Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Let's make Minthara Great Again

Female version would work better for sure.

Wow so beautiful. Which game she's from? Personally it's kind of obvious what direction larian is heading towards with minthara design.

I just got it from google; but if they don't improve Minthara's appearance; I'm not buying any more of their games; I do see where the wind is blowing and I should have had my suspicions when they released their patch 5 on the numerologically apt July 13th; I think this is them testing the waters so to speak; but I'm waiting and watching to see what their final product will be.

Technically yes you're correct regarding the in-game patch 5; the statements of my post had to do with my comparison of the patch 5 and pre patch 5 Ringmail in that it had a different more feminine variation for over nine months; which is what I showed; the chest used to have a small protrusion and the figure did not look as broad; The updated armor took away the unique aspects of the female ringmail model and made it look almost exactly the same as the male model; I associate the new patch 5 female Ringmail model with the male model; because they basically look the same the now; I consider the new female ringmail model to basically be the men's ringmail and the pre patch 5 ringmail to be a unique female model; I posted it that way because that's exactly how it appeared to me; I do not think their change was good and it does not make the female body models stand out in any way.

Though it is true some people like this new unisex armor; atheistically male and female Ringmail models look the same now; which I consider to be a horrible design choice; if they had done this change in reverse I probably would state they gave the male characters a female Ringmail model; they both had different unique aspects.

I just cannot consider this to be a be a female armor; with all do respect where did her breasts go? How does a woman's torso look as flat and broad as a man's.

In pre patch 5 you can clearly see the slight protrusion of her breasts; furthermore the stitching on her Ringmail jacket goes further up nearly below her armpits; that makes sense when a female bosom is being supported; though in the patch 5 Ringmail she has no breasts; so further stitching on the sides of the jacket does'nt make any sense I suppose.


When she wears the Ringmail in Patch 5 it literally changes her body type insofar that she no longer has breasts and even her arms look bigger unless she's naked; we've been talking about her hair, her makeup, her expressions, etc; but this Ringmail change I would contend is actually the biggest change she's had in patch 5. For over 9 months what she is now wearing we came to associate with the male Ringmail.

So because we're currently in patch 5; are we supposed to treat the over 9 month old pre patch 5 female Ringmail variation as if it never existed?; does it make sense to accept that the new patch 5 Ringmail that is a smaller scaled recolored variation of the male Ringmail; with nothing at all to distinguish it from the male Ringmail model that was used in both patch 5 and pre patch 5 is the female Ringmail model; that just so happens to be the same male Ringmail model that we've seen in all the patches; which has been recolored in patch 5 and replaced the unique female Ringmail that was used prior to patch 5?

My assessment is they destroyed any difference it had had from the male Ringmail model; they're virtually the same now; and so thus I stated Minthara is wearing the male Ringmail model(patch 5); because she is in a sense; besides the recoloring it's the same armor we saw for over 9 months on male characters.





The Drow female Ringmail is entirely flat chested and broad now; just like the male variation and the difference shows when you compare it to the pre patch 5 Ringmail where there is obvious protrusion of the bosom.


As I said at the beginning of both threads; we've been simply comparing and contrasting images and gifs; a lot of the commentary here is subjective; which was the intention; so yes I agree by all means use whichever sources of information that best suit your needs.

Well those armor sets in the top couple posts are about a thousand times better than the new ring mail.

Ring mail is such a silly armor concept to begin with, but at least in the old Minthara version the rings actually looked somewhat 3 dimensional. In the new ring mail they look completely flat, probably because of that horrid midrange brown. At least with the darker reddish leather trim the rings had some pop to them. I dislike the collar on both versions, but the older collar was at least somewhat subdued, the new one is all starched and flared, like disco, born to clip lol.

I don't like the color choices in the new ring mail set, the lighter browns and particularly that muted red in the sleeves. They also knocked off the brilliance from all the metallic components, so that now there are no highlights to break it up.

Feels like someone trying to make an already dull outfit even duller and somehow more garrish at the same time. It's whatever, they can make ring mail look as stupid as they want I guess, since ring mail is a dumb concept anyway, and doesn't really exist except in the D&D imagination. Rings that don't interlock aren't really "mail" at all, and probably not something a skull crusher would be decked in anyway, but that's a big neologism digression.

In any case, the Minthara character deserves a better outfit. A unique outfit! Preferably a black one, or at least something with the purples and darker hues on display in that nicely rendered armor from the second post above...


