This just kind of reads like a hand wave to me at least. The tadpole doesn't really seem to want to take your powers away, abyssal sorc shows people can still be super strong even with a tadpole in their head, and he's still perfectly able to level up and cast normally.
I personally think the impact a backstory that big has on your plot progression is a larger issue, but it just feels a bit contrived to me that the tadpole would drain all of your levels without causing any other issues, and that it would also do this to martials like minsc or karlach too (as even if she is a paladin she's not gonna have a level 15 paladins health).
Also I'm a bit unclear on his relationship with Mystra at this point, doesn't the weave scene suggest she's still looking over him?
Yeah hard agree on that, Inquisition was pretty bad with this. Thought i guess you could argue you start at a stronger point? You're pretty impressive pretty quickly in that game, and Solas has his own weird stuff going on that makes him kind of excusable. Varric is out of place, but I'm like 90% sure Varric being so out of place in combat in general is an in joke at bioware lol, guy's primarily an author and he keeps up just fine with all these elite career fighters.
Did you not play DA 2 or really play DA:I to hear Varric's backstory, because I can tell you he is a helluva lot more than an author that is keeping up with elite career fighters. I mean he was an elite fight in before you even met him in DA2. Also, in DA:O you absolutely did NOT start with young fighers besides Allistair. Morgan was a top level mage, Wynne as well (I mean she was even an instructor). Leliana was a trained bard and assassin for royalty. Zevran a trained assassin and crow. So where exactly are these "young" fighters besides the MC? So basically EVERYONE besides the MC was more powerful characters to start that they scaled down to your level. Also with DA:I they really never went into the backstory of the Inquisitor, but the companions, once again, were established powerful characters that the scaled down to level with. Cassandra was a trained knight and the Chantry Seeker, Iron Bull a trained merc, Dorian and Vivian were both powerful mages, and again Varric was a trained, accomplished rogue from DA2. So your whole argument about lvl 20 characters being scaled to level 1 is basically the MO of basically most of the RPGs today that have companions.
