The only reason your grop is holding together is that they all need each other, remove that and they will send you to hell faster than Gale did in his campfire scene. :-/
I'm not sure I understand your suggested fix.
- Are you saying that it is implied we are surviving because we have companions to watch our backs? That feels very much in line with UnknownEvil's suggestion: We dont die because...why waste time with death as long as someone is still standing?
- Are you saying that death should just be permanent? The tadpole emerges from companions, but you can't raise them in any way? Does that not still require an explanation as to why my clerics reveify, raise dead, resurection, etc... spells are not working on anyone I can actually cast them on? I wouldn't want to be on Larians bug report team if that is the solution.
- Are you saying just let death fix the problem for everyone but the player controlled character(s)? If you raise a dead companion, they get up and say "Thanks for all the fish! Laterz!", but if you have an NPC raise a PC, the tadpole is still there because... The Larian DM says so. I don't really find that solution any more satisfactory than the current situation.
Please clarify. Some of these might work, but I still feel my idea is the lowest budget.
I agree that violently letting people you hardly know bash in your head to get resurrected is out of the question.
I don't think this would be a "Kill me now" type of decision. But rather a "What to do in case of death" type of decision. When death happens as a result of the games natural struggles, why not just smash a companions head in to rid them of the tadpole before bringing them back to life? If this was a tabletop game and we came across a scroll of true resurrection, or my druid reached a level in Act 1 where I could cast re-incarnate, I could see the group having a discussion about it. We would say what we want to happen in case of death. Astarian would likely be like "Just revive me, no head smashing!". But I could see Lazel preferring the possibility of death or even coming back as non-gith over continuing on with the parasite. Would the DM pipe in and say it wont work (I would expect an explanation or call foul on the whole campaign if they did)? Or would they let us possibly rid one of the companions of the parasite? What happens then? Does the companion stick around out of loyalty, attack us or leave quietly in the night? Without the tadpole, could we now control them like some thrall? Would there be a consequence for those that stick around with no parasite, like the one we will likely see for those who choose to get branded with the sebille control tattoo, I mean, sign of the absolute.
All good questions, but all big budget ideas.
If we learn that being brought back quickly is the only real option (And if we get head smashed, decapitated or disintegrated, it is permanent death even if the spell is True Resurrection), problem solved, DM's "It wont work" explanation accepted, discussion not needed. What I am offering here is in fact the DM's explanation and I'm just putting in the game by placing it in a book.
Let gale turn to stone after the 3rd failed save
Nice idea. I like the way you think. My idea was to have him fighting the intellect devourers at the crash site and fall immediately when you approached. Thus he would have just died, and his Progarmmed Illusion spell would have just kicked off. So he would die, but not as a companion. You save him and then redo his intro with some gratitude. Once a companion, dying during combat would no longer be possible. But my idea was way more complicated then just having him use Flesh to Stone on himself. However all gale solutions are big budget and that is the main issue with the whole not-dying concept.
The thing is, the ceremorphosis quirk is just irritating enough that I want it fixed/explained, but not irritating enough that I want Larian prioritizing it over other things. There are so many other more important things I want them to fix. So the ideal solution is the one that gets the job done with least effort. A dev could crank out my idea in 20 minutes with access to the code base. That is why I stand by it as the best. (Not that the other ideas here aren't good or even better).
