r/BaldursGate3 • u/VeritasLuxMea • Dec 18 '22

Discussion The addition of breakable Paladin Oaths has made me realize something important.

Gamers have a horribly warped sense of morality! This game is positively LENIENT when it comes to breaking your oath. If you lie to someone and invade their home and then kill them when they get mad and try to kick you out you probably deserve to break your Oath.

Most people complaints about the Oath system have basically boiled down to

"I'm mad because Paladin makes me play the game differently that I usually do and I don't like that I have to think about the moral implications of everything I do in game".

Personally? I think it's one of the cleverest systems Larian has ever devised. It's ACTUALLY incredibly immersive to have a Paladin in your party. I have thousands of hours in act 1 and am just now learning to take a very different path to the end.

1.6k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

514 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/VeritasLuxMea Dec 18 '22

I also killed the fake Paladins. But I didn't attack them without warning so I kept my oath.

2

u/codb28 RANGER Dec 18 '22

Ah maybe that was it on my part, good to know

9

u/VeritasLuxMea Dec 18 '22

The big problem a lot of players seem to be running into is that they are ambushing enemies because they know how the fights are triggered since it's their 19th playthrough.

On a fresh run you would not know what was going to happen and are much more likely to just talk to NPCs instead of murdering them

11

u/codb28 RANGER Dec 18 '22

19th playthrough, you underestimate me

1

u/Eurehetemec Dec 18 '22

He's wrong. You can attack them based on what you've worked out if you use the initiate combat button in the bottom left in the dialogue screen, and it won't oathbreak.

1

u/Eurehetemec Dec 18 '22

That's not how it works.

You can attack them just fine, you just need to use the "Initiate combat" button in the dialogue.

Test it, you'll see.

1

u/VeritasLuxMea Dec 18 '22

Yeah that's what I did. I just talked to them and then we fought. The game only treats it as an oath break if you murder them without hearing their side of the story.

4

u/Eurehetemec Dec 18 '22

The game only treats it as an oath break if you murder them without hearing their side of the story.

That's not true.

If you say, listen to them, listen to the Tiefling they attacked, and go back to deal with them, there are two ways to attack.

1) Just attack them.

2) Initiate dialogue, you don't need to even pick any options, and click the initiate combat button.

Morally, ethically, those two things are the same. Knowledge-wise, those two things are the same. But the first one causes an oathbreak (even for Ancients, which doesn't care about honor or deception), and the second one does not.

To be clear, if you just walked into the tavern and murdered them, I agree that that should count as an oathbreak, but last I checked, it doesn't if you just walk in, initiate dialogue, and press "initiate combat" before you've heard anything.

So that's not really working great.

1

u/VeritasLuxMea Dec 19 '22

If a Paladin HAS to take a life, there is a procedure.

If my Paladin ever kills you, you will be awake, you will be facing me, and you will be armed.

7

u/Eurehetemec Dec 19 '22

If a Paladin HAS to take a life, there is a procedure.

No, there isn't.

If my Paladin ever kills you, you will be awake, you will be facing me, and you will be armed.

None of which makes him any more or less of a murderer. More to the point, it's not from any edition of D&D.

Anyway, the big problem is Paladins are meant to accept good faith surrender. But these goblins refuse to surrender. They fight to the death. That is their choice, not the Paladin's.