Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Need More Masculine Characters

Larian give us a character that

* dominates every conversation
* refuses healing because it make him seem weak
* views the world through a male / female binary
* insults the party using words like 'girly' or 'womanly'
* brags about sexual conquests
* flys into a rage when masculinity is threatened

please :p

I would like to have at least two optional companion characters that do not feel like they pray to the Goddess Soy'alina please.

It does fit in the current political climate that our 3 male characters are as they are.
° One is a coward that is sneaky and needs finesse, even tho there are big spiky teeth in his sarcastic mouth too.
° The other one gave up lifting very early since you don't need muscles if you are tight with the weave.
° And the last one does not need his Rapier actually. He is mainly relying on infernal aid.

The most masculine character is a Spacepirat "strong independent Wamen".
While the other Woman is wearing medium Armor instead of light and she uses a Shield too, besides her magical attributes.
Always viewed magic more like the feminim way of fighting since lets face it, the average man will always dominate the average Women in pure physical ability.
^
It also makes Women valid fighters in a fantasy world in the first place.
The innate physical limit can be overcome by magical means. Or maybe race. ( Cambions baselevel seems higher as that of mortals, etc. )

The two female story characters have the most "open" and tanky speccs.
Looking back on it, that does feel very forced and politically correct.
At least they do not have horrible SJW like hair, rainbow colored and an "unhealthy bodytype". xD

But yeah a shame that even in a fantasy universe, nobody has started to get ripped that much yet.

Good point! I forgot a fondness for right wing phrases in my list.

Okay how about this to add a bid more androgen to the game: Daddy Halsin's side quest.

The evol Goddess Soy'alina has polluted the local milk supply with a substance that is turning the frogs gay. The brave adventurers need to purify the milk with a hormone magical substance that will save the frogs from the horror of homosex. The brave men succeed and, after watching a tastefully rendered frog orgy, Halsin rewards us with special armor made out of lobster shell that can be used by any (male) party member. This armor gives a +1 to charisma and speeds the rate at which one can clean up the camp.

Ain't nothing wrong with a bro companion who's a bro and not a whiney gaff.

But you did point out something that does bother me. "The Blade of frontiers"...the dude is useless as a melee fighter. Its like his 3rd considerable skill in my playthroughs. I hate hearing of his melee "blade" prowess and then seeing him look like a chump while my real melee fighter is hacking and slashing.

Hearing the companion comments about the tieflings just being fodder to goblins and not being fit to survive in this harsh world. I'm just like what actually qualifies the city vamp boy and the shielded emo girl to think they're good enough to take on a gobbo army and the wilds. Their story's don't really instill "adventure-esque" material. They sound just as out of place as the tieflings. The only people that sound fit to adventure out with is laezel, gale, and Wyll. Tho Wyll's over upped bravado makes his actual performance prove wanting.

Pretty sure that's the average female drow, only reverse.

@KillerRabbit
Thx that gave me a good laugh. ^^



I wrote about that somewhere else too, yeah.
That Warlocks are totally range-exclusive fighters & their most powerful tactic currently is 'kiting'.

You can do so very well with the flying little Fiend companion. Fly in the back of an enemy, hope there is no red "I see you" field behind it, crouch down, even higher hitchance now and make auto-attack.
While your Warlock is simply falling back constantly, shooting Eldritch Blast.
It is truly... "very powerful" °cough°.

There is no reason for a more Melee oriented Warlock yet, which makes Wyll truly seem like a joke when just looking at how he is called "The Blade".

But then again it makes sense he would try to cover his abilitys up.
When he joins us in the fight over the Grove, he acts "normal" so to say. Appart from Featherfall, he is attacking only with his Rapier.

And I doubt that the effect of "Dark Masters Pact" is supposed to be visible for onlookers.
But people would start to doubt him, if he would use Magic all of a sudden.
He is supposed to be "a Hero that fights without spells" I believe.

And it could make problems when an experienced observer is seeing him using spells, more related to being a Warlock instead of something else.
Reputation is everything after all.

@justanotherbaldu thanks


I think you are right and I think that was intentional. While WotC has been handing on some (deserved) criticism of Gygax' insensitive comments, I do think Gygax was influenced by 70s feminism and made the drow matriarchy into a mirror image / photo negative of a patriarchy.

I don't know if any of the Forgotten Realms authors have really exploited this potential in the lore but it wouldn't be difficult to write a feminist novel using the drow -- want to convince some dude who doesn't understand what all this fuss about patriarchy is about? Write a novel about what it's like to grow up as a a dude in drow society.

