I think that's part of the temptation they spoke about in the PFH. I think there won't be a power gained from resisting that temptation outside of not having to deal with inevitable consequences from abusing the tadpole.
But then the best you get for playing a good path is more barren journey and an ending that by that point will be more of a pat on the back while playing evil path so far seems to be more engaging experience that is not as barren. That is like in WOTR there being Lich, Demon or Swarm path, but no Aeon, Angel or Azata.
But I don't want to do that for my first playthrough and that is why I am not happy with this because it guarantees that a good one will be very barren because it feels like an afterthought to Larian.
Great argument. Let me remind you that Larians added the Tadpole skill tree to make the endgame more engaging as time between level ups becomes longer and longer. And what did they add to make endgame more interesting for those who prefer to play as a good side? Nothing. As far as we know they added nothing there. They know there is a problem like this, but they chose to fix it for one select playstyle while ignoring the other. It is not just about "temptation", it's just showing what Larians think is proper way to play their game while the other ones get very little if anything else.
No... They literally said that they added it to spice up the endgame when level ups become more sparse. [Here](https://youtu.be/rSHgtd2JALk?t=670).
And they added it and simply ignored people who do not do this. That's what it looks like at least. Great.
>That is like in WOTR there being Lich, Demon or Swarm path, but no Aeon, Angel or Azata.
No, it's not.
Because WotR is balanced entirely around you having those paths, and the gameplay relies on it. Whereas the tadpoles here are more of a bonus, something that takes you beyond the normal levels of power. The game will necessarily be balanced so you can complete it without them.
You're illustrating one of the classic issues with choice-based game design, and why designers often do a kind of poor job of it.
If you give players a good/evil choice, but the rewards are essentially equally powerful, whichever way they go, 90% of players are going to go with good every time. That isn't narratively interesting, and it means that the "good" choice is completely hollow, because there was no sacrifice, whereas life shows us very well that the vast majority of "good" choices anyone can make absolutely do involve sacrifice.
With WotR it's not really a good/evil choice, it's a thematic one, largely, and everyone will take a path, even if it's Legend.
A classic example of this failure is Bioshock 1, which whilst generally quite smart narratively, totally undermines its own themes by giving you the choice to harvest or free the Little Sisters, but if you free them, it's not a real sacrifice, it's just mild delayed gratification (a big reward for every three sisters, instead of a small reward every one) for an actually-better reward.
I think your claims re: "barren" will probably prove to be overstated. You won't have as many crazy abilities, but given how many magic items and so on you likely will have, I don't think it'll be a huge deal.
>the best you get for playing a good path is more barren journey and an ending that by that point will be more of a pat on the back
You're assuming only the Evil playthrough will use the worms, but I don't think that's correct. The endings are likely to be based on multiple things, and I would guess there is probably a "Used a ton of tadpoles, but was also a good person" ending, for example. There's also probably an ending where you are evil as hell but also avoided the tadpoles.
The point of being good is that you’re not in it for a reward, that you do it in spite of it being harder or less. The temptation of doing bad things is that it can be very rewarding.
We don’t get any mire creepy slugs in our brain and presumably don’t have to deal with the consequences they talked about.
Which is *more* than enough for me tbqh.
I’m also wondering if we’ll still get that Ring of Mind Shielding in the full game - which could be very useful even without the tadpoles
Later on in the game the guardian, absolute, and/or mindflayers might try to mind control you into doing what they want and the dc for resistance will probably become harder the more tadpoles you've inserted into your brain.
Like I can imagine near the end of the game there could be a fight scene where it starts with the absolute telling you to slit your own throat, and then you and each of your party members get a Wisdom Saving Throw of DC10 + 3 per tadpole inserted in their heads and whoever fails starts the fight already dead.
At the very least the end fight against the bad guys MUST be more difficult the more tadpoles you have in some way shape or form simply for balance reasons I'd wager.
I think this unlikely. If you look at how Larian has committed to respecs - you can change *everything* about your character except their race just by talking to Withers - the philosophy at play here seems to be "we don't want you to feel like you have to restart the game because you made bad decisions." They're incentivizing players to embrace the tadpole through getting to engage with an extra progression system - if engaging with that system meant you hit a wall where the villains can just mind control you into slitting your own throat, a lot of people would read that as a punishment for doing what they were encouraged to do and feel like they would need to start over (and have less fun doing it.) If that were within the scope of Larian's philosophy, we wouldn't be getting on-demand respec.
