Roleplaying True Neutral

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Well, I've been actually trying to roleplay a bit this time instead of just pure powergaming, but I must admit I picked a hard alignment to roleplay.

How I have been doing it is basically trying to maintain a balance, both within my party and with my reputation. I do a mix of evil and good deeds, but I am unsure whether that is in the spirit of the alignment or not.


Here is how I see it: In bg1(which I am in right now), my character would try to solve the iron crisis because if he didn't the balance would be disrupted. So it makes sense even for a True Neutral character to pursue that to the best of their ability. Yet for all the surrounding quests I have been doing a mix of good and evil deeds. I'll admit I have two reasons for this. One, is I can't see any other way to properly roleplay True Neutral and two, I don't want to lose my evil npcs due to really high reputation.

If it seems like I'm rambling, I probably am. I am curious what people think of my take on this alignment though and whether or not I am doing it properly. It seems like a True Neutral character might be at times looked upon dubiously by both good *and* evil, due to their lack of allegiance to either.

 

Alignment doesn't determine personality. Someone can still be mean and be good while someone can be loving while still evil.

Being Neutral doesn't neccessarily mean you strive to create balance or maintain balance, while this is the idealogoy behind a neutral druid, it is not the whole essence of this alignment.

Many neutral characters simply lack the drive or action to be truly evil or truly good. They may simply do good or evil acts, not for the action itself, but for their own reasoning and goals.

A neutral character may solve the iron chrisis as they believe it may lead to personal improvement and knowledge on Gorions murder. It may be an overbearing sense of justice as a personal goal adopted to deal with the overwhelming loss or direction, family and home.

Being Neutral is more about satisfying personal goals and looking at the bigger picture without overly complicating personal ideals of good and evil. A neutral character may indeed believe themselves to be one or the other from social upbringing and treatment.

A Bhaalspawn who is constantly criticised for being a wicked child would be concsious not to do bad things due to constant chastisement and generally behave - yet not believe they do - this sense of caution would be carried on into adulthood. Likewise a child of bhaal could be unrewarded for good behaviour or be treated with suspicion, so does Good acts sparsely, being introverted and not stepping forward to stop the whordes of orcs about to eat a village and instead perhaps kill a few as many as they can while they leave the place, so the guards and other adventurers can manage the rest.

Being Neutral is as complex and filling as any other alignment, if not more so, in a game where often extremes are the norm, it can be rewarding to finally play something grounded and 'reasonable' in beliefs. Too often players and DMs will not reward neutral alignment and only consider an action aligned if it's grotesquely so.

In terms of BG games, you'll often find the neutral path is essentially the good aligned one, even more so in BG2. Looking at most the neutral aligned NPCs

 

I suppose I should point out I was doing it from the Druid perspective, so thats where I got the whole "balance" thing. Since it is hard to actually properly show balance since there is only one path for most of the quests and it tends to be a good one, I have tried to counterbalance that by doing some evil deeds because otherwise I will end no different from a lawful good pc and I don't feel that makes sense.


edit: I suppose to a certain extent I have also been roleplaying my guy as having a bit of a temper and weakness at times when it comes to resisting the Bhaal taint. He is a Shapeshifter and while he has control of his Lycanthropy I have kinda roleplayed a bit that he is at times influenced by the bloodlust inherent in Werewolves. I don't know, it makes sense to me .

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I guess I should also say that I am doing good deeds more of the time, since that makes sense from a balance perspective since good tends to be more conducive to balance than evil.

Still, as I said I don't want to always be doing good deeds since thats not conducive to balance either and I am having a hard time dealing with that aspect of a Druid and the alignment.

 

Hmm, BG series is rather linear in that respect, for example taking the evil option for the Druid Attacks quest from Trademeet would certainly be counter productive

I can only suggest that for each quest you consider what focuses most on what is good for the surrounding area, naturewise rather than civilisationwise. I can't think of many quests where you have to choose between the two to be fair. Neutral BG2 is very awkward in that respect!

There should really be an expansion on alignment options in quests

Am liking the thought behind the character

There is also the phrase "The cost of sin is higher than the cost of virtue" to balance one evil act, you would need to perform good acts of greater magnitude to counteract the evil. After all, a balanced diet doesn't mean you have equal measures of every group (salts, fats, proteins) so doing more good isn't neccessarily a drawback.

I can't think of all the rep lowering points in the game now, that will probably bug me There's always turning into the Slayer of course

 

The idea of the druid's 'balance' is to ensure that neither good nor evil becomes too powerful. You might take down a powerful evil noble who was making a powerplay to prevent him from accumulating too much power, but you'd be just as likely to oppose his Lawful Good, Dudly Do-Right successor who was also accumulating power (through good means). Typically, the druid's idea of 'balance' is presented on the defensive (you bring down the powerful, you don't build up the weak). I can think of several chances to build up evil throughout BG and BG II, but to bring down powerful good? The druid's 'balance' may be hard to play.

 

If you take a look at the various alignment parts:

Lawful: Believes the society is more important than the rights of an individual.
Chaotic: Believes the rights of an individual are more important than society.
Good: Believes the path to happiness focuses on others.
Evil: Believes the path to happiness focuses on self.​

Neutrals are obviously moderates in the D&D scheme of things. You can obviously have NG, NE, LN, and CN -- but then again you can be TN with tendancies toward G, E, L, or C. Just as in real life.

Balance does not mean for every evil killed, a corresponding good must also be killed. Maintaining balance is ensures both the needs of the society and individual are equally weighed before a decision is made -- likewise growth involves both improving oneself and improving others.

A true neutral person may choose to stop a NE villian, the selfish nature of the NE person is too damaging to others. That same TN person would council a NG person to take care of themselves and not be so self-sacrificing -- but the TN would never realistically kill the NG.

