cant imagine Minthara beging for mercy ...
If you think about it, she is Drow, Lolthsworn Drow, that was probably growing in Menzoberranzan ... that, and all the threatments prisoners get in goblin camp ... should be motivation enough to rather commit suicide, than risk falling into captivity. :-/ So more than that i can imagine her swalowing some poison.
Ofcourse we should be able to ressurect her and capture her anyway, it would be hilarious as hell. laugh
In lore as far as I know, drows can and do end up getting captured. I feel like I have used the wrong word to describe it; it should look somewheat like this:
Her henchmen are dead/fleeing and she is at low health, (let's say below 35% of maximum), with enemies surrounding her. A cutscene triggers, during which she falls on her knees, visibly wounded and exhausted. You are given an option to approach her, with several options possible:
a)Finish her off
b)Give her to tieflings
c)Take her as your prisoner
Here we should be able to choose, what to tell her, for example when roleplaying lawful good -> "There will be no harm done towards you from our side", lawful evil - "Show that you are useful and you might still live"
So I just meant that she surrenders due to her inability to fight or do anything basically, not straight begging for mercy.
Minthara is shown to both value her life very highly and to be cowardly, so there is a reason why she would surrender.
As for resurrecting, certainly that should be a + in relation if player is willing to try to redeem her. If we end up killing her, I know that in Forgotten Realms characters have to agree to resurrection; so this could be tricked by forcing someone else, like a goblin mage/priest/warlock to read the scroll. After which a big suprise moment happens for Minthara.
Goblins certainy should start runing, or surendering at this point ...
Maybe im wrong here, but they seem to me like fear of Minthara was the only thing that was driving them on. :-/
If you get along with her well, by choosing her side, she does say that they need a "strong hand", or else they will disperse, so you are right indeed.
I dont like this to be honest.
Yes we should completely be able to treath her nicely i agree ... but she should not willigly reveal us the informations, nor offer to join us, just bcs we are nice to her. :-/ That seem out of character.
If anything, we should be able to torture our answers out of her, and even in that case she should not give them easily.
But i just cant shake the feeling that Minthara is that type that will mock you for being soft, weak, patetic, and despicable if you treath her nicely.
I can imagine that this could work, but it would require a much longer work on her ... like treath her nicely since capturing, through moonrise towers where we show her what she actualy signed to, shaken her believes, and then help her deal with that ... and even that seem a little too fast for us to gain her thrust, after all we just broke her whole world. laugh
But concidering it as long therm, it could work.
I based this on indication, that she is not exactly 100% loyal to the Absolute, which is given during dialogue with her in a Camp. Since Minthara can't really return back and she has enemies everywhere now, the drow might decide to do anything to improve her dire situation. It could be done in a different way, like she reveals to you only basic and unimportant information, since there is little trust towards but it improves as time goes, if you continue to act well towards her.
Just like the rest of Absolute leaders, she doesn't show an awarness of being infected by the Tadpole too, so your point with Moonrise towers is great and could give her a good reason to reconsider what is she doing and let her for example join us as a companion in act 2.
Yes, mocking our character definitely fits her, although it's shouldn't be to the point of it being ridiculous since she is not stupid and her situation isn't exactly the best. And if you continue to treat her humanely for long enough (by for example giving her normal food and drink instead of just bread and water, letting her sleep on bedroll instead of sleeping on the ground, letting her keep the equipment (except the weapon and shield obviously, bandaging her after the fight, bringing her a health potion), she should behave better.
First time, when you ask her when she is your prisoner, how is she feeling? You get a insulting response in a style of "go away and see if you aren't somewhere close to that rock nearby"
But when enough time passes and you don't stop treating her well, she will respond first neutrally, then nicely. At one point she will say, that if you let her join your squad, she will be a much more useful than just sitting here in the prisoner cage doing nothing.
Same comentary as abowe ... yes, i can see this as possibility, and even fiting the character ... just not so fast.
After all, even David Hasselhoff wasnt able to save everyone. wink
It is shown if you side with her, that she is definitely someone with a huge logical possibility of redemption arc, with it starting to get going after we reach Moonrise Towers in act 1 and with act 2 letting us recruit her as a companion.