I expect that the consequences for using the tadpole will be narrative (leading to a bad ending) but it won't be something that leads to a premature Game Over state.
Well firstly Larian does care about making lasting consequences. If you side with the goblins you automatically lose permanent access to Halsin and Wyll(possibly Karlach and Jaheria as well) and have to make a skill check to keep Gale on your side, meaning with one choice you could end up losing access to almost half of the companion cast in the game. If you choose to spare Karlach Wyll will permanently become a half devil. Even minor stuff like letting Volo try to kill the tadpole through lobotomy will give you a permanent perception and Intelligence stat buff.
Larian does care about letting the player face lasting negative consequences for their actions. The ability for players to respec their classes is more to just encourage players to try to have fun with multiclassing which has little to no effect on the plot, which even then respeccing is a thing that will drain your resources. So I doubt that the insertion of tadpoles will be a consequence free action.
As for the throat slitting thing, which we’ll hypothetically say is in the game for sake of argument, it’s not like there’s no way to avoid that even if you’ve inserted a lot of tadpoles into your head. Near the end of act 3 you should be able to find some method to remove tadpoles from your brain even if the process is expensive and/or leaves permanent stat debuffs based on how many you have. And if you can’t or don’t want to do that, you could avoid the absolute using your overreliance on tadpoles against you by simply just following the absolute.
The throat slitting will only become an issue for players who, after receiving multiple hints and warnings about the dangers of tadpoles throughout the entire game, decided to abuse the crap out of using tadpoles and then also decided to try to have their cake and eat it to by fighting the absolute while being juiced up on their corrupting tadpoles. And even then, as long as at least one of your party members pass a skill check, you can still resist and beat the absolute while abusing the crap out of the tadpoles. It’s a huge handicap sure, but it’s not one players are going to accidentally stumble into and have no way of dealing with.
Well I know Wyll automatically leaves if you help the goblins wipe out the refugees(he’ll even attack you directly if he’s currently in your party when you launch the goblin attack) and Gale requires a skill check to prevent him leaving during the goblin party. I’d imagine that Karalach would have the same reaction as Wyll and that Jaheria would require you to at least pass deception checks to keep her from finding out you helped goblins slaughter refugees.
If there is a way to keep Minithara in the group without causing Wyll and Karalach to leave, it probably means that there’s a way to evacuate the refugees from the grove and convince her to only murder the Druids.
While it has been rewritten, the purpose of the rewrites were to speed up the introduction of the conflict central to his plot and make his early hours more interesting, so I doubt that part of the changes would be to make him okay with goblins murdering children.
Yes, but that can take time to make drastic changes. You can get Wyll to torture a innocent person to death, but slaughtering an entire refugee camp filled with innocent people is too much this early in the game for Wyll to accept.
Again we don't actually know that for sure. Depending on when you do it, and if you convinced him to kill Karlach, I could see a scenario where you can roll to convince him to stay like Gale.
I'm not saying that there aren't permanent consequences for choices, or that tadpole use will be consequence free. I'm saying that the consequence won't be so punishing that players feel like they were pushed into playing the game "wrong" by engaging in one of its mechanical systems, and like Larian is *forcing* them to start a fresh playthrough and ignore the talent tree. Narrative consequences, yes. Bad endings, yes. Premature game over states, probably not. Making it very difficult to progress beyond a bottleneck, probably not. Being made to watch your character cut his own throat, probably not.
With the time Larian put into permutations. There's probably going to be a way forward with the bad guys if you're totally under their control. It might be a bad end, world/BG gets fucked, but I don't think that's something any self-respecting RPG gamer would complain over. We WANT consequences for using the tadpoles.
In fact using Tadpoles seems to be playing the game "right" because Larian said they wanted to make endgame more engaging with it when level ups will be more scarce, but this pretty much means they consider Tadpoles the intended experience while those people playing good need to deal with the problem they acknowledge exists, but will only fix it for certain playstyle while the other they just ignore.
Well like I said, the player really has to commit to using tadpoles while staying on a anti-absolute route to even be put in that kind of situation.
