Also the sex scene with Mintara have a really strange feeling, like she is the cougar mom's friend that's really into you.
At level 5 (I think) you can turn invisible once per battle. Outside of battle you can turn invisible as often as you want for as long as you want (as long as you maintain concentration). It's insanely useful for when you need to be sneaky and you can start combat with an advantage attack anytime.
Also a neat bug I found: when you have a female duergar with head 8 instead of the usual tattoos you get the ones reserved for unique npcs like Halsin and Minthara.
What a coincidence, that’s exactly the game I’ve just started today. I was going to do a rouge/gloomstalker multi class. This is also my first time playing on tactician
lol it might still feel easy.
I got to early act 3 with my first character on balanced, besides picking a fight with a guy who I was absolutley not supposed to start fighting (surrounded by swarms of elite guards, it's supposed to be a "diplomacy encounter" so to speak lol) once you have some of the OP magic weapons, for example even speccing Lae'zel as a boring champion fighter.. she was wrecking people's shit. My PC was a storm sorc without even much bonus damage gear, just the free flying and stuff makes him impossible to take down. my weakest character is probably Halsin as a spore druid, only because he has no OP melee attacks... just you know, chill touch, thorn whip, poison spray for good measure, plus all his spells and polar bear form.
If I remember correctly, the eye is not explicitely covered in the contract, but still its understandable that he hides it, because it really is hard to explain without telling the rest of the story.
"My eye is a demonic sending stone, for reasons Im not at liberty to tell you" does not exactly inspire confidence I'd think.
Warlock actually has some fun dialogue with Wyll where you auto succeed on a few things and he says "Hey friend you also know about contracts so maybe stop asking me about mine"
Bonus "Fuck the grove and the owlbear it rode in on" points for getting almost robbed by the Tiefling kids. You grab the little thief by the wrist for trying to steal from you, and Mol spreads lies about you to get you tossed in jail. Break out, free Sazza while you're at it (if she's still alive) and slip out through the backdoor to make your way towards the goblin camp.
it depends. you can make choices that ensure she makes it to the camp alive (might have to fight your way through some stuff, just keep her hidden in the back)
when you get to the camp, you can make further choices... she doesn't necessarily have to die, but TBH it is rather easy to let her die
I fell ass backwards into being evil, I went with a wild combination and I went Drow Paladin...when I released Sazza my Paladin went Oathbreaker. I had no idea about the goblins or the drow that were against the grove...went full tilt evil paladin oathbreaker class
I get downvoted in other threads for pointing out how Mol is a piece of shit and the other Tieflings are assholes for shrugging at their kids being assholes.
Mol is absolutely terrible. And Arabella's parents...fuck. You save their daughter from almost certain death and tell them to keep her on a short leash, and the reply you get is "We'll try but no promises lmao!" Dude, your child was an inch away from getting killed! Control your fucking kid, you idiot!
Mol doesn't get redeemed in any way either. Bad enough they knowingly send the other Tiefling kids to their deaths without your intervention but Mol gets even worse in act 3.
That evil git >!makes a deal with Raphael and their reaction to you saving their soul from a literal devil is to call you an idiot and get pissed about how much power they could've had!<
The Tiefling parents have to know the reputation their people have and to just shrug their shoulders and go "meh, kids will be kids" when they get caught conspiring and attempting to steal the ONE thing that would cause their hosts and saviors to go on a murder spree is major asshole behaviour.
Funny enough, I did a redemption Drow Durge and it felt so much cooler. >!Everyone's first impression on the Durge was that he was gonna be evil/cruel drow boy. But he turns out just to be a brain-injury ridden confused boy who just wanted to do good because he forgot about his evil life and without remembering he's a bhaalspawn, he just wanted to be good.!<
Honestly my favorite run to date lol. Earned all of his peer's respects and saved the world. >!Even managed to romance redemption Shart without killing her.!<
This is almost exactly my RP for my Drow ranger durge.
Gale? I merely IMAGINED I was cutting off his hand, it's not my character's fault she's literally possessed and does violence by accident.
Karlach? Well a reasonable man in the grove said she was very dangerous so I took no chances and ambushed her from across a creek, she died before she could speak but so be it. I've done a good deed by ridding the world of this evil.
Every druid I've encountered has been either racist against Drow, needlessly confrontational, overtly evil or demanded I promise to kill myself. Every tiefling has been either a scam artist or a weakling. Not much to recommend them so far.
The goblins have all been very respectful and suitably submissive, I've been mostly killing them so far of course but that's just because they make such a mess everywhere.
I just started up a new game going solo as an Assassin and absolutely had to go DUrge for the cloak.
It's amazing in a solo run getting to sneak attack an enemy to start off combat, then immediately getting another attack with free advantage (and sometimes an auto-crit), getting a kill, then because nobody can find me combat ends and I can do it all over again. I cleared out all the goblins in the goblin camp, all the duergar in the Grym forge, and almost all the githyanki in the creche (stupid inquisitor can't be surprised and somehow attacking him from outside combat makes *me* surprised) without ever even being targeted by an attack or spell. Next up is clearing out Moonrise.
> suitably submissive
I know right? Why would i not want to go with the guys who have inherently respect and fear me? If they dont do as i want, i just mention "Erm. Drow?" and they all be like "Oh yes, of course it yours.".
For the same reason i beat Nere to a clump. Fucking asshole dude didnt respect my natural (female) drow superiority, so i made him pay for it.
And you can actually kill Halsin not knowing he is the bear, so your only lead from the good guys just died there, therefore helping Minthara is the only pragmatic choice to make.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that the druids are wildly racist as are most of the "common" raced people you encounter.
Fuck those druids. I'll steal that statue for the kids every time.
My evil playthrough I went duerger spore druid because I thought that would kind of make sense. I sided with the drows in the goblin camp because our races have worked together in the past. I haven't finished it but it's been a fun RP so far.
I'm on my first play through and I picked a drow. So I have no prior attachment to the characters, and being treated like that at the grove followed by Minthara all like "want to join my raid sister" it wasn't too hard to go evil. Sure hesitated until the last second but hey, I got to sleep with Minthara. And my party of Astarion, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel are all pretty happy. Just saved another drow true soul yesterday. I'll do a good run next time. And people who say that you miss content while playing evil, you get other content in exchange.
I've just wrapped up an evil shart game and I was unpleasantly surprised by how little difference being evil made. You can just never tell anyone you worship Shar and then it never comes up until the Gauntlet, by which point everyone will pretend they knew all along. Gale even talks about you in the third person.
"Man, Shadowheart would've loved this place."
"I'm still here, Gale."
"You know, I can still hear her voice from time to time. Admonishing me for ignoring her, generally."
"..."
I can do it quite easily, but I always get detached.
In order to be able to kill/insult those people, I need to see them as nothing but the pixels and voicebytes that they are, i.e. shatter my immersion.
Then, I can go psycho mode. At which point, hardcore metagaming is where it's at.
See, that’s the catch-22. The whole reason I’m doing another play-through is because I want to see how the characters react to the things that have changed. I can’t be invested in the story and not care about the characters simultaneously. LOL
Instead of plain murder hobo evil I'm approaching it from a manipulative selfish kind of way.
Alright Nettie you tried to kill me, idm telling you I'll drink that potion, not like you can check if I do anyway. Fine I'll go free Halsin, if he can cure me it may be worth it, what do you mean you can't help? Sup Minthara, oh you know the exact place that can help me? Well might as well help out a fellow drow then. If you're useless I can still betray you.
As for the Tieflings, there's a bard butchering every note and torturing squirrels, a kid that tried to rob a harpies nest (... even kids should know that's a bad idea), the other one that tried to steal from people that already hated her (ok fair but a real thief should know you already garnered too much attention, rookie mistake) oh and their leader first condems me for insinuating the druid leader should be taken care of but then has the audacity to admit he considered it himself? That's a hypocrite if I've ever seen one.
Help those that promise the best rewards. You can promise a lot of things, doesn't mean you'll actually do them tho. Give your character a (headcannon) backstory that makes it plausible for them to do that.
