I got myself to post 10 by discussing Thor's alignment, it does work.
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As others have pointed out, no, you're not the only one. I don't mind her as a character, but I also tend to prefer smaller 'core' casts, and the current one is looking more and more cluttered. So I'm surprised that she's apparently coming along (unless she gets randomly murdered by Vampire!Curly or Vampire!Hilgya in the next hour or so).
I just hope that there's a solid plan behind her inclusion, and that she'll serve an important purpose in the story. Representation is good, and I'm glad there are more female characters than there used to be (the effective replacement of Tsukiko with Oona in Team Evil was particularly deft), but hopefully Minrah's addition to the party will be able to serve a very important story purpose, because Book 7 already looks like it's going to be overloaded with characters.
Just my take the Belkster is about to be gone six is the party number.
I'll continue to bet against that until we get close to the story's climax.
I just went with the first one that came to mind, which probably came to mind because of the Giant's comments that he purposely tried not to sexualize Laurin and people still immediately went there.
Everybody here just needs to get a good predictive text keyboard and then post here on mobile so much that "Fyraltari" becomes one of the top suggestions any time you press a capital F.
I'm sure Rich has a good reason for Minrah coming along, and I like her well enough as a character, but I'm not really a fan of the development. In general, the story is rounding 3rd base and heading for home plate which is a weird time to introduce new core characters.
But more specifically, Minrah is kind of like the Scrappy-Do of the group. She's way, way less formidable than everyone else (potentially forcing folks to go out of their way to save her) while also (at least, at that moment) being inexplicably able to push the rest of the party around. Ok, she's a lot less annoying than Scrappy-Do, but its a pretty good parallel.
I mean, seriously, everyone else in the party has spent YEARS (of real-time, admittedly not Stick-time) working on strategies and feats and whatnot to even give them a chance to deal with Team Evil. Throwing a level 6 or whatever character into the mix at the last minute is just asking them to get killed against the first group of guards.
Suddenly I'm thwacked by the memory of waiting at Frankfort Airport for my mother's flight from America to arrive so she could join me in Europe, and discovering that her gate was directly across from the bar... :smallamused:
To those who say that Minrah would be more of a liability than a help as the others would have to protect her, that is exactly the point Roy raises and she basically told him she doesn’t mind biting it.
Is it, though?
I find these 'meta' concerns for Minrah coming along to be a little troubling. I also find some people's expectations that she's going to bite it instead of coming back in some kind of 'gotcha!' writing move to be equally troubling.
Rich is going somewhere with this and personally I'd like to watch it play out. I've enjoyed her as a character so far, and what she said is true: she gave up on Valhalla then to come back and stop the world from ending. She wants to take action and help however she can.
And on a more tactical note, having an extra healer on board could let Durkon feel more comfortable with doing more than just patching up damage and remove conditions from the team with his spell slots. At worst she could take care of all the 'off-panel' healing that Durkon usually does. The Order has lived with Elan being a nonentity (besides some +1 bonuses), Belkar failing any Will save that gets thrown at him, etc, in the past. Belkar's brought a housecat to battle and he hasn't gotten in the way or died to incidental AoE. It's also possible that she'll stay out of the way in combat and help in other ways.
Well now the 5 man band (+6th ranger) is ruined. We have too Lawful Good dwarf Clerics.
Hey, Xykon got a mention 🙂
Is Minrah basically a magikarp? Like, they'll have her hit every enemy for a bit and then have her hang back so she can level up fast. In all seriousness I really like Minrah, she has a very fun personality and honestly I really don't understand why people that have read this comic for so long would think that she'll be useless just cause mechanically speaking she isn't the strongest. I mean, the most cunning character in this book by a fair bit was someone that had an NPC class!
Minrah is a lot behind the level of the Order. But so is Lien, and even O-Chul. And both are waiting at Kraagor's to rejoin the Order.
Also, Minrah just revealed that though she is a crap level cleric, she multiclassed, so probably has a decent level of Fighter. I hope she packs a bigger weapon and a shield this time. We already have a Hammer-Dwarf, she can't be an Axe one due to clerical limitantions. A Mace or Flail one would be a nice change.
Personally it's not the mechanical implications of Minrah that I don't really like, as much as the stress on how cutely spunky she is, sort of "I know I'm not the best but I want to do my part ooh coach send me in ooh coach boo evil boo!". I think that, at least to me, the lowest point was reached at the end of strip 1167, with that long pseudorant to the vampire, reeking of this forced funny zeal in her being staunchily opposed to Evil, ending with that "...and you are bad!!", that wanted to sound like the apex of cuteness, but that to me was overly childish.
Mind, these are just my impressions, and I'm not claiming that she is a bad character: I don't want to see her die, quite the contrary, I want her on the frontlines to smash Evil because she's a positive character. I just don't really enjoy her being part of the main cast, I feel that the OOTS is more mature - not only mechanically, but also from the standpoint of personality - than her. Heck, even just from the point of view of age: Minrah alwaysstroke (striked?)struck me as a 18-19 years old who's just come of age and who's very enthusiastic and full of will to do, compared to a more mature and experienced OOTS.