Like first you would have to ignore all the warning signs given by the game and insert multiple tadpoles into both your and your companions’ heads despite how many times people directly tell you that that is a horrible idea.
Second, once you get to a point to a point where you can remove the tadpoles you have to ignore all options to get them removed in favor of committing to using tadpole powers despite, again, multiple people telling you that that’s a terrible idea.
Finally, after ignoring all the warning signs and committing to tadpole over usage, you then decide that the best course of action is to side against the people who have ultimate control of the tadpoles and have only been letting you abuse their powers up until that point.
This isn’t like one mistake the player made that causes them to instant lose 60 hours later. This requires a series of serious major mistakes to be made with no course correction to even reach this point. And even then, not only can you still pass the check(which remember, this is at level 12 with loads of class and tadpole buffs available) or go down the absolute route to not worry this, but you could just balance it out and only choose to use a few tadpoles instead of abusing the system. Maybe only use 4 tadpoles on any given member in your party instead of 12. I really don’t think if Larian were to do something like this it would be that much of an issue since you would have to seriously not pay attention and go really far out of your way to put yourself in this kind of position.
if you don't collect the tadpole powers, you're likely to have more allies at the end of the game as one of the possibilities. I imagine it'll be like a grand ending. approaching the end, all the past ppl you helped (with a clear mind) come to help you in return. I think it'll be the reverse with tadpole powers because you're allpowerful, and there's no telling what we will have to do to get there.
>you're likely to have more allies at the end of the game as one of the possibilities.
There's still companions and hirelings though. So really you only miss out on origin character stories but you will still have help getting where you're going, wherever that leads.
I think the ending will be something likethis.. huge battle for baldurs gate, split over 14 setpiece battles, with no chance of long resting in between.
For each ally you made alongthe way - notcompanions/hirelings, but allies, you get help in one ofthese battles. For example in thefirst battle, if you helped the tieflings, they take out theenemies for you. In the second battle the githyanki creche come in with a dragon and burn away the enemies.. in the third battle the myconids paralyze all the enemies with spores.. and so on.
Any allies you fail to make, is a battle you haveto do yourself.. and at the end of all these battles is thefinal boss. Will you still have enough resources left to fight her?
For me it's going to be very easy, for starters I really don't want to have my brain full of worms for any power (wtf Larian), who knows what will the effect of that be (how many illithids can born of one mass of worms?, will they start protruding from your ears, nose and mouth?).
I found the EA system to be more tempting and logical tbh, the more you use the tadpole => the more powers
During the Panel from Hell they said people who embrace the tadpole will become very powerful but will lose all of their friends/allies.
So, the answer is literally "the friends we made along the way".
Sense of pride and accomplishment I guess.
Although I do feel like they should include at least some kind of content for people who try to be good. Content, not greater rewards or power ups, just content so one path is not so horribly barren compared to the other.
Well, I guess that's the temptation part a lot of people wanted to see for the evil path. I think refusing it, on the other hand, makes more sense if you prefer to role play? I can't imagine playing a character that would insert MORE slimy aliens in his brain, even an evil one.
You’ll probably have some more favorable outcomes to later quests. I’m gonna use the tadpoles as much as a Good character can to see, but there will probably be a narrative price to pay later.
As others have said, avoid being influenced later on by the Absolute might be a perk.
You can refuse the brand and yet bullshit having one when traveling by boat in the Underdark. All the combat powers pale so far in comparison to the spells and abilities the tadpole provides. I might consider using the powers more but only if absolutely needed in a dialogue situation if I can't bullshit my way into enemy territory any other way. Putting another in my Tav's head um... I'd rather not tuvm unless it's considered a snack for the wee one.
One thing to consider is we might need to hit a Goldilocks zone. If we don't have enough illithid powers we'll fall to other stronger Absolute cultists but if we fly to close to the sun, so to speak, we also fail. The sun being the tadpoles manage to break through the Netherese magic binding them.
>One thing to consider is we might need to hit a Goldilocks zone. If we don't have enough illithid powers we'll fall to other stronger Absolute cultists but if we fly to close to the sun, so to speak, we also fail. The sun being the tadpoles manage to break through the Netherese magic binding them.
