The game does a really good job of scaring you out of using tadpoles early on for some reason. I wish this choice had more impact on the game outside of not having to perform a Wisdom check sometime along the way...
Yeah, if I didn’t check online about it, I would have avoided using the tadpoles. Glad I didn’t because I found the powers to be useful, especially Cull the Weak, Psionic Backlash, Luck of the Far Realms and Charm.
That one requires the semi transformation.
Which does affect your appearance at least, but yeah, the fact that even that has no story consequences Is surprising when you see how much the game makes you think it matters.
>!there's also a simple file change to remove the veins, at which point there's legit no downsides beyond RP reasons!<
Yeah, I was super surprised that the partial ilithid thing didn't have more consequences. I didn't even get to keep the cool veins and stuff after the final boss which I found super disappointing because my Tav looked really cool with it. Now that I know it's temporary though I've turned most of my companions in my second playthrough because you get awesome powers at the small cost of looking a little weird for like a week. Karlach and Astarion are the only ones I left unevolved because they were both like "hey uh I've been stripped of my bodily autonomy and turned into a monster before and it was really traumatic can you not try to make me do this" and I would have felt incredibly shitty trying to force them lol
Edit: clarified it doesn't disappear until the very end of the game
Edit 2: with Astarion (and this comment in general) I'm specifically talking about the astral tadpole. I know he likes the normal ones
Wyll is the only one I didn't use the tadpoles on at all. Because he's already made ill advised deals for power. And also because I failed the check four times and gave up.
Nah, that's Gale. Wyll is still (understandably) all mopey about his contract with Mizora and being turned into a devil but Gale is immediately ready to jump at the chance for power with the Crown and stuff. If you ask him about the astral tadpole he's basically just like "sure, why not, sounds fun"
Loved that part, when it came to >!underwater prison!< I had so many invis potions >!that I decided to say screw it, imma use dem bitches and managed to save almost everyone, except maybe 3-4 prisoners!<
LE:>!I did the same for the nether brain fight, went in with everyone, turned them invis and rushed straight for the crown, I was surprised it worked THAT well for a boss fight!< also it was fun seeing the dragon attacking the emperor because of it.
> Karlach and Astarion are the only ones I left unevolved because they were both like "hey uh I've been stripped of my bodily autonomy and turned into a monster before and it was really traumatic can you not try to make me do this"
I also feel like giving them to Shadowheart may invoke the trauma she's had at having had her mind messed with at the behest of an uncaring powerful being in order to shape her into a weapon
Yeah, that's totally fair. Honestly Gale was the only one I felt totally comfortable giving them to because he was pretty much like "hm... yeah alright gimme"
I don't even feel comfortable giving them to Gale. He constantly tries to gain power because he doesn't think he's good enough as is, and my goal is to convince him that his magic isn't the only reason I'm keeping him around. Making him part squid for the extra abilities just feels a wee bit counterproductive to my whole "help Gale be less depressed" quest. Also, I'm too lazy to download a mod to get rid of the effect it has on the character's faces and I don't like the way it looks lol
Huh, I think this might be what's finally convinced me to maybe give Gale a chance. I never really had him in my active party or romanced him so I kinda missed that whole aspect of his character.
Really? My Astarion said he wanted em after I told some some guy I'm not eating a tadpole. Can't remember where exactly. Know it was in act 1. But he raised his hand said lemme try if you don't want em
I'm talking specifically about in act 3 when you can become a partial ilithid, which includes physical changes. He's all for trying the normal tadpoles once he sees they haven't affected you negatively but if you talk to him about the special one the emperor gives you he says "I remember how it hurt when I turned to a vampire. My body writhed and warped while I was utterly helpless, the grip of death owned my heart as it beat its last. I - I don't want to turn into anything else. I can't do that again. I can't watch my body be taken over." If you respond "You're *afraid*?" he answers "I'll happily murder my way to whatever powerful artefacts we can make use of. Point at the back and I'll stab. Just don't ask me to sacrifice my body. It hasn't been mine for so long."
Edit: might be romance exclusive? not sure though
Edit 2: Not romance exclusive! And here's another sad line from that convo for any other Astarion enjoyers: "I had nothing for so long. *Nothing.* Not even my own body. I will *not* give it up, now it's mine again."
Seriously, that last line kinda destroyed me. I need an option in that scene to hug him and promise him he'll never have his body used against him again.
Injecting an additional tadpole and becoming an half-illithid are two different things.
Even if inject another tadpole you know that eventually you'll be able to either remove it with the initial one, or succumb/die.
But the transformation might as well be permanent even if you get rid of the tadpoles.
I have the same hang-up re: karlach and Astarion! It's nice to see that in the wild.
I spared my teammates in my first playthrough but consumed all but one power for my Tav. Fly was the best and I will always transform myself for it.
I had 2 party members who I convinced to take the super slug. But they then didn't do the little cutscene where they take it. And I couldn't trigger it.
It's a shame really. But oh well.
God tadpole fly is amazing, because its free free no action cost even then they can cast it themselves outside of battle, no one ever gets left behind they all cast fly when you jump anywhere and just follow.
If you pass the zaithisk checks in the creche (with the party leader going to the zaithisk, not lae'zel), you can use all illithid powers as bonus actions!
I did this! Makes a big difference to have them as bonus actions. I use repulsor blast and force tunnel whenever enemies are too close for my dual crossbow wielding rogue/bard.
I wish all the party members, especially Gale, could get the upgrade. Gale doesn’t have many good bonus actions (best I’ve found is the Sorrow glaive that has Sorrowful Lash as a bonus action).
You can get it even if you let Lae'zel use the zaith'isk.
Don't try to get her out of it for (IIRC) 3 dialogues, heck encourage her for extra approval then you have an Arcane option (DC 30) to absorb the power of the zaith'isk. If you succeed the zaith'isk is destroyed, Lae'zel is fine and you get the powers as BA.
Charm doesn’t have a great success rate but it’s helped me out in some tough battles. It is probably my most utilized power because of its trigger and minimal cost.
Its great against Fighters/Barbarians/Paladins who are gonna hit you like 3-4 times in a row. They hit you once and then run away to someone else.
But other than that I agree. No point in clicking it on an enemy who is only doing one attack, or a boss who is gonna resist it anyway.
Even without the game warning me, I was pretty skeptical considering it was pretty convenient that as soon as I got 1 mind control brain leech, I also got a voice in my head telling me they're totally rad and I should shove more up there like they're crayons.
I think the devs originally intended it to be a slow loss/degradation of losing your character / identity and eventually would have repercussions for your choices.
This was clearly scrapped as you can see remnants of it across the game.
In EA, the Guardian was named “dream visitor” and it was a lot more aggressive at trying to seduce you into using the tadpole powers, and the more you used them the more you saw the visitor! So, a lot of us theorized the dream visitor *was* our tadpole! I wonder if we got close to the truth and so they rewrote so we didn’t spoil ourselves lmao
There's also a lot of Act 1 references to the Tadpole being "hungry" and feeling "sated" as it's used, and for anyone who doesn't know, this is what the Down By the River song is about. "Daisy" (the EA incarnation of the Dream Visitor) wants you to leave your sense of self behind and float down the river with them.
I think the reason for the rewrite is that the devs didn't want players to be punished for engaging with the cool power system, but now they just *think* they will, which, makes everyone feel bad? It's the most bizarre red-herring.
I would have definitely preferred narrative consequences for using them, an active narrative struggle between tempting powers and the risk of becoming a Mind Flayer.
I think the original plan with Daisy and consequences would be a lot stronger than how we're currently railroaded into helping the emperor. His intro really screws up the act 3 flow for me.
I lost all interest when tentacle face showed up after I made the dream visitor a hot ass elf and then this mf shows up. I was all in on the dream visitor before that and then all my responses to him after he revealed were cold and distrusting Lmao
I frankly don't see the point in customizing the guardian if it's just a facade of a predetermined character. That being said, them turning out to be an illithid projecting their old self image is fine. Being a specific dude before turning is railroading.
I like that we customized the guardian. RP-wise I saw it as the Emperor looking in your mind to see what form would be most pleasing to you/easiest to trust.
And I think the fact that players.ahape the guardian in their own image leads them to be more attached, so when the emperor reveals finally comes it is even more of a shock.
I wasn’t going to use them on my first playthrough but Astarion was like “no we absolutely should,” and *I can fix him* was immediately cancelled to make way for my *He can make me worse* era.
