Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Anything for the club of healthy brain enjoyers?

Anything for the club of healthy brain enjoyers? No?

I know the recent blog mentioned an option to ignore the mighty tadpole if we want to, but what are the gains of such action? Is it a gameplay gains VS story gains kind of thing? Because it feels like all the healthy brainers are getting is the story, while no-brainers are getting both story and gameplay.

In short, 'Of course if you want you can shoot your own leg, its great flavor dude!' is an ill-advised notion from the dev.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are that going too heavy into iillithid use will lock you into a particular route, where as other routes will only really be options if you resist the urge to indulge in the power it grants.

Certain companions, equipment, and potentially styles of play COULD be locked behind not going overboard with it.

But... as it stands, all we know for sure is- if you want these cool powers, you need to make yourself more illithid.

I mean its a rpg. Trying to get the golden ending is the main point for a lot, I'd argue most, of us.

Also thanks to how the action economy works the tadpole kind of has a ceiling on any power it can give you. Outside of non concentration requiring passives. The stuff the tadpole tree gives you has to compete with what else you could be doing with that action.

Thanks, but no thanks to the Illithid powers, I like my brain healthy and myself to not become a pawn in the end, which is probably, what will happen.

Having a healthy brain is the gain.

The way I am interested in this topic is from the point of game design. I can totally see a valid reason to ignore the powers roleplay-wise. But is it ok for you players to have that sort of disbalance between the options? Or if you think its balanced, can you elaborate why you think so?

I can totally see the sweet payoff of avoiding the mind melting powers of the larvae, but how could the plot only gains counteract the plot/gameplay gains from the illithid route?

If we stick with only the narrative payoff for the healthy brainers, won't it create a disbalance between the game systems and what they can offer for different kinds of players?

Well ...
If you resist, you dont get anything bcs you are refusing tje only thing you can get ... that feels right.
And concidering that many plots in EA were purely black/white ... i dont expect any flavour for refusing.

The blog also said using the tadpole too much can affect your relationship with your party members and even affect your romance. So while it is mainly a roleplay thing it also seems to greatly affect the game's story as well. If you abuse the tadpole and become immensely powerful so you can save the world I imagine the ending you get will be a bittersweet one at best.

I'd argue that the tadpole affecting the narrative of the game is just as important as any pure gameplay effect it might have.

Bingo!

Level 12 characters have a _lot_ of powers, and I'm controlling 4 of them. I can do some cool Illithid psionic blast or throw up Crusader's mantle on the party, they're basically commensurate.

That said, broader options are more powerful...

Except I'll already be swimming in potions, scrolls, specific magic items, dynamic environment, etc... I think I'll manage fine without.

Swen said that you could do evil things and be rewarded with power, but also that if you played good you would have a lot of friends instead. I expect a lot of camp followers and companions in a good play through that might help you in the end.

Hopefully the game is interesting enough for two full playtroughs, exploring two radically different approaches to the adventure. I do hope I will be able to roleplay the kind of sick person that will sacrifice anything for power.

Sadly this is probably correct. Larian went on to say that they added it to spice up the endgame where you have less level ups so so if you want a healthy brain then you probably get jack. It is stupid to me that Larian fixes this problem only for one group of players and doesn't seem willing to fix it for others. And I don't mean being op if you were using it, but just content for people that want to play good, because so far it looks like playing evil will get you more interesting gameplay while playing good gives you nothing except for pat on the back at the end. That's like in WOTR there were only Lich, Demon or Swarm and there was no Angel, Aeon or Azata. There needs to be balance in this case and Larian so far seems to favor one side and ignore the other one. That is not good way of showing "temptation".

I don't know about that. To me, it sounded as if you get a lot of power with using tadpole powers, but will loose your companions. As team healthy brain you have your companions to help you. The only companion, that I can see staying, if you start experimenting with the tadpoles, is Astarion. The others made it very clear, how their views are, Lae'zel will probably even attack you outright. Halsin and Jaheira might too, given their opinion of the tadpoles.

Edit: I'm referring to Swens interview, that was posted here a while ago, where he said, that with using the tadpoles, you will be become very powerful, but lonely.

The weird thing - they could easily use the same Illithid Powers interface for the healthy brainer approach. You would then strengthen your mind by resisting the tadpole's influence and gain some abilities helpful against the aberrations. Seems like a missed opportunity to me. Not critical though.

We'll have to see, but my understanding based on what we've been told is also that if we go for heavy tadpole use then chances are we lose out on companions and allies, so we might get more powers but lose out on content. I can understand the concern people are expressing, but I'm happy to reserve judgement on this one until I actually see it in action.

Firstly, I am definitely going to be rejecting the tadpole. If the story puts me in a position where I think my characters would feel backed against the wall and desperate for a bit more power in order to push through, then I would welcome the opportunity yo try but I'm not interested in playing evil characters who go all in on them. Power-hungry characters aren't interesting to me.


Put simply, my issues with this system are as follows; if this is purely a matter of theme and enforcing theme, then I'm totally fine with good characters not getting an equivalent beyond narrative. However, Larian in my opinion all but stated that this was included to shire up what they felt was a mechanical issue in the game (slow leveling at later levels) and I that's the case, then that means they fixed what they viewed as a problem for more evil playthroughs and left it untouched for more good playthrough's, and that is what I consider unacceptable because I think it reflects poorly on the treatment of good-aligned choices in general as we go through the game.

Larian is trying REALLY hard to make people pick evil options. Between those free powers and the dark urge, I am pretty sure their metrics told them that everyone want to play as the perfect good guys and that only a very small fraction of players actually try anything else.

I sincerely doubt you won't be 'rewarded' for taking the other route. But none of us know. Just, play as you like and find out.

Perhaps turning into a Mind Flayer at the end of the game when we collect too many tadpoles is the final ability

I also doubt it, but its not about getting a reward, its about balancing the game systems to be at least relatively fair for every type of playthrough. IMO good guys should get nearly as much gameplay as the bad guys. Also bad guys should get nearly as much story as the good guys. This is a balancing act of sorts. And the balance kinda shifted to the bad guys gameplay-wise.