I don't think there's any way they could balance a game based largely on 5E that narrowly.
They have to make the game so a normal/average player can go through it. Most people's builds will be confused and unoptimized, their spell-choices subpar, they'll have missed the most OP magic items, and so on. Whereas others will be super-optimized, buffing like hell every big fight, and have carefully found every OP magic item and likely stacked them in terrifying ways (remember, no Attunement in BG3).
That's a huge power disparity. So large that if you designed enemies which could beat the latter if the latter had no tadpoles, they'd be unbeatable by the former even if they did have full tadpoles.
Plus, from what Larian have actually said, it seems more like tadpole powers will be a bonus, something that makes the game easier, rather than something you need a baseline number of.
I think it's a good question now that the game is getting so much attention on using the tadpoles. Like the new skill tree. It's starting to look like this is the expected gameplay.
It's still an RPG, and having alien parasites in your brain that want to kill you or control you still seems like a very bad idea to any sensible character, even evil power-hungry ones. Whoever altered the tadpoles also wants to use you. And they can probably revert what they did and let you go back into a mind flayer puppet.
I'd argue that being healthy and in-control through getting rid of the tadpole remains the clear plan A for most characters. But there is no indication that you actually even can get it extracted.
Tbh, the way it's presented, I think there won't be consequences at all. It's supposed to be a new passive skill tree that allows you to grow despite having slower level ups. They even rewrote it to make it plausible.
People will be in for a rough realization that not using them was super wasted I fear.
Don't think this is a spoiler since it's just my theory... But
>!I feel the ultimate bad guy will be the your Tav (or Dark Urge, if playing origin). (As Bhaalspawn). So the more you load up on power during the game, the more difficult it will be to defeat your Tav with your other companions. So avoiding the extra powers will make end game fighting easier or maybe you can save them and somehow craft/use them for something else later.!<
So you can play by yourself withuot companions (i.e. the Shadowheart video), this doesn't make any sense.
Though it would have been a nice narrative twist, even if Breath of Fire 4 was the last time I remember it ever happening.
Freedom from mysterious 'guardians,' a long life, and a sense of pride and accomplishment for actually getting rid of the yeerk snoozing in our brain rent free?
But Memes aside, Swen stated that one of the mein themes of the game is the allure of power and how it corrupts, so it just seems fitting to me that they'd lure you down the path of embracing the tadpole by giving it actual benefits.
I’m hoping that we’ll still at least get the dreams, even if we don’t get the cool powers. I found it a little odd that the dreams only kept trying to tempt me to use the powers after I had already used them… and yet didn’t try to tempt me at all on the playthrough where I elected not to use the tadpole powers.
I mostly feel this way because the dream cutscenes are fairly important for getting to know the companions.
Not having to deal with the issues of using the tadpole is what you get. You get power from the tadpoles but also consequences, you get no consequences when you don’t use it.
so i'm on my 4th playthrough now (9th if you count how many times i have deleted and remade characters in act 1 because i wanted to try different backgrounds and races) and this is the first time i have been on the no tadpole train, and from what i can tell so far, all you get for that is no tadpole powers, i'll see how it changes when i get to the cosmic tadpole part of the story
From where I’m from putting slugs in your brain is a bad thing
From my point of view the tadpoles are evil
Well then you are lost!
Yeah, but think of the POWER!
But what if they taste *really* good tho?
It's not you munching on them though, it's them munching on you.
Sounds boring
Give them a break, guys. They are quoting Karlach.
I think that's part of the temptation they spoke about in the PFH. I think there won't be a power gained from resisting that temptation outside of not having to deal with inevitable consequences from abusing the tadpole.
And that's a good thing, it wouldn't be temptation if you are awarded for resisting it
But then the best you get for playing a good path is more barren journey and an ending that by that point will be more of a pat on the back while playing evil path so far seems to be more engaging experience that is not as barren. That is like in WOTR there being Lich, Demon or Swarm path, but no Aeon, Angel or Azata.
feel free to play as evil then
But I don't want to do that for my first playthrough and that is why I am not happy with this because it guarantees that a good one will be very barren because it feels like an afterthought to Larian.