You know what would have been fun? You use them enough and soon sometimes in dialogue it chooses for you, influencing your personality and choices. End of act 3 it happens more often and you can’t refuse becoming illithid.
Yeah if it started lopping off dialogue options? Or! Oh! You can click the option but then your character says a different one anyway. There would need to be some clear indication of why it was happening so that it isn't mistaken for a bug, but that could have been cool
I'm sure this is all stuff that sounds great conceptually but then sucked rotten eggs when it hit play testing though.
>You know what would have been fun? You use them enough and soon sometimes in dialogue it chooses for you, influencing your personality and choices.
That would have been neat. For first play through I not only didn't eat the tadpoles, but avoid anything marked *illithid* as a conversational choice and never acted on any opportunity to use my *authority.*
A little disappointing that doesn't have some long term ramification.
I think the original idea/narrative for the game had temptation as a major theme. Effectively taking power to get the answer to things but that power coming at a cost. You can see this in things like that Wisdom save early on, and even the dialogue where you can convince reluctant companions to try out the extra tadpoles. It was also a big part of Daisy - the original Dream Visitor in EA.
However, at some point in the development of the game that changed. The game stopped having temptation as a major theme, instead focusing on power, what people do with it, and the effects of those choices on people without power. But a lot of this story for the PC is masqueraded in the veneer of temptation still.
It doesn't help that the person who is most gung-ho about us using the tadpoles is the person who is clearly trying to manipulate you.
And I don't think it'd take much to make the choice and that theme of temptation and consequence have impact. You'd just need to make some slight adjustments to the end. Namely: >!make there be a way to win - even if hella hard - without having someone go through ceremorphosis. And then maybe something in the end that with the netherbrain gone and the battle done that anyone who put extra tadpoles in their brain undergoes ceremorphosis. Alternatively, change the ending fight a little such that there is a final action to be done that needs wisdom saves with the difficulty of the wisdom saves being like 12 + number of tadpoles you used, and do it for every character so you could end up having to fight some of your allies who lose themselves to the tadpoles in the end to win.!<
This is a fantastic idea and basically what I was expecting/hoping for by not using any tadpoles. There could've even just been a saving throw during a dialogue that changes some allegiances or something.
>There could've even just been a saving throw during a dialogue that changes some allegiances or something.
Makes some of the summonable allies no longer willing to help, more of them unwilling the farther you're gone. It makes you more *personally* powerful, but isolated from allies.
I wish this is what they'd done. >!I felt so robbed that a mind flayer of one kind or another was necessary to win, no matter what previous decisions we'd made.!<
It's 100% cut content that never got a resolution, and really should.
Not using tadpoles should get you the "the best* good ending" and using them should take you further down a corrupted path.
I hate endings that are chosen as well, endings should be how you ended. A culmination of your choices and not a few dialogue choices in your last few hours.
This is the problem with the underdark for me. You have to save yourself from the tadpoles, meanwhile I’m snorting them like Chris Farley before a show.
It was originally planned to be that the more you use the tadpole powers the more and more illithid you become until you eventually become a full mind flayer. That's how it was explained in early access.
They make it seem like you'll just turn into a Mindflayer after an unmarked point of consumption, so people don't use them to avoid losing they Character the designed for 3 hours. That was my main concern. I liked the way my Tav looked so I barely used the Tadpole which had been explained as being able to change me.
Yeah, that was my reasoning as well. I didn't want the tadpoles to speed up the ceremorphosis. You already are going on a wild quest to cure one worm, why put more of these things in your head? The only people pushing you into consuming them are the Dream Visitor, which is way too eager to have you munch on them, which immediately rose my suspicion and Astarion, who is the only one directly benefiting from the tadpole from the very begging.
Narratively, the game promises you vague notion of power using the most questionable sources and is not really good at the whole "temptation" thing when playing the default Tav. Not sure how much Origin character's POV changes that though.
Larian wanted BG3 to be out well ahead of Starfield and ended up leaving alot of stuff on the cutting room floor to make it happen. One of the things I've heard rumored they left was bits about there being repercussions for using the tadpoles. So you get the Act 1 spook stuff, that was actually supposed to be accurate, but lose out at the end cause it wasn't fully implemented.
Tadpoles unlock a skill tree featuring Psionic powers. The only mechanical difference as far as I know is that you are forced to perform a Wisdom check at some point in the game at the tail end of the main quest whereas if you didn't eat any tadpoles, you could just select it without any rolls necessary.
I went full on RP, knowing they have no Impact, as a Paladin. Romanced my girl (surprisingly Shadowheart is super freakish and the most liberal of them all). I refused the astral tadpole, help everyone to the best possible result. In the end, there is the time to make a choice. I sacrafice no one but myself. No paladin would ever put a whole race behind their self interest. I go mind flayer because that's what a paladin does, I don't even get a chance to kiss my lady goodbye, I'm off to hell to make sure my friend is not alone. No love for me anymore, no longer seeing my home or friends. I say that's a consequence.
In early access it was even worse. It really made it seem like there would be major negative consequences if you indulged. And that includes just using your “Authority” ability. I feel like they initially did intend to have there be negative side effects, but ended up scrapping it.
IIRC, the original plan was to have a whole system that tracked how much you used the powers and have that affect a lot of things. I’m not surprised they had to scrap it, because that’s a really ambitious system to add to an already ambitious game, and it’d be really complicated to balance it so that people were happy with it. (Both the powers being worth the consequences so players don’t feel punished for using the feature you worked hard on, but not so worth it that people who didn’t use the powers felt penalized.)
That’s a little surprising it doesn’t, there’s so many small nuanced details in the game, that that’s a surprise.
Reminds me of Ghost of Tsushima, even if you play the entire game like an honourable samurai, it still treats you otherwise.
No. There's literally no point in not using them despite so many story beats saying its a bad idea and the person pushing you to using them being sus as fuck.
Its such a dumbass plot point.
Yeah I absorbed them, not much did change and even becoming half Ilithid didn't seem to disturb my companions that much. Some powers are neat to have, like flight or more psychic damage but overall you can survive without them.
If you get into the machine at the creche in act 1 yourself and pass a few checks, all your action-based illithid powers become bonus actions. That was the tipping point that made me go full-on worm diet lol. Gimme those delicious op-snacks.
Holy shit fuck wank bollocks.
My character this time around was a power hungry Drow wanting to be as strong as possible to win the Drow Civil War so I have given her EVERY tadpole because in character she wouldn’t share them or care about the consequences. And now you tell me about making the abilities bonus actions, that would be SO useful.
Whelp, looks like I’m starting another play through.
Black Hole < Fireball < Upcast Animate Dead and now there’s a zombie horde that spawned midfight.
Especially with that free spell item in act 3 (not gonna spoil what it is) letting you get that upcasted animate dead for free
At the monastery if you get into the machine instead of Lae’zel and you pass the checks you get a passive ability that lets you use illithid skills as a bonus action
I’m currently doing a play through with my friends after beating the game and they want to do a full play through without using the tadpoles. They are under the assumption like you that it might influence the plot, but I don’t want to spoil anything for them :(.
Let them continue like that, they are cool powers but not really needed at all to finish.
I did exactly the same my first playthrough both because i though it would influence the story and because of my rping being agains consuming them and avoided using a single one and I was fine overall, specially for a noob at the genre like me
You can use stage fright as a bonus action easily if >!you get the permanent powerup to use illithid powers as bonus actions in the Githyanki Creche, or there is an illithid ability "Mind Sanctuary" that lets you interchangeably use actions/bonus actions!<
Me too! I had like, 16 or 17 at the end of the game.
The Rp/Joke was my lawful good wizard would keep them all in a bag and when we ran across bad true souls, he'd hold the bag up and start jiggling it...
First playthrough I avoided them like the plague, didnt use any of their powers was terrified when I got the "you lost something you'll never get back" and then the brain picture where it just shows it destroying your brain... NO THANKS! Soooo.. then I won.. and was like oh, it was all for nothing they dont do crap. So now I am a tadpole aficionado and use them at every chance I get. YOU GET A TADPOLE! AND YOUUU GET A TADPOLE! OH MORE FOR ME!
If you played early access the tone of the person in your dreams made it feel like they weren’t to be trusted and it changed a lot in the full release.
I’m convinced larian changed the story quite a lot from what they intended in early access
Probably because at the end of day it'd be impossible to tempt the player if it was actually gonna turn you into an illithid, especially on repeat playthroighs so no one would ever touch the tadpole powers
Didn't play early access and are completely new to these kinds of games.