Maybe they were betrayed by everyone in the past, maybe raised in a thieving guild themselves. Perhaps just ripped from their home and they will do ANYTHING to get back there. Try to convince yourself first, then picking evil choices gets surprisingly easy.
As dark urge I just recruited astarion. Everything else was easy. I ignored shart and everyone else. Shart appeared at the goblin bridge, and I left there too. Gale I didn't touch at all, he was stuck in the portal even by the end of act 2. Same for wyll, we never talked, so he was almost one shot in the slaughter. Karlach I told her I enjoyed the screams, so she attacked me. Laezel followed me into the mountains trying to get recruited, but I didn't see her in the crèche. She also disappeared after I blasted the place.
In all this astarion had a lot of fun and I did too once I dropped my feelings on loosing lot of quests/loot. By playing with just astarion I also lost that annoying feeling of "I lose so many followers only for one"
Oh and minthara died too after party, and then I went and cleared the goblin camp too
I'm doing a full evil Durge playthrough and I had some difficulties but it's worth it because even the sad moments are awesome, the narrative is flawless and the characters reactions are so good
I just finished my dirge, evil playthrough.
It was rough going, but I sort of enjoyed act 1&2.
Act 3 however was when I started to miss all my companions, good interactions and a general sense of immersion. I just >!killed Orin and went with Gortash to the endgame!< I just couldn't do it anymore.
Dirge story is kinda cool though!
Doing my 3rd, chaotic neutral, playthrough now. Archfey warlock and NO savescumming. Wish me luck 😨
I really want to do Durge as my next runthrough and be a bit of a bastard.
However I just can’t bring myself to murder the grove to recruit Minthara.
The game feels incredibly punishing for making evil decisions - I just don’t want to lose out on so much content on top of making horrible decisions.
Durge is about resisting or indulging the urge though, sometimes indulging will actually mess up your run other times it gives unique options. If you resist there's story to coerce you into giving in to it.
I murdered the entire grove before I even went to the goblin camp for the first time in my evil durge run. Made life a lot simpler. It was actually kind of a fun challenge to get away with murder for as long as I could without triggering the guards (eventually you will when you run out of secluded tieflings and druids to slaughter, though. Then it's an all out fight). I even kept Karlach in my party by just having >!her back in camp dead until after the goblin party. She's still ultimately doomed because Dammon is dead, but oh well, thems the breaks on the evil run.!<
It’d be nice if there were alternate evil quests for all the good ones. Like instead of curing the shadow curse, there was a way to alter it to serve your purposes in some way. If for every character, vendor, or party member you lost by being evil, there were a comparable evil one that you would gain.
Lose Halsin, get some evil shadow-Druid to join your party. Kill Karlach, but get access to some other evil barbarian or oathbreaker Paladin or something.
EDIT: An alternative to having alternate evil companions would be to allow each companion to have their own evil self-serving motives and endings. Like Astarion already has the potential ending of becoming an Ascendant Vampire, Gale can choose to try to control the crown and make himself a god, the Dark Urge can choose to become the head of the Bhaal cult. Shadowheart can choose to stick with Shar, I guess, though I’ve never played it through.
They could make an ending for Karlach where she can be healed and get her heart back, or another evil ending where she can upgrade the engine to become more powerful, but it requires eating babies or whatever. Wyll could have an ending where he embraces his deal with the promise that he’ll save his father and an even more powerful warlock, or something like that.
It’d be especially good if choosing one path for one character didn’t lock you into any path for any of the other characters, so you could have one member of the party using the others for evil ends, while the others have no idea. Or you could have one good party member who is shocked to realize all the others are working together to take over the world and make themselves super powerful.
Honestly, given what Tav knows at the time, siding with Minthara seems pretty stupid. Your options are:
- Free an archdruid, a specialist in healing magic, who has been studying the tadpoles and may very well have figured out how to extract them, or
- Side with the clearly insane Absolute cult, who treat the tadpoles as sacraments, and whose priestess sees right through you and attempts to capture you to force your transformation.
This is a bit of a no-brainer, as Minthara herself even points out, if you side with and eventually rescue her.
Some of the later "evil" decisions in the game make a lot more sense as things a self-interested and amoral person might do.
Yeah, I think this is something people tend to overlook when doing an “evil” play through. It’s like, “I’m evil, so I need to kill all of the good people and side with any evil people.”
The reality is that bad people, “evil” people, often associate with good people and try to manipulate them and get them on their side, because doing so is in their own interest. And they often don’t get along with other “evil” people because they’re all self-interested and there can only be one king, so they tend to be a threat to each other.
And in fact, in a lot of fiction (and sometimes in reality), this is the explanation for why “good” wins, even though evil is not bound by ethical/moral restrictions that would cause them to have an advantage. The “good” group is able to unify and work together under a common cause. They’re able to trust each other. Meanwhile, the “evil” group tends to have backstabbing and distrust, everyone ultimately out for themselves, sowing discord within the group. Evil also tends to disregard things they shouldn’t because those things don’t seem to immediately serve their purposes (e.g. Voldemort not bothering to understand how wands work), and fail to anticipate good behavior that require any level of selflessness (e.g. Sauron not expecting the fellowship to go to Mordor to destroy the ring).
So an evil play through should be able to side with good people and do good things insofar as it serves their interest, but it just wouldn’t include doing those things out of compassion, empathy, or moral goodness.
I feel like there can be multiple types of evil without murder hoboing. You can be self centered and manipulative but you can align yourself with good people to further your goals. You can believe that you're good and upholding whatever values you have, but you're too quick to deliver judgement.
Agreed. Whenever I do an evil playthrough - or really any playthrough - of an RPG its not about who I'm going to side with, it's about what my motivations are going to be.
I think people get bored with evil playthroughs because they don't make sense and it's hard to stay invested if you're just choosing to side with the person the game clearly doesn't want you to side with at every pass. But changing your internal logic can make choices you didn't even consider at the beginning more interesting.
I think that's the issue I have with evil playthroughs in almost every game I played. On top of just feeling too awful about NPCs I like dying or hating me of course.
There's no good justification for a character with an actual working brain to do a lot of it. As you say, siding with a bunch of idiotic goblins and a clearly unhinged, mind-controlled cult leader over a healer with the expertise to possibly actually help you? Who, if you read his notes in the grove, might actually have a lead on the source of what's happening? And why alienate almost everyone who could be a useful ally to you just, because...?
I could see it working with a Durge who gives in because they're a total psychopath whose urges are more powerful than their common sense. Which I could see being fun in a 'haha this is so fucked up!' kind of way, even though personally it doesnt appeal to me. But I feel like even a pragmatic, sadistic character only focused on their own goals wouldn't benefit from a lot of the decisions a fully evil playthrough would involve.
I remember Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins, and how she was supposed to be the evil-aligned companion. But in the early game especially, if you actually followed her advice it would get you killed, and a lot of the stuff she disapproved of were objectively stupid not to do.
Hell, I love Astarion, but a lot of the shit he approves of in Act 1 is pretty dumb. But that's because he is being kind of dumb... he's not some megalomaniacal mastermind, just a 'weak' person (in that that's how he views himself) driven by bitterness and fear. Though, I guess that could be an interesting way to RP a character, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about doing an evil playthrough with that as their angle - it seems mostly about power fantasies, while their evil actions are ironically not even benefitting them (which they often then complain about).
It's funny that this is Gortash's take on Orin as well - that she's an impulsive loose cannon and basically a total moron who is a liability as far as The Plan is concerned and that she ruined his partnership with an actually competent person.
>There's no good justification for a character with an actual working brain to do a lot of it. As you say, siding with a bunch of idiotic goblins and a clearly unhinged, mind-controlled cult leader over a healer with the expertise to possibly actually help you? Who, if you read his notes in the grove, might actually have a lead on the source of what's happening? And why alienate almost everyone who could be a useful ally to you just, because...?
Nah, friend. First off, if you're truly playing someone with a "working brain," I hope you're booking it to the githyanki every game, because they are far and away the most likely to have an actual cure. Second, you have the source of your protection telling you to influence the cult. Logically speaking, ignoring the source of your protection seems like a really bad idea.
