How the Morality System Works - Mass Effect Guide - IGN (2025)

This page of IGN's Mass Effect wiki guide is all about the Morality system and how it works, including Paragon and Renegade Choices, as well as Charm and Intimidate options.

The Morality system is Mass Effect's showcase feature, allowing you to align Shepard with either Paragon (good) or Renegade (bad) by making specific choices in the game. This page is about blowing the lid off of how this system works so that you can get the results you want out of the game.

Looking for something specific? Click the links below to jump to...

• Paragon and Renegade Choices
• Morality Points
• Persuasion Points: Charm and Intimidate
• Consistent Morality Rewards Itself

Paragon and Renegade Choices

The two alignments in Mass Effect are Paragon and Renegade, which are associated with being a good person and a bad person, respectively. While playing the game, you'll be interacting with the Dialogue Wheel to respond in varying ways and making certain decisions.

The placement of these dialogue options actually informs you what Morality that choice will be associated with. Options in the top half of the wheel are considered Paragon, and are more likely to give you Paragon Points when selected. Options in the bottom half meanwhile are Renegade, and may give you Renegade Points instead.

There are two situations where this doesn't apply. Unless there's only three options on the wheel, anything on the left side and coloured white will give you more information about the matter at hand. As well, any options in the middle are considered Neutral, and will never give you any Morality Points.

Morality Points

Picking specific options on the dialogue wheel as detailed above may give you certain amounts of Paragon or Renegade Points, which fills a Paragon or Renegade meter visible in the Squad menu. These meters fill independently of each other, so you can do something Renegade without taking away from the Paragon meter, for example.

Filling up the Paragon or Renegade meters a certain amount will give certain bonuses. The Paragon Meter will award Charm Points, while Renegade Meter will award Intimidate Points (these are explained in the next section).

• If you reach 80% of one Morality meter, you'll need to fill the other meter by 90% to unlock the other Morality Assignment.

Persuasion Points: Charm and Intimidate

The main thing you'll unlock with your Paragon and Renegade points are Charm and Intimidate slots. You initially start the game with three Charm slots and three Intimidate slots, and you can have up to a total of 12 in each.

Unlike every other item in the Squad menu, new Charm and Intimidate slots are NOT unlocked by leveling up. Instead you must fill one of the meters a certain amount, as shown in the graph in the previous section. The Paragon meter unlocks Charm slots, while the Renegade meter unlocks Intimidate slots.

So what do these get you? At important and critical points in the game, you may notice some extra options pop up in either blue, red or grey. These are Charm and Intimidate options, and In order to activate one, you need to pass a Charm or Intimidate Check.

For example, early in the game you come across a man named Powell, who runs a weapons smuggling ring.

• If you've bought 3 Charm points, the "You should make amends" Charm option will be lit in blue: picking it will get you a free Grenade.
• Alternatively, if you've bought 3 Intimidate Points you can pick "You're lying!", which will also get a Grenade from him.

Charm and Intimidate options will always get the same result, the difference is how you guide Shepard to get there. Larger, tenser situations and strong-willed characters will have higher Charm / Intimidate Point requirements.

Picking the Charm or Intimidate option is always a good idea, because it allows Shepard to resolve the situation in their favour 100% of the time and receive large amounts of Charm / Intimidate Points. If you pick the right-hand options, you'll get less rewards and less favourable outcomes; in extreme situations Shepard may be forced to restrain, kill or sacrifice other characters in order to resolve the situation.

Consistent Morality Rewards Itself

So with all of that said, the final piece of advice we have is this, and it cannot be understated:

PICK A MORALITY AND STICK WITH IT.

The reason for this is simple: consistent Morality will reward you with more of that Morality. For example, consistently picking Paragon and Charm dialogue options will reward you with Paragon points, which will unlock Charm points, which let you pick Charm dialogue options, which reward you with Charm points. The same applies for Renegade / Intimidate.

If you swap between Paragon or Renegade too often, or worse pick Neutral options a lot, you'll find yourself in situations where you don't have enough Charm or Intimidate points to make decisions that have a favourable outcome. You won't get extra rewards, you can't convince characters to stand down or change their mind, and in extreme cases characters may even end up dead.

Once again: pick either Paragon or Renegade as your outlook and stick with it for the entire game!