The TN would adamantly oppose oppressive societies (strongly lawful) and oppose anarchy (strongly chaotic).

When dealing with people of extreme alignments (LG, LE, CG, CE) the TN would evaluate the affect of the individual on others and, for druids, on nature. Thus a paladin who lives to help others would be tolerated, but the paladin who choose to make a stronghold by wiping out "all evil" in the area would be opposed. A CE barbarian who chooses to leave the locals alone (he simply wants a peace and quiet when not adventuring) and actively defends the local grove (he may need healing every now and then) would be welcomed by the TN Druid as an ally (although the barbarian may not be fully trusted).

I don't believe a druid would ever intentionally focus on "powerful good" enemy unless that "good hero" had goals that were incompatible with the druid's. Faldorn declared war on Trademeet because she felt the increase in trade was encroaching on the creatures she felt obligated to protect (that and she was insane).

 

I'd like to say that, in my opinion, it's pretty much impossible to do any meaningful roleplaying in the BG series, so you might as well give up and go play Planescape Torment instead.

 

One can always roleplay a good character, and one can roleplay an evil character in TOB and SOA right until exiting the Underdark.

Neutral is a bit harder.

 

I agree on the Neutral point. Although a True Neutral character could decide to take down anyone who would stand out either way: "You threaten the Balance, time to die"

For RPing (or at least trying) an evil character it is possible in BG before TOB or exiting the Underdark. Evil is fun: link. I have to finish that run one day.

 

I don't see why you can't roleplay evil. What is your objection? Helping the Elves? I could see that, I guess, for a chaotic evil character. But, a Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil character probably would want to help the Elves if only to insure they got their soul back from Irenicus.

 

You can also understand True Neutral as being self focused and I don't mean utterly selfish or greedy (like Neutral Evil) but centered on the self to be in perfect harmony with the universe instead of being at odds with it and trying to change the world through rebellion (Chaotic whether creative or destructive) or enforcing order (Lawful whether just or tyrannical).

It might be an interesting approach especially for a Mage or a Cleric devoted to his/her own fulfilment through arcane power or faith and knowledge.

Such a character would be focused on this goal to the exclusion of the rest and won't meddle or interfere with situations that don't concern him or her directly (perhaps like Orrick in IWD). It's not that he/she wouldn't care at all about others but there are many things that have to be done and require the character's complete attention.

 

I'm playing a druid/fighter right now and had a party consisting of the following:

Me (fighter/druid) multi
Jaheira (fighter/druid) multi
Anomen (fighter/cleric) dual (R.I.P.)
Jan Jansen (thief/illusionist) multi
Cernd (druid)
Haer'Dalis

All neutral characters since I didn't want to go with any of the extremes.

I found that playing "true neutral" was confusing at first, but is actually quite easy. The only problem is that the game doesn't give you many oportunities to actually play neutral. It gives you good and bad things to do, but playing neutral usualy ends up with 20 rep anyway, which is stupid.
For instance the skindancer sidequest in trademeet requires you to kill the skindancers and save a persons life in the proces. The skindancers are obviously very evil and must be dealt with from a neutral perspective, but finishing the quest grants you 1 rep point.
It does help to listening to what your party members have to say about certain decisions you'll have to make.

On a side note I did Anomens side quest and he became lawful good. Now he already annoyed the hell out of me with his righteous banter, but he started insulting all my party members and even threatened to kill Jan. When I was in the Underdark he insulted Haer'Dalis and that was it. I killed him and left him there and continued with only 5 characters. Too bad the game does nothing with that though.

Anomen is pretty strong and if he passed his test he becomes a good cleric aside from a good fighter. He has the worst personality of all of the NPC's though. In fact the first time I played the game I played "Good" and I met him in the Copper Coronet and he talked to me. He sounded so stupid that I chose to insult him a little which prompted him to attack me. I was right about him. He's not only lame when you meet him, he becomes worse along the way.

 

Of course it's possible to play evil, but there are no incentives whatsoever for doing so. Take the Trademeet quest. Completing the quest in the good way lands you a hefty amount of money, XP, and reputation points. The evil path gives less money, less XP, lowers reputation, and an inferior item (Shield of Harmony) WHICH YOU CAN GET BY DOING THE GENIE QUEST ANWAY.

I know you can install that mod where you get lower buying prices for low reputation, and I know that you can come up with all sorts of reasons to make yourself feel like you're "roleplaying" evil when you're actually doing good in-game acts, and I agree with some of them. For example, it makes sense for bad guys to want to have a high reputation - cheaper stuff, right? The problem is, the game simply does not support that kind of gameplay on any meaningful level. Sure, you can pretend you're doing it, but the game still doesn't recognize that you're doing it.

That being said, I still enjoy playing evil in BG games - taking evil NPCs and going on murdering sprees. It is satisfying - but only in satisfying homocidal urges and generally being an arse. It's just not rewarding (enough) in game terms.

Which is why everyone should just go play PS:T.

PS: There are a few pretty good mods either out or in development that seems to actually allow evilness. Assassinations comes to mind, as well as...uh...that one.
You know the one I mean.

 

Check this thread for evil discussion:link.

Going on a killing spree is not the only way.

Regarding Anomen the best way is to have him fail his test. He is so interesting that way (and I can't stand his self righteous attitude if he doesn't fail anyway). There is no contest that Anomen is more evil than Jaheira despite the fact that Jaheira is True Neutral (she acts a lot like a goody two shoes). IMHO if charname didn't interfere Anomen would fail the test.

 

I don't think Anomen is evil, he's just fanatic.

 

This is a very thin line to cross. A fanatic is prone to fall. One thing is for sure, Anomen is not good. He is a self righteous, pompous **** with a violent streak.