Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Cure yourself of the Tadpole with this one simple trick ( Larian HATES him! )

Holy shit people, I actually just realized something.... you could be completely free of the Tadpole just by using the 5E spell 'Reincarnate'. And it's only a 5th level spell, too, which means even Halsin or Jaheira could cast it at level 9. Ha! No wonder they didn't include that one in the game... Gale and Astarion were right all along! You just need a good spellcaster, which are readily available in Baldur's Gate, possibly even more minor towns or groves, and a decapitation ( Purely symbolic though, you don't actually have to get decapitated first for this to work ).

Well, I sure hope nobody attempts to turn the game's plot into an actual 5E DND campaign or else it's going to get completely unraveled by level 9.

Raise dead would be enough as the encounter with the cultist in act 1 shows that the tadpole leaves the body after death for some reason. And even if yours does not, being dead allows for far more invasive and successful methods of extraction.
So with Withers on standby curing the tadpole would be a matter of minutes and a few hundred gold coins.

But Larian decided that the tadpole is this awesome powerup mechanic you are not allowed to remove.

Well, you could potentially fabricate some reason as to why the tadpoles leaving only happened once, or sometimes, or it's too entrenched in your case, and so on and so forth. Raise Dead's description also say this:

>"This spell also neutralizes any poisons and cures nonmagical diseases that affected the creature at the time it died. This spell doesn't, however, remove magical diseases, curses, or similar effects; if these aren't first removed prior to casting the spell, they take effect when the creature returns to life. The spell can't return an undead creature to life.This spell closes all mortal wounds, but it doesn't restore missing body parts. If the creature is lacking body parts or organs integral for its survival--its head, for instance--the spell automatically fails."

So you could also argue that these more successful methods of extraction would destroy too much of the brain tissue that the tadpole already fully attached itself to and thereby prevent resurrection. Netherese magic involvement likewise certainly qualifying as a 'magical disease', and you've got the cherry on top of the cake. No such caveats or issue when it comes to Reincarnate, though, since all it needs is a soul and a piece of the old body to create a brand new body for the soul itself, head, brain matter, and everything.

Thank you for the chuckle - perfect adaptation of clickbait title <3

Perhaps, the tadpole leaves the victim only if it is not protected by the astral prism. Which means that for this to work, you would have to leave the protection first, which would turn you instantly into an absolutist, maybe even start ceromorphosis, if the elder brain is paying attention.
Actually, the dream guardian tells you she blocked several commands to turn you, so yea. Instant illithid conversion. What happens if you try to resurrect a turned victim ?

Are you talking about Reincarnate or Ixal's post? Because the tadpole doesn't have to leave for Reincarnate.

Both. Arguably , the netherese tadpole is not a "non-magical disease".
So a case can be made you raise the dead with the tadpole intact in its brain.

Not trying to convince you or top poster, but that's probably what I'd do if I were DM and had to run this story.
(If I was DM, the story would probably not be exactly as it is, but it's the "what if I had to DM this case as is".

The 'Netherese' element of the Netherese-infused Tadpole is a completely homebrewed Larian invention, so a DM could easily classify it as a 'magical disease, curse, or a similar effect', with emphasis on the 'similar effect' part if all else fails. As for 'both' though, I'm not sure what the tadpole has to do with Reincarnate, unless you are unfamiliar with the spell description - Reincarnate only requires that you die and then it summons your soul itself and implants it in a brand new, magically created body, with the state of your old corpse and all effects on it being completely irrelevant.

Okay, so continuing the role as "Advocatus Diaboli", what exactly is "the state of the old corpse.
Could you kill horned Wyll and resurrect him without horns ? Or is that part of his state ? Could the embedded and netherese magic encased worm be part of the state ?
Omeluum says that the lesions in the brain caused by the worm may be lethal also, and removing it would need special care. So if you resurrect it and the brain is fatally damaged, then that would probably not help.

Again, judging by the questions being asked, it seems like you simply haven't read the text of 'Reincarnate'. Here, I'll just post it:

Most sentient creatures, particularly playable humanoids, in DND have canonical souls, completely separate from their material forms. When they die, their souls depart the Prime Material to the City of Judgement where they await assignment to the respective plane of their deity or the Wall of the Faithless unless they're yanked back to the Prime by a resurrection spell or mechanism. Reincarnate only requires a piece of a humanoid corpse's to identify its correspondent soul, then it targets the soul itself and implants it in a brand new body. You don't resurrect your old body, you resurrect the soul.