She doesn't come across as cute or childish to me when she does that - just as an extremely bad orator, which is her main thing so far. But to each their own.
It wasn't something I expected/wanted when I talked about the 'gotcha!', but it's a possibility that other writers use. I don't think Rich would deliberately set up a gotcha like that with a character he's spent a lot of time establishing. I also doubt she'll be a 'raise the stakes' death in the final battle to show us how really real the Xykon fight is. Whatever she's going to do in the story, it'll be something that required outsourcing rather than giving to a core member of the Order.
If it had been Not-That'd joining the order, it wouldnt have worked. Even if he's comparable in power to the Oots (debatable), he's not a story character in the way Minrah is. He'd be like Poochy. Time will tell if Minrah is Scrappy Doo. My gut says she won't, but my intestines have done some serious wrongness in their time, so I wouldn't put money on it/in it.
That is about the least likely thing she'll do. She's already mixed it up in combat against vampires and spawn, and was originally a Fighter before becoming a Cleric. Convincing her to not fight? A losing proposition.
Her dialogue seems to be deliberately clunky; I think it is part of Rich's effort to give her a unique voice. Theline, when juxtaposed withQuote:
I carry my fists in my heart {1132}
seems to be a clash in tone. The comedic-effect Ode to Brother Sandstone in 1100 established the "not the best orator" point previously, however.Quote:
-what every worshipper of Thor dreams of from the time when they were a child, writing his name with hearts and stars in the margins of their notebooks. Would you cast dreams forged in glitter ink aside to easily? {1134}
I've heard the general rule that if you ask "am I the only one who...", you're not.
That does describe my relationship with the ouevre of Joss Whedon.
Well, I guess that could work if you don't run screaming from that sort of thing. Or even if you do, but come back to your keyboard so you can tell someone that They Are Wrong.
I can't see him dying soon, either. Unless by "soon" you mean in comic time, in which case yes, it'll be quite soon.
I think most mobile phones let you add things to its spell check dictionary one way or another, sometimes even when you don't want it to. ("Just because I once sang a few songs with someone named 'Stoll' there is no reason to keep trying to replace the word 'still,' OK? OK?!")
Yep, she may or may not be all that useful in the final battle, but her getting killed there would not be a tragedy from her point of view. She is clearly not a liability unless someone else makes her a liability.
She, Lien, O'chul, and the crew of the Mechane are all expendable given that the stakes are the survival of the world. Fortunately for them, the Order has Belkar already on tap to make the necessary final sacrifice at the end (possibly with an assist from V's ability to use arcane magic).
If 20 more low level characters volunteered to come and help, and they'd fit on the Mechane, I'd probably say that the Order should logically say, "YES! It's about time someone else showed that they care about this too."
This.
And this.
Personally, I'd expect any dwarves who aren't busy vampire hunting to join with. Remember, they KNOW that if they die in battle, they get a super sweet afterlife, and they also know that there's an impending doomsday clock that might send them all to Hel if they're still alive when it hits. (Actually, now that I think of it, the surviving vampire is probably the only logical reason all the dwarves on panel don't go with the Order... nice writing, Giant!)
Minrah has the added knowledge about the Snarl, and knowing that even if the vampire threat is ended, she could get unmade if the good guys fail. Presumably the souls in the outer planes are safe, so getting an honorable death with the good guys would be a win for her.
Durkon just said the last vampire wasn't strong enough to turn anyone as powerful as poor Gontor...
but Minrah isn't nearly as powerful as he was, is she?
And she probably burned off a lot of her slots in the big fight. Who's to say she, not Hilgya, won't succumb to the vampire? Roy is just asking for trouble saying it's the wrappy uppy hugs and kisses part - he's no genre savvy bard!
Minrah is about as powerful as Curly, and luckily has these things called fighter levels that are really useful for if you’ve burned your spell slots. Also, it’s just not a really smart move to do this and then kill her with some minor character from the ending book, Minrah is here to stay (though something bad will happen, but I doubt it will be to Minrah, and it will set up the next book not randomly kill off a major character from this book who didn’t really need to join the Order for the arc to make sense).
I’m sure if Minrah comes back in an hour ready to join the party and she happens to be a vampire, Roy will let her join them anyhow.
Because he promised she could come with, and also because reading a story where people act really, really stupid for no reason is fun.
I don't really expect her combat prowess to be critical. Quite the opposite: As someone Redcloak doesn't need to worry about killing quickly, who also hasn't killed or caused the death of numerous goblins in the pursuit of Xykon, and who knows everything Thor asked Durkon to do because she was there when Thor told Durkon; she has a good chance of being heard long enough for Redcloak to hear what Thor has in mind.
Curly* was, as far as we know, a low level cleric. Minrah defeated an at least 9th level Cleric NoName McFangs alone and dragged her body to throw in the sunlight.
One problem I see Minrah having against Curly* is that they probably knew each other, since both worked at Thor's temple.
Yeah, why should Durkon be the only one to lose two levels?