Does BG3 enforce alignment? Eg. Will a Good char. suffer if they fireball the weak and helpless? Eg.I have not seen this mentioned in the reviews.

This was an issue with BG2, ex. Druid.

Thanks
.

At least for Paladin it does, you can become an oathbreaker and lose the benefits a Paladin gets,

There isn't an alignment/morality system in BG3, at least from what I can tell. I know you don't pick your alignment in the character creator, unlike the original games. The closest things you have to it are the approval system with your companions and, as jhevers said above, the oath for the paladin class, which you can break and face consequences for. I'm not sure if there is anything similar for other classes.

Well, you lose the benefits that original oath gives you. Oathbreaker has some awesome abilities.

As far as I know, unlike BG1/2, BG3 has no concept of alignment at all. The closest thing in BG3 is Paladin's oath. However, that's not the same thing as the Lawful Good alignment that every Paladin character in BG1/2 has to have. In BG3, every character can choose the Paladin class at character creation or level up. And every Paladin in BG3 has the freedom to keep or break their oath. When they break their oath, they get a different set of abilities - which is equivalent to choosing a 4th subclass of Paladin. Unlike other 3 subclasses of Paladin, the oath breaker subclass cannot be chosen at character creation or level up - you have to get it by actually breaking the oath you have chosen.

There is no alignment as such in BG3.

You dont choose one at character creation, you cannot find your own or the one of other people out, and all spells that work on alignment have changed.or got removed. For example spells that dealt holy damage deal radiant damage now, and spells that dealt unholy damage deal necrotic damage now. Its kind of the same but then its not. Good aligned opponents get hurt by radiant damage just the same, likewise evil opponents arent immune to necrotic damage.



BG3 is extremely strict about Paladin oaths. And if you break the oath, you have to pay 2K gold to get reinstated. Its not made better by the fact thats not always entirely clear to everyone what the Paladin path is supposed to be.

However you can also just turn into an Oathbreaker. They arent even less powerful than other Paladins, just different and a bit evil themed.

The Oath of Devotion is the classic Paladin oath. The other two are substantly different.

Also if you do certain - evil - things then followers may leave you for good, meaning you lose their storylines. Only one follower will stay with you. You can get replacements but they have no personality or quests.

As far as I can tell, there really aren't many decisions you make that set you on a fixed story, and it's already been mentioned that you don't even pick a traditional good/evil, lawful/chaotic alignment.

As far as the game goes, your alignment is as much a spectrum as the real world, and you really aren't limited by much. As far as I can tell, you could start off being a totally evil character, slaughter an entire city if peaceful druids and refugees, and then change your mind and decide to kill the group you had originally aligned with, and the story would make it work.

There's a pretty amazing amount of variability in your ability to tell the story you want to tell with your character in this game. More than most, I'd say.

the pally only falls if the pally did it i.e, sit and watch Shadowheart gut little kids = you are fine pal

I havent played Paladin extensively yet, but from feedback on the net all three Oaths are different.

And it might not always work as intended, i.e. in some places you have to read the programmers mind or use reload tactics to find out what your specific Oath is allowed to do in this situation.

Case in point, as a Devotion paladin, when freeing Lae'zel you can fail the Paladin/deception check on the two bloodthirsty tieflings, Should you side with Lae'zel, a prisoner, or decide to not get involved, the tie flings may choose to attack you too. If you defend yourself against these obviously non-good tieflings, your oath is broken immediately. However choosing to kill Lae'zel even though she doesn't attack you does not, nor does murdering Astarion if you tell him you don't want him in your party and he peacefully walks away and you decide to jump him as he does.

I suspect its less "needing to read the programmers' minds" and more "the programmers themselves lose track of the quest logic", at least most of the time. Case in point, the one time my Devotion Paladin broke his oath, at the end of the Steel Watch quest line. Peacefully resolving things to keep the Gondians alive led to an oath breach, even when literally using a [Paladin][Devotion] dialog choice. However, when I examined the quest log afterwards, it looks like what happened was the game lost track of the event flags, and mistakenly believed I had betrayed and overthrown Wulfren ( because one quest tracker had that as the 'conclusion', even though a different quest tracker actually said Wulfren was out for revenge ). In retrospect, this doesn't surprise me, given the Steel Watch quest line is one of the most complex I've encountered in the whole game; not only is it an elaborate quest in its own right, but it directly ties into Gortash and Oren quest lines, *and* the Wyll/Mizora quest line, *and* the Steelhand Clan quest line.