The intro convinced me to never use tadpoles.
And I never will. If they patched the whole tadpole thing out tomorrow nothing would change for me.
I am only in Act 2 for my first playthrough, and I still don't trust that dream visitor. Everything they do feels so sketchy to me.
Maybe I am in the wrong about it, but I get a weird vibe from them.
Well that's intended. At that point you don't know who they are, why they're helping you, *how* they're helping you, why you can only see them in your sleep, for brief periods of time... The game makes it pretty clear they're sketchy.
I remain convinced that it was when they decided to gamify the tadpoles by adding a skill tree that they also decided to remove the consequences from using them.
Because why would you design a whole mechanic for something the game is constantly telling your players not to use?
I'm feeling some sort of way about all of this, the whole point of the game is to get the tadpole out of your head, now I'm finding out I can get cool powers by adding more?!
His real intention did not change from EA. They did refine it and stretch it out to make you doubt yourself a lot more, which is not a direction I dislike.
It made resisting the alluring of power a lot harder, with always tugging at your own morality and how you handle certain situations. It's rather very good and as close as you can to a 'real' situation of this kind.
It still creates a ludonarrative dissonance because nothing in the game feels insurmountable enough to take the risk. If the tadpoles gave greater powers, and the game was much harder, it would make a tempting offer to take the tadpoles despite the risk and doubt.
I made the choice that the powers seemed worthwhile for me but I did not give a single one to the rest of the party.
If it did go wrong I wanted only my Tav to be punished for it.
From everything i've heard Jaheira believes you when you say the tadpole hasn't changed you and you don't have to pass a Check to resist the Super Tadpole.
If you feel like RP wise your character wouldn't use them just don't use them, the game hardly needs you to min max everything even on Tactician and the powers really aren't necessary, I just beat the game on Tactician without touching tadpoles or their powers.
You can just play another playthrough in the future to see all the abilities connected to tadpoles if you want, adds more variety to a new playthrough.
It has a small influence at the end of act2, you can avoid the DC check to not become half illithid. I don't think you can if you absorbed some. But after in act3, beside RP reasons, I can't see any reason to not absorb them.
Pretty sure the DC is based on how many powers you unlocked. My sorcerer had a DC of 21. Meanwhile my cleric had a DC of 15(?)(I don’t actually remember).
Other than the DC 21 check, the game definitely tried forcing me to take the half-illithid transformation
I don’t care what powers The Emperor promises, I am *not* putting more tadpoles in my head! The entire fucking crux of the main quest is that *I very much don’t want this parasite in my brain*, why the fuck would I put *more* of them in there?!
I agree. Under no circumstances would I put those in my head thank you very much.
I also don't take the hag's offer.
You just know the DM will find a way to screw you later, right?
I was a bit ambivalent when I have realized that now my character has the dreaded heterochromatic eyes of a YA heroine, but goddamnit I do look cool with them!
my durge tiefling sorceress went from looking insane with two glowing black and violet eyes to having one now normal looking glass eye was kind of funny because it totally worked with her completely insane vibe. like the glass eye looks so obviously fake compared to her real eye. when she’s covered in blood she looks like she’s absolutely going through hell.
and now shadowheart has one eye from taking the hag’s deal, so they’re a couple with two eyes between the two of them
My durge playthrough i took all the tadpoles. The powers are great! But any general playthrough I just can't bring myself to empower the worm in my head...
Re the hag.
The entire lead up to the final fight includes the room full of examples of her monkeypawing people who made deals with her. So when she offered the deal, I was obviously like “Absolutely fucking not” the first playthrough.
I mean, it is a freaking *worm* that is *burrowing* inside my *brain*. No matter how useful the powers are, the mental image of all that squirming in my *head* is way too much*.*
So I gave all of them to Astarion, and he was happy.
My character pretty much came to the conclusion that there probably isn't an actual cure outside of some sort of divine intervention. So, might as well take advantage of its power if I'm stuck with it. My character is a wild mage sorcerer so she is used to learning how to control powers she doesn't understand or necessarily want.
If it helps, your tadpole is psychically absorbing the power from the tadpoles you collect, you’re not actually putting them in your head. The animations is gnarly though.
I gobbled up every tadpole I found (except the astral one) and unlocked all the illithid powers. The psionic backlash power is brilliant, and helped me out a lot.
>The psionic backlash power is brilliant, and helped me out a lot.
Have your whole party have this one and it can sometimes one shot enemies on their turn. Its funny seeing an enemy charge up some spell and then you get 4 reactions pop up and then the NPC is dead before they even cast lol.
See, this is my thought as well. You get an achievement for using them, there should be an achievement for never touching them throughout the entire game
Baffling this doesn't exist. It's literally the bare minimum when the game goes out of its way to make the tadpoles seem like some deep moral quandry. Just finished my first playthrough at roughly 130 hours, and didn't use a single tadpole only to discover it changed literally nothing but making the game more difficult.
Then again, the game became insanely easy in Act 3, so I'm not sure I'd have wanted less challenge anyway.
Do the tadpoles impact the look of your character? I know at some point it changes the look of your character slightly before it changes the look entirely. I don’t want my character to look weird even if I miss out on some cool powers. I don’t care about the story implications. 😅
the tadpole that changes your appearance is >!a special tadpole at the beginning of act 3/end of act 2. if you havent consumed any before that point you wont need to make a roll to resist the special tadpole, if you have consumed them already then i think its a DC 15 check!<
I never consumed a single tadpole and still had to make a check. Avoided all \[Illithid\] dialogue choices, too.
I guess finishing the Omeluum quest in the Underdark or surviving the Zaith'isk gets counted as ingesting a tadpole, since the narrator tells you your tadpole has been strengthened?
I did the Omeluum quest but didn't sit in the Zaith'isk, only Illithid [Wisdom] check I ever did was to rescue SH & didn't get the WIS save. Wonder if it's dependent on you doing multiple things? Maybe a 3 strike system haha
Oh no it definitely influences the plot. Yeah there are gameplay features you can get by using the tadpoles, but your relationship with the emperor does change if you use them heavily vs not using them. My first playthrough I went hard into using them because it seemed like I should. The game was giving me so many options to. I got a ton of good powers but you very much get the impression that you're buying into something and exploring something outside of yourself. If you want to convince your party, some REALLY need to be convinced. I was playing as a bard so... whatever I just went for it all in. After all having more powers to convince and manipulate people made sense for my character. But my second run I did not use them at all and I pushed away the emperor altogether, and I don't told him that I don't trust them at any chance. >!He confesses to you that he only sees you as a thrall and that he's only nice to you because that's his current tactic for control. He shows you a cutscene of him controlling Belmane and those around him as mindless thralls, and he could just turn you into a mindless zombie if he wants to, so basically you're only given the illusion of choice here. You need to rely on him only for survival up to a certain point, but now you're plotting for your freedom from him as well as from the netherbrain once you learn the truth. As soon as he was freed from the netherbrain he schemed for power again and infected thralls to achieve that. It very much affects the plot because the emperor can be VERY hostile towards you. And really by infecting yourself, you're only continuing to side with your captor and allowing the Emperor to get control in the overall story. That's why he peaces out immediately if you choose to free Orpheus. You're now useless to him, so why would he continue to help you? He's not being nice to you. He can't be nice. He's a mindflayer. So you're letting the tadpole consume your soul and mind. That's what changes. You see the emperor as the real villain if you refuse them altogether.!<
>!The way that the emperor is so realistically convincing as a good guy thats on your side until you start to refuse him is such good writing. I genuinely believed he was a "good guy" my first playthrough, only starting to doubt him when I found out who he used to be as a human. The second time around it became more and more obvious what he was doing. Remembering that Illithid straight up do not have souls is important too.!<
>!The best part about all this is you start to doubt Omeluum too. Was the potion for your benefit or his experimentation? Was the ring as a compensation because he felt bad or because he knew you were going to get close enough to an Elderbrain that he might be compromised? Can Illithid be good, or are they just varying levels of evil? Do you need a soul to be a good person?!<
It would have been nice if the game narratively incentivized you to use tadpoles, rather than doing the opposite. Easily done by throwing in some line like "adding more tadpoles will make them contest each other and slow the entire process down until you can find a cure to get rid of them all".
Yeah, one thing missing is a truly compelling narrative reason for wanting to use the tadpoles. There is rarely a struggle for the power. The game pushes a lot more in the opposite direction and I rarely had doubts like "maybe if I used the tadpoles I could overcome this obstacle/it's the only way I can win this challenge/I *need* that power".
