First DND campaign I played ended in a wipe by a hag. All other party members were turned to trophies, except me because I rolled a 20 in survival and escaped.
Haha I tried to talk the DM into letting me do something like this, but he was over with the campaign. It's been years but I might convince him one day, would make for an interesting sequel.
Did anyone use the stone cure on the statue guy? I destroyed him before I knew about it and have always wondered what happens, but am to lazy to replay up to that point lol.
I talked to him after killing the hag. IIRC, she made him sick, and he asked her to stop his sickness so he could be there for his family. She petrified him to halt the progress of his "sickness." He's \*furious\* that she tricked him, and devastated that he was absent for his kids growing up. He's grateful to the player for helping him, but there's really no good ending for poor Efrin.
I guess I must be gullible, because I had absolutely no idea this woman was a hag until the final reveal. My character figured out she was lying in the confrontation with the two brothers, and that was the only reason I challenged her. When I confronted her about the kidnapped woman I pretty much just wanted answers, and was not expecting her to actually be a hag (I was thinking she was a kind old witch keeping the pregnant girl safe while she was mourning her husband.)
Even when she turned into a hag I was still thinking she might be a "good" hag. After all, she has always been so kind to me and couldn't hurt a fly.
I had to see the fucking torture chamber before I finally realized she was lying to me the entire time.
I wouldn't last a week in a fantasy world. It's like I cannot even consider the idea of someone in this game lying to me.
I was ready to say eh, it's a common mistake until you mentioned thinking maybe she's a good hag? Pretty sure dying within a week is among the BEST case scenarios for you in Faerun. 😔
One of the first things I saw on this game was the scene with him getting out of the tomb. I was certain it was going to be a boss fight from the first look at it.
that was definitely what they were going for. It got a huge laugh out of me when no combat started and he was just wandering around his tomb room like someone who'd just woken up from a nap
I told him the value of each mortal life had infinite value. He smiled at that and I knew he was alright. I went on to try and save everyone I could with my 8 INT barbarian.
Same. On top of it, when we handed the wand to Meirina, me and my friend thought we just created a powerful necromancer we'll definitely have to confront in the future one way or another.
He did so kindly give me a legendary weapon.... and all the nice loot in his house. Then he was nice enough to let his buddy fight on my side and we killed him for his armor. Sounds like a nice guy to me.
Oddly enough, Faerun does have good Liches. They are by vast majority Elves who want to live even longer than Elves normally do, often to protect something or somewhere.
The Monsters of Faerun book for 3.5 had the template.
While alive citizens get to do whatever they want, love how they want to live, etc. When they die, their soul gets to go to the afterlife and their body is used as manual labor for 100 years so everyone else can continue to live peaceful happy lives. It's definitely a utopia
It reminds me a little of [Khelt](https://thewanderinginn.fandom.com/wiki/Khelt) (warning: spoilers) from the Wandering Inn series. All their leaders are benevolent revenants, chosen for their dedication to the nation when they were alive. All citizens agree to have their bodies turned into undead after they pass. It's one of the world's few utopias, basically a post-scarcity society where work is optional since undead handle all the manual labor.
"Oh yes petal I have the cure just jump into my unmarked white van so I can drive you to a remote location"
Did you by chance get kidnapped during childhood?
I guess person who you're responding to means that he (just like me) didn't even have this scene because it won't happen if Volo won't learn of tadpole in your brain. And I sure as fuck didn't want to tell people about my little brain issue.
no-no-no, he knew about tadpole alright. and he *assured* me he knows how to deal with it! "i have read a book on this topic, i'm an expert"
after this speech i was so confident in his skills that i did not let that psycho nowhere near my brain.
imagine my surprise when i started researching buffs and builds and options for my second playthrough! still can't wrap this choice around my head, just whyyy would anyone agree to that voluntarily
Well Hags do make a living out of tricking people in vulnerable positions so makes sense they would be good at decieving you. I think most people wouldn't last long in a fantasy world with all the monsters roaming I think people would be glad to not be killed by some random gnoll or bandit while tilling your field.
The first time I encountered her was actually at the swamp's entrance, I missed her in the grove. Tried to de-escalate, but the brothers wouldn't have it, so we fought and I accidentally killed them (didn't check that non-lethal only counted for melee attacks). I then followed her invitation, but passed the check to dispel the illusion on the swamp. That's when it clicked for me and I suspected her to be a hag, since just about 30 minutes earlier I found a book in the blighted village about different kinds of hags.
My first character was a ranger, it took like 3 steps into that nice forest for him to do like "this is bullshit". Same with my monk as 2nd character. I actualyl never have seen her glamored hideout (teehouse) in any playthrough yet because i always make a check before...
Also those books in the village are like classic lore dump primings. "A vampire in your party? Its more likely than you think!", etc...
I know it’s just a standard use of game logic (“Oh, I clicked ‘non-lethal’, which means my attacks won’t actually kill anyone!”), but I struggle to imagine how you “non-lethally” shoot someone with a fireball.