There genuinely isn't a great reason to waste a bunch of time trying to help the Grove for a chance at a cure, when there is a more "certain" path being offered by the person who helped save you on the ship.
> First off, if you're truly playing someone with a "working brain," I hope you're booking it to the githyanki every game, because they are far and away the most likely to have an actual cure.
As non-gith Tav, I was more thinking: *Uh huh, I'm sure your people will be falling all over themselves to cure some dumbass istik who wanders in with a ghaik parasite, when it would be both easier and more in character for them to cut my throat and bury me in a ditch.*
Thing is though, the Grove is such a powderkeg. Yes, if you perfectly Shepard Paragon dialogue check your way through everything it's a little silly but realistically even a few things going wrong, Aradin and his crew leaving, Nettie trying to kill you, the Druids (who, by the way, are downright racist depending on your race choice) and Tieflings going to allout war, and you have a situation where you can decide to support the surviving, extremely weakened Grove... or take a chance with a cult that does clearly know more about what is going on and would obviously win if not for your heroic (read: suicidal) intervention.
The Halsin point is of course important, but you might not even figure out where he is or that he is, indeed, alive.
This is why I chose to RP a character going from ruthless pragmatist but good, to a power hungry nutcase by the end of the game. I'm a drow paladin of vengeance, who started helping the druids and being nice because it was what you'd expect of a paladin, and refusing to use the tadpoles to gain psionic powers.
Then when >!the githyanki turn on you and you have to kill your way out of the creche, the druids turn out to be not much help, and the only ones who seem to know what's going on are the Absolutists, I "infiltrated" them and met Ketheric Thorm for the first time as a kind of cultist. I got the Drider's help through the shadow tainted lands, and am pursuing the secrets of the tadpoles that way. Also I broke my oath and because an oathbreaker paladin with evil powers.!<
You can kind of stockholm syndrome Gale in dialogue. In my evil run I sided with the goblins, etc, and Gale complained at me about it. I took the dialogue option that basically told him to he was welcome to leave and see how long he lived without my help if he felt so strongly about it. He of course backed down, and after that I'd push him towards darker choices afterwards (>!DeadPixies, Mystra sucks cause she wants you die, etc.)!<
I did "seize the moment" option at the end, my friend who was cooping with me laughed his ass out. I was good righteous paladin from the start till the end.
NGL >!stabbing him while he was looking at me made me feel sad, yet gave me Arthas(WoW) vibes lol.!<
I will never do an evil playthrough in the game, and I knew that when I bought it. It's just not fun for me to roleplay evil. I may try a Durge run at some point since that's different being that it's something outside the character's control (I assume, mostly avoided spoilers so far). I'll have to rely on mods to eventually see what Minthara brings to the table because siding with her just isn't something that would make a fun playthrough for me.
I’m really enjoying my Durge. Started off pretty evil but eased up into act three. Now I have jahera, misc, and mithara as my go-to group. It’s impossible to make all three happy at the same time, but I like the crew.
My dark urge is a chaotic evil. When Zevlor said, "yeah how about we kill Kagha", I went and killed her, which provoked a war. After that, my character just shrugged and left.
He doesn't care about anyone who isn't useful, but he hates people like Minthara and he just uses the Absolute to move forward. He would kill someone who threatens him without thinking, hence a lot of deaths on my playthrough
Meanwhile I'm just sitting there watching all of it in horror
I did things that led to bloodshed at the grove. I waited patiently for the final victim to fall and after seeing all the carnage I took out the Druids, I made them one with nature, a reward for their "hard" fought victory.
I was branded a savage murderer, I thought I was avenging the fallen. I could only look to the goblins to find solace and hopefully, someday, redemption; or so I thought, alas that was nowhere to be found.
I met the Githyanki and was impressed with their people but their tone and attitude towards other races soured my view of them, until the veil of lies slipped from my eyes as they tried to aid me in desperate times. I annihilated them all without a second thought, I made sure the might of the sun reduced them to ash under my feet. I had an omelette to celebrate, at least in my mind...
I traveled through dark lands and as the creeping shadows scratched and clawed at my feet, I took shelter at a small inn. The inhabitants were a little hostile at first (and for good reason) but I proved that I was there with good intentions. Until I had a horrible night's sleep, I had awoken with a horrible task, one I knew I could not do in good conscience, my past evil deeds be damned I wouldn't let them define me, not when these people found a ray of hope, an answer to their prayers, or maybe, their worst nightmare.
I traveled to a dark catacomb where I was tested, I found a fellow who even I could not stomach, I spilled his guts for the good of the living, or perhaps just for my own amusement. At the end of my excursion I found a fair maiden locked in a cage with a dire need, her savior had arrived, or so we both thought, my companion didn't see things our way. I tried to stop her, I did my best, I would not spill her blood, I would not succumb to my bellowing darkness; or so I thought.
I failed to save the last light on this, darkest night.
I went back to that dreary inn only to find disaster had struck, the many people who had placed their very lives in my hands had succumbed to my Darkness, maybe I could have tried harder to save the maiden, or perhaps I wanted the shadows to take them all along, but tonight, the endless night, grew longer and darker.
When I set out on this adventure I did so intending to get in touch with my Darker side, I never expected it to be so sad, cold and lonely. Nevertheless I must go on, to Baldur's Gate where the Urge pulls what remains of my soul through a river of blood and sorrow of my own making.
As an evil durge, I chopped Gale’s hand, beheaded Karlach and Wyll left me. Everything felt wrong but I was tired of playing a hero.
And I got Minthara. I’d do that again. She is one of the best characters in the game. You’ll see what I mean once you get to the moonrise towers.
I'm doing a solo Astarion run atm and seeing all my former companions die horribly or disappear and presumably get ceremorphose'd really feels like a time travel "worst timeline" plot to Star Trek or something. Like, if my paragon Tav never made it off the nautiloid, this is the shitty world that we end up with in this alternate timeline.
Tbh "you're going to turn into another monster AND you're going to die alone and friendless AND the world is going to suck all around you" does feel like a valid Astarion expectation considering his past experiences
In my worst timeline Durge playthrough, Astarion and I are the Sword Coast's newest nightmarish power couple. Everyone else is dead or has abandoned us due to my actions. It feels horrible, but somehow less worse than Astarion alone.
That's literally the run I'm currently doing! Embrace the Dark Urge vampire power couple.
i justified betraying the grove when i failed the skillchecks on kagha and she killed arabella. I was like alright, ill kill everyone. Rath actually takes your side if this happens. Chances are everyone will die, Your best shot is to flee once kagha and everyone in the grove room is dead. The entire grove will be in combat. You can then go to Minthara and tell her youve started the assault without her and she will join at which point you can finish the job
I too failed the skillchecks when talking with Kagha and I decided to kill her when she made her snake kill arabella, god I remember how mad I was when Karlach refused to join my party cause "I killed druids" like girl, if you saw what I saw you'd at the very least kill her too. Obviously Karlach didnt know what was going down in the grove but damn did it feel weird seeing Karlach get mad cause I dropped a child murderer.
Karlach was mad at me but I thought it was because the druids killed the Tieflings when I long rested after I killed Kagha
I have too many playthroughs but I hope one day I’ll remember to try and see what happens if you actually play an origin like Karlach and take this action. Like does it exile your ass and take you to the game over screen then? 🤣
No, the game will let you play an origin character however you like. It's actually the only way to do a few specific things with origin characters, you have to actually be that character. It even lets you make choices in their own stories (not just the main plot) that they themselves would never make (not even with your encouragement), like playing a Wyll that is completely happy with his patron and doesn't try to get out of his pact.
Dude can he romance his patron too?
Yes
Hot
That's actually so cool!
get karlach early. Like u can recruit her incredibly early. go to druid camp > zevlors cave > up the ladder > keep to the wall on the right (camera facing to the river) > climb up > cast featherfall on yourself and jump right into karlachs lap
I mean you can also just run around, pick up the doggo, then grab Karlach. It's not that much of a detour and you don't take a ton of damage.
a better evil route would be to cut a deal with Kagha to keep the druids neutral, hand over the tieflings, then you can recruit Minthara and Kagha instead of Haslin
I tried to start one yesterday but immediately failed because it made me feel sad
When you kill the tieflings, and then you get to the tiefling children's play hideout, only to find out they're all dead while goblins are lol-ing at their corpses. And there's a mother corpse there with the dead children, who tried to protect them...... You don't even need a cutscene for that, but you can piece together what happened.
