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Belegar Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:40am
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Women are better warriors? (seeking a loreful explanation)
In this game it seems that most warriors, melee fighters, and leaders are almost exclusively woman. What is the loreful explanation for this?

This is a serious question, i generally love the game but i'm new to the franchise and there are certain things about the worldbuilding that just seem very odd.

I'm a massive fan of the worlds of Tolkien, Sapkowski and George R. R. Martin, and i have immense respect for creators that understand the value of worldbuilding and try to make a relatively logical explanation for every single aspect of the world that they are making.

So with a franchise as big as Baldurs Gate i have to expect that the developers understand the value of good worldbuilding, and have some sort of explanation to why the vast majority of melee warrios are woman, and men generally are the more passive intellectuals.

What is the loreful explanation for this? please enlighten me.
Last edited by Belegar; Oct 5, 2023 @ 11:55am
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Originally posted by Thorley23:
Originally posted by Belegar:
In this game it seems that most warriors, melee fighters, and leaders are almost exclusively woman. What is the loreful explanation for this?

This is a serious question, i generally love the game but i'm new to the franchise and there are certain things about the worldbuilding that just seem very odd.

I'm a massive fan of the worlds of Tolkien, Sapkowski and George R. R. Martin, and i have immense respect for creators that understand the value of worldbuilding and try to make a relatively logical explanation for every single aspect of the world that they are making.

So with a franchise as big as Baldurs Gate i have to expect that the develepors understand the value of good worldbuilding, and have some sort of explanation to why the vast majority of melee warrios are woman, and men generally are the more passive intellectuals.

What is the loreful explanation for this? please enlighten me.

Well, I am going to answer this two ways:

1. There is some precedent for there being a lot of "strong women" types in The Forgotten Realms, especially during it's heyday in AD&D 2E. Like most fantasy settings created for RPGs there were a fair number of purely matriarchal societies. As a general rule they wanted to get away from male dominated societies due to some uncomfortable political baggage in the real world, but had no real issue with exploiting mythology like the Amazons and such for inspiration. It wasn't as political as it would be nowadays though there was a general tendency to want to avoid issues like historically accurate patriarchal societies.

This lead to a fair number of jokes about how men were the oppressed sex in D&D, especially when you had stuff like this in a lot of campaign settings, and tons of entirely female classes, kits, and specialties, but none that were male exclusive. This lead to common jokes like how the old Fighter's Handbook had some Amazon kit that had special bonuses against men based under the assumptions they would be unprepared for such a fearsome and aggressive woman, yet there wasn't one canon setting where that would apply, and instead they jokingly created male versions like the "Gorean Dominar" who would fight against the matriarchies. People needless to say took this stuff far less seriously then, and a lot of female players made tons of jokes about this stuff too.

At any rate in Forgotten Realms you have the Drow who are almost entirely matriarchal, Aglarond which was ruled by The Simbul and was that way, and then Rameshan which is where Dynaheir in Baldur's Gate was from, she was originally Minsc's mistress though there was no intimacy, he was just her muscle/bodyguard/pack mule and so stupid and conditioned he didn't know any better (seriously that was his thing).

On top of the societies you had classes like the Incantrix which had entire orders and a strict "no boys allowed" policy, as well as things like the Spelldancer class which was female exclusive if I remember, though not as well organized. In comparison there was not one male dominated society I know of, nor any male excluisive character options, or at least none that were worth playing so they might as well not have existed.


2. The situation in the video game is based on modern politics however, not on that game lore, as there generally is no justification being used for any of it. The female dominated societies were largely doing it through magic, and most of the female classes were also magic based. What's more the front liners in the pre-made characters are generally given planar origins so aren't supposed to be from the world the game is taking place in anyway.

As far as men largely being scholars, well it can be said that the most powerful wizards are to be fair men. Elminster was Ed Greenwood's self write in more or less and was easily the most powerful wizard of the world, Malchor Harpell (not to be confused with the less formidable but amusing Harkle Harpell), Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun, Vangerdehest arch-wizard of Cormyr, and others are all men. The only female mages that came close were The Simbul who was the Queen of Aglarond and Elminster's usual lover, and Sylune of Shadowdale who was dead but whose ghost appeared once in a while. So there is precedent that the greatest scholars and wizards were in fact men, BUT it was not supposed to be a cultural thing.

