The Misunderstood Blunt Instrument
Two Minthara posts from yesterday (this one about the glorious new wallpapers and this one about her weapons and armor) got me thinking about The Mace as her weapon of choice. If I recall correctly the fandom has touched on bits of it already, so I won't go too long on this (and forgive me if it's been mentioned already), but other than the two cited above my brief searches haven't yielded anything new. And what I got thinking about was how ditching the maces upon recruitment is almost essential.
Personally I never retain them as her melee weapons, for both mechanical and RP reasons. For the first it's because I routinely respec her to a Dex-based build and of course maces are Str-based. The second reason is because (and forgive me if I’m late to the party here) that as a paladin she’s a blunt instrument for whatever deity she’s sworn to: Lolth, the Absolute, etc. And once she’s free of both, she’s free to choose how to defend herself and/or her friends/lovers among the companions.
As noted here, the mace itself may be two fun call-backs in one—both to her EA version as a cleric and, as dual-wielded by an exile, to Drizzt's "draa velve" fighting style (and I'll take their word for it because I may be the only over-40 D&D fan who hasn't read Salvatore's books). But representing this with maces feels specifically like a reductive and more brutish or ugly choice—and the perfect encapsulation for what she's become while enthralled.
The Absolute (and/or the three Chosen) has sanded down all the complexities of Minthara's character into the "mad dog" epithet Ketheric dumps on her during her trial. I'd add (based on much better arguments by much smarter fans) that for the casual BG3 player this is all she is and all she'll ever be, especially (as she notes after Orin's death) that if Tav/Durge had killed her, that would indeed be her fate.
The mace is also a symbol of Minthara's pre-tadpoled hubris of privilege, arrogance, and elitism in that it's the deadweight of how her life up to that point had sculpted her to precisely this outcome. A symbol of her trauma. "How the mighty have fallen" is a cliché, sure, but it's a cliché precisely because it's true and happens so often. The schadenfreude that fellow envious Lolth-sworn might feel when encountering this manic, raving caricature of their own culture! The shock that anyone who knew her from her previous life might feel about how she's changed for the worse! She says as much when candidly later admitting that pride is one of her sins.
The mace is a great choice for an enthralled Minthara, but that makes it (for me) necessary to abandon when she's a companion. The mace helps further that convenient, simplistic, reactive, and reductive way of writing her off as just another male-hating Drow dominatrix. It helps any player confirm lazy priors about her, which might be why she's both blithely dismissed by some and jealously policed by others.
So that's why I always ditch those weapons and re-arm her with Phalar Aluve. It may be just as reductive, but I think it fits, because 1) it's a fab finesse weapon for Dex-based builds, 2) fuck you Lolth, this is a weapon of Eilistraee and Minthara will wield it at you if you come for her and anyone she loves, and 3) fuck you Absolute, she is not your blunt instrument anymore, and she will smite you with something entirely different and with extreme prejudice.
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