Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Patch 8 introduced the first time I've ever been tempted to use the tadpole.

Locking the "rescue Shadowheart from the pod with the rune from the chest" option behind the tadpole now is cruel!

It makes sense and I respect larian for doing it but im still mad! I hope sorcerers can still free her without the tadpole use.

You're saying that Sorceress as a class in particular cannot use the rune to save Shadowheart?

Sounds like a bug rather than an intended feature to me. The whole point of the key, the chest and the rune is to provide the player with a guaranteed option to save her incase they fail all the other checks, such as the Barbarian pod smash.

No the sorcerer and wizard had options to feed the rune into the pod without getting into the chest. I hope thats still in and they can do it without the tadpole use. I havent been able to check in game yet.

Guess Shadowheart is staying locked up then if this is true. I'll never use the tadpole.

I really like what they did with that scene.

I always try to not-use the tadpole as well. Just oocursed to me that im not testing any of the tadpole encounters that way. Guess il try them out in my next playthrough

You have to use the tadpole as a sorcerer now as well. If I remember, I will check wizard later on since I had to restart.

Dang so barb might be the only "clean" way to rescue her in the ship?

Stupid sexy Barb

Wizard also requires the use of the tadpole. I actually don't mind that they added this, instead of mindlessly trying to save everyone, the player now has to think about potential consequences.

This change introduces well the power and sinister danger of the tadpole. It also helps smooth out the camp scene progression. The "where are you" scene can now happen as early as the very first rest.

This is part of an overhaul of the camp scene timeline which is a good change, imo. Essentially, playing slow (resting often) will get you scenes saying you've got time and playing quick (resting rarely) will get you scenes underlying the urgency of the situation. The game now reinforces whatever the player's doing. Good job, Larian!

I don't know - not a fan of the scene. I don't know, why the tadpole is connected to the console, but not to the elevator or the healing stations. If one tech piece works with psychic power (aka tadpole), the other on teh ship should too - or am I wrong here?
I normally try not to use my tadpole power at all, since I find the scenes with the dream person creepy, but I have to free Shadowheart - not only, because I like her, but also, because I need her in the fight against Commander Zhalk for teh Everburning Blade.

Agreed. Well put.

Good. The path to evil should be easier and more immediately rewarding. Otherwise, no one but sadists and/or idiots would choose evil. Larian should be putting in scenarios where we really really want to use the tadpole, where it's incredibly difficult or maybe even impossible to complete the task otherwise at this time.* Like seen here:

*The "at this time" is important. We shouldn't be fully railroaded, but in this example you'll find SH later, so you're only missing out on approval, dialogue, and I guess an easier time of fighting Zhaik. None of this is a permanent loss of important content, so it's fine, good even.

I haven’t used the tadpole yet! Luckily it isn’t Halsin in that pod😂, and I know Shadowheart won’t die.

It could be because her pod requires extra security. I think anyone including thralls would need to use the healing and the elevators in an efficient manner. Probably our pods would have had some type of console involved but they got destroyed.

Not too sure that our characters (as players we know too much) would consider the use of the tadpole at this point as being rewarding, we know nothing about what it will do to us. I think that the type of characters (usually good aligned) who want to save anyone in distress would be more tempted to use it here. An evil type may not see the risk as worth it because self preservation is more important than saving some random person. If they added something about us sensing some great power coming from inside her pod then it might tempt the more traditional evil types to save her because it might actually be worth the risk.

Hopefully they won’t add lots of cases where there are no good choices, though. I wouldn’t like to be forced to play an evil character.

That's fair. This example falls into the "tempting a good character to become evil" situation (which is great!) but wouldn't necessarily be appealing to an already-evil person. Although it *could* be appealing to a self-interested person->saving SH puts her in your debt, and henchpeople are always useful. Can we sense that SH also has a tadpole while she's still in the tank, and that there's a connection between us? That by itself might be a good enough motivation for an evil character to free her...or to leave her trapped. :P

As to the claim "we know nothing about what [the tadpole] will do to us": Our characters, living in the Forgotten Realms, almost certainly know that mind-flayers are evil and listening to a magic voice in your head that suddenly gives you power is probably bad. So if they're at all intelligent, they can probably reason that using the tadpole *might* have drawbacks, and then have to decide if that risk is worth saving SH.

I love games where choices are difficult (which doesn't always mean evil) and players have to think about consequences, but properly done they shouldn't turn you into something you don't want to be.

Let the narrative railroading begin! lawful good characters down bad!

How, exactly? If you don't get her out of the pod, she'll turn up later, after all, it wasn't possible for quite a while. If you choose to rescue her because you want her for the cambion fight, that's not a narrative railroading, that's a player choice, and if you wind up having to use the tadpole to do it, it's still a player choice. In this instance, the game taking control of the character, and using the tadpole would be railroading. I'm not seeing anyone stating or claiming that, so no?