One point that needs to be understood for those doing this setting respectfully is that one of the reasons why there was such "Level Inflation" is that Ed allowed a lot of his friends to immortalize their favorite characters in his lore. More importantly it should be noted before they even played D&D some of the central characters are those created by Ed and his young peer group when they played make believe. Durnan, Mirt, Elminster, and a few others are all supposed to be actual people, which is why race swapping and messing with them is utterly offensive and disrespectful.

An important group to not touch or modify in particular is "The Seven Sisters". See in an editorial in Dragon Magazine called "come play with me", it was explained that in Ed's initial peer group there was a girl that played with them who became terminally ill and died. She was one of the foundational creator of a lot of the ideas for this setting. The Seven Sisters are literally a homage to her, and their entire look was based on her, and many of them are her own make believe and early RPG characters. This is also why in most groups ranging from the sisters (Sylune... I think I had that name right, died) and things like "The Company Of Eight" that were based on some of the original fantasies and stories, there is always a missing member who is always female. That's why when "The Company Of Eight" is mentioned it only has 7 members and they leave one seat at their table forever empty and so on. Someone never named always being missing from other events Ed touched on was also her. This is why people who have wanted to do lesbian crap in the name of diversity with characters like The Seven Sisters is utterly profane and disrespectful as they are not just a pure fantasy creation, but literally a memorial to a specific person, which is why when Ed was in charge he had some guidelines apparently for using a lot of these characters when novelists and such wanted to do them. Even though he's out of the loop, there should be some standards on what they mess with as doing stuff like race swapping Elminster or whatever is pretty much taking a dump on an actual person and claiming "it's an idea, not a person" which isn't exactly true in something like this setting. That is why I have said companies like Larian should have hired someone who knew this, as real fans do tend to know this stuff.

At any rate, I'm getting beyond the point which was that you can justify a lot of strong women being in this setting, and even female dominated societies, but what they are doing is purely a modern socio-political thing and cannot be understood in game lore.

It's sort of like how a few people have dumped on Gale for being Mystra's lover when she already has one (the god Azuth), and how Wyll should have been written or styled entirely differently as while there are black people in Forgotten Realms, they are from specific areas, and while no less advanced, they do have specific styles of dress and weapon choices and so on unlike any other culture. While in theory possible Wyll could have adopted the style of where he's from his background would need to be VERY different to account for it. Like in real life ethnicites are from different regions (Asian people from Kara Tur for example) and as a general rule the region where they put Wyll would not have enough people to reliable breed black people like him, which means his parents would have had to be immigrants from somewhere like Chult or Malatara, and while he could have been raised there and adopted that mode of dress and those general weapon choices, his background would need to be entirely different to fit the setting lore. This is why Larian really needed someone to tell them how to do their diversity properly.

Think of it this way, let's say you had a guy in AD&D 2E who wanted to play a wild elf Samurai, who as an elf would then also take blade singing with his proficiency selectionsso he could stack it with samurai bonuses and regional fighting styles, and of course have a 19 strength since a wild elf can do that. Of course this guy would be level 1 too because the point would be to utterly decimate any reasonably balanced low level encounter inside of a single attack sequence. The problem there is that the guy is taking a primitive elf, claiming he somehow trained in a class from the other side of the world from where those primitive elves lived, and on top of this had somehow managed to learn an ultra-refined style of artistic sword fighting practiced by super-civilized elves from yet another region, and remember even if you could make some background to somehow explain all of this, this dude does not have a single experience point from wandering back and forth across the breadth of an extremely hostile fantasy setting. Most GMs would say "yeah, hell no". Now to be fair Wyll does not have any real statistical benefits here b/c 5E. That said originally things were set up this way because there were certain pretty decent perks to coming from a place like Chult or Malatara such as free survival skills or whatever else, especially if your human, as getting the best regional benefits was part of what balanced the special abilities of other races, yet he's going to be a warlock which to be fair doesn't generally fit in with the mysticism of either of those areas, and then on top of that he is going to start using weapons and armor from outside his ethnic area. It could happen, but you sort of have to explain in his background how someone like him got to the area he's from, and that raises all kinds of questions about how the parentage and such works as I mentioned since there aren't going to really be many black people there, nothing to do with racism, it just isn't their region, and it's not like it's neighboring. The point of using a setting as heavily defined is this is the detail, history, and cultures and so on, there is no point if your going to just handwave it and let you say have a northern barbarian from icewind dale who happens to be a Waterdelvian Rake somehow and wears a dwarven battlerager chestplate. What exactly is the point of having a world setting if your just going to nuke it from orbit.
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Showing 1-15 of 914 comments
Tomas Mac Mordain Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:41am 
You're best off to see real-world explanation for your question. Not game-world.
#1
DrZann Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:43am 
It's simulating a game of tabletop DnD where anyone can play any roll they want.
Last edited by DrZann; Oct 2, 2023 @ 1:35am
#2
アンジェル Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:44am 
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Originally posted by Belegar:
Woman are better warrios? (seeking a loreful explanation)
In this game it seems that most warriors, melee fighters, and leaders are almost exclusively woman. What is the loreful explanation for this?