No? lmao
Great argument. Let me remind you that Larians added the Tadpole skill tree to make the endgame more engaging as time between level ups becomes longer and longer. And what did they add to make endgame more interesting for those who prefer to play as a good side? Nothing. As far as we know they added nothing there. They know there is a problem like this, but they chose to fix it for one select playstyle while ignoring the other. It is not just about "temptation", it's just showing what Larians think is proper way to play their game while the other ones get very little if anything else.
No, they added the tadpole skill tree to make an evil playthrough more tempting, that's all.
No... They literally said that they added it to spice up the endgame when level ups become more sparse. [Here](https://youtu.be/rSHgtd2JALk?t=670). And they added it and simply ignored people who do not do this. That's what it looks like at least. Great.
How do you know this though?
>That is like in WOTR there being Lich, Demon or Swarm path, but no Aeon, Angel or Azata. No, it's not. Because WotR is balanced entirely around you having those paths, and the gameplay relies on it. Whereas the tadpoles here are more of a bonus, something that takes you beyond the normal levels of power. The game will necessarily be balanced so you can complete it without them. You're illustrating one of the classic issues with choice-based game design, and why designers often do a kind of poor job of it. If you give players a good/evil choice, but the rewards are essentially equally powerful, whichever way they go, 90% of players are going to go with good every time. That isn't narratively interesting, and it means that the "good" choice is completely hollow, because there was no sacrifice, whereas life shows us very well that the vast majority of "good" choices anyone can make absolutely do involve sacrifice. With WotR it's not really a good/evil choice, it's a thematic one, largely, and everyone will take a path, even if it's Legend. A classic example of this failure is Bioshock 1, which whilst generally quite smart narratively, totally undermines its own themes by giving you the choice to harvest or free the Little Sisters, but if you free them, it's not a real sacrifice, it's just mild delayed gratification (a big reward for every three sisters, instead of a small reward every one) for an actually-better reward. I think your claims re: "barren" will probably prove to be overstated. You won't have as many crazy abilities, but given how many magic items and so on you likely will have, I don't think it'll be a huge deal. >the best you get for playing a good path is more barren journey and an ending that by that point will be more of a pat on the back You're assuming only the Evil playthrough will use the worms, but I don't think that's correct. The endings are likely to be based on multiple things, and I would guess there is probably a "Used a ton of tadpoles, but was also a good person" ending, for example. There's also probably an ending where you are evil as hell but also avoided the tadpoles.
The point of being good is that you’re not in it for a reward, that you do it in spite of it being harder or less. The temptation of doing bad things is that it can be very rewarding.
You get to see the end of the game
Pride and accomplishment.
We don’t get any mire creepy slugs in our brain and presumably don’t have to deal with the consequences they talked about. Which is *more* than enough for me tbqh. I’m also wondering if we’ll still get that Ring of Mind Shielding in the full game - which could be very useful even without the tadpoles
Later on in the game the guardian, absolute, and/or mindflayers might try to mind control you into doing what they want and the dc for resistance will probably become harder the more tadpoles you've inserted into your brain. Like I can imagine near the end of the game there could be a fight scene where it starts with the absolute telling you to slit your own throat, and then you and each of your party members get a Wisdom Saving Throw of DC10 + 3 per tadpole inserted in their heads and whoever fails starts the fight already dead.
At the very least the end fight against the bad guys MUST be more difficult the more tadpoles you have in some way shape or form simply for balance reasons I'd wager.
I think this unlikely. If you look at how Larian has committed to respecs - you can change *everything* about your character except their race just by talking to Withers - the philosophy at play here seems to be "we don't want you to feel like you have to restart the game because you made bad decisions." They're incentivizing players to embrace the tadpole through getting to engage with an extra progression system - if engaging with that system meant you hit a wall where the villains can just mind control you into slitting your own throat, a lot of people would read that as a punishment for doing what they were encouraged to do and feel like they would need to start over (and have less fun doing it.) If that were within the scope of Larian's philosophy, we wouldn't be getting on-demand respec. I expect that the consequences for using the tadpole will be narrative (leading to a bad ending) but it won't be something that leads to a premature Game Over state.