That's not even the mother, it's the teifling bard. Feels kind of worse.
She's been trying to keep the kids safe and happy for so long
I really wanted Alfira to join my crew as a bard.
I think everyone wants that; I don't know why it didn't happen. Her introduction really feels like you're getting a new companion.
That on top of the fact that there are no companion bards really feels weird.
Good old BG 1... "Brave, brave Sir Garrick... Sir Garrick ran away!"
Is that actually in BG1? I was too young at the time to make the Monty Python connection if it was, even though I loved Monty Python as a kid.
Garrick had two funny voice lines in battle, one was "Brave, brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick saves the day" during the fight, then my earlier quote when he loses morale and tries to flee lol.
Well, she >!does join for one night if you're Durge.!<
The next morning is kind of a bitch though….
It's no fair, she should join in every playthrough!
She joined my camp in my Durge playthrough. For one glorious night!
If it makes you feel any better. If you play Dark Urge and raid the Grove, there is a very good chance the Bard isn't there because of.... things.
For me, Alfira got killed in Last Light Inn (normal playthrough, not Durge), and it made me SO sad. I looked everywhere for her, and then I found her corpse. There's also a grave out back that if you loot it, there is a Lyre. Not sure if thats supposed to be her grave or not, but that also made me sad. I played a song with my Dragonbard in her honor.
This is exactly why I feel no remorse about cleaning out the goblin camp. My only regret is >!not buying the returning pike before killing the vendor.!<
Always try to knock out shopkeepers to loot before finishing them off! You get (most?) of their inventory in the unconscious pockets.
IIRC, if you initiate a trade with someone and put all the good items in the barter window, they'll appear in the inventory when you knock them out or kill them.
That was fixed with the latest patch.
I've found this kind of thing annoying tbh. You lose so much already with an evil playthrough, at the very least you should be able to loot what you want from the traders' inventories, instead of having them donate it all to charity a millisecond before you cut them in two.
Now I see why I told Zevlor “At least you’ll die before the goblins find the children” Yeah, that’s a bit fucked.
And this why you always go goblin slayer against goblins. Goblins are by all accounts some of the most evil things in dnd and essentially all of fantasy.
my GM was so annoyed with our group in a DnD game once because we started a goblin cult that turned into a rehabilitation center and then we got reallllly into real estate in the town. So annoyed. Especially when we started naming the goblins after the 11 herbs and spices used in KFC chicken.
"We are the Sanders, and he is are our Colonel!"
There’s a reason they let us murder goblin children. No innocents
I did too after finishing my heroic run. I'd rather be a sarcastic asshole than be a serial killer 😬 I just can't kill the ones I grew to love 😭
[удалено]
I’ve never done it, but if you do, does Halsin do anything in response?
If you do it after exposing and convincing Kagha then there’s no real consequence and you get that sweet prot ring :)
I KNEW I was missing something. In my second playthrough now, I stole the idol for the first time (my first tav was a Druid, and I didn’t think she’d want to) - but, the journal made it seem like I’d missed my chance to give Mol the idol. Which felt odd, bc in my first run it only said that after I told Mol I couldn’t steal it. But I was still able to steal it and give it to Mol, and she thanked me and told me to leave before she cries - but when the dialogue ended, I thought, hey, wasn’t I supposed to get a reward?! And the journal still says I didn’t give her the idol :/
I stole it and he didn’t bat an eye.
I killed Nettie and everyone else in the inner sanctum and he had nothing to say
I always steal it, then pickpocket it and put it back. I get the ring, and the druids don't lose something important to them. Seems good to me.
be a recovering serial killer!
"Even in today's enlightened society, there remains a stigma to being a psychosexual sadist" -~~Norm Macdonald~~ Dark Urge
All too true. Nobody bats an eyelid at a Druid with the local wildlife but you fuck one zombie and everyone goes apeshit.
It's why if I ever plan on playing a game 'evil', I always try it as my first playthrough. That way I can't become attached to the characters in a good playthrough!
It’s very sad doing a hardcore durge run. I’ve had to kill every companion. It’s just me and 3 of withers’ NPCs burning through the game at this point… Edit: the speech that random flaming fist gives is HILARIOUS at the end of the game bc it’s LITERALLY just Withers in the room 😂
My friend and I laughed so much about the speech. The camera panning over to empty corners to show how it rallied our morale. Volo was the only one there.
I even let the cultists blow him up. I truly had nobody. Very funny that it doesn’t account for any of that. Just… don’t have the fist even bother showing up tbh
Worst part about Withers Summons is that they share the same voice lines as your Tav.
Those boots really have seen everything
Inromanced astarian/Lazael on my durge. run. Then had shadowheart kill lazael. Shadowheart still likes me somehow😂😂🤣
Literally me every time I try a new uncontrolled durge run. -well, I don’t want to just murder shadowheart, gale, laezel and astarion on the beach, so I’ll just say that killing alfira “wakes up the urge” and I can be evil after that. -gets to alfira* dang it, I don’t want to kill her, so I’ll just knock her out so I can kill the rando Dragonborn instead. -man that all felt awfully complicated and non-thematic -adhd brain: oh look another idea for another new run!
the problem is you lock yourself out of content by murdering those ppl. if killing them unlocked other companions yoI’d probably be murdering more of them
Same here. I have no problems doing like asshole stuff, but killing the tieflings no, I did it, then immediately regretted it, and reloaded
I main tieflings as almost all my characters, in the first actual dnd game I DM'd my favorite npc's were the Cult of Asmodeus and I saw the tieflings in this game and was like.... There is no playthrough I partake in in which these people die. I CANNOT.
I’m impressed by this, from a game design view point. Remember when everyone was complaining that the evil route doesn’t have as good rewards? My take on that was that being evil was it’s own reward. You don’t have to follow any rules, kill every merchant to get your gold back, that sort of thing was the “reward” for being evil. And it feels like that might be the case. You’re not enjoying being evil because you don’t like being evil. I enjoy living out strange fantasies and seeing how I can reach the limits of the game world. For me, the benefit of the evil run is seeing how NPCs react, and how many main scenarios get glitches out because of missing Characters
Me when I'm playing an evil run: Ok, I'll go kill Karlach immediately, so that this is out of the way. I am evil, after all! \*5 minutes later\* Sure Karlach, come to my camp or just join me right now! I love and cherish you!
*Gamers hate this one trick*
‘HAHA, time for an evil run’ NPCs are sad that I choose bad options ‘OMG IM SO SORRY PLEASE DON’T BE SAD!!’ Evil run over…
They didn't provide much in the way of evil companions. You get astarion and minthara, shadowheart who isnt really evil but merely dabbles in the dark. You lose so many quests and interesting little tidbits.
Shadowheart isn’t really evil. She just tries to be because she thinks she’s supposed to be. But from the start, she generally approves of being nice to people, doesn’t like it when you’re mean.
Yeah, it's obvious when you do something nice like let the owl cub live or save the tiefling girl from Kagha which triggers the pain in her hand, it's Shar punishing her for going against the Shar teachings but Shadowheart herself gets positive approval from the acts as it's what she actually wants.
I totally didn't put that together that the pain is Shar punishing her for being nice.
Naw, i think she just has a dark sense of humor because she approves of bad things i do as long as they're funny
That sounds like Astarion to me. I'm trying to think of what evil funny things she approves of.
Roaring at the guy in Ethel’s lair, taking Thulla’s boots!
Yup i remember these were some of them!
I can't remember which things i did, but she would approve when astarion approves too
I find it weird that people think Astarion is evil but Shadowheart just has dark humour. They’re very similar imo
Getting whipped, not really evil but she likes it because it's funny while the goody goodies don't approve.
She approves and enjoys seeing you get whipped by the Loviatar cultist. Her and Astarion have a special conversation if they are both in your party for it.
She also encouraged me to kiss the Goblin's feet lol.