This is a serious question, i generally love the game but i'm new to the franchise and there are certain things about the worldbuilding that just seem very odd.

I'm massive fan of the worlds of Tolkien, Sapkowski and George R. R. Martin, and i have immense respect for creators that understand the value of worldbuilding and try to make a relatively logical explanation for every single aspect of the world that they are making.

So with a franchise as big as Baldurs Gate i have to expect that the develepors understand the value of good worldbuilding, and have some sort of explanation to why the vast majority of melee warrios are woman, and men generally are the more passive intellectuals.

What is the loreful explanation for this? please enlighten me.

Personal bias and prejudice. Otherwise you would not think or ask that and instead just accept that the modern D&D Faerun reflects in its world our world where both genders are treated equal in cultural societies. Same reflection of that goes for the exceptions like the Drow and other people.
#3
Kaldrak Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:44am 
They took a page from Drow culture and are trying it out.
#4
Belegar Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:45am 
Originally posted by DrZann:
It's simulating a game of tabletop DnD were anyone can play any roll they want.

I get that is the case for the companions, but i am also talking about the NPC's and how the world is represented as whole.
#5
BigJ Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:46am 
If we follow the same train of thought, women are terrible talkers, low charisma, and mediocre intelligence wise.

Stats have no lore explanation, somehow shut in Gale has the same social skills as handsome rogue Astarion.
#6
DrZann Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:47am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
Originally posted by DrZann:
It's simulating a game of tabletop DnD were anyone can play any roll they want.

I get that is the case for the companions, but i am also talking about the NPC's and how the world is represented as whole.
Which NPC do you have in mind?
#7
Belegar Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:47am 
Originally posted by アンジェル:
Originally posted by Belegar:
Woman are better warrios? (seeking a loreful explanation)
In this game it seems that most warriors, melee fighters, and leaders are almost exclusively woman. What is the loreful explanation for this?

This is a serious question, i generally love the game but i'm new to the franchise and there are certain things about the worldbuilding that just seem very odd.

I'm massive fan of the worlds of Tolkien, Sapkowski and George R. R. Martin, and i have immense respect for creators that understand the value of worldbuilding and try to make a relatively logical explanation for every single aspect of the world that they are making.

So with a franchise as big as Baldurs Gate i have to expect that the develepors understand the value of good worldbuilding, and have some sort of explanation to why the vast majority of melee warrios are woman, and men generally are the more passive intellectuals.

What is the loreful explanation for this? please enlighten me.

Personal bias and prejudice. Otherwise you would not think or ask that and instead just accept that the modern D&D Faerun reflects in its world our world where both genders are treated equal in cultural societies. Same reflection of that goes for the exceptions like the Drow and other people.

How is that a loreful explanation? Isn't that just admitting that modern day politics took priority over good worldbuilding?
#8
Belegar Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:49am 
Originally posted by DrZann:
Originally posted by Belegar:

I get that is the case for the companions, but i am also talking about the NPC's and how the world is represented as whole.
Which NPC do you have in mind?
Pretty much all of the good ones, only some of the evil males are melee fighters and traditionally masculine.
#9
アンジェル Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:50am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
Originally posted by アンジェル:

Personal bias and prejudice. Otherwise you would not think or ask that and instead just accept that the modern D&D Faerun reflects in its world our world where both genders are treated equal in cultural societies. Same reflection of that goes for the exceptions like the Drow and other people.