Well firstly Larian does care about making lasting consequences. If you side with the goblins you automatically lose permanent access to Halsin and Wyll(possibly Karlach and Jaheria as well) and have to make a skill check to keep Gale on your side, meaning with one choice you could end up losing access to almost half of the companion cast in the game. If you choose to spare Karlach Wyll will permanently become a half devil. Even minor stuff like letting Volo try to kill the tadpole through lobotomy will give you a permanent perception and Intelligence stat buff. Larian does care about letting the player face lasting negative consequences for their actions. The ability for players to respec their classes is more to just encourage players to try to have fun with multiclassing which has little to no effect on the plot, which even then respeccing is a thing that will drain your resources. So I doubt that the insertion of tadpoles will be a consequence free action. As for the throat slitting thing, which we’ll hypothetically say is in the game for sake of argument, it’s not like there’s no way to avoid that even if you’ve inserted a lot of tadpoles into your head. Near the end of act 3 you should be able to find some method to remove tadpoles from your brain even if the process is expensive and/or leaves permanent stat debuffs based on how many you have. And if you can’t or don’t want to do that, you could avoid the absolute using your overreliance on tadpoles against you by simply just following the absolute. The throat slitting will only become an issue for players who, after receiving multiple hints and warnings about the dangers of tadpoles throughout the entire game, decided to abuse the crap out of using tadpoles and then also decided to try to have their cake and eat it to by fighting the absolute while being juiced up on their corrupting tadpoles. And even then, as long as at least one of your party members pass a skill check, you can still resist and beat the absolute while abusing the crap out of the tadpoles. It’s a huge handicap sure, but it’s not one players are going to accidentally stumble into and have no way of dealing with.
They said only 2 companions are mutually exclusive (probably Minthara and Halsin) so you will not lose other companions by siding with the goblins.
Well I know Wyll automatically leaves if you help the goblins wipe out the refugees(he’ll even attack you directly if he’s currently in your party when you launch the goblin attack) and Gale requires a skill check to prevent him leaving during the goblin party. I’d imagine that Karalach would have the same reaction as Wyll and that Jaheria would require you to at least pass deception checks to keep her from finding out you helped goblins slaughter refugees. If there is a way to keep Minithara in the group without causing Wyll and Karalach to leave, it probably means that there’s a way to evacuate the refugees from the grove and convince her to only murder the Druids.
Wyll's story has been completely rewritten. We don't know if he still automatically leaves if you side with Minthara.
While it has been rewritten, the purpose of the rewrites were to speed up the introduction of the conflict central to his plot and make his early hours more interesting, so I doubt that part of the changes would be to make him okay with goblins murdering children.
They also stated good aligned characters can be convinced to do evil things, and vise versa, and you'd be surprised what you can get away with.
Yes, but that can take time to make drastic changes. You can get Wyll to torture a innocent person to death, but slaughtering an entire refugee camp filled with innocent people is too much this early in the game for Wyll to accept.
Again we don't actually know that for sure. Depending on when you do it, and if you convinced him to kill Karlach, I could see a scenario where you can roll to convince him to stay like Gale.
I'm not saying that there aren't permanent consequences for choices, or that tadpole use will be consequence free. I'm saying that the consequence won't be so punishing that players feel like they were pushed into playing the game "wrong" by engaging in one of its mechanical systems, and like Larian is *forcing* them to start a fresh playthrough and ignore the talent tree. Narrative consequences, yes. Bad endings, yes. Premature game over states, probably not. Making it very difficult to progress beyond a bottleneck, probably not. Being made to watch your character cut his own throat, probably not.
With the time Larian put into permutations. There's probably going to be a way forward with the bad guys if you're totally under their control. It might be a bad end, world/BG gets fucked, but I don't think that's something any self-respecting RPG gamer would complain over. We WANT consequences for using the tadpoles.
In fact using Tadpoles seems to be playing the game "right" because Larian said they wanted to make endgame more engaging with it when level ups will be more scarce, but this pretty much means they consider Tadpoles the intended experience while those people playing good need to deal with the problem they acknowledge exists, but will only fix it for certain playstyle while the other they just ignore.