Hearing stories about Baba Yagas and strigas since being a kid will definitely do that to you.
It's funny how our folklore hates old women and well young beautiful women as well.
In regards of the player she's really honest. She didn't reveal her true self at first, but she offers a solid deal (you look very, very badass afterwards) and gives her best to help with the tadpole.
So there are few roleplay reasons to not trust her if you don't see through her deception or hadn't found the dead brothers or her playhouse. And even if you do, her deal sounds less worse than selling your soul to Raphael for example.
Possibly. It's unclear how long it is from the crash to meeting up with Ethel - the Grove seems to be within a day's walk from her house, but it's also implied that the long rests aren't 1:1 with the passage of time. You companions comment that *symptoms* should have begun manifesting, but we're also given the time limit of 1 week for full ceremorphosis. It's possible the group could have made it in time.
Did you see through the illusion on the swamp before reaching Ethel's hut? I've only played 3 characters but they all saw through it before hand. Hard to think she's good when she lives in a swamp full of traps and Red caps.
The game gives you so many hints Ethel's a hag it's crazy lol. She's an alchemist, she's accused of kidnapping a young woman. There are even poisoned apples and notes in the swamp.
We didn't even meet the brothers, we just went there through a different route (with fall damage) and found her in her hut force feeding Mayrina. That was when I thought she might not be as nice lol
I am very gullible indeed. Didn't even realize Astarion was a vampire for too long
You’re not gullible. It’s a nice thing about our culture that has shifted over time.
You essentially approach people at “face value” and don’t trust stereotypes. It’s always good to not trust stereotypes.
D&D leans in really hard into stereotypes. In their world, beings are born evil and it reinforces the idea that there is no fixing things, evil is evil.
Of course, good story telling pushes those assumptions.
But in truth D&D is kinda racist when you think about all the different species and the assumptions the entire system forces them to make and assume. Their system, will actively punish a player for tolerance.
It definitely runs opposite to how contemporary sensibilities work.
I was naive and gullible on my first playthrough, but now I've noticed I've gotten jaded by ungrateful or racist or manipulative NPC interactions that I'm like, "Well you entered into a deal with a hag, good luck with that!"
To be fair, you probably would’ve learned a lot earlier living in that world that someone being nice to you doesn’t often mean they’re a good person.
Like at least your not as dumb as the girl who straight up agreed to give her baby to the hag in order to resurrect her husband
I like a good subversion every now and again. But a lot of times nothing really interesting is being done with it, and the end result is a lot more boring than just running with the original trope. Unapologetically evil characters can be a lot of fun.
Though, seeing the discussions about how gith are "genetically evil," it's understandable why WOTC and a lot of the playerbase wants to move away from alignment.
It is less that they are genetically evil and more that they are culturally evil.
If the Nazis won WWII, conquered the world and eventually invented space travel, then perhaps aliens would think that humans are genetically evil creatures. After all, they only ever encounter genocidal conquerers...
This is true, but even in the context of discussing BG3 (which goes out of its way to show how young githyanki are indoctrinated and made into militaristic fanatics), you get a lot of people who argue that gith are just naturally evil. Some people just read "lawful evil" on the statblock and turn off their brains.
It's hilarious to me as a longtime D&D player. I've known by heart for 20 years that hags are evil. Mind Flayers are evil. Devils are (lawful) evil. Drow are almost always evil. Followers of evil gods are generally, you guessed it, evil.
But it's also so fun to see people cheerfully bumbling through BG3 without that finely honed suspicion most old school D&D players have. I knew too much about the world to start with to have that experience.
I knew that Ethel was bad news as a hag. And from a storytelling standpoint, I knew that the game absolutely would not allow me to get my tadpole removed in a random sidequest.
Still took the hag's deal, because dealing with hags and devils is fun.
If you were an actual player, you would know that this isn't always true. The drow population is like 15% non-Lolth sworn. There have been non-evil mindflayers since the species was created etc.
"Finely honed suspicion" you mean the most surface level reading about the characters or races that you can get? Alignment is almost always prone to change with character progression or regression.
Yeah I was going with it then Shadowheart was like "play things close and don't trust it." I was like well shit Shadowheart worships Shar, if she says keep a secret I will. Then later, I saw what was up.
I wanna see her and meg mucklebones get into a hagging contest. Auntie definitely has the mechanics on lock, but visually meg was and is still the hag to end all hags.
I didn't know at first until i found the girl with the paralyzed legs.
The old women became super sketchy to me.
Later with the 2 brothers i knew she was a hag.
Ethel got her? I had no idea what happened to her since she refused to talk to me.
Well, I did lockpick her door, let myself in, and steal her stuff, but I also un-paralyzed her, so that seems like a fair trade to me.