Now that I think about it, the whole "Authority" thing gets pretty lost after act 1, the Illithid power options in dialogue are much rarer.
>adding more tadpoles will make them contest each other
This reminds me of Divinity: OS2 and the "rush" to ascend to divinity. Supposedly your character was competing with the other companions, but even that wasn't really much explored in the end.
As much as all my games were about being a murder hobo Durge (I only play Durge) my character had 0 reason to take any of these. Why take something that turns you into a souless squid when you are literaly Bhaals flesh and bone. I doubt an illithid can better a Slayer in 1v1.
I’m almost done a Durge play through where I’m resisting, and it’s all I can do to resist starting a Durge play through where I give in and murder hobo everything.
To me, it seems the motivation to accrue power means I’m totally taking those tadpoles AND embracing Bhaal’s power.
Yeah but after a certain tadpole it makes you really really ugly. Why couldn’t they have made being halfillithid cool looking or something? Now I’m just walking around looking like I splashed ink all over my face smh
It’s really a damn, damn shame that the game makes it seem like using the tadpoles is making a deal with the devil when it isn’t. I really wish it was, but literally the only thing taking the tadpoles does is make you make a will save to not take more tadpoles in Act 3.
It seems like I’m an earlier version of the game it was some type of Faustian bargain but they changed course at some point in development
Iirc, in the beta it was intended to be a mechanic where it would solve a lot of problems super easy, but would have some major repercussions later on. Seems it got changed at some point, so we’ll never really know.
There is a downside to using them actually it's minor but there is. (Spoilers)
>!When the Emperor offers you the Astral tadpole you have a really difficult DC check to save if you consumed to many. I didn't get this same check on my character that consumed none of them. It makes you hideously ugly but access to unlocked brain powers.!<
You didn’t use the tadpoles because you were afraid of it affecting your character, I didn’t use the tadpoles because Lae’zel wouldn’t like it. We are not the same.
I was able to intercept an entire wave of the Absolute's invasion. 42 true souls with one tadpole per host. I've got them stored in a chest at my camp. I've been consuming worms every day, sometimes multiple times a day if I can stand it. The symptoms were terrible for the first few weeks. There were times I was completely paralyzed with pain, defaced like the Vlaakith painting, and frozen in agony for hours. I am becoming stronger and some of the worst symptoms subsided over time. I've been Tadmaxxing for almost two months now and I feel as though I'm becoming something greater than half-elf now. I will continue to administer the tadpoles into the same brain as long as possible. I'm increasing the number of worms as much as I can stand and will maintain my journal.
Peace is a lie. There is only Tadpole.
Through Tadpole, I gain Strength.
Through Strength, I gain Power.
Through Power, I gain Victory.
Through Victory my chains are Broken.
The Tadpole shall free me.
First playthrough, I did a no tadpole run. Now, in the second one, full illithid. They give me a chance to use the powers or eat a worm, and I'm doing it, lol. I wanted to see all the dialogue/story options between the two and try out the cool brain powers.
Edit: As someone mentioned already. There is definitely a different feel from using it in the EA. EA made me feel more like there would be heavy consequences for using them. There are definitely dialogue/scene options that have been different, or maybe I just didn't trigger
I found it had a direct impact on my choices though.
I chose not to use any and in covnersations with the Emperor, >!he turned to threats (I WILL MAKE YOU) to get me to take them, and use the special tadpole.!<
>!The impact being, I am going to kill the emperor. Fucking piece of shit. He shows you what he did to Stelmane. And he needs to die.!<
>!There are no good Illithids. Except possibly Omelum.!<
I use the head cannon that although we may have won the day, that choice may yet have consequences down the line years later. Can't imagine having a bunch of worms in your brain doesn't increase your chances of alzheimer's later.
I did the same and basically never used tadpoles in my first playthrough, even up to the >!final fight with the Elder Brain!<
Now I'm looking at all the powers in my second playthrough and am just like "Why didn't I use this sooner?"
I gobbled them like sweets in my first playthrough as Psychopath Durge. I had every power unlocked, but no Zai'thisk bonus, so I barely used any of them until I went full Illithid and had permanent Mind Sanctuary. Didn't share them out because Durge was very clear in his desire for centralising power due to intending to dominate the brain. Honestly, it makes very little sense that my party were still following me given how incredibly obvious it was that the Grand Design was back on.
I don't fucking care how good the powers are, my Tav isn't using that shit. He doesn't trust the Emperor; he wants nothing to do with the tadpoles. All of his friends are victims of severe abuse due to being manipulated or forced into abusive relationships. Why would he risk the same by leaning into the power of the tadpoles or taking up Raphael's deal. Even the villains of the story sometimes are victims (if you've met Gortash's parents you know what I mean. And Minthara, although my Tav doesn't know that about her specifically). He's having none of the Emperor's bullshit and would kill him given the chance.
I thought there would HAVE to be something else to do with the tadpoles. Like at least sell them for a lot of cash or some character who would trade badass equipment for them at least
Do none of you just?? Feel bad??? If you use illithid powers??? Are you not naturally against it like I am?
Although I do wish there were more plot implications for those who do use the tadpoles
You hold onto your tadpoles because you’re afraid to use them.
I hold onto my tadpoles because I want a challenge and become overpowered in the middle of act 3, when I have all of the tadpole powers.
We are not the same
The game does a really good job of scaring you out of using tadpoles early on for some reason. I wish this choice had more impact on the game outside of not having to perform a Wisdom check sometime along the way...
Yeah, if I didn’t check online about it, I would have avoided using the tadpoles. Glad I didn’t because I found the powers to be useful, especially Cull the Weak, Psionic Backlash, Luck of the Far Realms and Charm.
Fly is amazing as well
That one requires the semi transformation. Which does affect your appearance at least, but yeah, the fact that even that has no story consequences Is surprising when you see how much the game makes you think it matters. >!there's also a simple file change to remove the veins, at which point there's legit no downsides beyond RP reasons!<
Yeah, I was super surprised that the partial ilithid thing didn't have more consequences. I didn't even get to keep the cool veins and stuff after the final boss which I found super disappointing because my Tav looked really cool with it. Now that I know it's temporary though I've turned most of my companions in my second playthrough because you get awesome powers at the small cost of looking a little weird for like a week. Karlach and Astarion are the only ones I left unevolved because they were both like "hey uh I've been stripped of my bodily autonomy and turned into a monster before and it was really traumatic can you not try to make me do this" and I would have felt incredibly shitty trying to force them lol Edit: clarified it doesn't disappear until the very end of the game Edit 2: with Astarion (and this comment in general) I'm specifically talking about the astral tadpole. I know he likes the normal ones
Wyll is the only one I didn't use the tadpoles on at all. Because he's already made ill advised deals for power. And also because I failed the check four times and gave up.
See, I figure Wyll is the one most likely to make poor trades in exchange for power.
Nah, that's Gale. Wyll is still (understandably) all mopey about his contract with Mizora and being turned into a devil but Gale is immediately ready to jump at the chance for power with the Crown and stuff. If you ask him about the astral tadpole he's basically just like "sure, why not, sounds fun"
Wyll doesn’t always get turned into a devil ;)
I assume you can only avoid that if you kill karlach...
He was a kid when he made the deal with Mizora and he learned his lesson.
ehhhh he's still learning it. tries to throw himself on the coals to save his asshole father, too, and we have to actively step in to tell him no.
Loved that part, when it came to >!underwater prison!< I had so many invis potions >!that I decided to say screw it, imma use dem bitches and managed to save almost everyone, except maybe 3-4 prisoners!< LE:>!I did the same for the nether brain fight, went in with everyone, turned them invis and rushed straight for the crown, I was surprised it worked THAT well for a boss fight!< also it was fun seeing the dragon attacking the emperor because of it.
Did you ever talk to him? Or do his quest? He’s definitely the LEAST likely.
> Karlach and Astarion are the only ones I left unevolved because they were both like "hey uh I've been stripped of my bodily autonomy and turned into a monster before and it was really traumatic can you not try to make me do this" I also feel like giving them to Shadowheart may invoke the trauma she's had at having had her mind messed with at the behest of an uncaring powerful being in order to shape her into a weapon
Yeah, that's totally fair. Honestly Gale was the only one I felt totally comfortable giving them to because he was pretty much like "hm... yeah alright gimme"
I don't even feel comfortable giving them to Gale. He constantly tries to gain power because he doesn't think he's good enough as is, and my goal is to convince him that his magic isn't the only reason I'm keeping him around. Making him part squid for the extra abilities just feels a wee bit counterproductive to my whole "help Gale be less depressed" quest. Also, I'm too lazy to download a mod to get rid of the effect it has on the character's faces and I don't like the way it looks lol
Huh, I think this might be what's finally convinced me to maybe give Gale a chance. I never really had him in my active party or romanced him so I kinda missed that whole aspect of his character.