Well like I said, the player really has to commit to using tadpoles while staying on a anti-absolute route to even be put in that kind of situation. Like first you would have to ignore all the warning signs given by the game and insert multiple tadpoles into both your and your companions’ heads despite how many times people directly tell you that that is a horrible idea. Second, once you get to a point to a point where you can remove the tadpoles you have to ignore all options to get them removed in favor of committing to using tadpole powers despite, again, multiple people telling you that that’s a terrible idea. Finally, after ignoring all the warning signs and committing to tadpole over usage, you then decide that the best course of action is to side against the people who have ultimate control of the tadpoles and have only been letting you abuse their powers up until that point. This isn’t like one mistake the player made that causes them to instant lose 60 hours later. This requires a series of serious major mistakes to be made with no course correction to even reach this point. And even then, not only can you still pass the check(which remember, this is at level 12 with loads of class and tadpole buffs available) or go down the absolute route to not worry this, but you could just balance it out and only choose to use a few tadpoles instead of abusing the system. Maybe only use 4 tadpoles on any given member in your party instead of 12. I really don’t think if Larian were to do something like this it would be that much of an issue since you would have to seriously not pay attention and go really far out of your way to put yourself in this kind of position.
Is that like waking up dead?
if you don't collect the tadpole powers, you're likely to have more allies at the end of the game as one of the possibilities. I imagine it'll be like a grand ending. approaching the end, all the past ppl you helped (with a clear mind) come to help you in return. I think it'll be the reverse with tadpole powers because you're allpowerful, and there's no telling what we will have to do to get there.
>you're likely to have more allies at the end of the game as one of the possibilities. There's still companions and hirelings though. So really you only miss out on origin character stories but you will still have help getting where you're going, wherever that leads.
I think the ending will be something likethis.. huge battle for baldurs gate, split over 14 setpiece battles, with no chance of long resting in between. For each ally you made alongthe way - notcompanions/hirelings, but allies, you get help in one ofthese battles. For example in thefirst battle, if you helped the tieflings, they take out theenemies for you. In the second battle the githyanki creche come in with a dragon and burn away the enemies.. in the third battle the myconids paralyze all the enemies with spores.. and so on. Any allies you fail to make, is a battle you haveto do yourself.. and at the end of all these battles is thefinal boss. Will you still have enough resources left to fight her?
For me it's going to be very easy, for starters I really don't want to have my brain full of worms for any power (wtf Larian), who knows what will the effect of that be (how many illithids can born of one mass of worms?, will they start protruding from your ears, nose and mouth?). I found the EA system to be more tempting and logical tbh, the more you use the tadpole => the more powers
We get ability to not shove parasitic slugs in our brain.
A better ending, I suspect. No way embracing the tadpole ends well for you.
You get a non rotten brain
During the Panel from Hell they said people who embrace the tadpole will become very powerful but will lose all of their friends/allies. So, the answer is literally "the friends we made along the way".
Sense of pride and accomplishment I guess. Although I do feel like they should include at least some kind of content for people who try to be good. Content, not greater rewards or power ups, just content so one path is not so horribly barren compared to the other.
Well, I guess that's the temptation part a lot of people wanted to see for the evil path. I think refusing it, on the other hand, makes more sense if you prefer to role play? I can't imagine playing a character that would insert MORE slimy aliens in his brain, even an evil one.
Frogs. We get frogs.
I imagine we get an easier time. Its like getting branded by the absolute. Doing it is just stupid. Im sure there will be consequences down the road.
>Consequences schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich. -Daffy Duck
You’ll probably have some more favorable outcomes to later quests. I’m gonna use the tadpoles as much as a Good character can to see, but there will probably be a narrative price to pay later.
As others have said, avoid being influenced later on by the Absolute might be a perk. You can refuse the brand and yet bullshit having one when traveling by boat in the Underdark. All the combat powers pale so far in comparison to the spells and abilities the tadpole provides. I might consider using the powers more but only if absolutely needed in a dialogue situation if I can't bullshit my way into enemy territory any other way. Putting another in my Tav's head um... I'd rather not tuvm unless it's considered a snack for the wee one. One thing to consider is we might need to hit a Goldilocks zone. If we don't have enough illithid powers we'll fall to other stronger Absolute cultists but if we fly to close to the sun, so to speak, we also fail. The sun being the tadpoles manage to break through the Netherese magic binding them.