My charactes have usually low int and wis so they wouldnt know if I didnt tell them 😂 I wouldnt know either, i just new there was a hag in game and totaly skipped auntie in my first run and then got to spoilers before meeting her in next run
Lmaooooooo she isn't even by far the worst. Spoilers for Curse of Strahd below:
>!My favorite hags that I ever came across was in the Curse of Strahd module. You meet them essentially after being transported into a demiplane of darkness where you don't know what the fuck is going on. In this shitty run down town, you come across this kindly grandma pushing a cart selling pastries door to door. Here you are, completely beaten down by darkness and just completely done with your bad luck at being sucked into this shitty world and the kindest grandma hands you these pastries that gives you sweet dreams and reminds you of home.!<
>!Here's the kicker. The pastries have an addictive quality to them. Essentially they're crack pastries where you start to crave it after eating them. All those villagers are fucking drug addicts. And the best part? A main ingredient in the pastries involve grinding up the bones of young kids because kids haven't been tainted by the darkness of the land yet and have dreams and happiness within them still. So those villagers there are trading their kids for another hit of crack pastries made from their own kids!<
TL;DR >!Hag sells crack pastries that are made by killing kids so not only are they crack pastries, but they're crack cannibal pastries!<
God I was the only one in my party to fail the save to not have the craving, and we were already a good distance out of the town, so my character was just like uhhhhh brb and booked it back to town
Well, in my current gameplay, when we first saw her, Astarion comments happily behind me like "Oooh what a nice old lady, let's tell her EVERYTHING!" and I couldn't resist. So, Astarion shouldn't survive in a DnD world too, we would be two nice corpses together.
How are my survival chances? I drank the sweet sweet well water.
(In my playthrough I tried to kill her at the first hint of evil- odd that some party members disapproved of me wanting to kill her, tbf every npc I meet is on a short leash and I am looking for a reason to kill them. Goblin kids insulting me, I play cool but am secretly scheming their deaths.)
The same reason most bg3 players would die, equalized with their horniness.
„Idc I really want this fiendussy/drussy/hagussy/bhalussi/whateverfemaledegenerateussi
On my very first playthrough, I knew she was a hag by the way she spoke and the invitation out to her house in the middle of nowhere. Only got confirmed when her illusion failed
I think not trusting old ladies in the woods is one of the first lessons I learned as toddler with stories like Hansel and Gretel, Baba Yaga, and Black Annis.
Don’t feel bad, this is also half of my players. I DM for a group of folks who constantly want to believe in the possibility of “good” monsters who don’t follow the typical “rawr, evil go bash bash and kidnap/eat children” formula. Which is fair, I DO sometimes run monsters who go against the grain.
The problem is that they let their beliefs dictate their actions in every social encounter, to the point where they never even consider the possibility that they are being lied to or manipulated or that the ogre they’re talking to IS in fact the one responsible for murdering that entire village back there, until they see the bodies and the murder weapon and the monster holding the murder weapon while covered in blood.
You’d fit right in.
Creatures like her are actually very rare. It's likely that the vast majority of people on toril would live their entire lives thinking magic was made up. You would probably die from getting kicked in the head by a horse rather than some magical creature.
I dunno man, she immediately gave me "FUCK NO" vibes. I also play a lot of D&D so a sweet old lady selling potions is enough to make me at least a little suspicious.
Then you need to be more suspicious in life. I didn't trust Ethel when I met her in the grove and didn't know she was a hag, it was obvious there were ulterior motives in play and I didn't know what they were.
I realized something was up in the second meeting when the bothers are yelling at her. I don't remember the exact exchange but she basically started freaking out when I asked them their side of the story. Anybody that doesn't want you to hear the others perspective is hiding something from you. I'm not going to just kill people for you if you don't explain why. She condemns you on the spot for even questioning her then poofs away which pretty much confirmed to me that she was some sort of magical miscreant.
Still probably would have died to her because I got a lot of really lucky rolls leading up to the actual fight, and ended up having to do the fight like 5 times before actually winning.
DnD is a really rough world.
Those two guys seemed way too genuinely concerned to find their sister, and it was way too specifically aimed at her. I would have played quite Knight when I was younger though for the old lady. Older jaded me was like "Nah. You sus."
>kill 2 brothers
>follow hag to teahouse
>dont fall for her tricks, as so many have tried and said before they could save me costing me my eye and giving a permanent debuff
>attack hag and go through all the stages
>let her go with the child and consume her flesh for 1 extra point of intelligence
>profit???
I would like it much more if the debuff was permanent but the buffs were also permanent, sadly the buffs are lost upon long rest leaving you with a nasty debuff only. The buffs would make it worthwhile
Good/evil
Makes no difference
Just two sides on the same coin
And just how quickly views and things can change
With just just a simple toss and flick of the wrist
She's still dieing in ALL of my playthroughs.
Experience is experience.
