At DragonCon 2025, a panel featuring some of the Baldur’s Gate 3 cast took place on Labor Day Monday at 11:30 a.m. In a large ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta. The actors shared their experiences with Dungeons & Dragons, both before and after being cast in Larian’s award-winning game. During the session, a fan asked, "If there’s one message you hope fans take away from your character and performance, what would it be?"
Emma Gregory, Minthara’s voice actor, nodded thoughtfully and replied without hesitation, “That they shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” Her voice, deep and steady, filled the room as she spoke a simple phrase that somehow lingered in the air. The audience emitted a soft hum of contemplation.
If Baldur’s Gate 3 stands out for anything, it’s definitely for the dichotomies its characters embody. From kindhearted yet vengeful to cruel but redeemable, Baldur’s Gate 3’s characters go beyond typical archetypes for their canon classes. As Gregory’s words suggested, Minthara challenges the long-standing stereotypes about Paladins in both Dungeons & Dragons and Baldur’s Gate 3—made even more compelling by how her alliances change as the character evolves with the party. She embodies conviction without conforming to morality, proving that divine oaths don’t have to come from the Lawful Good mold. Instead, Minthara shows Paladin players that the class is less about being a holy knight and more about being defined by purpose, belief, and roleplay potential.
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Baldur's Gate 3 players can dabble into the not-so-holy side of the Paladin by voluntarily breaking their oaths. Here's how to do it.
How Baldur's Gate 3 Breaks Dungeons and Dragons' Paladin Mold
When players think of a Paladin, they likely think of a knight in shining armor who defends the weak and stands for what is right. Righteous, pious, and upstanding, the Lawful Good Paladin serves a deity through a divine oath and only smites foes in an attempt at divine justice. The most adventurous Paladin builds historically serve as some beacon of hope, with little room for the darker areas of a character to fully overpower their call to do good.
Part of this stereotype isn’t even derivative of a fairy tale assumption. In previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, Paladins were actually required to be Lawful Good. Paladins had to act according to strict moral guidelines without fail, lest they risk losing their powers or oath. Through this narrow pigeonhole, Paladins were typically limited to a narrow roleplaying potential, where character growth had to be confined within carefully drawn lines. 4e D&D removed the alignment requirement, which opened up the possibilities for characters like Minthara to shine.
Minthara: A Paladin in Tarnished Armor
Needless to say, Minthara doesn’t precisely fit the archetypal Paladin role. Her role in Baldur’s Gate 3 stands at the complete opposite of what people expect of Paladins.
- Minthara’s Oath-Jumping: Paladins typically channel benevolent deities. However, Minthara swears to Lolth the Spider Queen, then the Absolute, and then shifts her allegiance against the Absolute if recruited. This mocks the idea that Paladins have unchanging devotions and weaponizes her convictions.
- The Personality of a Flawed Paladin: Minthara commands loyalty through fear and authority, inspired by her upbringing in Menzoberranzan. She is pragmatic instead of purely pious, focusing on strategy rather than holiness.
- The Morality of a Baenre: Most players who play as a Good- or Neutral-aligned character (even some who are Lawful Evil) may opt for a playthrough where they save the Emerald Grove. This means that many players will dismiss her as evil on sight. However, even in this evilness, she is cunning, morally gray, and unwavering.
Where a stereotypical Paladin is straightlaced and radiant, Minthara rejects these virtues for ones of her own. She fuels her devotion to an Oath of Vengeance instead of a specific deity.
Minthara as a Role Model for All Players Embodying a Paladin
It may be hard to imagine a character who is evil for evil’s sake being a Paladin. Luckily, that is not Minthara. She has values and a worldview that she embodies strictly, and strikes down those who do not observe the ways set forth by her deities. But this is only possible to trace if players pay attention to Minthara’s character beats. This depth can only be enhanced if a player pursues Minthara’s romance.
Emma Gregory’s performance grounds Minthara in a history that explains her severity. And how she brought the character to life shatters the Paladin stereotype because her story is built on survival, not sanctity. As a drow from one of Menzoberranzan’s most powerful families, she was raised in a culture where violence and betrayal were constant, and survival demanded absolute loyalty to Lolth. Her Paladin’s oath reflects that context: a disciplined worldview shaped by fear, devotion, and control rather than compassion. When she’s later punished and abducted at the hands of Orin, it underscores a pattern in her life: condemned by the systems she serves, forced into new ones, yet refusing to abandon her oath. Her resilience makes her a Paladin not because she embodies goodness, but because she embodies conviction.
Paladins, since they no longer need to follow the Lawful Good model, can technically still swear oaths to non-traditional things. In fact, they are at liberty to embrace the darker side of their nature. They can swear oaths to ideals, people, or forces unknown as long as their allegiances follow a disciplined and logical path. Minthara proves that Paladins can be villains, antiheroes, and cutthroat leaders, yet still remain true to the class without oath-breaking. Minthara’s final oath, if she is redeemed and recruited, is perhaps the most powerful: an oath to herself.
Baldur's Gate 3 Fan Designs Real-Life Version of Minthara's Spidersilk Dress
A Baldur's Gate 3 fan makes a beautiful real-life dress that is based on the Spidersilk armor that Minthara wears in the game.
Minthara Is A Perfect Paladin Because of Her Imperfections
When Emma Gregory leaned into the microphone and reminded fans not to judge a book by its cover, it was a reflection of the character work she had done to beautifully communicate Minthara’s redemption arc in Baldur’s Gate 3. Unknowingly, however, it was also a statement on Paladins as a whole.
For too long, the class has been boxed in by shining armor and lawful-good morality. But Minthara proves that conviction and complexity don’t belong to perfect heroes alone. It belongs to those who had answered a call from a cruel or false goddess, only to be abandoned at the breaking point. It belongs to those who believe in the infallibility of the Forgotten Realm’s divinity, only to be crushed under the weight of their at-times erroneous and all-too-human judgment. Minthara is proof that Paladins can be anything that players dare to imagine: villains, visionaries, or something entirely in between. And in that sense, Minthara may be the most faithful Paladin of them all.
Baldur's Gate 3
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 96 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- August 3, 2023
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Larian Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Larian Studios
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- RPG
