A fan-made D&D alignment chart has Baldur’s Gate 3 fans debating where each character actually belongs.
While Baldur’s Gate 3 is a pretty faithful recreation of Dungeons & Dragons, the game does lack one famous part of the iconic TTRPG: the alignment system.
D&D’s alignment system has transcended the game itself, categorizing player characters, NPCs, and creatures by their ethical and moral values. This has existed since the first edition, starting with lawful, neutral and chaotic before expanding to good and evil to create the nine alignments we know today.
Since Baldur’s Gate 3 does not assign its characters alignments, players have their own views on where their favorite characters fall on the chart.
Baldur’s Gate 3 players debate where Astarion, Karlach & others fall on the D&D alignment chart
The discussion began with a Reddit post by YakEvery4395, who shared their version of a Baldur’s Gate 3 alignment chart with one character assigned to each alignment. This features most companions (save for Gale, Jaheira, and Halsin), plus the Dark Urge and Orin the Red.
While most seem to largely agree with the chart, certain characters’ placements have split fans.
For example, several commenters argued that Astarion should be evil rather than neutral considering how he behaves early on. As one user put it, “There is NOTHING neutral about him, he actively approves of most amoral/evil decisions, and actively disapproves of most unambigously righteous ones.”
Another pointed out that Baldur’s Gate 3 does, indirectly, tell you where the Origin characters fall in terms of good, neutral, and evil alignments based on how they respond to siding with the Goblins.
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There’s also some debate over whether Karlach and Minsc should be swapped. As a returning character from the first two BioWare-made Baldur’s Gate games (which did use alignment), Minsc is the only one with a canon alignment; he was neutral good in BG1 and chaotic good in BG3.
To some, the fact that Karlach primarily values her freedom makes her more chaotic than Minsc, who largely tries to do the right thing for its own sake. Of course, Minsc mostly does what Boo tells him, leading one commenter to joke that he should be lawful because he “sticks VERY firmly to the ethical code delivered to him by his hamster.”
Ultimately, these debates are a pretty good sign that Baldur’s Gate 3 was right to do away with alignment and just focus on character development through story rather than mechanics.
The fact that, after nearly 50 years, fans still can’t agree whether, say, chaotic alignments are about personal freedom, recklessness, or both speaks to the limits of the alignment system in general.
In a game as massive as Baldur’s Gate 3, where characters can change dramatically between runs based on player choices and dice rolls, it seems like alignment is best left to fan discussion rather than canon.
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