True-Neutral: The Loser of Alignments? (Spoilers)

[Shadenuat]

I did not play TN, so asking from people who played it.

Heavy spoilers beware.

The way dialogue often works and how choices are presented in the game, unique choices often come from one of the 5 main alignment paths: Good, Evil, Chaotic, Lawful and Neutral.

Usually if you are of combined alignment, you can borrow from any of your 2 parts. For example: Lawful Neutral can tell Kesten to go to City in Bloom chapter, saving him easily; and can mediate peace between Kobolds and Mites in first chapter by picking Neutral option.

It goes as such for all other Neutral alignments, creating a particular meta around them:

Neutral Good is one of the "optimal" alignments, especially if you want And So Shall You Reap achivo and also make peace everywhere. You will be able to mediate between Kobolds and Mites; Rostov and Surtovas; and make goodie decisions which often lead to reasonable/"happy ending" choices. Making peace, persuading people, getting a lot of XP from persuading people, making Tristian adore you and using Good in dialogues with Nyrissa.

Lawful Neutral is a pretty "powerful" alignment as well. Lawful allows Bulletin Boards and some unique choices, Neutral allows mediating.

Chaotic Neutral is one of the more interesting ones. Chaotic allows you to be lolrandom, mix with dirt arrogant noble in Chapter 2, spare monsters, spare Tartuk/Hargulka, build +intrigue buildings (useful). And Neutral, again, allows you to mediate.

Neutral Evil is a strange one. Neutral play is about mediating between parties, while Evil is about being somewhat of a thug. It is a lot more interesting to play Lawful Evil. Still, you can do some neat stuff with it, for example Evil allows brute forcing your parth through saving the boy in Chapter 2 quest, and Neutral gives you some extra options/allies.

Which brings me to True Neutral.

You do not get Good options, so no stuff like going into Nyrissa dream. You're not Chaotic, so no turning enemies into friends. You have no Evil, so no extra options at intimidating people. The only good part about all this is, I guess, you can pick any alignment option and balance them out and keep yourself TN, that is. But effectively it should be an alignment that cuts your roleplaying options by 50%.

Am I wrong, are there unique True Neutral options; or is it indeed an alignment with less options than any other?

[abbyzero]

Pure selfishness.

[Mauman]

What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

[nym_moondown]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3eN-kdPouc&t=0s

[Dorok]

Neutral law opens options that don't offer good like make an agreement with an evil group, like close eye on some illegal stuff as thieves, it also open options for kingdom management that can be rather useful, like Back Market or building that can help rush to get spy advisor.

It's very easy to have the alignment going to Neutral law.

For Neutral Evil/Good anyway it's always been ambiguous in D&D and this game doesn't change it. Cases of clear Neutral Evil/Good choices are rare and hard to setup. Then Neutral tend be more a balance between Good and Evil than anything else.

That is it's more about making as much Good choice than Evil choices, and the game reflect it. As I didn't played Neutral Good/Evil I have no idea what it brings specifically in this game. It's only clear that it would be easy to stick to a Neutral Good/Evil alignment by distributing evenly good and evil choices plus some neutral.

[Shadenuat]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Neutral law opens options that don't offer good like make an agreement with an evil group, like close eye on some illegal stuff as thieves, it also open options for kingdom management that can be rather useful, like Back Market or building that can help rush to get spy advisor

I think Black Market is Chaotic or Evil, I got that during Chaotic Evil playthrough. Neutral unique should be that druid grove building I never got to build, which states it has to be built in a town with megaliths or something.

Some of the buildings are bugged; in my LG Kingdom I had options to build thieves guilds and such.

Spy Advisor you get when your Relations reach 60.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Shadenuat:

Originally posted by Dorok:

Neutral law opens options that don't offer good like make an agreement with an evil group, like close eye on some illegal stuff as thieves, it also open options for kingdom management that can be rather useful, like Back Market or building that can help rush to get spy advisor

I think Black Market is Chaotic or Evil, I got that during Chaotic Evil playthrough.

Spy Advisor you get when your Relations reach 60.

Wrong I have the Black Market building option. And my character is lawful good, kingdom neutral good.

For Spy advisor my comment was to get spy level 20 faster, I didn't look at the two other requirements.

EDIT: And it's never reach 60 but 40+ and level III.

[Shadenuat]

You can build it with any alignment, even if it states only Chaotic. It must be a bug, read that building description.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Shadenuat:

You can build it with any alignment, even if it states only Chaotic. It must be a bug, read that building description.

Mmmm it's perhaps specific to Pitax city, despite I kick off thieves guild, I let families rule the city and they always been soft with thieves and Black Market. It's possible I don't have the option anywhere else.

[manystarredcloak]

There is a very strong ring that requires true neutral near endgame.

[Shadenuat]

Originally posted by manystarredcloak:

There is a very strong ring that requires true neutral near endgame.

It is a good ring, but there are alternatives for other alignments as well.

But I am less interested in items, more in unique TN dialogue options that change the plot, if there are any.

Originally posted by Dorok:

Originally posted by Shadenuat:

You can build it with any alignment, even if it states only Chaotic. It must be a bug, read that building description.

Mmmm it's perhaps specific to Pitax city, despite I kick off thieves guild, I let families rule the city and they always been soft with thieves and Black Market. It's possible I don't have the option anywhere else.

It's not Pitax, I had it in my LG barony since first city upgrade I believe.

[thefollowingcharacters]

I love the alignment system because I think it reflects how difficult it is to stay one particular alignment. True Neutral is VERY difficult to pull off for most people, as it means balancing between 4 tendencies.

Further staying on the extreme end of law or chaos is also difficult. I feel this is accurate to in universe.

[kaymarciy]

Indeed, there are no True Neutral-only options and only a handful of encounters which can move you towards it. (Including the banishment of Tsanna which is stupid.) This leaves me as a True Neutral player extremely frustrated.

[nym_moondown]

During my CN run I found many "neutral only options" while not so many "chaotic" ones. So I think the possibilities of a N character are not very different in numbers from a CN. I'm not speaking of "free choices" but the ones requiring specific alignment. I didn't mind for my character to take very different free choices if I feel they were the best option for the situation...even LN, LG or LE ones. Alignment is not a cage, ad pretending to follow always your alignment it's simply not realistic. Also there would be some paradoxes such being chaotic and strictlty adhering to the Chaos alignment XD

[Shadenuat]

The main thing going for Chaotic is what you can do with Tartuk in Ch. 2 and Ch. 7. (which is a pretty massive easter egg). Some other things include solving Tsanna "murder mystery" with Chaotic choice, dialogue with Candlemere quest giver and talking down one obnoxious noble. Those were most memorable on my CE playthrough, but I did not pick all of them since I mostly picked Evil instead.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by SoundofSilence:

True neutral isn't about mediating or anything, it's about doing whatever you want without predisposition, but everything balances out in the end. So I wouldn't expect any specific true neutral alignment choices, rather the combination of choices selected lend the character a balance between good/evil and law/chaos.

From the handbook, "A (true) neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos...(true) neutral means you act naturally in any situation, without prejudice or compulsion."

It's how I always saw chaotic, but with that logic chaotic is always choose anti law option, which makes no sense for me.