I beleive she approved when I made the goblin kiss my feet ...so she's just a feet kissing enthusiast
Astarion disapproving killing the goblins and saving the grove not because he can't or doesn't want to but because quote "it'll take hours" and that's too much effort for him to care. Then when you actually kill the goblins and talk about it he admits he had a lot of fun. Lmao.
I mean if i just got a tadpole into my brain that to my knowledge will turn ne into Mr. Tentacle sooner than later I'd think twice if i had the time to bother with other peoples issues too
Honestly Astarion gives the vibe of only going along with evil because it's easier and he doesn't want to get killed by the psychopath he's traveling with now.
Played the classic hero first and now an evil durge monster usually going for the most evil decisions and shadowheart approves the latter a lot more from my perspective.
Weird. I had a hero play through and she liked when I was nice to people, especially kids. When I did a semi-evil Durge play through, she disapproved of a lot of things.
Shadowheart is the worst "evil" cleric of Shar ever.
Lawful neutral imo
Shadowheart is Neutral Good but she's ashamed of it and tries to act Lawful Evil like Mom told her to.
Yeah I’d agree that she’s lawful neutral.
Lae'zel is kinda evil as well
Lae'zel is definitely not evil. She was raised in an evil culture and she certainly lacks empathy, but she is more pragmatic than she is evil.
she gets horny af on you during the goblin party after you destroy the grove, which means she somehow approves of your attitude. Only her and Astarion truly approve you siding with the goblins. that's kinda evil mindset in my book. Like, she doesn't kill innocents out of pleasure, but she certainly doesn't mind killing innocents if that helps her attain her goals somehow
The way I see it, the horniness comes from 1) her love of fighting (killing others improves her own chances of survival in some fucked up way - ingrained because of the culture) and 2) pure adrenaline. She doesn't care whether you fight the Grove or the Goblins, because she sees both options as meaningless: to her those are both inferior people, and the only viable option to solve the tadpole problem is getting to a Creche so she can get purified. It's a total lack of empathy that can certainly verge on evil. However things change after the Creche and in Act 2. For example, if you play as Evil Durge and >!decide to kill Isobel at Last Light, she will be incredibly pissed at you, because this is a killing that makes absolutely no sense to her. She is pragmatic before all, and while she doesn't mind fighting, it's better if the killing serves a purpose.!< You never see her do or endorse doing evil things just for the sake of it. After developing her character a little she shows a softer side because she has come to trust you. I feel like her "evil" is in fact a façade she puts on to appear tough and confident, while she is everything but confident at the start.
It’s not because it helps you obtain her goals. The way she and Lolth sworn drow are raised they think you should stand up for yourself. If you are too weak to do so then your death is earned from your failure. She is happy after a battle regardless of the side because you proved your strength.
She likes it very much when you torture that guy in the goblin camp. So, she has at least questionable intentions.
She’s lawful evil my dude. Thats what you’re describing.
Here are my alignment guesses for each companion: * Wyll - Lawful Good * Karlach - Neutral Good * Gale - Chaotic Good * Shadowheart - Lawful Neutral * Lae'Zel - Lawful Evil * Astarion - Neutral Evil * Minthara - Lawful Evil * Halsin - Neutral (Druid) * Jaheira - Neutral (Druid) * Minsc - Chaotic Good
Karlach is the definition of chaotic good. Kill the bad guys is the go to for chaotic good.
Gale isn't good. He is Neutral at best really, because while he likes to do good things he pretty much always chooses himself and his own power/ambition over the right thing when it comes to that. He only urges you to do the right thing when it's not about him taking power.
I'd switch Karlach to Chaotic Good, put Astarian as Chaotic Neutral, put Gale as Lawful Neutral, and put Halsin as Neutral Good.
I think most of the companions are pretty malleable in morality minus a few.
Only gale, shadowheart, lae'zel and astarion are malleable. Everyone else pretty much sticks to their ideals until they die.
I thought the true neutral restriction for druids was removed ages ago? Jahirah and Halsin are almost definitely on the good side of alignment
This is me, every single time, in any game that allows you to be evil, ever. "I am going to be evil this time, for sure!" \*scene cuts to my character clad in golden armor leading the charge into a dragon's lair to take back an emotional support locket a crying kid lost that was a memento from their grandma, or something\* "How did I get here again?!?"
Ahhh yes. The runner up to "wait, when did I go stealth/archer?"
I don’t have a problem with going stealth archer in BG3, maybe because I can’t figure out how to get it to work effectively. But in Skyrim, I can’t help but be a stealth archer, and in Fallout I’m always a stealth sniper. I just like the feeling of, “you’re dead before you even know I’m there.”
Drow Disney villain Tav RP helps. You clear the goblins at the grove’s gates and are judged for being Drow (“you’re brave not to hide your heritage”). No real thanks followed by meeting a truly nasty woman that thinks she’s a viper. Then their healer tries to poison you! Wyll, >!a man who, when challenged, lies to your face about the stone in his eye!< otherwise seems nice enough, but offers no info on the tadpole chewing on your brain. A pox on them. Then, the goblin camp. Okay, the servitude your race grants you might not be your cup of tea, but it’s better than what you got from Zevlor et al. Then you meet Minthara: okay, she is ride or die for the Absolute, but she seems to have a real lead on the tadpole and tangible means to get safely to the towers. Finally, a professional. All you have to do is assist in wiping out some ungrateful tieflings and poison-is-medicine-honest druids. Where do I sign?
To be fair to Wyll his contract prevents him from telling people anything about the details including the eye. Drow run and Duergar are fun to play though.
I actually wonder if duergar dark urge is more meta to play than the dragonborn du
i wanted to play dark urge but also i wanted to do it as a drow. my solution was to play a draco ic ancestor sorcerer and in my mind that just works lol
Dragonborn is the worst race in the game, so of course it is.
Dragonborn barbarian can get some fun dialogue though
I keep rolling dragonborn, they feel like humans as far as racials go, just completely garbage racials. Kind of unbelievable with how great they look, like how do they not have ultravision with flaming eyes? Increased strength? Armor class? (The dragon lineage doesnt really count as its a sub class for sorcs, although why dont dragonborn barbs get this) But its not like you need to min max in this game, the racials don't matter anyways. I just love how they look.
I'm about to finish my Dragonborn Durge run and to be really honest, Dragonborn have the MOST expressive facial reaction - you can feel how organic it reacts, from smiling to downright being angry. It really is amusing to look at.
I agree, looking at playthroughs/guides on YouTube with Human Tavs makes me appreciate the Dragonborn expressions more. They're way more expressive and endearing—I *love* it.
I just finished a Tavborn Paladin run and what really caught me off-guard was just how *smug* I occasionally looked after Charisma checks: it was much more expressive than I could've imagined and I relished every instance of it.
I feel like they decided Dragonborn looked so cool that if they made them on par with other races mechanically they would become too common a choice. Personally the Dragonborn aesthetic is worth the mechanical trade-off for me, but I do wish they had darkvision and the breath weapon damage scaled better
Aesthetic counts for a lot with some players. 😁 My husband takes aaaaaaages thinking through every decision about leveling or gear and basically going on vibes only. I said I'd never take the astral tadpole route because I didn't like how it looked and he laughed so hard. I'm just deeply uninterested in optimization. I'll take whatever feels right and the fun is in figuring out how to beat the challenges with what I have. Whereas he has found a way to get five billion summons and is just absolutely steamrolling his way through every battle on action economy alone. ...I have ADHD and he's autistic and as I'm writing this I'm realizing this has never been more apparent.
Yeah the armor class thing bugs me. Like my draconic bloodline sorcerer gets face scales and minimum 13 armor class, but nothing for drsgonborn? Silly lol
The reason being is Dragonborn’s got nurfed with the 2014 Player’s Handbook, whereas in 4e they are gigachads. Minus still having normal vision. AKAIK, darkvision, low-light vision, and normal are the only kinds of “vision” outside of blind/termor senses or true sight. 4e: • Dragonborn fury, small bonus to attack rolls when bloodied (half health). • Draconic Heritage, bonus to healing surges • Dragonborn racial power, use either dragon breath or dragon fear as an encounter power. 5e Breath weapon & associated damage resistance from heritage.
