So, I've encountered something which is either an annoying design decision or a glitch. I've reached the end of the "Destroy the Steel Watch" quest, and at the epilogue where the Steelhands show up to confront the Gondians, persuading them to *not* murder the enslaved Gondians for some reason breaks my paladin oath. I have no idea why: while I've supported the Steelhand up to this point, I didn't exactly promise on my oath to murder the Gondians for them ( as opposed to blowing up the factory, which is *not* the same thing ). And its not like I backstabbed them, I simply used persuasion checks to talk them down from murdering the ( obviously enslaved, still wearing a bomb collar! ) Gondians.

Is this a bizarre, out of place "gotcha!" moment intentionally, or a glitch? And either way, what seems to be the cause? Because honestly, this kind of makes me regret supporting the Steelhand at all in the first place. *cough*

The way you say it, it sounds like not killing killing the Gondians would be the good thing to do.

As to whether this is a bug: it sounds like it. I'd be curious as to if anyone could role-play justify why that would cause you to break your oath... unless the Paladin oath is more about lawfulness than about goodness, in which case maybe it's about punishing the people who did evil, regardless of how manipulated they were? Seems pretty draconian to me, but when I tried playing a pally at first, I broke my oath less than an hour in. Clearly my moral compass is misaligned with whatever a Paladin points to, and I don't have the D&D lore background to know why.

That said, if you want a real answer, the Larian forums are far more likely to get you one than here. Larian actually reads those. If it *is* a bug, that's where you'd go to let them know.

the pally oath system is just busted by having 1/3 of the game cut... there will be a quest maker saying you did [insert bullshit] and that comes from cut content Larian didn't bother testing because they needed to meet their deadline

Actually, on further investigation, its almost certainly a bug: the quest log had contradictory data. One quest line would say "Wulbren is angry and will seek revenge", another said that I *deposed* him, when I clearly didn't. The flags clearly got mixed up.

And yeah, I probably should poke my head in the Larian forums. Its just, I've never made an account with them while I *do* have one here. ;)