Your brain and head could be thrown into a volcano or into Gale's sphere of destruction, all a druid would need is your fingernail in order to pull your soul back from the planes and recreate a new brain and body for it.

Yes, you could also remove the horns from Wyll, however, you will not annul his contract, that's why Devil contracts are explicitly tied to your soul rather than a body, with the soul being infinitely more valuable due to its naturally eternal existence. So Wyll's soul would come back in the body of some random Halfling or Elf or whatever that lacks the horns, but Mizora would probably just give him a new set of horns.

I wonder if Reincarnate would work on Astarion?

Given it states "Provided that the creature has been dead no longer than 10 days" and being a Vampire (Or Vampire Spawn) is considered "Undead" meaning Astarion has been "Dead" for longer than 10 days, even if he's been walking around until very recently.


Actually you likely couldn't.

It specifies "If the target's soul isn't free to do so, the spell fails" and given that Wyll's soul belongs to Mizora due to the contract, it's not free to be taken and put into a new body. Not unless Mizora gives you permission to Reincarnate him.

Of course, if you had permission and thus could cast the spell, yes, Wyll's new body wouldn't have horns (Unless it was a Tiefling body, which would be an amusing coincidence)

You wouldn't be able to target Astarion with the spell in the first place because you must target a Humanoid, and in DND 5E, a Vampire Spawn is 'Undead' creature type, which is a different type than 'Humanoid', the two being mutually exclusive ( In terms of technical Creature Type, if not linguistically ). And good catch about Wyll, I was so focused on the horns/body that I forgot his soul isn't free in the first place:

However, we do have an indication that Mizora is reluctant to permanently bind Wyll's soul in the Nine Hells at least until the party takes care of the Absolute, because Gale's Scroll of True Resurrection works on Wyll.... which reminds me, that scroll is also supposed to revert Astarion back into his non-undead form. Another Larian oversight.

I don't think you even need a detailed RAW explanation for why such-and-such a spell doesn't work (or why you should be able to break out of the main plot by level 3): it doesn't work because that's what the game says. My first experience of GMing was the Wildemount module Frozen Sick, and in the introduction text the players are told that there's a mysterious disease going round and none of the local clerics were able to cure it. The players all accepted it: this disease can't be cured by standard magic. If any of them had sat there going "but why doesn't Remove Curse fix it?!" all session, I wouldn't have bothered to run the game.

Yes, I have seen it mentioned a while ago.

For the most part it does feel like death and resurection is a gamaplay convenience in BG3, rather than part of the world, except companions do aknowledge it.

So you can't resurect NPCs, and tadpoles do leave bodies of dead NPCs, but not playable characters, because plot requires them to stay there.

Agree, but it can still be fun to discuss about it on a forum.

@relogon : I'm not very familiar with 5E rules (am an old school DND player) so yea I didn't know the complete description of resurrection. (Seems like a game breaker to me at such a low level, but I guess that's also an old-school reaction)

You can (as DM) imagine what happens next after resurrection.

If they find someone to do it in act 1, the game is over. They will not be able to enter moonrise towers pretending to be true souls.

If they do it after killing Ketheric and obtaining his stone, how would the emperor react ? They don't need his protection anymore. They're free. Will he try to get that stone from them ? How will Gortash and Orin react when they arrive at Baldur's Gate, free from the tadpole. Are you still part of their plan to kill the other partner , or will they decide it's more opportune to kill you and get the stone.

And in addition, how would withers react to this "solution" ? He also has a greater purpose than just saving your lives.

Lots of choices for a DM to make.

To be clear, there is no detailed RAW explanation in this case, since the spell would in fact work perfectly. As to the broader point - most serious, official modules, as well as most serious homemade campaigns in the world of DND, have always adhered to some modicum of consistent internal logic. That's not only true of DND campaigns, but of books and movies too - plotholes and contradictions are generally off-putting to most discerning viewers, unless intentionally done in a goofy setting.

Dealing with the query of 'Why wouldn't this thing which makes sense solve X problem?' with 'Because I said so' is just bad DM'ing, and trying to shift the blame to the player is even worse DM'ing. I've also DM'd for years and dealt with thousands of 'clever loophole/solution' attempts, or 'Gotcha' attempts if you want to present it in the worst possible light, although trying to have those moments of brilliance is half the fun of DND and why DND mechanics exist to begin with as opposed to just being pure narration, and I never had to answer in that manner. Either I constructed my internal logic well enough, or a player did discover a quick way to solve something, and then I'd adapt the story to their success and not the other way around.