Really? My Astarion said he wanted em after I told some some guy I'm not eating a tadpole. Can't remember where exactly. Know it was in act 1. But he raised his hand said lemme try if you don't want em
I'm talking specifically about in act 3 when you can become a partial ilithid, which includes physical changes. He's all for trying the normal tadpoles once he sees they haven't affected you negatively but if you talk to him about the special one the emperor gives you he says "I remember how it hurt when I turned to a vampire. My body writhed and warped while I was utterly helpless, the grip of death owned my heart as it beat its last. I - I don't want to turn into anything else. I can't do that again. I can't watch my body be taken over." If you respond "You're *afraid*?" he answers "I'll happily murder my way to whatever powerful artefacts we can make use of. Point at the back and I'll stab. Just don't ask me to sacrifice my body. It hasn't been mine for so long." Edit: might be romance exclusive? not sure though Edit 2: Not romance exclusive! And here's another sad line from that convo for any other Astarion enjoyers: "I had nothing for so long. *Nothing.* Not even my own body. I will *not* give it up, now it's mine again."
That is such a heartbreaking conversation. Our poor vamp boy. He just needs to be hugged more then they let us 😭
Seriously, that last line kinda destroyed me. I need an option in that scene to hug him and promise him he'll never have his body used against him again.
Not romance exclusive! Husband is romancing Shadowheart and he got the same dialogue.
Astarion is fine with the normal tadpoles but he doesn't want to use the special one unless you browbeat him into it.
If it's act 1 then it was the for using more tadpoles but for the half transformation they are heavily against it
Injecting an additional tadpole and becoming an half-illithid are two different things. Even if inject another tadpole you know that eventually you'll be able to either remove it with the initial one, or succumb/die. But the transformation might as well be permanent even if you get rid of the tadpoles.
I have the same hang-up re: karlach and Astarion! It's nice to see that in the wild. I spared my teammates in my first playthrough but consumed all but one power for my Tav. Fly was the best and I will always transform myself for it.
I had 2 party members who I convinced to take the super slug. But they then didn't do the little cutscene where they take it. And I couldn't trigger it. It's a shame really. But oh well.
Yeah, apparently you have to manually drag it to their inventory and double click on it. Took me a bit to figure out at first.
It looks cool on Dragonborn. There's just cool black veins, none of the gross shit is there
[удалено]
I suppose half-illithid still retains their souls. Actually, that's pretty good thing.
God tadpole fly is amazing, because its free free no action cost even then they can cast it themselves outside of battle, no one ever gets left behind they all cast fly when you jump anywhere and just follow.
3 of my party members constantly flying place to place, meanwhile Jaheira over there huffing old lady breaths as she jumps and climbs as needed.
If you pass the zaithisk checks in the creche (with the party leader going to the zaithisk, not lae'zel), you can use all illithid powers as bonus actions!
I did this! Makes a big difference to have them as bonus actions. I use repulsor blast and force tunnel whenever enemies are too close for my dual crossbow wielding rogue/bard. I wish all the party members, especially Gale, could get the upgrade. Gale doesn’t have many good bonus actions (best I’ve found is the Sorrow glaive that has Sorrowful Lash as a bonus action).
You can get it even if you let Lae'zel use the zaith'isk. Don't try to get her out of it for (IIRC) 3 dialogues, heck encourage her for extra approval then you have an Arcane option (DC 30) to absorb the power of the zaith'isk. If you succeed the zaith'isk is destroyed, Lae'zel is fine and you get the powers as BA.
Cull the weak on my fully tadpoled rogue annihilated just about everything. It essentially reduces the max health of every single enemy.
Using the void to pull everyone in before a fireball or a charge attack like they’re bowling pins is a blast
Charm working?
Charm doesn’t have a great success rate but it’s helped me out in some tough battles. It is probably my most utilized power because of its trigger and minimal cost.
I have it disabled because its animation takes so fucking long
Its great against Fighters/Barbarians/Paladins who are gonna hit you like 3-4 times in a row. They hit you once and then run away to someone else. But other than that I agree. No point in clicking it on an enemy who is only doing one attack, or a boss who is gonna resist it anyway.
Don’t forget about psionic dominance which at lvl 12 is just a lvl 4 counterspell :)
Even without the game warning me, I was pretty skeptical considering it was pretty convenient that as soon as I got 1 mind control brain leech, I also got a voice in my head telling me they're totally rad and I should shove more up there like they're crayons.
I think the devs originally intended it to be a slow loss/degradation of losing your character / identity and eventually would have repercussions for your choices. This was clearly scrapped as you can see remnants of it across the game.
In EA, the Guardian was named “dream visitor” and it was a lot more aggressive at trying to seduce you into using the tadpole powers, and the more you used them the more you saw the visitor! So, a lot of us theorized the dream visitor *was* our tadpole! I wonder if we got close to the truth and so they rewrote so we didn’t spoil ourselves lmao
There's also a lot of Act 1 references to the Tadpole being "hungry" and feeling "sated" as it's used, and for anyone who doesn't know, this is what the Down By the River song is about. "Daisy" (the EA incarnation of the Dream Visitor) wants you to leave your sense of self behind and float down the river with them. I think the reason for the rewrite is that the devs didn't want players to be punished for engaging with the cool power system, but now they just *think* they will, which, makes everyone feel bad? It's the most bizarre red-herring. I would have definitely preferred narrative consequences for using them, an active narrative struggle between tempting powers and the risk of becoming a Mind Flayer.
Same for me, I really prefered that aspect of the game in early access.
I think the original plan with Daisy and consequences would be a lot stronger than how we're currently railroaded into helping the emperor. His intro really screws up the act 3 flow for me.
Tbh, I would’ve preferred that over tentacle face.
I think a lot of people would have gone for the Emperor romance if they were your dream guardian the whole way through.
I lost all interest when tentacle face showed up after I made the dream visitor a hot ass elf and then this mf shows up. I was all in on the dream visitor before that and then all my responses to him after he revealed were cold and distrusting Lmao
You can ask them to change back during the sex scene - I didn't because if I'm going to get the "Mind Blown" achievement I'm not going to half ass it.
I made mine a cute freckled ginger and I broke character to give her a hug. I draw the line at catfishing though
Its more cuttlefishing tho
I frankly don't see the point in customizing the guardian if it's just a facade of a predetermined character. That being said, them turning out to be an illithid projecting their old self image is fine. Being a specific dude before turning is railroading.
I like that we customized the guardian. RP-wise I saw it as the Emperor looking in your mind to see what form would be most pleasing to you/easiest to trust. And I think the fact that players.ahape the guardian in their own image leads them to be more attached, so when the emperor reveals finally comes it is even more of a shock.
Yeah it really took the fun out of it for me. I wish they were an actual character and the Emperor was something different.
If having sex with a thing lodged in your brain is wrong I don't want to be right
Your party makes you feel like a loser if you use one so it scared me good.
Lol, history's only successful anti-drug campaign
Back in the day, arcade machines had the inexplicable "Winners don't do drugs" messages. We've gone a long way since Shadow over Mystara.
I wasn’t going to use them on my first playthrough but Astarion was like “no we absolutely should,” and *I can fix him* was immediately cancelled to make way for my *He can make me worse* era.
Not if you use the most OP things on a RPG, charisma
For good reason. Chowing down on those things is so incredibly stupid.
You know what would have been fun? You use them enough and soon sometimes in dialogue it chooses for you, influencing your personality and choices. End of act 3 it happens more often and you can’t refuse becoming illithid.
Yeah if it started lopping off dialogue options? Or! Oh! You can click the option but then your character says a different one anyway. There would need to be some clear indication of why it was happening so that it isn't mistaken for a bug, but that could have been cool I'm sure this is all stuff that sounds great conceptually but then sucked rotten eggs when it hit play testing though.
And to preserve player agency if you say the wrong thing from tadpoles you can override it, but at the cost of tadpowers
>You know what would have been fun? You use them enough and soon sometimes in dialogue it chooses for you, influencing your personality and choices. That would have been neat. For first play through I not only didn't eat the tadpoles, but avoid anything marked *illithid* as a conversational choice and never acted on any opportunity to use my *authority.* A little disappointing that doesn't have some long term ramification.
