Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Illithid Powers!!

If the macguffin completely destroys the central conflict of act 1 (and maybe even more!), I'm sorry, but I'm not going to straight up believe Larian's writing is that shit. There will be a cost. Maybe a reward for faithfully serving someone in particular. But a handout? For every fully symbiosed character? Nah. There's no way in hell I'll believe you that you'll end up "just fine" down that path. You'd have to be the Dark Urge and about to ascend, fuck a puny tadpole and its shadowmagic.

The dream persona offered vague explanations and promises. That is very different from what the guardian seems to be. From what I've seen, the guardian appears to be much more direct and straightforward, getting to the point.

Which leaves me thinking either:

1. it got rewritten/tweaked after devs read how the players were interpreting the character, or
2. It was intentionally vague in early access to hide truths about the plot and keep some mystery for release.

To me, this is a big enough change that it warrants playing and learning more about before any real insight is possible.

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Regarding divine intervention, sure. But that means the god has to choose to intervene. And the DM is the one who decides whether or not the deity in question intervenes. And Larian is the DM. Little bit of a circular thing going on here.

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Speculation that the guardian is Shar? Is there a good argument for that somewhere? I haven't seen anyone put forward that theory.

I'm open to possibilities, but I'm not sure I'm on board with that one without learning much more.

A ''netherese magic infused tadpole'' is something new, there's no ''research field'' around it, Omeluum is probably the one that knows the most about it and all he knows is that it's different from a normal tadpole and it's protected somehow. All I said is ''Saying impossible is a bit of a stretch'' and Ethel and Omeluum are not ''extremely powerfull'' beings and I don't know how any of those statements are wrong.


Saying it's seems impossible to get rid of the tadpole is us much speculation as anything else. And again what am I speculating? that more powerful beings might be capable to help us where Omeluum, Ethel and Halsin failed? I don't know how am I so wrong xD

EDIT: Sry about the messed up quotes, last time I extensively used a forum was 20 years ago xD
EDIT2: Ok I fixed it.

There's, in my opinion, no good particular theory. I've just seen various people go in that direction. It seems like a low hanging fruit since she's just... Involved

BTW I just saw that on the build people played on PFH the tadpole powers have an icon near the minimap, you click it put the bug on the trait and close the menu, that's it. No conversation, no nothing but the player already had a few perks unlocked at the time.

You're dwelling way too much on act 1. Choices will have consequences...like locking you our of alliances and costing you party members. But it is very very unlikely to lock you into a bad ending...it might lock you down an evil path but even that is unlikely as Act 1 is less than a quarter of the game so around a fifth or so. But in case you haven't been paying attention, Larian isn't going all in on punishing bad endings where you better be nice or you die or go sit in a corner with the dunce cap on. This game has a full spectrum of endings including where you can get a satisfying evil ending. Not to mention that evil gods like the dead three and Shar aren't just the best of buds just hanging out for fun...no, each of them wants to come out on top at the end of it all...preferably with the power of the other three. If nothing else you'll almost certainly be able to play them against each other, potentially even getting one of them to remove the tadpole.

It's not wrong, but it's as correct as anything else. The game wants us to believe something particular, but how good the resolution will be? How much it fits into D&D lore? All up to Larian. For some reason, the current plot is "no base, earthly means of safe removal", "Raphael desperately wants your soul", "furthering symbiosis Is Very Bad".

Why keep telling us it's bad? That "something has been lost", even, at times? Would they set up a story that way to go: "aha, just kidding"? Call me tinfoil hat wearing, but I think there will be a consequence down the road. A hard one, for extreme tadpole use specifically. "Once you become a full symbiote, any, otherwise alright magical removal will harm you" type of deal.

You know, in my view, Tav is the least important part of the story. What determines *the* ending is your faction choices, major decisions during/before the ending, etc. That also means... your origin character can end up fucked despite the ending not being bad.

The aberration? The dark urge. It's the cumulation of "what's normally smart doesn't apply to you". It's the path for people who don't want to suffer from destroying relationships and burning bridges. Tav doesn't have these privileges. The gameplay will be more varied for it. It pleases people who want to be the edge lord supreme, but also people who want serious storytelling and consequences.