And here is the problem ... to leave where exactly?
I could imagine convincing them (with extremely hard persuation check) to repair boat and try their luck on water ... but that seem like the only option. :-/
The willage just across the first bridge is swarming with goblins and if you go the other way, you just reach the beach and its over. Also Tieflings are draging all their property with them, wagons with food, clothing and stuff ... not to mention civilians and childern. There is litteraly no way they could sneak around that goblin village.
Also note that bridge that is conecting Blighted Village to northern part of map is broken, so they even cant cross it with all their posessions.
The only another way i could imagine is persuating leader of Flaming Fist to provide them escort, once you help them save that elf from burning house.
I imagine that would also require some persuation check, since they have allready urgent business to do ... but its only fair to ask for favor, after you save her life.
Good point, I agree.
Im not quite sure if that is even possible.
All we get so far is that goblins are searching some "weapon" in the groove ... no idea who, or what it should be.
But i presumed that Minthara was hunting for Tieflings at first, and finding druids is simply sideffect of her hunt.
So if that is the case, i cant imagine any way that she would let go her prey ...
On the other hand, in some other topics at this theme, i allready mentioned that i would like to see "some" Tieflings not being killed during attack.
Personaly i would like to see groove wiped out, and every armed Tiefling dead ... then civilians with kids being driven into a corner ... either in prison, or "dragon cave", or in Zevlor's cave, w/e it dont matter so much in the end ... and then Minthara let us decide their faith:
- Sell them to slavery ... either to Zhentarim, or to Underdark ... with conciderable cut for us, ofcourse.
- Sacrifice them for the absolute ... either right there, or send them to Moonrise Towers ...
- Give them to goblins, to kill/torture/eat.
- Execute them all at once personaly.
- Let them go, to spread word of what happened here ... with possibility to send goblins after them.
Plenty of good interactions for roleplaying evil characters written by you; I based my thoughts before on the fact that Minthara says that she wants to get rid of worshippers of false god, and the druid grove is sanctuary of Silvanus.
I dont see any conection between Halsin and Tieflings ...
So why this condition? O_o
Because he seems to be a good person caring for the rest and unlike Kagha he does show a soft side for Tieflings by letting them stay in the Grove.
But you certainly should be able to tell Minthara about secret passage, to prepare another ambush.
It would be even better if you can convince Minthara to send army to gate, where they are suppose to distract and occupy defenders ... and join you and your group within the secret passage ... and from there you either could amsbush defenders from inside, or prepare there another ambush to capture Minthara as they say "with her pants down".
And to make it absolutely brilliant, in finish you should be able to show her restrained and captured to goblins so they surender (or run).
A good dialogue could result with her getting captured there, with our hero either threatening her to cooperate with us, or simply saying that if she is going to willingly cooperate, she won't be harmed.
Either way, fully agreed.
Since using secret passage will have same result, and since you are no "suply manager" of the groove, but simply traveler, who just happened to arive there ...
I cant quite imagine how exactly you like to justify such action. O_o
Zevlor mentions using oil barrels as a part of defense plan and tieflings trust you in 100% when you side with them during the first attack on grove.
As i allready said countless times in countless topics ...
Those things are present, they just arent specificly "told" ... wich i personaly find even better, since those are options for perceptive characters (or maybe players).
The only way i could find this to be implemented so it fits to curent situation that i honestly love ... its simple introspective comentary from narator ...
Something like when you talk to last of Goblin leaders, you sucess percetion check and narator tells you something like: "Sudently you realize that she have the same tadpole as you do, they all do. That means that they must know some way to avoid transformation ... is their Goddess powers protecting them prehaps?"
It still seem stupid, but much better that way, than if some character tells you the same. -_-
I remember seeing survey on reddit, with players being asked what could make them play the evil side. Suprisingly.... it was "better story reason"
The fact that me or you could see that there is a reason of siding with goblins, doesn't mean that the rest of players will see it. That's why I would like it to be better explained, it doesn't have to be said by any of the bad guys. Your way of narrator doing it is perfectly fine.
IMO both Halsin and Minthara are well written characters and just forcing us to kill them if we choose the opposite side is pretty lame.
