I don't think we disagree either, I'm sorry if I was coming across that way.
How about this, every long rest you take stat damage; such as -1 CON, or every use of the Tadpole tests WIS, on a fail you take 1 permanent WIS damage, until a point at which you no longer have the choice *not* to use the tadpole. All these healers we run to in Act 1 can't cure us, but they can heal some of this damage(resetting the clock somewhat), or give us a bonus during these rolls. Ability score damage is very outre in current D&D but it certainly would up the peril of having been experimented by some Illithids.
It's really the lack of fear where I have issues, you don't have to be good-aligned to not want to use the tadpole, especially after the first time, just look at our evil/neutral party, only Astarion is gung-ho about using the tadpole, and there's probably more going on there too.
If we were undergoing a clear process, one that active use of the tadpole accelerated, you'd be getting more out our "Hook"/ Ticking Clock.
As for BG2, like I said, I was a more naive gamer then, but even now, especially with the game "checking in" with Imoen at Spellhold, I am fully on board for making a bee-line to her rescue, but I understand how on a metanarrative level you understand that there is really no consequence for not saving Imoen as soon as possible, but in terms of having a clear goal and narrative justification to do so in a timely manner, BG:2 does it better than 1 or 3(so far)
No, we were just expressing similar things in a different way, but thankyou for your concern.
I agree, there is definitely something not quite right with the the way the tadpole is handled at the moment. All you seem to have is a binary choice to keep using it, gain benefits and go down the dark path, or ... not. There's also the fact that everyone in the party has a tadpole, yet all conversations seem to imply that only the face character matters, which doesn't sit particularly well in the narrative.
I'm prepared to believe that this is not how it will play out for the released game, and I do also understand that Larian are trying to weave together a fairly complex set of alternate paths, which is quite challenging when the most sophisticated tool you have is a branching dialog tree.
I'd certainly be happy with a tadpole-related debuff on long rest, if only to have something to point to for those that complain that you shouldn't be able to rest whenever you are tired.
But I don't know how well this would sit with all players, as the player base is much wider and less geeky than it used to be. I can't imagine, for example, that the play difficulties imposed by the spirit-eater in Mask of the Betrayer would be seen veey positively by Larian's core co-op MP user base.
