Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Petition: Let us have Minthara without mass genocide

So - the Absolute's only interested in the death of the Druids - not the tieflings. You can see this in the reports they write up about how to subvert the grove given that it has proven problematic in the past.

A compromise would be to be tasked with executing the Druids or the leaders of the Druid grove with the Shadow Druids and negotiating safe passage for the Tieflings.

The Absolute's forces go back on their word and ambush the Tieflings in Act 2, same as always and some still flee to Last Light same as before.

Minthara - "We should have shadow druid agents within the grove, meet up with them and help them slaughter the leaders - in exchange we will arrange for safe passage for these Tiefling Refugees."

The Druids die, but the Tieflings are allowed to leave - the absolute forces take over the grove, kill or capture and tadpole the shadow druids as well and search the grove for the weapon (to no avail).

It's still evil but not ridiculously unbelievable levels of evil - the Druids are on the verge of committing genocide anyway so it's excusable.

Just as an aside, Shadowheart (not her birth name), was more or less brainwashed, taken advantage of you might say, by Shar as a child (as I'm sure you remember) and at every turn in the game disapproves of evil acts. Strictly speaking, I disagree with branding her as evil, even by association. IMO, she's the best developed origin character in the game.

As far as Minthara, having both recruited her and wiped out the teeth'ling-filled grove and killed her in the goblin camp, it's better just to kill her. She's not all that interesting.

In my first playthrough I smacked Kagha, which caused the druids to seal the grove and push the Tieflings out. For some reason, that ruins any prospects of recruiting Minthara, as she's supposedly furious she didn't get to wipe out everyone in the grove. But in theory, the goblins must at least have gotten their claws in the Tieflings, so it's not the same as siding with the druids. There should still be the option to connect with Minthara if one goes this route.

Has this already been shared?

Emma Gregory, Minthara's VA, may have been back in the studio recording new lines, or so folks are speculating after a tweet she released.

Here is the link to the article.

Great news! At least our fight for Minthara didn't go unnoticed. Kudos to everyone who fights for Minthara everywhere, especially on Reddit!
"One player isn’t holding out hope just yet, but should new content be added, they hope in a future playthrough they’ll be able to recruit Minthara without needing to decimate the Emerald Grove."

Everything comes off as metagaming when talking about it after the fact. There's no way to avoid that feeling but it's not necessarily true. It's possible to have it pointed out to you by a couple characters that without their drow leader the goblins are a total mess. Being the leader implies she knows the most about the cult, and we even see her communing with someone even more important in it. There are a ton of reasons to try and talk to her, especially when the game keeps dropping hints throughout Act 1 that True Souls don't know they're tadpoled (and with the way Larian thought it important enough to alter her dialogue interactions with Nere in the recent patch which was kinda weird). The problem isn't that people would stop roleplaying to recruit her on the good path. The problem is the game doesn't have support for it, but on the other hand its narrative support for recruiting her the evil way is to not only have a ton of content turn off, but to have her tell you herself you shouldn't have done it, on top of her own content being the buggiest mess I've ever seen out of a Larian game. The roleplay in this case is that you knock her out with the intent to speak to her more. If the game wasn't programmed to treat her as dead, that would work totally fine, just more delayed than it would be if we were doing this in tabletop. The early Speak with Dead amulet is awesome but feels like it misguidedly replaced this type of roleplay almost entirely except when it doesn't, in those instances when the game DOES want you to knock someone out to talk to them and/or recruit them later. Just not for Minthara because... because. The game even has surrender conditions for certain enemies in certain encounters, but again not for Minthara because... because.

Regardless of what Larian clearly wanted, to achieve it they've layered a bunch of double-standards onto Minthara compared to the other non-Origins. If she were some kind of secret in Act 3 this would make WAY MORE SENSE. But she's as front and center right at the start as Wyll is. They literally treat her like an object to award to you for being evil, and then gave her some of the best writing in the game which not only remains buggier than it should be but can only be experienced with massive collateral damage to the rest of the playthrough if done as intended. It just doesn't make sense. If they won't budge from her current restrictions, they need to change a lot more than just turning off the death flag for knocking her out for it to make sense.

See part of the problem with Minthara's extremely strict recruitment conditions is exactly that Halsin does NOT have a problem with genocide.

She shouldn't go there? But I can't have both of them in a group and Wyll and Karlach have a problem with that.

I wasn't giving advice for how to do what you want, I was explaining the extreme absurdity of Halsin's lack of recruitment restriction compared to Minthara.

Personally I'm fine with them remaining incompatible, I just wish the game wasn't so ridiculously lopsided about it. If you want them both you'll likely have to use mods currently. The way you used to be able to do it has been patched out and even when it worked, Minthara just existed in camp and was almost entirely unable to interact beyond existing there.

I haven't read through the whole thread, but my read on the situation in regards to the Goblins VS Druids is that the the Goblins and the followers of the Absolute didn't specifically have anything against the Tieflings, only the fact that there was a Druid circle there.