Drizzt Do'Urden?

Hmm. I don't those novels really exploited that potential. I forget the name of the novel but Salvatore has used one of his novels to talk about wearing a white mask -- left that novel with mixed feelings.

Egalia's Lolth's Daughters?

I've not a read Egalia's daughters . . . gotta check that out

Read R.A. Salvatore's books. He wrote extensively about drow society and he wrote a book about what it's like to grow up in drow society. It's called the Darkelf trilogy.
Also it's ridicolous to say that drow matriarchy is a negative photocopy of real life patriarchy, because IRL, men actually love women, while drow women fucking hate everything and everyone who is not them. The religious aspect is even more obvious. IRL, religion is all about cohesion, social values and community, while in a drow matriarchy it's senseless fanaticism, violence, and a pointless struggle for power and one-upwomanship only to appease an unappeasable lolrandom goddess, who will reward you by randomly abandoning you just to see if you can get out of the mess she encouraged you to make.

The original trilogy of Drizzt the dark elf is literally all about the madness of the underdark and his home world of (menz-to hard to spell). It paints the literally imagine of the matriarchs and that its purely a world ran by woman and their faith to the spider queen. A book about a woman growing up in that society would have to be pretty good book about intrigue and evil wickedness. Otherwise it just be a gender bender Drizzt.

Are you sure this new-age FREAKS understand the true core of female empowerment though? Or true female domination that is not just some kinky play?

Meaning: True Feminimity?

Drow females are highclass narcistic temptresses, seductresses and if else, dominatrixes.
But ultimately they understand the concept of feminim beauty and do not try the crazy shit we see in our modern world.
Which translates in all kinds of grotesque ways I do no even want to count here.

Appart from having Elven heritage, a heritage superior in visual beauty and allure as that of almost all other Races,
Drow females use their female allure to influence and conquer Males hearts and minds. For whatever purposes.

Drow society circles around how to have fun with the lesser mal sex or how to use it right.

While our real world feminism bullshit is founded on mentally ill hate and rejection of Men "because they oppress the poor Women".
Their beliefes are not based on female oppression or some kind of shady male system that rules in the shadows.
Drow Women would laugh at the idea that Drow males at least are somehow in power and control.

Or that they have to be chained, crippled or completely removed from society even. xD
Some of the demands I have seen on social media are so crazy you wouldn't believe it!

But to bring it back to the game. I think all races should have a different sense of masculinity and femininity. And all in all, this game needs a health dose of masculinity in one of its companions at the least. Not to be confused with toxic masculinity.

OK then can we remove Laezel for having toxic masculinity? Because she has it.

Thats not toxic masculinity friend. She's just racist lol.

I'm not sure it's racism - though DnD does have a tendency to ascribe a culture to an entire race. But what she brags about is more along the lines of ethnocentrism - to which we would need to have a world where there are multiple cultures for Githyanki to determine if it is couched racism or not. Shadowheart is definitely racist as she uses the slur "flatnose" to refer to githyanki, and Lae-zel shows similar racism in referring to Tieflings as Teeth-lings, but her overall personality strikes me as being focused upon her belief in the superiority of her culture due to her queen - and taught that way to her for control reasons - rather than her belief that her genes make her superior. She berates player Githyanki for not having the same understanding of how everything works - though it is possible her crèche taught her lies (rather than player githyanki not being aware of Githyanki culture). She definitely dominates people, but we see other Githyanki dominate others like that. It comes off as if Githyanki culture, being so focused on martial endeavors, is full of toxic masculinity.

They are a ranked structured society as it seemed tho as the dragon knight was directing her as her superior by rank, not as a male to female. I dont think in her culture their is a distinction of male roles to female roles. They are all breed warriors (to what I figured) and its all about rank and prestige to their goddess. Different than in Drow culture where its about rank, prestige, and what sex you are born as. Toxic or tame masculinity or femininity by cultural standards for the gith I don't think exist by how they live. So if not racism than over zealous nationalism. Much like Helots to the Spartans, they were 2nd rate citizens. I figure the gith see all other races as 2nd rate races.

But back to the point, apart from laezel. I think most of the other races have a pretty standard "humanistic" standard of masculinity and femininity that Larian can bring to life(besides the drow and their matriarchies).

Yes it is toxic masculinity. Laezal does everything that you people love to blame on men.
She constantly needs to dominate every situation, she has to prove herself all the time and show off how she is more competent and more fanatic and more devoted then everybody around her. She is violent, she is entitled and she is unpleasant.