It's not that hard. In your example, if you're aiming for that kind of disease, you could just plan the lore around it in advance - It comes from freaking Ao, it's embedded in the Shadoweave and can't be accessed through Mystran arcane magic, it's not a 'curse' anyway, and the list goes on. It doesn't take much, you don't even need COMPLEX lore, you could just make up a 'catch-all' excuse if you're lazy, but having an origin and story and background and logic that actually ties in to why it can't be cured by conventional means, even the most banal explanation, only makes things more interesting and increases immersion.

Back to the topic at hand, you could simply reveal that the Absolute has also screwed up your soul in some fashion and that eliminates all the resurrection options on the spot. That's what the actual DND books and campaigns themselves do too in similar circumstances, by the way, and all of them are designed with almost every possibility in mind because that's the mark of a detailed high-effort campaign. But the one thing we can agree on is that it's far less egregious in a video game due to its far more linear nature and it only being 'loosely inspired' by the spells and rules of tabletop. Still, given that Reincarnate circumvents the main plot itself just by casting it without any genius combos or multi-step methods, I do believe that Larian simply forgot about it.

Yeah, but such things bring up how flimsy a plot element might be.

The driving force of BG3 is "Tadpole in brain. Tadpole bad." yet there are elements missing from why it can't be removed easily (It already has the "It can't be removed by normal or magical means, not without killing you" thing... It just doesn't resolve the part where killing you is an impassable hurdle... Not when Raise Dead scrolls are everywhere and Gale can access True Resurrection scrolls...)

It doesn't even need much to fix it. Just have some spiritual type NPC tell you that your soul is being altered by the magically enhanced Absolute tadpole. Voila, Reincarnate and True Resurrection are no longer viable options to bypass being infested by the tadpole.

When writing a story, it generally helps if you factor in such things into major plot elements. Even more so if there's an urge to make players find a solution to a problem - Thus encouraging people to find any loophole they can to bypass any restrictions you've imposed to make the story function.

You don't necessarily have to go into the details of WHY things don't work. Only that you make it clear that non-intended things don't work.

However, the more details you provide of WHY, the more interesting it can be for players. Especially if the revelations behind things not working help guide them towards the intended goal. (For example, in BG3, the Zaith'isk doesn't work because it's not designed to work. But it leads you to the creche and the revelations about the Astral Prism and thus directs you towards the Absolute)

No doubt about it, in such an event, I don't even expect the party to head towards Moonrise Towers, they'd probably just go their separate ways. It's a campaign-killer for sure unless you have a good-aligned party that wants to get to the bottom of it for the benefit of the Sword Coast and you give the campaign a significant makeover, which is possible, as a lot of elements still persist - You don't have to infiltrate Moonrise after all, you could just kill your way up to Ketheric. Gortash and Orin could react just the same if you kill Ketheric and obtain his shard, not to mention also carrying Shadowheart's Astral Prism with you.

So minus some plot elements, it's still perfectly doable if your cured party members is willing to help. You're pretty much just taking the role of Jaehira and Minsc, and even the endings doesn't necessarily change - You could either let The Emperor deal with the Absolute, let Orpheus, or decide you wanna get re-infected with a tadpole after all so you can transform into an Illithid.

Couldn't have said it better myself, and I'd also like to make another observation - the less experienced a DM is or the more casual a session is, the less expectations there are of them to 'cover all their bases' and be prepared for players capitalizing on some kind of design flaw or be able to quickly come up with alternative directions, and as long as it's acknowledged that the players aren't to blame for employing what to them just appears as the most efficient way of accomplishing the objective set before them, then you could just 'let it slide', pretend you never thought of it, and move on to avoid stumping the poor fellow and stall the campaign.

If you're pitching a 'pro' campaign for experienced players only, as with some online campaigns, then of course the bar is gonna be set much higher. If you're an Adventurer's League DM, if you're a celebrity DM making money from deep and engaging campaigns, the same applies. So it's important to note we're not talking about some dude at the kitchen table here, but a company staffed by hundreds of supposed DND nerds, working alongside Wizards of the Coast themselves, who said in interviews that they pretty much 'revere' the DND source material, want the choices and possibilities to be as realistic and believable as possible, and to make a worthy successor to the most famous DND series in existence.

So if they neglect something quite basic in DND lore which can invalidate the entire main plot itself, and there are effortless ways of mitigating that, then it could justifiably raise a few more eyebrows than your friend stammering over some lore aspect in his 7th session.