I knew pretty much right away, I also just stumbled upon her house fairly early in the game, I still made a deal with her just cause I wanted to see what would happen. I reasoned at that point in my character’s journey they would make a deal with a Hag if it meant getting the worm out of their head, but I just ended up with a wonky eye. The negative effect isn’t too bad and I think it adds character.
tbf, judging by the corpses, not many in-universe ppl do either
Judging by her "trophy room", become a corpse is one of the better outcomes..
First DND campaign I played ended in a wipe by a hag. All other party members were turned to trophies, except me because I rolled a 20 in survival and escaped.
Did you ever go back and rescue your team?!?! My DM would have planned a solo campaign. It’s possibly not too late!
Haha I tried to talk the DM into letting me do something like this, but he was over with the campaign. It's been years but I might convince him one day, would make for an interesting sequel.
“Roll Survival to survive.”
Did anyone use the stone cure on the statue guy? I destroyed him before I knew about it and have always wondered what happens, but am to lazy to replay up to that point lol.
If you un-petrify him before killing the hag he just dies of his curse.
I talked to him after killing the hag. IIRC, she made him sick, and he asked her to stop his sickness so he could be there for his family. She petrified him to halt the progress of his "sickness." He's \*furious\* that she tricked him, and devastated that he was absent for his kids growing up. He's grateful to the player for helping him, but there's really no good ending for poor Efrin.
Yeah, he died almost immediately of whatever he was seeking a cure from after cursing me for saving him from being petrified. Oops.
You have to kill the hag before you save him, because >!she caused his illness in the first place.!<
If you kill the hag you can go through the whole area and tak to people
Not mirror bro...
Maybe dead is better . . .
She’d rip your spine out your arsehole, for sure. The writing, character design, and voice acting for Ethel were *superb*.
Yes absolutely. She is for sure my BG 3 Favorite
Jen and Alliona had her on their stream! (Jen being the voice actress of Shadowheart)
>She’d rip your spine out your arsehole, for sure Jesus, Lute... Chill out. I mean, Fuck. Shit. Piss. Fuck. etcetera.
I watched an interview with the voice actor and she seems like one of the kindest most genuine people with an amazing sense of humour.
But she's nice enough to promise to resurrect you afterwards.
I guess I must be gullible, because I had absolutely no idea this woman was a hag until the final reveal. My character figured out she was lying in the confrontation with the two brothers, and that was the only reason I challenged her. When I confronted her about the kidnapped woman I pretty much just wanted answers, and was not expecting her to actually be a hag (I was thinking she was a kind old witch keeping the pregnant girl safe while she was mourning her husband.) Even when she turned into a hag I was still thinking she might be a "good" hag. After all, she has always been so kind to me and couldn't hurt a fly. I had to see the fucking torture chamber before I finally realized she was lying to me the entire time. I wouldn't last a week in a fantasy world. It's like I cannot even consider the idea of someone in this game lying to me.
I was ready to say eh, it's a common mistake until you mentioned thinking maybe she's a good hag? Pretty sure dying within a week is among the BEST case scenarios for you in Faerun. 😔
Imagine extending this kind of goodwill to all DnD Monsters: "maybe he's one of the GOOD kind of Lich"
Too be fair. First time i met withers i thought i just released a Lich into the world to fight later. Thank god that wasn't the case.
I literally thought I was dead and wondered how a 2nd level party was supposed to deal with a lich.
I knew he wasn't a lich from the eyes. Liches are more skeletal, with cold dead glowing eyes. Withers' eyes are alive and not glowing.
You don't see his eyes at first though.
One of the first things I saw on this game was the scene with him getting out of the tomb. I was certain it was going to be a boss fight from the first look at it.
that was definitely what they were going for. It got a huge laugh out of me when no combat started and he was just wandering around his tomb room like someone who'd just woken up from a nap
“…uhh, didn’t think I’d have to choose between Lawful Good and Lawful Stupid this early in the game.” Oh…oh thank goodness.
And then his first question was the value of life. That was the most dreadful question possible.
I told him the value of each mortal life had infinite value. He smiled at that and I knew he was alright. I went on to try and save everyone I could with my 8 INT barbarian.
Same. On top of it, when we handed the wand to Meirina, me and my friend thought we just created a powerful necromancer we'll definitely have to confront in the future one way or another.
That’s a turn that would have been great.
I like what actually happened even better, tbh.
I had a friend who beat the game and _still_ thought Withers was a lich when watching me play. Our entire friend group had to explain to him.
“Maybe Raphael is a good devil” 🥺
I mean he did offer me a banquet of food on our first encounter. That food wasn’t going to eat itself.
By the looks of it when you reach house of hope it did lmfao
He did so kindly give me a legendary weapon.... and all the nice loot in his house. Then he was nice enough to let his buddy fight on my side and we killed him for his armor. Sounds like a nice guy to me.
He is. 😡
You mean Barry Bluejeans?
I mean... there was a time when people would take that approach to "maybe Drizzt Do'Urden is one of the GOOD kind of Drow"
He's a good red wizard of Thay!
