Yup, I also have posted many times in other threads here about being punished for choosing to not use the tadpole powers. As a good-inclined PC, I would NEVER opt to use the tadpole powers, and as a result significant chunks of the game are closed off to me with no offsetting compensation. It is ridiculously bad game design.
There is nothing rewarding about the dream lover sequences, they are short and creepy (which is kind of the point). The powers might feel rewarding, but considering the limited information you can obtain in the game, this seems to be a "give into temptation now, regret it later" situation. In which case it would only bad game design if the devs never implement the negative consequences of tadpole usage.
I'm torn now, actually. On the one hand, I get your point. I really do. It actually goes along with a lot of the other suggestions I'm trying to make about the game. Good roleplaying equals good results in the game. Not so good roleplaying equals negative, bad results in the game. So if we have negative results happen to the main character when they do the right thing and not use the tadpole powers, then what's the point of NOT using the powers? You're going to get negative results either way.
On the other hand, the dream sequences are creepy and add a certain flavor to the story. Giving the PC's more tadpole powers is also like the Dark Side of the Force tempting a person to use those powers to speed up whatever is happening to you. So the reason I gave this suggestion was for the following reasons:
1. It is pointless to even bother with the Dream Person during Character Creation if I'm never going to see them in my dreams.
2. Having the dream sequences regardless of your choices reminds the players that they do have a terrible thing still happening to them. Right now, we wouldn't have so many people arguing that there is no sense of urgency if their characters were actually transforming in some way as time progresses in the story.
3. There is still a reward for NOT using tadpole powers. The reward is that the dream sequences are further apart from one another, and you more slowly get tadpole powers. If you use the tadpole powers, you more quickly get the powers. I actually suspect that this is Larian's original intent anyway, but since we don't have Acts 2 and 3 yet, we don't see this slower progression if you don't use the powers. So this may be an invalid discussion anyway about whether or not the dream sequences ever get triggered at any point in the game.
I didn't particularly like the dream sequences in that, like you said, they are creepy. However, I did feel that they added a certain sense of, "Holy Crap! That was wrong, and I really need to step up my game or this thing is going to totally take me over." It at least intensified the story plot.