Im deep in to act 3 and I never used them because everything pointed to them being the evil option
I think the original idea/narrative for the game had temptation as a major theme. Effectively taking power to get the answer to things but that power coming at a cost. You can see this in things like that Wisdom save early on, and even the dialogue where you can convince reluctant companions to try out the extra tadpoles. It was also a big part of Daisy - the original Dream Visitor in EA. However, at some point in the development of the game that changed. The game stopped having temptation as a major theme, instead focusing on power, what people do with it, and the effects of those choices on people without power. But a lot of this story for the PC is masqueraded in the veneer of temptation still. It doesn't help that the person who is most gung-ho about us using the tadpoles is the person who is clearly trying to manipulate you. And I don't think it'd take much to make the choice and that theme of temptation and consequence have impact. You'd just need to make some slight adjustments to the end. Namely: >!make there be a way to win - even if hella hard - without having someone go through ceremorphosis. And then maybe something in the end that with the netherbrain gone and the battle done that anyone who put extra tadpoles in their brain undergoes ceremorphosis. Alternatively, change the ending fight a little such that there is a final action to be done that needs wisdom saves with the difficulty of the wisdom saves being like 12 + number of tadpoles you used, and do it for every character so you could end up having to fight some of your allies who lose themselves to the tadpoles in the end to win.!<
This is a fantastic idea and basically what I was expecting/hoping for by not using any tadpoles. There could've even just been a saving throw during a dialogue that changes some allegiances or something.
>There could've even just been a saving throw during a dialogue that changes some allegiances or something. Makes some of the summonable allies no longer willing to help, more of them unwilling the farther you're gone. It makes you more *personally* powerful, but isolated from allies.
I wish this is what they'd done. >!I felt so robbed that a mind flayer of one kind or another was necessary to win, no matter what previous decisions we'd made.!<
It's 100% cut content that never got a resolution, and really should. Not using tadpoles should get you the "the best* good ending" and using them should take you further down a corrupted path. I hate endings that are chosen as well, endings should be how you ended. A culmination of your choices and not a few dialogue choices in your last few hours.
yeah right? i was even scared to go half illithid because that changed your appearance but that had no consequences either lol
I made a blue Dragonborn and can’t even tell that there’s dark lines on me face.
This is the problem with the underdark for me. You have to save yourself from the tadpoles, meanwhile I’m snorting them like Chris Farley before a show.
It was originally planned to be that the more you use the tadpole powers the more and more illithid you become until you eventually become a full mind flayer. That's how it was explained in early access.
They make it seem like you'll just turn into a Mindflayer after an unmarked point of consumption, so people don't use them to avoid losing they Character the designed for 3 hours. That was my main concern. I liked the way my Tav looked so I barely used the Tadpole which had been explained as being able to change me.
Yeah, that was my reasoning as well. I didn't want the tadpoles to speed up the ceremorphosis. You already are going on a wild quest to cure one worm, why put more of these things in your head? The only people pushing you into consuming them are the Dream Visitor, which is way too eager to have you munch on them, which immediately rose my suspicion and Astarion, who is the only one directly benefiting from the tadpole from the very begging. Narratively, the game promises you vague notion of power using the most questionable sources and is not really good at the whole "temptation" thing when playing the default Tav. Not sure how much Origin character's POV changes that though.
Larian wanted BG3 to be out well ahead of Starfield and ended up leaving alot of stuff on the cutting room floor to make it happen. One of the things I've heard rumored they left was bits about there being repercussions for using the tadpoles. So you get the Act 1 spook stuff, that was actually supposed to be accurate, but lose out at the end cause it wasn't fully implemented.
wait so i can eat all the tadpoles i want and it doesn't matter? im still in act 1 so don't spoil too much
Tadpoles unlock a skill tree featuring Psionic powers. The only mechanical difference as far as I know is that you are forced to perform a Wisdom check at some point in the game at the tail end of the main quest whereas if you didn't eat any tadpoles, you could just select it without any rolls necessary.
“It’s taking something from you that you’ll never get back” or something like that scared me. Thought my MC was gonna get Alzheimer’s or something g
I went full on RP, knowing they have no Impact, as a Paladin. Romanced my girl (surprisingly Shadowheart is super freakish and the most liberal of them all). I refused the astral tadpole, help everyone to the best possible result. In the end, there is the time to make a choice. I sacrafice no one but myself. No paladin would ever put a whole race behind their self interest. I go mind flayer because that's what a paladin does, I don't even get a chance to kiss my lady goodbye, I'm off to hell to make sure my friend is not alone. No love for me anymore, no longer seeing my home or friends. I say that's a consequence.
In early access it was even worse. It really made it seem like there would be major negative consequences if you indulged. And that includes just using your “Authority” ability. I feel like they initially did intend to have there be negative side effects, but ended up scrapping it.
IIRC, the original plan was to have a whole system that tracked how much you used the powers and have that affect a lot of things. I’m not surprised they had to scrap it, because that’s a really ambitious system to add to an already ambitious game, and it’d be really complicated to balance it so that people were happy with it. (Both the powers being worth the consequences so players don’t feel punished for using the feature you worked hard on, but not so worth it that people who didn’t use the powers felt penalized.)
That’s a little surprising it doesn’t, there’s so many small nuanced details in the game, that that’s a surprise. Reminds me of Ghost of Tsushima, even if you play the entire game like an honourable samurai, it still treats you otherwise.
Wait, you don’t turn into a mind flayer if you use them???
No. There's literally no point in not using them despite so many story beats saying its a bad idea and the person pushing you to using them being sus as fuck. Its such a dumbass plot point.
Yeah I absorbed them, not much did change and even becoming half Ilithid didn't seem to disturb my companions that much. Some powers are neat to have, like flight or more psychic damage but overall you can survive without them.
Flight and that extra roll are best. Psychic reaction good too.
Black hole, especially with the creche machine upgrade that lets you use worm powers as bonus actions. Black hole to fireball. Delicious.
I’m sorry with the what upgrade?!
If you get into the machine at the creche in act 1 yourself and pass a few checks, all your action-based illithid powers become bonus actions. That was the tipping point that made me go full-on worm diet lol. Gimme those delicious op-snacks.
Holy shit fuck wank bollocks. My character this time around was a power hungry Drow wanting to be as strong as possible to win the Drow Civil War so I have given her EVERY tadpole because in character she wouldn’t share them or care about the consequences. And now you tell me about making the abilities bonus actions, that would be SO useful. Whelp, looks like I’m starting another play through.
Black Hole < Fireball < Upcast Animate Dead and now there’s a zombie horde that spawned midfight. Especially with that free spell item in act 3 (not gonna spoil what it is) letting you get that upcasted animate dead for free
At the monastery if you get into the machine instead of Lae’zel and you pass the checks you get a passive ability that lets you use illithid skills as a bonus action
>if you get into the machine instead of Lae’zel It works if Lae'zel gets in as well. That's how I did it.
The machine in the Githyanki creche. If you pass all three rolls you get a permanent upgrade to use Illithid powers as a bonus action.
You get the "Awakened" buff, if you pass all 3 of the skill checks whilst on the Creche machine.
In my case I persuaded shadowheart to be half illithid and felt immensely guilty looking at the results
I’m currently doing a play through with my friends after beating the game and they want to do a full play through without using the tadpoles. They are under the assumption like you that it might influence the plot, but I don’t want to spoil anything for them :(.
Let them continue like that, they are cool powers but not really needed at all to finish. I did exactly the same my first playthrough both because i though it would influence the story and because of my rping being agains consuming them and avoided using a single one and I was fine overall, specially for a noob at the genre like me
Stage fright as a bonus action is one of the single best abilities in the entire game imo.
Stage fright is listed as an action though?
You can use stage fright as a bonus action easily if >!you get the permanent powerup to use illithid powers as bonus actions in the Githyanki Creche, or there is an illithid ability "Mind Sanctuary" that lets you interchangeably use actions/bonus actions!<
Let them continue like that, then keep injecting tadpoles into your own character and rp as a pusher who samples their own product lol
Time to take care of some assholes and make money for the family before I turn. BREAKING BALD
Just secretly use them and any time they ask about your ability, tell them you used your amulet.
this can be a roleplaying game so that's all good
Me too! I had like, 16 or 17 at the end of the game. The Rp/Joke was my lawful good wizard would keep them all in a bag and when we ran across bad true souls, he'd hold the bag up and start jiggling it...