I particularly like the Skull choker. That's a nice touch hehe

OK. I don't know exactly who created this character, but THIS is more of what I'm thinking of for Minthara. She looks SO much more intimidating:



Give her Minthara's face, white hair, maybe red eyes, maybe not... SHOULD MInthara have red eyes since, you know, they were going for that whole Lolthsworn only have red eyes thing... lol.

Ah heck! Just go with this model. Dark hair would make her unique and cause her to blend in even more. Just use this model, put the little tattoo on her neck, and BAM! Minthara.

this really looks good too!. if larian meant minthara as a 'she' then i think they shouldn't make her look like a dude honestly. other than what other obvious reasons, if larian want minthara as a 'them' then just make it so. don't mention 'she' but slap a man there.

Ah whatever. The point is that Minthara needs to look more evil. They need to remove that ring mail armor, which is dumb armor anyway. She's a cleric and could wear specialized Plate + 1 armor that only requires Strength 14 or something like that. That would give her 19 AC. Then give her a Shield + 1 so she'd get a +3 to AC if shield is equipped. That's 22 AC. That would make her a tough enemy right there. If she then cast Shield of Faith, she'd have 24 AC, making it so that the player would have a really tough time fighting her. She'd be the biggest bad-butt villain in the EA easily. The characters would have to roll a 19 or Natural 20 and/or have Bless just to hit her; or they'd have to use magic or explosives. She wouldn't even need to be level 7 or 8 then. She could easily be a level 4 enemy with maybe 40-somthing HP if she was hard to hit and she could use magic to heal herself. THAT would make a seriously awesome villain.

But even if the armor wasn't +1 and the shield wasn't +1, Plate armor would be 18 AC with shield adding +2 to make it 20 AC. Shield of Faith would make it 22 to hit. That would STILL make her incredibly tough. Either way, the look and quality of this final boss would be greatly enhanced by better armor than Ring Mail.

I love this look for Minthara so much, I'm thinking of changing my fanfic to match it. This player generated Drow in Drow Armor with black hair just looks so much tougher and more powerful to me. She just looks like she belongs in some dark, shadowy lair; someone ready to pounce on her prey and crush them. Give her the tattoo on the neck, replace the spider web decoration with the Absolute's symbol on her chest, maybe give her red eyes, and put a mace and shield in her hands. She would be a truly frightening enemy on the battlefield.

Actually, if you look closely, that symbol on the armor already kinda looks like both the tattoo Minthara has on her neck and the symbol of the Absolute combined. They might not even have to replace it. It would work as is.

You know, I just looked up Minthara's stats. Yeah, it makes no sense that she isn't wearing some sort of plate armor.

Strength: 15
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 15
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 18
Charisma: 16
Proficiency Bonus: +3
Initiative: +6

The only prerequisite for Plate Armor is Heavy Armor Proficiency and Strength 15. As a Cleric, she should meet both of these. It also makes no sense that a boss villain would have plain Ring Mail armor at all. Why would she NOT have some sort of superior armor? She's a boss. That's when players SHOULD acquire awesome armor, while beating a tough boss bad guy.

The more I look into Minthara, the more disappointed I am with what they have done with her. There's no reason why she should wear plain Ring Mail and carry a plain Shield other than that Larian doesn't want her being too OP for the PC's. BUT, she would make a perfect villain with better gear if the PCs are either able to acquire better gear themselves beforehand OR we are given a party of 6 as opposed to 4. There are ways to make it work besides totally nerfing a potentially cool villain.

I'll hijack this slightly off-topic post to reiterate my argument on armor in BG3: its in-game availability doesn't make sense. We can get +1 studded leather armor and half-plate/+1 scale mail armor, but there is NO splint armor, let alone plate armor in the game! Even Chain Mail is gotten moderately late into EA, forcing heavy armor STR fighters to use Ring Mail or medium armor (which is terrible if you have a negative dex modifier).

Certain classes should be able to start with chain mail, and should get splint armor roughly around the time other classes are acquiring normal studded leather and breastplate (~level 3). Ring mail basically shouldn't exist in the game, as it is worse than the base armor given to heavy armor classes.

So yes, Minthara should certainly not have ring mail. She should have splint armor at the very least, but plate would also be a good option. Even medium armor (scale mail or breastplate) would provide her with more AC because of her dex mod of +1. Defeating her could grant the players their first opportunity to obtain splint or plate armor, which is appropriate for level 4 characters. Plate +1 would make it too difficult to defeat her and is too powerful a reward for lvl 4 players.

