He was a Ranger before he suffered his head injury during his Dajemma. His behaviour in-game is a result of this head injury -- his alignment is good because his 'character' is good. Anything he does that could be regarded as 'evil', or 'less than good', is an unfortunate 'mind blank' moment for him, and his general goofy behaviour is down to his injury (witness his love of his pet miniature space hamster). As a Ranger, it would not be in his character to behave as your 'rules'. He may be lacking as a Ranger since the injury, but that doesn't make him not a Ranger.

Sure, I don't think anyone's disagreeing with that. The point is that is being made is that slaughtering his party in a homicidal killing-spree because of a disagreement is seriously out-of-character for him, and anyone of the good-alignment in general.

If Minsc actually had zero control over when and how he rages that might be different, but this is not how he's portrayed in game; he's shown to have the ability to influence his rage emotionally, wielding it as a weapon in battle. Due to the fact that he has a demonstrable level of control, the "temporary insanity" theory doesn't help since it just results in a catch-22. If Minsc is not culpable for his actions on any level then he's true neutral by definition (put bluntly, if you're not responsible for evil acts you commit then you're also not responsible for good acts you commit). If we accept that, on some level, Minsc is a moral agent, then he bears responsible for failing to control his violent tendencies.

Now, as I said, throughout the vast majority of the series Minsc keeps it together. He doesn't go nuts and go on a homicidal killing-spree, he does manage to pull himself together and avoid committing acts he'd regret later. That's why he's chaotic good; whatever violent tendencies he has, he controls them and makes every effort to ensure there isn't innocent blood on his hands. That's exactly why this outburst is so abnormal; it's completely contradictory to his moral ethos.


Being chaotic doesn't mean you have to be inconsistent. What it does mean is that you don't allow societal expectations or customs to guide your behavior. Lawful characters are conformists who structure their life around their place within a social hierarchy, while chaotic characters are individualists who often chafe at the expectation of "fitting in" to that hierarchy. Minsc doesn't care what other people may think, he seeks out evil and punches it in the face. Because a character class describes what abilities you have, not who you are. Minsc has the abilities of a Ranger with the addition of a custom berserk ability. You could argue that maybe he'd be better-described as a berserker kit fighter, but he doesn't need to be.

So being lawful means you live according to the rules of your social or political environment.

Until now I thought it was only about caring for any set of rules and chaotic characters are people who are against any kind of order at all.

I know several examples of characters who don´t have problems with killing tons of people, but they strictly follow their own set of rules. Like the bad from "the good, the bad and the ugly" (He works only for money and he always finishes what he is paid for) or the killer from "no country for old man" (He always does what he promises, he kills everybody who is in his way and when he is uncertain if he should kill somebody or not he decides via coin toss). Until now I thought them to be lawful.

The only character where I was 100% sure he is chaotic evil was tho joker from "the dark knight". He is agains any government and against organized crime because he wants to destroy order itself.

back to topic:
I understand what you say and I accept that minsc is chaotic good.

The definition of the lawful/chaotic axis depends somewhat on which era of D&D you're talking. In the early days, it was an almost entirely social thing. Rules of society mattered most. Gradually it shifted slightly to rules of any type. When WotC bought D&D, however, it changed to "personal laws" rather than societal ones. For instance, a crazy axe murderer who would have been CE in the old system could be LE in the new system as long as he didn't violate his personal code; it didn't matter if that personal code was based around causing as much chaos and strife as possible.

Of course, in D&D, law and chaos are actually primordial forces that have real actual power in the universe. They're not just concepts.

More Minsc madness! During combat with lots of bandits & one cave bear, I had Minsc use charm animals on the bear. Success....until the crazy ranger immediately attacked the once charmed beast and turned it back to hostile.

I doubt this was a Minsc specific script, just some kind of timing bug.

It's not a bug if Minsc was in Berserk mode. Even your own party members aren't completely safe. If he wasn't in Berserk mode, then it may be that the AI hadn't 'caught on' yet that the bear had been charmed: it doesn't happen instantaneously, so that would fall into your 'timing bug', except it's not a bug.

Thus far I've not used Minsc's berserk ability, so that's not it. I'm pretty sure that as soon as charm animal was (successfully) used, the game had minsc attack his selected target which is why I feel it is a timing bug or design flaw.

As I said, it's neither. AI is run by scripts, and scripts do not act instantaneously -- in certain areas they only run every few seconds or so; some only on area transition etc. If AI scripts were executed at every frame, you can see that the game would quite quickly get bogged down in trying to interpret and execute them.

Of course it's a design flaw (or AI timing bug). Charm person & charm animal works until the subject is attacked by the charmer (or duration ends), so to have the character immediately attack the subject of charm without the players command is nonsensical. This wouldn't happen with the pen and paper game this approximates. Baldur's Gate is great but hardly flawless.

And pen and paper is, of course...

It is as good as the GM running it; if the GM is doing something ridiculous, the player is able to point out any perceived problems in an attempt to see if the GM will correct any flaws in the system or its execution that exist or stop using a house rule that is making the experience less fun for all involved, whereas with a computer game, if it's running on problematic rules and scripts, your only hope is to grin and bear any AD&D 2E house rules the game uses that make things less fun for you and pray that the ludicrous outcome doesn't happen again (or download a mod and engage in aforementioned prayer).