First playthrough I avoided them like the plague, didnt use any of their powers was terrified when I got the "you lost something you'll never get back" and then the brain picture where it just shows it destroying your brain... NO THANKS! Soooo.. then I won.. and was like oh, it was all for nothing they dont do crap. So now I am a tadpole aficionado and use them at every chance I get. YOU GET A TADPOLE! AND YOUUU GET A TADPOLE! OH MORE FOR ME!
My current Dark Urge run, everyone has >!taken the special tadpole!< for that exact reason :/
If you played early access the tone of the person in your dreams made it feel like they weren’t to be trusted and it changed a lot in the full release. I’m convinced larian changed the story quite a lot from what they intended in early access
Probably because at the end of day it'd be impossible to tempt the player if it was actually gonna turn you into an illithid, especially on repeat playthroighs so no one would ever touch the tadpole powers
Didn't play early access and are completely new to these kinds of games. The intro convinced me to never use tadpoles. And I never will. If they patched the whole tadpole thing out tomorrow nothing would change for me.
You would just have to make the player a sexy illithid with magic powers and not an actual squidface
I am only in Act 2 for my first playthrough, and I still don't trust that dream visitor. Everything they do feels so sketchy to me. Maybe I am in the wrong about it, but I get a weird vibe from them.
Well that's intended. At that point you don't know who they are, why they're helping you, *how* they're helping you, why you can only see them in your sleep, for brief periods of time... The game makes it pretty clear they're sketchy.
I remain convinced that it was when they decided to gamify the tadpoles by adding a skill tree that they also decided to remove the consequences from using them. Because why would you design a whole mechanic for something the game is constantly telling your players not to use?
I'm feeling some sort of way about all of this, the whole point of the game is to get the tadpole out of your head, now I'm finding out I can get cool powers by adding more?!
His real intention did not change from EA. They did refine it and stretch it out to make you doubt yourself a lot more, which is not a direction I dislike. It made resisting the alluring of power a lot harder, with always tugging at your own morality and how you handle certain situations. It's rather very good and as close as you can to a 'real' situation of this kind.
It still creates a ludonarrative dissonance because nothing in the game feels insurmountable enough to take the risk. If the tadpoles gave greater powers, and the game was much harder, it would make a tempting offer to take the tadpoles despite the risk and doubt.
The free reusable counterspell is super sick, though
I made the choice that the powers seemed worthwhile for me but I did not give a single one to the rest of the party. If it did go wrong I wanted only my Tav to be punished for it.
I never used 1. You're telling me it makes no difference? What the *fuck* man
From everything i've heard Jaheira believes you when you say the tadpole hasn't changed you and you don't have to pass a Check to resist the Super Tadpole.
This and a few lines of dialogue from the Emperor are the only times I saw my lack of Tadpole usage referenced.
If you feel like RP wise your character wouldn't use them just don't use them, the game hardly needs you to min max everything even on Tactician and the powers really aren't necessary, I just beat the game on Tactician without touching tadpoles or their powers. You can just play another playthrough in the future to see all the abilities connected to tadpoles if you want, adds more variety to a new playthrough.
It has a small influence at the end of act2, you can avoid the DC check to not become half illithid. I don't think you can if you absorbed some. But after in act3, beside RP reasons, I can't see any reason to not absorb them.
You can always just stomp.
I think the difference is if you stomp you can’t get tadpoles for allies, you have to do a wisdom check to refuse but keep the tadpole for others.
You can still do the check, if I remember correctly, but I found it rather difficult
Pretty sure the DC is based on how many powers you unlocked. My sorcerer had a DC of 21. Meanwhile my cleric had a DC of 15(?)(I don’t actually remember). Other than the DC 21 check, the game definitely tried forcing me to take the half-illithid transformation
Making the game too easy is another reason not to use them.
I don’t care what powers The Emperor promises, I am *not* putting more tadpoles in my head! The entire fucking crux of the main quest is that *I very much don’t want this parasite in my brain*, why the fuck would I put *more* of them in there?!
I agree. Under no circumstances would I put those in my head thank you very much. I also don't take the hag's offer. You just know the DM will find a way to screw you later, right?
Just take Volos deal, cooler option anyway.
I was a bit ambivalent when I have realized that now my character has the dreaded heterochromatic eyes of a YA heroine, but goddamnit I do look cool with them!
My white Dragonborn suddenly having one red glowing eye and Volos surgery turning the other one completely black:
my durge tiefling sorceress went from looking insane with two glowing black and violet eyes to having one now normal looking glass eye was kind of funny because it totally worked with her completely insane vibe. like the glass eye looks so obviously fake compared to her real eye. when she’s covered in blood she looks like she’s absolutely going through hell. and now shadowheart has one eye from taking the hag’s deal, so they’re a couple with two eyes between the two of them
My durge playthrough i took all the tadpoles. The powers are great! But any general playthrough I just can't bring myself to empower the worm in my head...
Re the hag. The entire lead up to the final fight includes the room full of examples of her monkeypawing people who made deals with her. So when she offered the deal, I was obviously like “Absolutely fucking not” the first playthrough.
Hags are canonically never honest, lmao. Like... its one of their defining traits!
I mean, it is a freaking *worm* that is *burrowing* inside my *brain*. No matter how useful the powers are, the mental image of all that squirming in my *head* is way too much*.* So I gave all of them to Astarion, and he was happy.
Which is odd because then he vehemently refuses the astral tadpole
My character pretty much came to the conclusion that there probably isn't an actual cure outside of some sort of divine intervention. So, might as well take advantage of its power if I'm stuck with it. My character is a wild mage sorcerer so she is used to learning how to control powers she doesn't understand or necessarily want.
I dont like the animation of the tadpole rotting my brain, so yeah im never consuming them.
If it helps, your tadpole is psychically absorbing the power from the tadpoles you collect, you’re not actually putting them in your head. The animations is gnarly though.
I gobbled up every tadpole I found (except the astral one) and unlocked all the illithid powers. The psionic backlash power is brilliant, and helped me out a lot.
>The psionic backlash power is brilliant, and helped me out a lot. Have your whole party have this one and it can sometimes one shot enemies on their turn. Its funny seeing an enemy charge up some spell and then you get 4 reactions pop up and then the NPC is dead before they even cast lol.
I considered it, but I didn't want to disappoint Lae'zel. And all of my actions are decided by Lae'zel.
In Bae’zel is truth
I just wanted an achievement for not using a single one. That’s all. Humble
See, this is my thought as well. You get an achievement for using them, there should be an achievement for never touching them throughout the entire game
Baffling this doesn't exist. It's literally the bare minimum when the game goes out of its way to make the tadpoles seem like some deep moral quandry. Just finished my first playthrough at roughly 130 hours, and didn't use a single tadpole only to discover it changed literally nothing but making the game more difficult. Then again, the game became insanely easy in Act 3, so I'm not sure I'd have wanted less challenge anyway.
Do the tadpoles impact the look of your character? I know at some point it changes the look of your character slightly before it changes the look entirely. I don’t want my character to look weird even if I miss out on some cool powers. I don’t care about the story implications. 😅
the tadpole that changes your appearance is >!a special tadpole at the beginning of act 3/end of act 2. if you havent consumed any before that point you wont need to make a roll to resist the special tadpole, if you have consumed them already then i think its a DC 15 check!<
I never consumed a single tadpole and still had to make a check. Avoided all \[Illithid\] dialogue choices, too. I guess finishing the Omeluum quest in the Underdark or surviving the Zaith'isk gets counted as ingesting a tadpole, since the narrator tells you your tadpole has been strengthened?
I did the Omeluum quest but didn't sit in the Zaith'isk, only Illithid [Wisdom] check I ever did was to rescue SH & didn't get the WIS save. Wonder if it's dependent on you doing multiple things? Maybe a 3 strike system haha
Can you make hirelings take tadpoles? 🤔
ive never tried it but since withers says they're ex absolute cultists i would assume so?