Exactly!

Like if the player could loot some good old regular Plate Mail from her, not only would that make her look cooler, but it probably makes the character more memorable at the same time.

I remember a bunch of villains from BG1, and its usually not because they were written in such a captivating way, but because they looked cool, and after they got merc'd had a cool piece to loot.

Like why do I remember Mulahey the Cleric of Cyric from BG1? Probably because of the badass Ring of Holiness he was wearing and Talos' Gift hehe. Not that BG3 should be tossing enchanted items that powerful at us so quickly (BG raced up the enchanted tree too fast in my view) but its kinda the same deal here, where a lvl4 boss encounter should yield some cool armor. You were stoked to defeat the first big bads in BG, cause they had some kickass loot. Getting that first set of heavier armor, or eventually the Full Plate Mail was an equally big deal, and I tend to remember all the locations and encounters where they were first acquired at the entry level.

We don't need a bunch of glowing super special chainmail and +1 stuff, when just a clutch set of Plate or Splint with a nice color scheme would do just as well. Her amulet is great, but I think some badass armor would really ice it.

in BG3 when you loot "special armors" you just loot a random armor and the NPC keep his wonderfull armor on his dead body^^

Yeah, that's fairly weak. Not that I would mind randomized loot, but I like when a game gives you what it shows you. It's always lame to see a really nice set of armor on a corpse, and not being able to take it lol.

Also to the image above, I actually wouldn't mind them giving us a Drow with dark hair for once. Especially since they are changing so much with the Drow these days. Drow are like the only race in Faerun that seem to have a set hair color, always white or some version of off-white. In practically all the published materials, we've never seen anything else.

I think trying to totally revamp Minthara's face might be problematic, but the difference between that warpaint look and the silver eyeshadow is like night and day hehe. It just looks so much better when her eyes are in shadow like that. Like when the orbitals are blacked out, it makes everything about her seem more menacing. Whoever took over her art design in the last patch has failed pretty hard in my view. They need to pass it someone else and try again.

I dunno ...
It is nice character to be sure, but for Minthara i just dont feel it. :-/

I mean the armor is cool, and i would honestly like it for her ...
Either that or sun-bleached version, since she CLEARLY allready spend tome time on surface ...

But she seem a little too "intentionaly" dark, intimindating, and stuff. :-/
I dunno if that makes sence. :-/

As for armor she is wearing ...
On the contrary ... i would say that her ringmail makes perfect sence ... her Drow armor was clearly ruined, therefore she had to find some replacement ... and what else should she wear except raid loot?

Plate + 1 isn't too much. Think long term. By the time you reach Minthara, you are almost certainly level capped if you've played out most of or all of the side quests, etc. So, you should actually be roughly Level 5 by the time you face her. I understand that this is open world and you COULD get to her before that, but if you are foolish enough to face her at level 2 or 3, that's on you. In most video games, there is an end boss you have to grind up levels to beat. Minthara, Ragzlin and Gut should be those characters in EA. Yes, you can bypass them altogether if you want. Absolutely. But that just means even more so that she and others should be made to fit the story and not necessarily what level and/or equipment the characters have.

And you are going into the UNDERDARK!!! You absolutely should be able to have at least one character with Plate + 1 if you did something as awesome as kill off the bad guy goblin leaders. It would be a nice end quest reward.

And let's face it, not every character can use Plate Mail. You have to have Heavy Armor proficiency and Strength 15, so even if Minthara's armor reduced the Strength prerequisite to 14, which isn't necessary since she has Strength 15, only Fighters and Clerics could even use the armor. So if you're playing a Rogue, for example, you might, maybe, give the suit of armor to Lae'zel. That's it. Lae'zel might then prove to be a valuable asset to your journey in the Underdark where you face Minotaurs, the Bullette, etc.

Yeah. I think it's totally reasonable.

Try this appearance on for size. What do you think of this version?