Do you know how the dead three became gods? Or more specifically do you know what they were before they became gods? The dead three were just an adventuring party the same as our party...the potential resolution is literally right there under your nose...baked right in the very foundation of the story. They wanted to fight Jergal for his powers but Jergal got bored of his duties and offered them his position. But since neither of the three wanted to share power and neither could defeat the others the duties were split among the three. Now the dead three are working together, if we defeat them there is a very good chance our party could choose to replace them...new gods of tyranny, murder, and death...but more importantly they would be gods. That's a very straight forward potential resolution to getting rid of tadpole after taking a ton of powers from it. Another resolution...ally with one of them or Shar. Each of them wants to come out on top after this conflict...you can almost certainly broker an alliance with one of them. Your entire focus on the point that "but act one said it was impossible" is misguided.

So what you're saying is... You're locked into an evil ending :P

Your character became fully corrupted?

I think I'll pass in my good playthroughs.

We might be but being locked into an evil ending isn't the same thing as being locked into a bad ending. To be clear I don't think you should lean too much into the tadpole powers unless you intend to go down an evil path but I don't doubt there are interesting adventures, fun resolutions, and awesome endings to be found there too.

With the data mined content, it seems like using the tadpole will continually pull you closer to the side of evil. Ascending to save your skin is the finale. This is fair, because it doesn't punish you for being evil.

But, it does punish you for hubris. For thinking playing with these powers will not lead you down this path. That's how it should be if Larian is serious about consequences. Of course, there should be outs. They're giving us a million warnings. Nonetheless, there needs to be this consequence at some point for your struggle to have any meaning.

On the topic of punishing hubris there is another far less likely resolution to the tadpole dilemma although I don't really think Larian implemented this in the final game. Because the tadpole in our head is in stasis and unable to complete ceremorophosis it does mean that it gets to be exposed to the host for a lot longer than it normally would be and if we feed it other tadpoles to give us power it creates a sort up unprecedented bond between the host and the tadpole unlike anything that would have ever been possible before. Now it's not unheard of for mind flayers to retain an aspect of the host's behavior like a nervous tick or something along those lines but this is something else...this might actually create the Adversary. I don't know if Larian have thought of this possibility and I certainly don't think they implemented it. But how good would it be if the illithids in their own hubris by agreeing to the alliance with the dead three and the plot to put tadpoles in stasis in the minds of people, thinking they could control it, instead end up creating their worst worst nightmare?

One thing I find interesting and I've seen nobody speaking about it is, to my eyes, that the mindflayers are pretty much the underdogs on this mess and something is wrong with them or with their tadpoles in general.

The moment you start the game and the mindflayer that puts the tadpole in your eye appears, there's already a dead mindflayer on the ground before the fight with the githyanki starts. It makes me wonder if they're and actual threat or they're being used and abused.

And ofc considering the new tadpole is new lore they can do whatever they want with it as long as WotC agrees and from what Sven has said they pretty much have complete freedom.

If we have to kill literal weakened gods or their avatars at level 12 I think it would make sense to chose between growing your onw personal power via tadpole and other stuff, or growing in strength via allies and the power of friendship, wich is what I think they're going from what we heard on the PFH

Looks like Wolf just dropped a video with a bunch more info on this.

All that footage was already on one of the Fextralife videos but it was just on the background mostly, this is a much better breakdown but I don't see any new info since they both have the same footage to work with xD I wonder if they'll give youtubers/streamers more videos or early copies before release.

Make that 5, Jergal also seems to be involved. Withers is assumed to be a chosen or an Avatar.

Is Jergal still a God? Does he have a portfolio? I think he retained some dominion over stuff when he gave his godly power to the dead 3 but I'm not a lore expert and I don't remember.
If he's just a convenient plot device to have easy access to revivify I'm going to be very disappointed.

I think Jergal just gave up his duties, and by gaining those duties the dead three gained the power of the office in a way...but Jergal did not lose his divinity I don't think. Strictly speaking Myrkul technically lost his position as god of the dead a long time ago as ne no longer judges the souls of the dead...there have been a few other gods of the dead since Myrkul, and he even worked for one or two of them but he hasn't lost his powers...he just doesn't go to the office to handle the paperwork anymore. Look D&D lore is messy...just think of it like becoming president or something. There's a lot of powers you gain with the office and a lot of that stuff you retain for life.

I thought the powers of the God comes from their followers are their portfolio/what they rule over, so if you don't rule over anything anymore and don't have followers either I though you couldn't be a god anymore, and I know a lot of this stuff changes with time and between editions so yeah, I don't know xD