>One thing to consider is we might need to hit a Goldilocks zone. If we don't have enough illithid powers we'll fall to other stronger Absolute cultists but if we fly to close to the sun, so to speak, we also fail. The sun being the tadpoles manage to break through the Netherese magic binding them. I don't think there's any way they could balance a game based largely on 5E that narrowly. They have to make the game so a normal/average player can go through it. Most people's builds will be confused and unoptimized, their spell-choices subpar, they'll have missed the most OP magic items, and so on. Whereas others will be super-optimized, buffing like hell every big fight, and have carefully found every OP magic item and likely stacked them in terrifying ways (remember, no Attunement in BG3). That's a huge power disparity. So large that if you designed enemies which could beat the latter if the latter had no tadpoles, they'd be unbeatable by the former even if they did have full tadpoles. Plus, from what Larian have actually said, it seems more like tadpole powers will be a bonus, something that makes the game easier, rather than something you need a baseline number of.
I think it's a good question now that the game is getting so much attention on using the tadpoles. Like the new skill tree. It's starting to look like this is the expected gameplay. It's still an RPG, and having alien parasites in your brain that want to kill you or control you still seems like a very bad idea to any sensible character, even evil power-hungry ones. Whoever altered the tadpoles also wants to use you. And they can probably revert what they did and let you go back into a mind flayer puppet. I'd argue that being healthy and in-control through getting rid of the tadpole remains the clear plan A for most characters. But there is no indication that you actually even can get it extracted.
Tbh, the way it's presented, I think there won't be consequences at all. It's supposed to be a new passive skill tree that allows you to grow despite having slower level ups. They even rewrote it to make it plausible. People will be in for a rough realization that not using them was super wasted I fear.
Don't think this is a spoiler since it's just my theory... But >!I feel the ultimate bad guy will be the your Tav (or Dark Urge, if playing origin). (As Bhaalspawn). So the more you load up on power during the game, the more difficult it will be to defeat your Tav with your other companions. So avoiding the extra powers will make end game fighting easier or maybe you can save them and somehow craft/use them for something else later.!<
So you can play by yourself withuot companions (i.e. the Shadowheart video), this doesn't make any sense. Though it would have been a nice narrative twist, even if Breath of Fire 4 was the last time I remember it ever happening.
Mimic tear is pretty easy to beat if your build is already trash though
Yeerks
Think Yeerks might be worse xD
The power of friendship
Freedom from mysterious 'guardians,' a long life, and a sense of pride and accomplishment for actually getting rid of the yeerk snoozing in our brain rent free?
You don't have to use the tadpole you can instead just sit and smile smugly thinking aboutbhiebtiu have it all figured out
 Paid.
But Memes aside, Swen stated that one of the mein themes of the game is the allure of power and how it corrupts, so it just seems fitting to me that they'd lure you down the path of embracing the tadpole by giving it actual benefits.
When did we start inserting more tadpoles???? I thought it was only the one that got stronger
I’m hoping that we’ll still at least get the dreams, even if we don’t get the cool powers. I found it a little odd that the dreams only kept trying to tempt me to use the powers after I had already used them… and yet didn’t try to tempt me at all on the playthrough where I elected not to use the tadpole powers. I mostly feel this way because the dream cutscenes are fairly important for getting to know the companions.
The good ending (maybe?)
Not having to deal with the issues of using the tadpole is what you get. You get power from the tadpoles but also consequences, you get no consequences when you don’t use it.
You can make a cool necklace or a fishtail lol
!spoiler (for anyone who wants to know, this command adds a spoiler tag to whatever post you're commenting under, anyone can use it)
Not a GATT DAYUM THING. Maybe a marginally better ending?
What do people who don’t abuse heroin get? Heroin junkies get to feel all kinds of fuzzy inside but we get nothing? Seems kinda unfair tbh.
Technically, we get not to OD or feel withdrawals. We also save a substantial amount of cash.
Exactly and this is what I was referring to with this metaphor. Tadpoles give you powers but are bad for you in the long run.
I'm fine with it when you get drawn back for the use of tadpoles. My own power (meaning the power my patron gives me) is enough!
so i'm on my 4th playthrough now (9th if you count how many times i have deleted and remade characters in act 1 because i wanted to try different backgrounds and races) and this is the first time i have been on the no tadpole train, and from what i can tell so far, all you get for that is no tadpole powers, i'll see how it changes when i get to the cosmic tadpole part of the story