Now let's talk about Minthara stats. I just right clicked on her and Examined her to pull up these stats:

Class: Cleric of the Absolute
Race: Lolth-sworn Drow
HP: 57/57
AC: 16
Move: 30 ft
Size: Medium
Weight: 100lbs
Attitude: 0
Passive Features:
Xyanyde's Fire
SUNLIGHT SENSITIVITY
Dual Wielder: Bonus Armor Class
Dual Wielder
Darkvision
Strength: 15
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 15
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 18
Charisma: 16
Proficiency: +3
Initiative: +6

WHAT? What is this? This is all jacked up! This makes no sense at all. She's a Cleric of the Absolute, and she can cast Mirror Image, so she is likely of the Trickery Domain. That's fine. I figured as much and guessed she could probably Invoke Duplicity also. As such, however, she should not be able to wear Ring Mail since that is a Heavy Armor and Minthara is of the Trickery Domain which does not grant Heavy Armor Proficiency. So, absolutely, the armor should not be Heavy unless she spent her Level 4 Ability Improvement on going Heavy Armor Proficiency. If this is true, then she would not have Dual Wielder, for that would be a Level 4 Feat.

And again, why is she wearing Ring Mail anyway. The armor sucks. Zevlor has better armor than that. You can tell because it's the same armor you can buy from the Tielfing Merchant. If she had that armor, Scale Mail + 1, at the very least, she'd have AC 16 and it would be more appropriate. Just give it a different look so she doesn't have the same exact appearance as everyone else including you.

Now, that aside, what is she doing with DUAL WIELDER!!! She uses a Mace and Shield. That alone should boost her AC to 18, not 16. The only reason she has AC 16 with shield is because she's wearing dumb Ring Mail AC 14 armor. And why waste a Feat on Dual Wielder? Are they planning on stripping her entire gear set eventually and turning her into a dual wielding Drizzt-wannabe with maces instead of scimitars?

And what is with Sunlight Sensitivity? Why is it SHE has this but our Drow characters don't? I, at first, thought Larian was going with some sort of "the tadpole negates sun sensitivity for Drow so sun doesn't effect them, like Astarion" kind of thing, but if that's true, and Minthara has a tadpole, then why is she Sunlight Sensitive but our MC isn't?

And for crying out loud, if she IS Sunlight Sensitive, why in all of the Nine Hells would she
So, I say, she needs another complete rework. Get rid of Dual Wielder which doesn't fit her character and gives her no added bonus to anything. Give her Heavily Armored Feat instead. Give her Plate + 1 armor to boost her AC to 19 without shield and 21 with shield (assuming you just give her a regular shield), and either strip her of Sun Sensitivity or make it so that every Drow in the game, including the MC, have Sunlight Sensitivity like they should. Even if you do nothing else for her in terms of stat changes, these would make a whole lot more sense.

And wow! 100 lbs? That's REALLY dang thin for a person with 15 Strength who doesn't appear to be any shorter than every character model in the game. I'd expect a 100 lb person to be short and petite. She should be maybe 5 foot 4 inches or something like that and pretty darn thin at only 100 lbs.

So, I would expect Minthara at Strength 15 and about MC height to be at least 150 lbs; maybe even more. Average Strength is supposed to be 10, so at 15 Strength, she should actually be pretty toned and muscular, like an athlete. So she should have considerable muscle weight. Even 150 lbs might not be enough unless she was shorter; like I said maybe 5'4" or 5'5".

Just to go back to the eye makeup...

Look how terribly the silver is drawn on!

Seriously, it looks like pixelated glitter. Badly applied too, like how it comes up onto the brow all blocky and reflective in the sidelight. With white brows/lashes you can't even tell what's going on, it just looks like it's glitching out or something. Why the hell are they doing disco glam glitter for this character? It's horrid, and it's drawn directly onto her "head" model now.





I even tried to darken the skin tone slightly to see if that would make it read clearer, but it still looks all janky, especially with the double white for the lashes and brows. There are artifacts all over with the whites and silvers, you can see it even in the bangs here. Same thing happens with the new hair. Like the image is all rasterized or something. Its nit picking, but the modelling is so nice otherwise, that those little things grate on me. I mean can't they clean her up a bit?

They ruined an otherwise decent head model just to do this? Now the "makeup style" field no longer works properly for this face. The silver eyeshadow isn't just caked-on, its baked-in now too. Bad design choice, especially when the game already has a makeup editor built into it.

ps. I agree with all the points in the post above regarding her stats feats and equipment

Wow this really shows how bad that silver eyeshadow is; I cannot even imagine why they would do this; they need to get a woman who is competent at applying makeup to work on Minthara; they could have easily done a better job than this. When I look at artwork of Drow Females; none of them have bright eyeshadow; they all look good.

Big improvement! The eyeshadow is dark too; this would honestly work out pretty well.