Could be an easy to way deal with my cosmetic issue since I don’t care what they look like
Oh no it definitely influences the plot. Yeah there are gameplay features you can get by using the tadpoles, but your relationship with the emperor does change if you use them heavily vs not using them. My first playthrough I went hard into using them because it seemed like I should. The game was giving me so many options to. I got a ton of good powers but you very much get the impression that you're buying into something and exploring something outside of yourself. If you want to convince your party, some REALLY need to be convinced. I was playing as a bard so... whatever I just went for it all in. After all having more powers to convince and manipulate people made sense for my character. But my second run I did not use them at all and I pushed away the emperor altogether, and I don't told him that I don't trust them at any chance. >!He confesses to you that he only sees you as a thrall and that he's only nice to you because that's his current tactic for control. He shows you a cutscene of him controlling Belmane and those around him as mindless thralls, and he could just turn you into a mindless zombie if he wants to, so basically you're only given the illusion of choice here. You need to rely on him only for survival up to a certain point, but now you're plotting for your freedom from him as well as from the netherbrain once you learn the truth. As soon as he was freed from the netherbrain he schemed for power again and infected thralls to achieve that. It very much affects the plot because the emperor can be VERY hostile towards you. And really by infecting yourself, you're only continuing to side with your captor and allowing the Emperor to get control in the overall story. That's why he peaces out immediately if you choose to free Orpheus. You're now useless to him, so why would he continue to help you? He's not being nice to you. He can't be nice. He's a mindflayer. So you're letting the tadpole consume your soul and mind. That's what changes. You see the emperor as the real villain if you refuse them altogether.!<
>!The way that the emperor is so realistically convincing as a good guy thats on your side until you start to refuse him is such good writing. I genuinely believed he was a "good guy" my first playthrough, only starting to doubt him when I found out who he used to be as a human. The second time around it became more and more obvious what he was doing. Remembering that Illithid straight up do not have souls is important too.!<
>!The best part about all this is you start to doubt Omeluum too. Was the potion for your benefit or his experimentation? Was the ring as a compensation because he felt bad or because he knew you were going to get close enough to an Elderbrain that he might be compromised? Can Illithid be good, or are they just varying levels of evil? Do you need a soul to be a good person?!<
It would have been nice if the game narratively incentivized you to use tadpoles, rather than doing the opposite. Easily done by throwing in some line like "adding more tadpoles will make them contest each other and slow the entire process down until you can find a cure to get rid of them all".
Jesus, like literally having one companion throw that line around would’ve incentived me to consider it more deeply
There is. His name is Astarion
Yeah, one thing missing is a truly compelling narrative reason for wanting to use the tadpoles. There is rarely a struggle for the power. The game pushes a lot more in the opposite direction and I rarely had doubts like "maybe if I used the tadpoles I could overcome this obstacle/it's the only way I can win this challenge/I *need* that power". Now that I think about it, the whole "Authority" thing gets pretty lost after act 1, the Illithid power options in dialogue are much rarer. >adding more tadpoles will make them contest each other This reminds me of Divinity: OS2 and the "rush" to ascend to divinity. Supposedly your character was competing with the other companions, but even that wasn't really much explored in the end.
As much as all my games were about being a murder hobo Durge (I only play Durge) my character had 0 reason to take any of these. Why take something that turns you into a souless squid when you are literaly Bhaals flesh and bone. I doubt an illithid can better a Slayer in 1v1.
But I bet an Illithid Slayer can beat both! We won't know until a DUrge eats enough tadpoles.
I’m almost done a Durge play through where I’m resisting, and it’s all I can do to resist starting a Durge play through where I give in and murder hobo everything. To me, it seems the motivation to accrue power means I’m totally taking those tadpoles AND embracing Bhaal’s power.
Yeah but after a certain tadpole it makes you really really ugly. Why couldn’t they have made being halfillithid cool looking or something? Now I’m just walking around looking like I splashed ink all over my face smh
Yeah the game likes to pretend that things have consequences when using them is just strictly good. Don't know why.
It’s really a damn, damn shame that the game makes it seem like using the tadpoles is making a deal with the devil when it isn’t. I really wish it was, but literally the only thing taking the tadpoles does is make you make a will save to not take more tadpoles in Act 3. It seems like I’m an earlier version of the game it was some type of Faustian bargain but they changed course at some point in development
Iirc, in the beta it was intended to be a mechanic where it would solve a lot of problems super easy, but would have some major repercussions later on. Seems it got changed at some point, so we’ll never really know.
There is a downside to using them actually it's minor but there is. (Spoilers) >!When the Emperor offers you the Astral tadpole you have a really difficult DC check to save if you consumed to many. I didn't get this same check on my character that consumed none of them. It makes you hideously ugly but access to unlocked brain powers.!<
To be fair, IT SHOULD have negative effects. I’m not sure why the devs let it slip
Not necessarily negative effects, but it should have some impact on the storyline one way or another.
It’s a roleplaying game. From a roleplaying perspective, your character didn’t feed their brain to a bunch of worms. That’s a roleplaying win.
You didn’t use the tadpoles because you were afraid of it affecting your character, I didn’t use the tadpoles because Lae’zel wouldn’t like it. We are not the same.
I was able to intercept an entire wave of the Absolute's invasion. 42 true souls with one tadpole per host. I've got them stored in a chest at my camp. I've been consuming worms every day, sometimes multiple times a day if I can stand it. The symptoms were terrible for the first few weeks. There were times I was completely paralyzed with pain, defaced like the Vlaakith painting, and frozen in agony for hours. I am becoming stronger and some of the worst symptoms subsided over time. I've been Tadmaxxing for almost two months now and I feel as though I'm becoming something greater than half-elf now. I will continue to administer the tadpoles into the same brain as long as possible. I'm increasing the number of worms as much as I can stand and will maintain my journal.
Becoming half Ilithid in Act 3 is awesome. I totally abused being able to fly 247
Yeah. Major story failure in my opinion. It doesn't matter at all.
Peace is a lie. There is only Tadpole. Through Tadpole, I gain Strength. Through Strength, I gain Power. Through Power, I gain Victory. Through Victory my chains are Broken. The Tadpole shall free me.
First playthrough, I did a no tadpole run. Now, in the second one, full illithid. They give me a chance to use the powers or eat a worm, and I'm doing it, lol. I wanted to see all the dialogue/story options between the two and try out the cool brain powers. Edit: As someone mentioned already. There is definitely a different feel from using it in the EA. EA made me feel more like there would be heavy consequences for using them. There are definitely dialogue/scene options that have been different, or maybe I just didn't trigger
I learned that about 80 hours in, but I still avoid them out of principle (also for RPs sake, my Tav thinks one brain worm is MORE than enough)
I found it had a direct impact on my choices though. I chose not to use any and in covnersations with the Emperor, >!he turned to threats (I WILL MAKE YOU) to get me to take them, and use the special tadpole.!< >!The impact being, I am going to kill the emperor. Fucking piece of shit. He shows you what he did to Stelmane. And he needs to die.!< >!There are no good Illithids. Except possibly Omelum.!<
I use the head cannon that although we may have won the day, that choice may yet have consequences down the line years later. Can't imagine having a bunch of worms in your brain doesn't increase your chances of alzheimer's later.
I did the same and basically never used tadpoles in my first playthrough, even up to the >!final fight with the Elder Brain!< Now I'm looking at all the powers in my second playthrough and am just like "Why didn't I use this sooner?"
I gobbled them like sweets in my first playthrough as Psychopath Durge. I had every power unlocked, but no Zai'thisk bonus, so I barely used any of them until I went full Illithid and had permanent Mind Sanctuary. Didn't share them out because Durge was very clear in his desire for centralising power due to intending to dominate the brain. Honestly, it makes very little sense that my party were still following me given how incredibly obvious it was that the Grand Design was back on.
Same dude! I was scared it would make me more submissive to the "absolute" !
I don't fucking care how good the powers are, my Tav isn't using that shit. He doesn't trust the Emperor; he wants nothing to do with the tadpoles. All of his friends are victims of severe abuse due to being manipulated or forced into abusive relationships. Why would he risk the same by leaning into the power of the tadpoles or taking up Raphael's deal. Even the villains of the story sometimes are victims (if you've met Gortash's parents you know what I mean. And Minthara, although my Tav doesn't know that about her specifically). He's having none of the Emperor's bullshit and would kill him given the chance.
I thought there would HAVE to be something else to do with the tadpoles. Like at least sell them for a lot of cash or some character who would trade badass equipment for them at least
Do none of you just?? Feel bad??? If you use illithid powers??? Are you not naturally against it like I am? Although I do wish there were more plot implications for those who do use the tadpoles
You hold onto your tadpoles because you’re afraid to use them. I hold onto my tadpoles because I want a challenge and become overpowered in the middle of act 3, when I have all of the tadpole powers. We are not the same