How is that a loreful explanation? Isn't that just admitting that modern day politics took priority over good worldbuilding?

With that statement of yours we know you are just baiting. There is no other explaination if you do not get it. Faerun does not evolve canonically like "back then it was not like that, now it is like this because of this or that". Faerun is created by the players with the basic lines given by the guidelines and ruleset. It is always what players want it to be. And if you have prejudices and bias framing your ideas, then you can have that sort of Faerun with your weird question. Others do disagree with yours because your statement "women are better warriors" is illogical to begin with.
#10
robilar5500 Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:52am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
Originally posted by アンジェル:

Personal bias and prejudice. Otherwise you would not think or ask that and instead just accept that the modern D&D Faerun reflects in its world our world where both genders are treated equal in cultural societies. Same reflection of that goes for the exceptions like the Drow and other people.

How is that a loreful explanation? Isn't that just admitting that modern day politics took priority over good worldbuilding?
It's admitting that modern day values allowed for better worldbuilding. Kinda like you as the player, nobody else in the game is restricted by gender either. It's refreshing to get a pretty even mix of representation.

With that out of the way, you should be ready to maximize your enjoyment of the game.
#11
BigJ Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:52am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
Originally posted by DrZann:
Which NPC do you have in mind?
Pretty much all of the good ones, only some of the evil males are melee fighters and traditionally masculine.
I'm pretty sure Halsin is a melee fighter, traditionally strong, powerful, decisive with a bit of a kink as any man in his 200s would have.

Astarion is still a frontliner as well due to sneak attack.

You can respec anyone, stats don't mean ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lorewise or Astarion would be a charisma Monster.
Last edited by BigJ; Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:54am
#12
DrZann Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:54am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
Originally posted by DrZann:
Which NPC do you have in mind?
Pretty much all of the good ones, only some of the evil males are melee fighters and traditionally masculine.
I'm going to need more than that for a lore explanation. Like Minthara should be obvious. She's a drow. They have a matriarchal society. Back in the early days of DnD female drow were much larger and stronger than the males. I don't know if that still true since I was mostly a Greyhawk guy.
#13
ShuFlngPu Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:55am 
Originally posted by Belegar:
In this game it seems that most warriors, melee fighters, and leaders are almost exclusively woman. What is the loreful explanation for this?

This is a serious question, i generally love the game but i'm new to the franchise and there are certain things about the worldbuilding that just seem very odd.

I'm a massive fan of the worlds of Tolkien, Sapkowski and George R. R. Martin, and i have immense respect for creators that understand the value of worldbuilding and try to make a relatively logical explanation for every single aspect of the world that they are making.

So with a franchise as big as Baldurs Gate i have to expect that the develepors understand the value of good worldbuilding, and have some sort of explanation to why the vast majority of melee warrios are woman, and men generally are the more passive intellectuals.

What is the loreful explanation for this? please enlighten me.
Its their game, their world and women lead more here.
*Shrug* Use your imagination. SMH. lmao.
This is just... Odd. The whole post.
Do you ask LotR why humans act the way they act the way they do? Or the elves? Or just accept the story because men are in power and thats whats 'normal'?
-Genuine curiosity cuz otherwise it seems like youre just trying to stoke a fire.
Last edited by ShuFlngPu; Oct 2, 2023 @ 1:01am
#14
BigJ Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:55am 
Originally posted by DrZann:
Originally posted by Belegar:
Pretty much all of the good ones, only some of the evil males are melee fighters and traditionally masculine.
I'm going to need more than that for a lore explanation. Like Minthara should be obvious. She's a drow. They have a matriarchal society. Back in the early days of DnD female drow were much larger and stronger than the males. I don't know if that still true since I was mostly a Greyhawk guy.
Still true, Minthara towers above bodytype 1-2. Only males of bodytype 3 rival her, Karlach is about similarly sized.

Lorewise it's about the same, drow haven't changed much outside of selune and some new Duergar stuff.
Last edited by BigJ; Oct 2, 2023 @ 12:56am
#15
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