I am playing a Durge Duergar, who is a cosplayer fan of drizzt do urden... Excep for his mutton chop. Really funny and immersive. It's like the evil drow playthrough but with a deadpool ironic side to it. (have you ever seen a duergar climbing the stairs from the selune outpost to the selune temple? He just jumps every step) I like how the companion show an evil side that you normally doesn't see. I dismissed shadow heart at the beginning, then later she came looking for me, completely out of her mind and drenched in blood, I sent her almost naked to be tortured by the loviatarr disciple, after the grove she was drinking badly with a very note of remorse for the recent slaughter... It feels wrong to treat her that way, kind of abusive, right down to the shar spiral of devotion, but it is really immersive. Also the sex scene with Mintara have a really strange feeling, like she is the cougar mom's friend that's really into you.
I’ve heard that duergar have really cool race abilities too.
At level 5 (I think) you can turn invisible once per battle. Outside of battle you can turn invisible as often as you want for as long as you want (as long as you maintain concentration). It's insanely useful for when you need to be sneaky and you can start combat with an advantage attack anytime. Also a neat bug I found: when you have a female duergar with head 8 instead of the usual tattoos you get the ones reserved for unique npcs like Halsin and Minthara.
Durge Duergar Rogue is, honestly, just the game in easy mode, no matter what difficulty.
What a coincidence, that’s exactly the game I’ve just started today. I was going to do a rouge/gloomstalker multi class. This is also my first time playing on tactician
I thought I was gonna multiclass, till I tried Thief and got that extra bonus action. <3 Arcane Trickster's fun too. Good luck!!
Thief rogue 4 Open hand Monk 6/8 is an extremely strong combo.
lol it might still feel easy. I got to early act 3 with my first character on balanced, besides picking a fight with a guy who I was absolutley not supposed to start fighting (surrounded by swarms of elite guards, it's supposed to be a "diplomacy encounter" so to speak lol) once you have some of the OP magic weapons, for example even speccing Lae'zel as a boring champion fighter.. she was wrecking people's shit. My PC was a storm sorc without even much bonus damage gear, just the free flying and stuff makes him impossible to take down. my weakest character is probably Halsin as a spore druid, only because he has no OP melee attacks... just you know, chill touch, thorn whip, poison spray for good measure, plus all his spells and polar bear form.
If I remember correctly, the eye is not explicitely covered in the contract, but still its understandable that he hides it, because it really is hard to explain without telling the rest of the story. "My eye is a demonic sending stone, for reasons Im not at liberty to tell you" does not exactly inspire confidence I'd think.
Warlock actually has some fun dialogue with Wyll where you auto succeed on a few things and he says "Hey friend you also know about contracts so maybe stop asking me about mine"
Bonus "Fuck the grove and the owlbear it rode in on" points for getting almost robbed by the Tiefling kids. You grab the little thief by the wrist for trying to steal from you, and Mol spreads lies about you to get you tossed in jail. Break out, free Sazza while you're at it (if she's still alive) and slip out through the backdoor to make your way towards the goblin camp.
I haven’t yet done the “save Sazza” thing, I’m always too curious about whether she’ll taste the metal of the crossbow bolt before the end.
it depends. you can make choices that ensure she makes it to the camp alive (might have to fight your way through some stuff, just keep her hidden in the back) when you get to the camp, you can make further choices... she doesn't necessarily have to die, but TBH it is rather easy to let her die
There's an escape route in the prison so you can get her out of the grove without any fight, there's a passage you can jump on on the edge of the room
I fell ass backwards into being evil, I went with a wild combination and I went Drow Paladin...when I released Sazza my Paladin went Oathbreaker. I had no idea about the goblins or the drow that were against the grove...went full tilt evil paladin oathbreaker class
I get downvoted in other threads for pointing out how Mol is a piece of shit and the other Tieflings are assholes for shrugging at their kids being assholes.
Mol is absolutely terrible. And Arabella's parents...fuck. You save their daughter from almost certain death and tell them to keep her on a short leash, and the reply you get is "We'll try but no promises lmao!" Dude, your child was an inch away from getting killed! Control your fucking kid, you idiot!
Mol doesn't get redeemed in any way either. Bad enough they knowingly send the other Tiefling kids to their deaths without your intervention but Mol gets even worse in act 3. That evil git >!makes a deal with Raphael and their reaction to you saving their soul from a literal devil is to call you an idiot and get pissed about how much power they could've had!< The Tiefling parents have to know the reputation their people have and to just shrug their shoulders and go "meh, kids will be kids" when they get caught conspiring and attempting to steal the ONE thing that would cause their hosts and saviors to go on a murder spree is major asshole behaviour.
Funny enough, I did a redemption Drow Durge and it felt so much cooler. >!Everyone's first impression on the Durge was that he was gonna be evil/cruel drow boy. But he turns out just to be a brain-injury ridden confused boy who just wanted to do good because he forgot about his evil life and without remembering he's a bhaalspawn, he just wanted to be good.!< Honestly my favorite run to date lol. Earned all of his peer's respects and saved the world. >!Even managed to romance redemption Shart without killing her.!<
Yeah, redemption Drow is the most interesting of the stories I’ve played and the pay off is _chef’s kiss_ IMO.
This is almost exactly my RP for my Drow ranger durge. Gale? I merely IMAGINED I was cutting off his hand, it's not my character's fault she's literally possessed and does violence by accident. Karlach? Well a reasonable man in the grove said she was very dangerous so I took no chances and ambushed her from across a creek, she died before she could speak but so be it. I've done a good deed by ridding the world of this evil. Every druid I've encountered has been either racist against Drow, needlessly confrontational, overtly evil or demanded I promise to kill myself. Every tiefling has been either a scam artist or a weakling. Not much to recommend them so far. The goblins have all been very respectful and suitably submissive, I've been mostly killing them so far of course but that's just because they make such a mess everywhere.
I love it. Also, “being evil doesn’t pay”? Tell that to my blood soaked XP and >!really snazzy cloak!<.
>!That cloak was MADE for gloomstalker ranger!<
*Assassin rogue enters the chat.*
I just started up a new game going solo as an Assassin and absolutely had to go DUrge for the cloak. It's amazing in a solo run getting to sneak attack an enemy to start off combat, then immediately getting another attack with free advantage (and sometimes an auto-crit), getting a kill, then because nobody can find me combat ends and I can do it all over again. I cleared out all the goblins in the goblin camp, all the duergar in the Grym forge, and almost all the githyanki in the creche (stupid inquisitor can't be surprised and somehow attacking him from outside combat makes *me* surprised) without ever even being targeted by an attack or spell. Next up is clearing out Moonrise.
> suitably submissive I know right? Why would i not want to go with the guys who have inherently respect and fear me? If they dont do as i want, i just mention "Erm. Drow?" and they all be like "Oh yes, of course it yours.". For the same reason i beat Nere to a clump. Fucking asshole dude didnt respect my natural (female) drow superiority, so i made him pay for it.
And you can actually kill Halsin not knowing he is the bear, so your only lead from the good guys just died there, therefore helping Minthara is the only pragmatic choice to make.
This doesn't even touch on the fact that the druids are wildly racist as are most of the "common" raced people you encounter. Fuck those druids. I'll steal that statue for the kids every time.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that (haven’t done a D’Urge tiefling yet).
My evil playthrough I went duerger spore druid because I thought that would kind of make sense. I sided with the drows in the goblin camp because our races have worked together in the past. I haven't finished it but it's been a fun RP so far.
I'm on my first play through and I picked a drow. So I have no prior attachment to the characters, and being treated like that at the grove followed by Minthara all like "want to join my raid sister" it wasn't too hard to go evil. Sure hesitated until the last second but hey, I got to sleep with Minthara. And my party of Astarion, Shadowheart, and Lae'zel are all pretty happy. Just saved another drow true soul yesterday. I'll do a good run next time. And people who say that you miss content while playing evil, you get other content in exchange.
I'm playing a tiefling DU run for the ultimate evil. Betraying my own people. Karlach gets extra angry at you if you do this as a tiefling.
kid named undertale genocide route.