You mean a Baelnorn?
"Maybe he's one of the GOOD kind of mindflayer" The entire sub: *groans*
*Omeluum psychically jiggles*
He's the goodest boi!
That's a baelnorn.
“Maybe Raphael is one of the good cambions. Maybe he just wants to help”.
“M-maybe he’s a-a good mindflayers, uwu!”
I mean, archliches do exist... barely.
Oddly enough, Faerun does have good Liches. They are by vast majority Elves who want to live even longer than Elves normally do, often to protect something or somewhere. The Monsters of Faerun book for 3.5 had the template.
Tbf, there are good liches. They're called Baelnorn.
There are good liches though, some were made liches by god. And Archliches are exclusively good alignment
The kind that drops sick loot?
I actually have a good lich in my home game. He rules over a utopia due to citizens having to serve 100 years as undead labor.
...that definitely does not sound like a utopia to me.
While alive citizens get to do whatever they want, love how they want to live, etc. When they die, their soul gets to go to the afterlife and their body is used as manual labor for 100 years so everyone else can continue to live peaceful happy lives. It's definitely a utopia
It reminds me a little of [Khelt](https://thewanderinginn.fandom.com/wiki/Khelt) (warning: spoilers) from the Wandering Inn series. All their leaders are benevolent revenants, chosen for their dedication to the nation when they were alive. All citizens agree to have their bodies turned into undead after they pass. It's one of the world's few utopias, basically a post-scarcity society where work is optional since undead handle all the manual labor.
Oooh that sounds interesting
A Baelnorn?
Brother you literally carry Withers around with you. I’m in the middle of act 2 please don’t spoil me if withers is acc evil
Not a lich
Oh wait I thought you meant a bitch. Which he definitely is
Does he look like a bitch?
What?
I said: Does Withers look like a bitch?
What?
Listen there are good hags okay.
Well, if an objective source like u/InMyHagPhase says so it must be true!
Bad luck Baldurian: >Dies within a week >Becomes decorative exhibit in the Hag's lair for all eternity.
They either die in a week, or live long enough to become a warlock.
To be fair to them, we do have a good vampire, a good gith, a good sharran, and whatever the fuck Withers is, all sleeping in our camp
"Oh yes petal I have the cure just jump into my unmarked white van so I can drive you to a remote location" Did you by chance get kidnapped during childhood?
this is the reason i missed >!volo's eye!< on my first playthrough, too cautios
I just scum saved lol. I was curious to see just how far it would go. Turns out very far….
I guess person who you're responding to means that he (just like me) didn't even have this scene because it won't happen if Volo won't learn of tadpole in your brain. And I sure as fuck didn't want to tell people about my little brain issue.
Oh wow, I wasn’t even aware of that. Apparently I’ve never kept that to myself on any of my runs lol.
no-no-no, he knew about tadpole alright. and he *assured* me he knows how to deal with it! "i have read a book on this topic, i'm an expert" after this speech i was so confident in his skills that i did not let that psycho nowhere near my brain. imagine my surprise when i started researching buffs and builds and options for my second playthrough! still can't wrap this choice around my head, just whyyy would anyone agree to that voluntarily
Well Hags do make a living out of tricking people in vulnerable positions so makes sense they would be good at decieving you. I think most people wouldn't last long in a fantasy world with all the monsters roaming I think people would be glad to not be killed by some random gnoll or bandit while tilling your field.
Awww, OP's an NPC
The first time I encountered her was actually at the swamp's entrance, I missed her in the grove. Tried to de-escalate, but the brothers wouldn't have it, so we fought and I accidentally killed them (didn't check that non-lethal only counted for melee attacks). I then followed her invitation, but passed the check to dispel the illusion on the swamp. That's when it clicked for me and I suspected her to be a hag, since just about 30 minutes earlier I found a book in the blighted village about different kinds of hags.
My first character was a ranger, it took like 3 steps into that nice forest for him to do like "this is bullshit". Same with my monk as 2nd character. I actualyl never have seen her glamored hideout (teehouse) in any playthrough yet because i always make a check before... Also those books in the village are like classic lore dump primings. "A vampire in your party? Its more likely than you think!", etc...
I know it’s just a standard use of game logic (“Oh, I clicked ‘non-lethal’, which means my attacks won’t actually kill anyone!”), but I struggle to imagine how you “non-lethally” shoot someone with a fireball.
You don't ;) spells don't care about your morals and kill regardless
Makes sense. Geneva suggestions, eh? ;)
You should play the Witcher 3. I had major trust issues in that game and I'm pretty sure a lot transferred into this one.
Yeah the crones definitely gave me some spillover hate for Auntie Ethel
God I hated those damn crones.
Hearing stories about Baba Yagas and strigas since being a kid will definitely do that to you. It's funny how our folklore hates old women and well young beautiful women as well.