There should be an option to agree to escort the Tieflings out of the Grove (as in, hide them somewhere like the crypt after you clear it out), then side with the Goblins/Minthara in exchange for your own and the Tieflings' safety, and/or going with the angle that you want to teach the Druids a fatal lesson for treating the Tieflings the way they did. My impression is that Karlach and Wyll would be far more concerned about the Tieflings, though you'd still suffer a massive reputation hit from them for agreeing to help the Goblins take out the Druids, but I don't think they'd leave the party over the Druids dying as opposed to the Tieflings being slaughtered.

This way, you don't have to trade 3 companions for Minthara, the actual choice would instead be between Minthara and Halsin, which would make the tradeoff much more equal from a gameplay and narrative standpoint. This also gives you a way to resolve the whole situation yourself while keeping Karlach and Wyll, rather than grabbing Minthara and then just proceeding to the mountain pass, which feels like a metagamey exploit rather than something actually intended.

I concur. I would love for Minthara to be dual sided like Shadowheart. Also, more Minthara please devs!

If you don't think it's worth then don't do it. I personally don't recruit all the companions simply because I don't like them. That's my choice. If you don't want to lose 3 companions because you choose to kill a bunch of Tieflings and Druids. That's your choice. I don't why they have to change it just so you don't have face the fall out of it.

I can't recruit Minthara because I lose 3 companions. I don't like it, but Larian doesn't have to change it for my sake.

I agree that there should be SOME fallout, but right now the existing fallout is just way too much, and currently the choice to side with Minthara is basically full blown chaotic evil rather than leaving any room to still be evil but be rather pragmatic at it. We should have an option to divorce the Tieflings away from the Goblins VS Druids conflict, they are the primary factor in making a lot of players write Minthara off (if they even knew she was a potential party member) from both a role play standpoint AND the sheer amount of content you are locking yourself out of with hardly anything to make up for that.

At present, we only have three (or four?) ways to resolve the conflict.

1) Side with Minthara and the Goblins and raid the Druid Grove. The Tieflings and the Druids die, you lose Halsin, Karlach, and Wyll and all of their associated content. You gain Minthara, and really nothing else because as far as I've read, succeeding in raiding the Grove doesn't actually matter in terms of narrative outcomes in Act 2 because of reasons.

2) Side with the Druid Grove. You lose Minthara and gain Halsin, and get to keep the Tieflings alive and retain access to all of their content along with Karlach and Wyll.

3) Leave for the Mountain Pass as soon as you tell Minthara about the Grove, in which the goblins raid the grove after you leave. You lose Halsin and meet up with Minthara at Moonrise later. You also keep Karlach and Wyll but IIRC the Tieflings still die, so Karlach's personal quest cannot proceed. I currently don't like how this option is the only way to recruit Minthara and keep Karlach and Wyll, because as it currently is, the people choosing this option are largely only doing it for metagame reasons rather than anything involving the narrative.

4) Take so long to resolve the conflict in any way that the Druids seal the grove off. Not sure what happens after this, but I assume this means the Tieflings die and you don't get to recruit Minthara, but I remember reading that you can still save Halsin.

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I would add one more major option with several branching outcomes, to even out the consequences and add further choice to evil playthroughs. The major option would be to evacuate the Tieflings, like clearing out the crypt and then hiding the Tieflings in there until you are able to find a path through. The major branching outcomes from that would consist of the following:

1) Side with Minthara and the Goblins after evacuating the Tieflings from the Druid Grove, and then raid the Grove afterwards.
- You would get the option of passing a check to lie to her about how the Tieflings were already slaughtered by the Druids, because the Druids saw them as a liability after the earlier failed attack on the Grove that you witnessed. This makes her believe that there are less defenders at the Grove now, and that the artifact that she is also trying to look for is somewhere in the Druids' possession. Failing this check defaults to the outcome below.
- You can tell her the truth (or are forced to tell the truth or deny it if you failed to lie to her, of which choosing to deny that you're lying leads to her attacking you) about you directing the Tieflings out of the way, and that they didn't have the artifact with them when you questioned them about it. She immediately assumes that the artifact had been long seized by the Druids, but she would question why you would go out of your way to take the Tieflings to safety. You can tell her that you want to get back at the Druids for treating the Tieflings badly or you've taken potential defenders away from the Grove. Then you can pass a check to convince her that hunting down the Tieflings at this point would be a complete waste of everyone's time, and that you're working on recruiting them as potential future agents of the Absolute in the long run.
- Failing the check to convince her that you are trying to recruit the Tieflings makes her consider that she should still check the Tieflings anyway, causing her to order an attack the crypt right before the assault on the Grove. You can pass an insight check after failing the initial check or use Detect Thoughts to get a hint that she plans to do this behind your back. If you actually return to the Tieflings immediately afterwards, you can intercept the goblin party at the entrance of the crypt, and either fight them or convince them that you need them for the attack on the Grove instead of wasting their time here.