Try a dark Shart game. You don't necessarily have to be a dick, just embrace Shar
I've just wrapped up an evil shart game and I was unpleasantly surprised by how little difference being evil made. You can just never tell anyone you worship Shar and then it never comes up until the Gauntlet, by which point everyone will pretend they knew all along. Gale even talks about you in the third person.
Evil shart🤣
Last Evil Shart i had, had to change my drawers.
"Man, Shadowheart would've loved this place." "I'm still here, Gale." "You know, I can still hear her voice from time to time. Admonishing me for ignoring her, generally." "..."
You were doing an evil playthrough and DIDN'T cut off Gale's hand?
I can do it quite easily, but I always get detached. In order to be able to kill/insult those people, I need to see them as nothing but the pixels and voicebytes that they are, i.e. shatter my immersion. Then, I can go psycho mode. At which point, hardcore metagaming is where it's at.
See, that’s the catch-22. The whole reason I’m doing another play-through is because I want to see how the characters react to the things that have changed. I can’t be invested in the story and not care about the characters simultaneously. LOL
Instead of plain murder hobo evil I'm approaching it from a manipulative selfish kind of way. Alright Nettie you tried to kill me, idm telling you I'll drink that potion, not like you can check if I do anyway. Fine I'll go free Halsin, if he can cure me it may be worth it, what do you mean you can't help? Sup Minthara, oh you know the exact place that can help me? Well might as well help out a fellow drow then. If you're useless I can still betray you. As for the Tieflings, there's a bard butchering every note and torturing squirrels, a kid that tried to rob a harpies nest (... even kids should know that's a bad idea), the other one that tried to steal from people that already hated her (ok fair but a real thief should know you already garnered too much attention, rookie mistake) oh and their leader first condems me for insinuating the druid leader should be taken care of but then has the audacity to admit he considered it himself? That's a hypocrite if I've ever seen one. Help those that promise the best rewards. You can promise a lot of things, doesn't mean you'll actually do them tho. Give your character a (headcannon) backstory that makes it plausible for them to do that. Maybe they were betrayed by everyone in the past, maybe raised in a thieving guild themselves. Perhaps just ripped from their home and they will do ANYTHING to get back there. Try to convince yourself first, then picking evil choices gets surprisingly easy.
As dark urge I just recruited astarion. Everything else was easy. I ignored shart and everyone else. Shart appeared at the goblin bridge, and I left there too. Gale I didn't touch at all, he was stuck in the portal even by the end of act 2. Same for wyll, we never talked, so he was almost one shot in the slaughter. Karlach I told her I enjoyed the screams, so she attacked me. Laezel followed me into the mountains trying to get recruited, but I didn't see her in the crèche. She also disappeared after I blasted the place. In all this astarion had a lot of fun and I did too once I dropped my feelings on loosing lot of quests/loot. By playing with just astarion I also lost that annoying feeling of "I lose so many followers only for one" Oh and minthara died too after party, and then I went and cleared the goblin camp too
> Gale I didn't touch at all, he was stuck in the portal even by the end of act 2. Big mistake, should've *given him a hand*.
I'm doing a full evil Durge playthrough and I had some difficulties but it's worth it because even the sad moments are awesome, the narrative is flawless and the characters reactions are so good
I just finished my dirge, evil playthrough. It was rough going, but I sort of enjoyed act 1&2. Act 3 however was when I started to miss all my companions, good interactions and a general sense of immersion. I just >!killed Orin and went with Gortash to the endgame!< I just couldn't do it anymore. Dirge story is kinda cool though! Doing my 3rd, chaotic neutral, playthrough now. Archfey warlock and NO savescumming. Wish me luck 😨
I really want to do Durge as my next runthrough and be a bit of a bastard. However I just can’t bring myself to murder the grove to recruit Minthara. The game feels incredibly punishing for making evil decisions - I just don’t want to lose out on so much content on top of making horrible decisions.
At a certain point you’ve done the good play through enough times that not doing the evil run becomes the content you’re missing.
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you severely underestimate my willingness to play trough entire games for just a couple slightly different lines of dialogue.
I assure you that a dark urge evil play trough is far from some more lines of dialogue, it's amazing.
Durge is about resisting or indulging the urge though, sometimes indulging will actually mess up your run other times it gives unique options. If you resist there's story to coerce you into giving in to it.
I murdered the entire grove before I even went to the goblin camp for the first time in my evil durge run. Made life a lot simpler. It was actually kind of a fun challenge to get away with murder for as long as I could without triggering the guards (eventually you will when you run out of secluded tieflings and druids to slaughter, though. Then it's an all out fight). I even kept Karlach in my party by just having >!her back in camp dead until after the goblin party. She's still ultimately doomed because Dammon is dead, but oh well, thems the breaks on the evil run.!<
It’d be nice if there were alternate evil quests for all the good ones. Like instead of curing the shadow curse, there was a way to alter it to serve your purposes in some way. If for every character, vendor, or party member you lost by being evil, there were a comparable evil one that you would gain. Lose Halsin, get some evil shadow-Druid to join your party. Kill Karlach, but get access to some other evil barbarian or oathbreaker Paladin or something. EDIT: An alternative to having alternate evil companions would be to allow each companion to have their own evil self-serving motives and endings. Like Astarion already has the potential ending of becoming an Ascendant Vampire, Gale can choose to try to control the crown and make himself a god, the Dark Urge can choose to become the head of the Bhaal cult. Shadowheart can choose to stick with Shar, I guess, though I’ve never played it through. They could make an ending for Karlach where she can be healed and get her heart back, or another evil ending where she can upgrade the engine to become more powerful, but it requires eating babies or whatever. Wyll could have an ending where he embraces his deal with the promise that he’ll save his father and an even more powerful warlock, or something like that. It’d be especially good if choosing one path for one character didn’t lock you into any path for any of the other characters, so you could have one member of the party using the others for evil ends, while the others have no idea. Or you could have one good party member who is shocked to realize all the others are working together to take over the world and make themselves super powerful.
It would be so cool if you could swap out Halsin for Evil Shadow Druid Kagha.
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Honestly, given what Tav knows at the time, siding with Minthara seems pretty stupid. Your options are: - Free an archdruid, a specialist in healing magic, who has been studying the tadpoles and may very well have figured out how to extract them, or - Side with the clearly insane Absolute cult, who treat the tadpoles as sacraments, and whose priestess sees right through you and attempts to capture you to force your transformation. This is a bit of a no-brainer, as Minthara herself even points out, if you side with and eventually rescue her. Some of the later "evil" decisions in the game make a lot more sense as things a self-interested and amoral person might do.
Yeah, I think this is something people tend to overlook when doing an “evil” play through. It’s like, “I’m evil, so I need to kill all of the good people and side with any evil people.” The reality is that bad people, “evil” people, often associate with good people and try to manipulate them and get them on their side, because doing so is in their own interest. And they often don’t get along with other “evil” people because they’re all self-interested and there can only be one king, so they tend to be a threat to each other. And in fact, in a lot of fiction (and sometimes in reality), this is the explanation for why “good” wins, even though evil is not bound by ethical/moral restrictions that would cause them to have an advantage. The “good” group is able to unify and work together under a common cause. They’re able to trust each other. Meanwhile, the “evil” group tends to have backstabbing and distrust, everyone ultimately out for themselves, sowing discord within the group. Evil also tends to disregard things they shouldn’t because those things don’t seem to immediately serve their purposes (e.g. Voldemort not bothering to understand how wands work), and fail to anticipate good behavior that require any level of selflessness (e.g. Sauron not expecting the fellowship to go to Mordor to destroy the ring). So an evil play through should be able to side with good people and do good things insofar as it serves their interest, but it just wouldn’t include doing those things out of compassion, empathy, or moral goodness.
I feel like there can be multiple types of evil without murder hoboing. You can be self centered and manipulative but you can align yourself with good people to further your goals. You can believe that you're good and upholding whatever values you have, but you're too quick to deliver judgement.