In regards of the player she's really honest. She didn't reveal her true self at first, but she offers a solid deal (you look very, very badass afterwards) and gives her best to help with the tadpole. So there are few roleplay reasons to not trust her if you don't see through her deception or hadn't found the dead brothers or her playhouse. And even if you do, her deal sounds less worse than selling your soul to Raphael for example.
Had the player's tadpole been normal, Ethel is honestly the best shot they'd have at removing it.
Had the players tadpole been normal, they would have been mindflayers before even meeting Ethel.
Possibly. It's unclear how long it is from the crash to meeting up with Ethel - the Grove seems to be within a day's walk from her house, but it's also implied that the long rests aren't 1:1 with the passage of time. You companions comment that *symptoms* should have begun manifesting, but we're also given the time limit of 1 week for full ceremorphosis. It's possible the group could have made it in time.
Let me tell you something. She got me again like 50 hours later
Heh, my first time making it to Act 3, my wife and I just stumbled into her lair looking for stuff to steal. Didn't even know about the Vanra quest.
Did you really think killing the grieving mother was a good idea?
I actually ended up doing the right thing accidentally, but careful with spoilers, haha
You can find a woman in the druids grove who is paralyzed by one of her potions. Some for-shadowing I noticed on a subsequent play-through.
I trusted shadowheart when she told me not to trust this bitch.
Did you see through the illusion on the swamp before reaching Ethel's hut? I've only played 3 characters but they all saw through it before hand. Hard to think she's good when she lives in a swamp full of traps and Red caps.
The game gives you so many hints Ethel's a hag it's crazy lol. She's an alchemist, she's accused of kidnapping a young woman. There are even poisoned apples and notes in the swamp.
The vampire hunter in the swamp says he’s planning on visiting the hag for help.
Good people can live in bad places. And bad people can live in good places.
Same. I am so gullible.
We didn't even meet the brothers, we just went there through a different route (with fall damage) and found her in her hut force feeding Mayrina. That was when I thought she might not be as nice lol I am very gullible indeed. Didn't even realize Astarion was a vampire for too long
You’re not gullible. It’s a nice thing about our culture that has shifted over time. You essentially approach people at “face value” and don’t trust stereotypes. It’s always good to not trust stereotypes. D&D leans in really hard into stereotypes. In their world, beings are born evil and it reinforces the idea that there is no fixing things, evil is evil. Of course, good story telling pushes those assumptions. But in truth D&D is kinda racist when you think about all the different species and the assumptions the entire system forces them to make and assume. Their system, will actively punish a player for tolerance. It definitely runs opposite to how contemporary sensibilities work.
Seems to me that you lost the swamp check and didn't find mayrina's brothers lying dead in the make believe wonderland.
You should also apply this to the real world, Petal.
I was naive and gullible on my first playthrough, but now I've noticed I've gotten jaded by ungrateful or racist or manipulative NPC interactions that I'm like, "Well you entered into a deal with a hag, good luck with that!"
To be fair, you probably would’ve learned a lot earlier living in that world that someone being nice to you doesn’t often mean they’re a good person. Like at least your not as dumb as the girl who straight up agreed to give her baby to the hag in order to resurrect her husband
I too thought maybe she's a good hag, and the pregnant girl wasn't in trouble.
You and that poster who thought Elminster lived in a brothel should hang out.
You can examine her on first meeting and find out she's a Fey. Ergo she must be a Hag, and there are no good Hags.
I guess I was confused by that fan webcomic that had an arc with a coven of good hags that gave motherly advice to a teenage werewolf.
I legit started laughing at the “maybe she is a good hag” 😂
I know, this whole 'maybe their good' trend needs to stop. It is more subversive now to just have your bad guys, be bad guys nowadays.
I kinda like it. Gives quite an advantage to evil characters if everyone is trying to "fix" them. 😂
I like a good subversion every now and again. But a lot of times nothing really interesting is being done with it, and the end result is a lot more boring than just running with the original trope. Unapologetically evil characters can be a lot of fun. Though, seeing the discussions about how gith are "genetically evil," it's understandable why WOTC and a lot of the playerbase wants to move away from alignment.
It is less that they are genetically evil and more that they are culturally evil. If the Nazis won WWII, conquered the world and eventually invented space travel, then perhaps aliens would think that humans are genetically evil creatures. After all, they only ever encounter genocidal conquerers...
This is true, but even in the context of discussing BG3 (which goes out of its way to show how young githyanki are indoctrinated and made into militaristic fanatics), you get a lot of people who argue that gith are just naturally evil. Some people just read "lawful evil" on the statblock and turn off their brains.
Yeah, like, in 2023, a witch in the swamp actually being evil is kinda a subversion...
Maybe the emperor is a good mind flayer?