After the raid on the Grove, Minthara heads into the Kagha's room alone to look for the artifact there.
- The artifact will suddenly make itself known (you can assume later in the game that the Emperor is trying to influence Minthara at this point) by attempting to fly out of yours or Shadowheart's hands. You get a chance to snatch the artifact and conceal it before Minthara notices, in which she concludes that the artifact was never here. She leaves to report back to Moonrise.
- Failing the above check or making no effort to hide the artifact results in Minthara realizing that you had it all along, and she prepares to attack you. The artifact emits its pulse then, which stuns Minthara. You get the option of betraying and killing her while she's weakened then, or wait for her to recover. If you wait, she learns the truth from looking into your mind, and she can no longer hear the Absolute. She joins the party at this point, though you can convince her that you still wish to serve the Absolute after getting the tadpoles removed (and that you can personally deliver the artifact to the Absolute together with her, instead of handing it off to someone who might otherwise try to betray them to claim the credit for themselves), or tell her to consider that she probably doesn't need the Absolute if it only means she has to clean up after incompetent fools. If she sent that goblin party to attack the Tieflings, you can confront her about it if you stopped it beforehand, or she will mention that to you at this point (but it will be too late to save them).
- Halsin is killed offscreen afterwards. The goblin party in camp then occurs, with the Tieflings sneaking past the commotion offscreen if they are alive. If the Tieflings are dead, Karlach and Wyll refuse to talk to you during the party and disappear the following morning.

2) Side with the Shadow Druids and help them seal off the Grove after evacuating the Tieflings.
- This outcome results in the least amount of death overall. You can tell Minthara and the other leaders about this, though you may have to pass several checks to hide your involvement in the ritual and the fact that you hid the Tieflings. Failing the checks results in the Goblin camp turning hostile. Minthara and the Goblins report back to Moonrise, and they execute all of their prisoners including Halsin on their way out. No party happens. Minthara's events at Moonrise are slightly altered, you have no option to back up Minthara since the raid on the Grove never happened in this instance, and her captors immediately go into trying to brainwash her further, at which point you can rescue her.
- You can also just wipe out the camp anyway, and you would still be able to save Halsin at this point. The Tiefling party happens afterwards.
- If the Goblin leaders aren't killed or you don't report back to Minthara and the others while passing all the checks, the Tieflings end up being killed on the road.

The best characters are the flawed ones. They are mirrors for us to compare and contrast our lives and decisions to. The most inspired and captivating stories always offer these characters an ever-so-fleeting chance for redemption...or damnation, as Raphael would put it. How you, the avatar, react to the world and the choices we make constitutes the system of risk-reward / cause-effects that is the ultimate determiner for our story's direction.

Each companion story should have a chance to change, for better OR worse. The repercussion or impact of these decisions doesn't have to be lessened or watered down, they just need to have meaning. As a player I can withstand a lot of pain in the story as long as it has meaning.

Now, all that said...ATM, I would like the opportunity to play through the Minthara story arc, as the devs intended, just once. My current 'darkish' playthrough is now parked because she is so badly bugged. Oh well...there is more to do I guess.

But I'm not bitter, really...
R

Pls no. Everytime someone complain that "evil" playthrough have much less content there bunch of people shouting: "haha murderhobo eat shit, live with the consequences". And now these people want the only unique thing from evil path for their "good" playthrough, i mean... how about no?

People always wanted more impactful choices in games, and now we have such a game, and the first thing some people is complain you can't have everything because of choices lol. Please Larian, don't change this, I like games where choices have impact. And yes, she shoud be fixed and fleshed out more. Maybe give the Minthara playthrough a unique vendor with nice items, and a quest in Act 3, to make up for the loss of the thieflings.

I agree. Even Pathfinder Kingmaker did a great job into alignments. They will even change as the game goes by (based on decision making). BG3 could have that. I RPed into this when I noticed the game lack in that part. My 1st pt went Bardlock N/C that turned to L/E. That way I managed to RP in the game, have fun and explore the majority of the quests withouth breaking RP. If u ignore RP in this game it becomes a short way to endgame (expecially in evil play).

I'm of the opinion that Minthara deserves Origin status. Although admittedly I also haven't done much of a playthrough with her either (I am working on it though and have her saved on 1 play in Act 2 atm but that was going the neutral route), I think having to knock her out should be able to do just that, knock it out and not "kill her", So I am of the opinion that while this game is pretty fun and good, It could be a hell of a lot better and polished. BG3 feels like a small world Linear if you will. So hopefully down the road a lot of "things" change.

This seems like the best option, it's less death like they want and less added dialogue for the Devs and if you don't play your cards right you still can lose 3 Companions.

and your first option is ok but a lot of added content.

nah. I WANT Minthara to be evil. I don't like milktoast characters. If I want to do an evil playthrough, if anything I want to make my party MORE evil by actions, not less. I've done the neutral good playthrough (where your motivations are good, but you steal everything that isn't nailed down for fun and profit). next run through will be once they flesh out the evil side a bit more, and hopefully it get to stay REALLY evil. I want to be able to convert GOOD guys to BAD. that is the very point of an evil playthrough! there are few enough characters in the game you can do this with already!