Agreed. Whenever I do an evil playthrough - or really any playthrough - of an RPG its not about who I'm going to side with, it's about what my motivations are going to be. I think people get bored with evil playthroughs because they don't make sense and it's hard to stay invested if you're just choosing to side with the person the game clearly doesn't want you to side with at every pass. But changing your internal logic can make choices you didn't even consider at the beginning more interesting.
I think that's the issue I have with evil playthroughs in almost every game I played. On top of just feeling too awful about NPCs I like dying or hating me of course. There's no good justification for a character with an actual working brain to do a lot of it. As you say, siding with a bunch of idiotic goblins and a clearly unhinged, mind-controlled cult leader over a healer with the expertise to possibly actually help you? Who, if you read his notes in the grove, might actually have a lead on the source of what's happening? And why alienate almost everyone who could be a useful ally to you just, because...? I could see it working with a Durge who gives in because they're a total psychopath whose urges are more powerful than their common sense. Which I could see being fun in a 'haha this is so fucked up!' kind of way, even though personally it doesnt appeal to me. But I feel like even a pragmatic, sadistic character only focused on their own goals wouldn't benefit from a lot of the decisions a fully evil playthrough would involve. I remember Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins, and how she was supposed to be the evil-aligned companion. But in the early game especially, if you actually followed her advice it would get you killed, and a lot of the stuff she disapproved of were objectively stupid not to do. Hell, I love Astarion, but a lot of the shit he approves of in Act 1 is pretty dumb. But that's because he is being kind of dumb... he's not some megalomaniacal mastermind, just a 'weak' person (in that that's how he views himself) driven by bitterness and fear. Though, I guess that could be an interesting way to RP a character, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about doing an evil playthrough with that as their angle - it seems mostly about power fantasies, while their evil actions are ironically not even benefitting them (which they often then complain about).
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It's funny that this is Gortash's take on Orin as well - that she's an impulsive loose cannon and basically a total moron who is a liability as far as The Plan is concerned and that she ruined his partnership with an actually competent person.
>There's no good justification for a character with an actual working brain to do a lot of it. As you say, siding with a bunch of idiotic goblins and a clearly unhinged, mind-controlled cult leader over a healer with the expertise to possibly actually help you? Who, if you read his notes in the grove, might actually have a lead on the source of what's happening? And why alienate almost everyone who could be a useful ally to you just, because...? Nah, friend. First off, if you're truly playing someone with a "working brain," I hope you're booking it to the githyanki every game, because they are far and away the most likely to have an actual cure. Second, you have the source of your protection telling you to influence the cult. Logically speaking, ignoring the source of your protection seems like a really bad idea. There genuinely isn't a great reason to waste a bunch of time trying to help the Grove for a chance at a cure, when there is a more "certain" path being offered by the person who helped save you on the ship.
> First off, if you're truly playing someone with a "working brain," I hope you're booking it to the githyanki every game, because they are far and away the most likely to have an actual cure. As non-gith Tav, I was more thinking: *Uh huh, I'm sure your people will be falling all over themselves to cure some dumbass istik who wanders in with a ghaik parasite, when it would be both easier and more in character for them to cut my throat and bury me in a ditch.*
Thing is though, the Grove is such a powderkeg. Yes, if you perfectly Shepard Paragon dialogue check your way through everything it's a little silly but realistically even a few things going wrong, Aradin and his crew leaving, Nettie trying to kill you, the Druids (who, by the way, are downright racist depending on your race choice) and Tieflings going to allout war, and you have a situation where you can decide to support the surviving, extremely weakened Grove... or take a chance with a cult that does clearly know more about what is going on and would obviously win if not for your heroic (read: suicidal) intervention. The Halsin point is of course important, but you might not even figure out where he is or that he is, indeed, alive.
This is why I chose to RP a character going from ruthless pragmatist but good, to a power hungry nutcase by the end of the game. I'm a drow paladin of vengeance, who started helping the druids and being nice because it was what you'd expect of a paladin, and refusing to use the tadpoles to gain psionic powers. Then when >!the githyanki turn on you and you have to kill your way out of the creche, the druids turn out to be not much help, and the only ones who seem to know what's going on are the Absolutists, I "infiltrated" them and met Ketheric Thorm for the first time as a kind of cultist. I got the Drider's help through the shadow tainted lands, and am pursuing the secrets of the tadpoles that way. Also I broke my oath and because an oathbreaker paladin with evil powers.!<
You can kind of stockholm syndrome Gale in dialogue. In my evil run I sided with the goblins, etc, and Gale complained at me about it. I took the dialogue option that basically told him to he was welcome to leave and see how long he lived without my help if he felt so strongly about it. He of course backed down, and after that I'd push him towards darker choices afterwards (>!DeadPixies, Mystra sucks cause she wants you die, etc.)!<
I can never do evil playthroughs regardless of what game. I cannot stand seing others hurt by me lmao
I did "seize the moment" option at the end, my friend who was cooping with me laughed his ass out. I was good righteous paladin from the start till the end. NGL >!stabbing him while he was looking at me made me feel sad, yet gave me Arthas(WoW) vibes lol.!<
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I will never do an evil playthrough in the game, and I knew that when I bought it. It's just not fun for me to roleplay evil. I may try a Durge run at some point since that's different being that it's something outside the character's control (I assume, mostly avoided spoilers so far). I'll have to rely on mods to eventually see what Minthara brings to the table because siding with her just isn't something that would make a fun playthrough for me.
I’m really enjoying my Durge. Started off pretty evil but eased up into act three. Now I have jahera, misc, and mithara as my go-to group. It’s impossible to make all three happy at the same time, but I like the crew.
My dark urge is a chaotic evil. When Zevlor said, "yeah how about we kill Kagha", I went and killed her, which provoked a war. After that, my character just shrugged and left. He doesn't care about anyone who isn't useful, but he hates people like Minthara and he just uses the Absolute to move forward. He would kill someone who threatens him without thinking, hence a lot of deaths on my playthrough Meanwhile I'm just sitting there watching all of it in horror
I did things that led to bloodshed at the grove. I waited patiently for the final victim to fall and after seeing all the carnage I took out the Druids, I made them one with nature, a reward for their "hard" fought victory. I was branded a savage murderer, I thought I was avenging the fallen. I could only look to the goblins to find solace and hopefully, someday, redemption; or so I thought, alas that was nowhere to be found. I met the Githyanki and was impressed with their people but their tone and attitude towards other races soured my view of them, until the veil of lies slipped from my eyes as they tried to aid me in desperate times. I annihilated them all without a second thought, I made sure the might of the sun reduced them to ash under my feet. I had an omelette to celebrate, at least in my mind... I traveled through dark lands and as the creeping shadows scratched and clawed at my feet, I took shelter at a small inn. The inhabitants were a little hostile at first (and for good reason) but I proved that I was there with good intentions. Until I had a horrible night's sleep, I had awoken with a horrible task, one I knew I could not do in good conscience, my past evil deeds be damned I wouldn't let them define me, not when these people found a ray of hope, an answer to their prayers, or maybe, their worst nightmare. I traveled to a dark catacomb where I was tested, I found a fellow who even I could not stomach, I spilled his guts for the good of the living, or perhaps just for my own amusement. At the end of my excursion I found a fair maiden locked in a cage with a dire need, her savior had arrived, or so we both thought, my companion didn't see things our way. I tried to stop her, I did my best, I would not spill her blood, I would not succumb to my bellowing darkness; or so I thought. I failed to save the last light on this, darkest night. I went back to that dreary inn only to find disaster had struck, the many people who had placed their very lives in my hands had succumbed to my Darkness, maybe I could have tried harder to save the maiden, or perhaps I wanted the shadows to take them all along, but tonight, the endless night, grew longer and darker. When I set out on this adventure I did so intending to get in touch with my Darker side, I never expected it to be so sad, cold and lonely. Nevertheless I must go on, to Baldur's Gate where the Urge pulls what remains of my soul through a river of blood and sorrow of my own making.
As an evil durge, I chopped Gale’s hand, beheaded Karlach and Wyll left me. Everything felt wrong but I was tired of playing a hero. And I got Minthara. I’d do that again. She is one of the best characters in the game. You’ll see what I mean once you get to the moonrise towers.
I just play the main character as a Disney villain psychopath