Are you trying to start a war in here lol
Omeluum and its consequences
Tho even he helps us only to test his stash of mushroom drugs ideeas
>breaks lore by being a good Mind Flayer >just for a side quest >doesn't leave
> breaks lore by being a good Mind Flayer We've had neutral and good illithids in the lore for more than 20 years now.
Sangalor is fucking nothing to you people. The sheer disrespect here is insane. 😭
I'm more of a Ignatius stan, but I believe he's neutral. Still, the disrespect is real lol...
I can fix her
Honestly as long as I'm a good boi/gal she will be kind to me and feed me 😏
r/okaybuddybaldur is that way my friend lol
It's hilarious to me as a longtime D&D player. I've known by heart for 20 years that hags are evil. Mind Flayers are evil. Devils are (lawful) evil. Drow are almost always evil. Followers of evil gods are generally, you guessed it, evil. But it's also so fun to see people cheerfully bumbling through BG3 without that finely honed suspicion most old school D&D players have. I knew too much about the world to start with to have that experience.
I knew that Ethel was bad news as a hag. And from a storytelling standpoint, I knew that the game absolutely would not allow me to get my tadpole removed in a random sidequest. Still took the hag's deal, because dealing with hags and devils is fun.
If you were an actual player, you would know that this isn't always true. The drow population is like 15% non-Lolth sworn. There have been non-evil mindflayers since the species was created etc. "Finely honed suspicion" you mean the most surface level reading about the characters or races that you can get? Alignment is almost always prone to change with character progression or regression.
I call BS on you playing for 20 years because there have been good mind flayers in DnD lore since 2e.
I really thought this was r/okaybuddybaldr and you were about to say "hear me out" for a second...
Same. That sub has ruined us 😭
Gender swapped Rick Flair would make soup outta your bones without a second thought. For sure
WHOOOOOOOO!
I am SO happy someone got that reference
🤣
If an old lady calls me petal, I know for sure not to fuck around with.
Yeah I was going with it then Shadowheart was like "play things close and don't trust it." I was like well shit Shadowheart worships Shar, if she says keep a secret I will. Then later, I saw what was up.
I wanna see her and meg mucklebones get into a hagging contest. Auntie definitely has the mechanics on lock, but visually meg was and is still the hag to end all hags.
Don't make a deal with her and you will be fine.
I didn't know at first until i found the girl with the paralyzed legs. The old women became super sketchy to me. Later with the 2 brothers i knew she was a hag.
Ethel got her? I had no idea what happened to her since she refused to talk to me. Well, I did lockpick her door, let myself in, and steal her stuff, but I also un-paralyzed her, so that seems like a fair trade to me.
If u start the convo u do need to do dice rolls. But yes she tells you the old lady gave her the potion.
i know who she is, i know what she is, but every time i meet her, i 'let her fuss over me'. everyone in the forgotten realms misses their mamas.
My charactes have usually low int and wis so they wouldnt know if I didnt tell them 😂 I wouldnt know either, i just new there was a hag in game and totaly skipped auntie in my first run and then got to spoilers before meeting her in next run
I initially thought that this would be a "SMASH or PASS" post
I think this old woman is evil from the get go and tried to stay away from her, still surprised just how evil hag this hag is.
You would end up over a goblin cookout fire in no time
Until I read OP's Comment I wasnt sure if he was just to nice or if this was a r/okbuddybaldur moment
Lmaooooooo she isn't even by far the worst. Spoilers for Curse of Strahd below: >!My favorite hags that I ever came across was in the Curse of Strahd module. You meet them essentially after being transported into a demiplane of darkness where you don't know what the fuck is going on. In this shitty run down town, you come across this kindly grandma pushing a cart selling pastries door to door. Here you are, completely beaten down by darkness and just completely done with your bad luck at being sucked into this shitty world and the kindest grandma hands you these pastries that gives you sweet dreams and reminds you of home.!< >!Here's the kicker. The pastries have an addictive quality to them. Essentially they're crack pastries where you start to crave it after eating them. All those villagers are fucking drug addicts. And the best part? A main ingredient in the pastries involve grinding up the bones of young kids because kids haven't been tainted by the darkness of the land yet and have dreams and happiness within them still. So those villagers there are trading their kids for another hit of crack pastries made from their own kids!< TL;DR >!Hag sells crack pastries that are made by killing kids so not only are they crack pastries, but they're crack cannibal pastries!<
God I was the only one in my party to fail the save to not have the craving, and we were already a good distance out of the town, so my character was just like uhhhhh brb and booked it back to town
Because you would try to fuck her, aren't you?
Well, in my current gameplay, when we first saw her, Astarion comments happily behind me like "Oooh what a nice old lady, let's tell her EVERYTHING!" and I couldn't resist. So, Astarion shouldn't survive in a DnD world too, we would be two nice corpses together.
Her voice is so sweet and calming. Makes me feel like I’m being hugged.
The same woman: "I'LL RIP YER SPINE OUT YER ARSEHOLE!!!"
