Poor quest options for the truly neutral

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It's already been covered that SoA holds pretty poor quests - and quest options - for the evil players... but what about the true neutral characters, mainly druids?
I've always found the description (in the BG 2 manual) of the 'true neutral' alignment interesting - switching allegiance in order to maintain balance. However, the game doesn't really allow that kind of playing style... I mean, if the game lacks options and quests for evil characters, then by far it also lacks options for tree huggers (maybe BI figured no one would play as druid with the ridiculous xp limit...? ToB took care of that problem...)

Maybe I'm just a turncoat?

 

Most RPGs aren't big on the whole "neutral" path. To be honest, I don't really think there's such a thing as a truly neutral alignment either. Every person has their distinct motivations. A "true" neutral character is one who either has no real motivations or whose motivations are opposing (i.e. you play both good and evil or lawful and chaotic when it suits you, without preferring either side). Neutrality for the sake of neutrality isn't really neutral, it's lawful.

The alignment descriptions in D&D, especially AD&D, are a joke anyway and more often than not lead to poorly designed inorganic characters.

 

BG2 druids are nothing like their BG1 counterpart, one could argue that the SoA cap actually balances them out heh. ToB actually weakens them a bit.

The thing about BG2 is that quest options tend to be conservative. You can take that to mean that the game doesn't allow you to be "truly" evil/neutral, or you can simply treat quest options are more like stepping stones for the story - you are free to decide how most quests proceed. For example, "saving" Suldanessellar by letting the elves die (so you can loot them) before you kill off their attackers (for XP) is definitely not something a good character would do.
For all intents and purposes, playing as if every other NPC was just walking/talking XP/soon-to-be-looted inventory space is much, much more lucrative than playing a genuinely good character. You can betray quest givers after finishing their quests (XP + loot), kill off NPCs or rival adventuring groups as soon as you see them, steal from even the most impoverished homes and piss off the local law enforcers just so you can kill their strongest members (moar XP).
You can play neutral in a similar way.

 

That reminds me, at one point I made a mod that allowed you to slaughter the elves at the camp outside of Underdark and then fight through Suldanessellar, taking the "I don't care what you do to the elves, I'm just here for Irenicus" approach and potentially allying with the demons, rakshasas, and other beasties located there.

Man, I wish free cloud storage was a thing way back then. Almost all of the **** I've made has been lost in the aether over the years. Should have saved it on Gmail instead of blank unmarked CDs and ancient hard drives.