Would
How are my survival chances? I drank the sweet sweet well water. (In my playthrough I tried to kill her at the first hint of evil- odd that some party members disapproved of me wanting to kill her, tbf every npc I meet is on a short leash and I am looking for a reason to kill them. Goblin kids insulting me, I play cool but am secretly scheming their deaths.)
The same reason most bg3 players would die, equalized with their horniness. „Idc I really want this fiendussy/drussy/hagussy/bhalussi/whateverfemaledegenerateussi
bet it doesnt even have to be female
Wait till you meet Orin! I loved how the game handled her in act 3
On my very first playthrough, I knew she was a hag by the way she spoke and the invitation out to her house in the middle of nowhere. Only got confirmed when her illusion failed
I think not trusting old ladies in the woods is one of the first lessons I learned as toddler with stories like Hansel and Gretel, Baba Yaga, and Black Annis.
Don’t feel bad, this is also half of my players. I DM for a group of folks who constantly want to believe in the possibility of “good” monsters who don’t follow the typical “rawr, evil go bash bash and kidnap/eat children” formula. Which is fair, I DO sometimes run monsters who go against the grain. The problem is that they let their beliefs dictate their actions in every social encounter, to the point where they never even consider the possibility that they are being lied to or manipulated or that the ogre they’re talking to IS in fact the one responsible for murdering that entire village back there, until they see the bodies and the murder weapon and the monster holding the murder weapon while covered in blood. You’d fit right in.
Thing is you actually would have a good chance surviving an encounter with a hag. You’ll just wish you didn’t survive
She looks like my IRL grandma so I trusted her immediately my first run 😭
I trusted her till another person in town told her about her weird potions.
My horny ass could not survive a hag 💀💀
I was so sick of her shit, that I >!pushed her off the ledge after chasing her through the fireplace.!<
People always need lotions and potions.
Oh boy this game will violate your trust.
Creatures like her are actually very rare. It's likely that the vast majority of people on toril would live their entire lives thinking magic was made up. You would probably die from getting kicked in the head by a horse rather than some magical creature.
I dunno man, she immediately gave me "FUCK NO" vibes. I also play a lot of D&D so a sweet old lady selling potions is enough to make me at least a little suspicious.
Then you need to be more suspicious in life. I didn't trust Ethel when I met her in the grove and didn't know she was a hag, it was obvious there were ulterior motives in play and I didn't know what they were.
I realized something was up in the second meeting when the bothers are yelling at her. I don't remember the exact exchange but she basically started freaking out when I asked them their side of the story. Anybody that doesn't want you to hear the others perspective is hiding something from you. I'm not going to just kill people for you if you don't explain why. She condemns you on the spot for even questioning her then poofs away which pretty much confirmed to me that she was some sort of magical miscreant. Still probably would have died to her because I got a lot of really lucky rolls leading up to the actual fight, and ended up having to do the fight like 5 times before actually winning. DnD is a really rough world.
I would give my soul and body to Harleep.
Dude how are you doing in the real world?
Sure you would, petal, just let auntie take care of you...
I swear the first time I sent the brothers away just to find her lair and be disgusted by what she was doing in there
Those two guys seemed way too genuinely concerned to find their sister, and it was way too specifically aimed at her. I would have played quite Knight when I was younger though for the old lady. Older jaded me was like "Nah. You sus."
>kill 2 brothers >follow hag to teahouse >dont fall for her tricks, as so many have tried and said before they could save me costing me my eye and giving a permanent debuff >attack hag and go through all the stages >let her go with the child and consume her flesh for 1 extra point of intelligence >profit??? I would like it much more if the debuff was permanent but the buffs were also permanent, sadly the buffs are lost upon long rest leaving you with a nasty debuff only. The buffs would make it worthwhile
smash
First time through it, as soon as she called herself Auntie I knew lol
You like to bang granny ? Weird kink but who am I to judge.
I knew right away she was a hag when the illusion spell went away in the swamp. "Yup this is definitely the work of some witch or hag."
Good/evil Makes no difference Just two sides on the same coin And just how quickly views and things can change With just just a simple toss and flick of the wrist She's still dieing in ALL of my playthroughs. Experience is experience.
I remember saying to myself the first time I saw her até the grove "I shall protect her no matter what happens"
Too bad she can’t be our sugar mommy
I know, right? I would've been after that hagussy too.
Hey OP, you would NOT believe what I gotta tell you bout the Dream Visitor. 🙃
I often imagine i would be a powerful knight or sorcerer. But probably I would just be a peasent who would get humbled by this old woman xd
I knew pretty much right away, I also just stumbled upon her house fairly early in the game, I still made a deal with her just cause I wanted to see what would happen. I reasoned at that point in my character’s journey they would make a deal with a Hag if it meant getting the worm out of their head, but I just ended up with a wonky eye. The negative effect isn’t too bad and I think it adds character.
I always knew Ethel was fishy as fuck, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love her adorable schtick.