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

Paraphrasing: "You won't see the dream if you don't use the tadpole."

That's not actual evidence, despite the assertion. We'll see in a couple of days how the game handles it now, especially with the change to the guardian figure, but in the meantime, there's precious little we actually know.

'Little information, long speculation' is the password of the day.

--we don't know if the guardian comes to you whether or not you use the tadpole, and as the current understanding goes (source is Fextralife), the player character actually meets the guardian character in "real life" along the way. I'm not sure if Fextralife misunderstood something or if that's legitimately the case. Regardless, there's clearly a lot going on in this story, and assuming you get no interaction if you don't use the tadpole is a bit premature. In my opinion.

--it's made abundantly clear early on that we are not transforming as we should be. Something is clearly different.

--the guardian character claims to be protecting us from that transformation for a reason, and it seems that reason has something to do with a battle in what appears to be the astral plane. Further, it appears that battle may be taking place around a the deceased body of a forgotten god. If I recall correctly, the githyanki established their city within the giant body of a dead god in the astral plane.

--so our tadpoles aren't working as they typically do. We are told that we are being protected from that and shown a great battle in the astral realm, possibly where the githyanki reside. As all of these pieces start coming together, and as the guardian character encourages us to use the tadpole powers to help save the realms... suddenly the calculus of what's "smart" and what's "dumb" starts to shift a bit, at least in my estimation.

Perhaps mind flayers are attacking the githyanki. Perhaps the dead god the city was built on isn't actually dead and something's happening. Perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps, who knows?

This has been my question from the beginning, and this recent info from Larian does nothing to help me understand things better. They say that thre will be "costs," but that can mean anything, including negligible costs that players can easily shrug off in return for what are clearly huge benefits. But even this doesn't really get at the point, which is what benefits does one get from NOT using tadpole powers? I still very strongly suspect the answer will be the same glib answer some here have offered, which is: You lose out on huge benefits, get NOTHING meaningful in return, but get to have a nice brain free of tadpole corruption. Yay! How cool is that?!

Well they obviously won't spoil the game for you here by telling you what the precise consequences are but we did get one bit...it seems you can go all in and still save the forgotten realms, which is a good ending...though it might cost you your companions and they might abandon you or force you to kill them and so on. But it seems that going all in on tadpole powers doesn't lock you out of good endings entirely.

Wanna bet?

Personally I don't really want to know what all the consequences are. Otherwise I may not want to do it. I kind of like the idea of "f*** around and find out,"

Why would I bet? I am just pointing out what it says...that description would be EXTREMELY misleading if the powers were the same for all...but with that said, being able to turn into a Displacer Beast without having to be a Druid would be a hell of a thing...those things are tanky as anything...can you imagine having your wizard turn into one after his spell slots are depleted to go provide front line relief for the tanks? And in D&D when the HP of your shapeshift form is reduced to 0 you just go back to your regular self with the HP you had before the transformation. A tank can now be double tank basically...providing a nice big target while your rogue deals insane damage from the shadows, you casters provide aoe damage and effects, etc.

Yeah, I agree. Larian actually announcing what the consequences are would be an incredibly bad decision on their part.

You can't please everyone, obviously, but you can keep your finger enough on the pulse to avoid mistakes like that.

In my opinion.

Something I've been contemplating is that people keep bringing up loss of companions and their associated content as a trade off for the tadpole path. But we know that there are other ways to make companions abandon us, presumably even if we don't interact with the tadpoles. And we know at least Astarion will likely stay since so far he's the only one advocating for keeping keeping tadpole. So how balanced is it to be "gaining" content that we can still lose in another way anyway? Plus we will presumably still be gaining different story content based on embracing the tadpoles, not including the powers themselves. So saying we lose out on content may not be entirely accurate, unless you say we also lose out on content going the good, anti tadpole route.

The more I think about it, the more I think that embracing the tadpole to a significant extent is the intended way to play, since Larian has said we can use the power for good. But I think rejecting it completely isn't how the story is meant to play out.

Well, it says that there are 25 abilities. Which I interpret as in total, as opposed to "per class."

And when you count the tadpole abilities on the "skill brain," they amount to 25 exactly.

I'm pretty sure everyone is choosing from the same pool.

And yes, I am mad with anticipation. Turning into a displacer beast sounds like something I want my character to experience. There's so much I'm looking forward to.

Like, I wanna go back in time and change my career so that I could have been an "influencer" just to get a copy a few days early, lol.

I think there will be ways to convince companions to turn them to your way of thinking but it might be tough...you might need a 20 roll to convince Lae'zel and if you don't make the roll she'll probably try to kill you. Additionally the post mentioned this in the context of convincing companions to use tadpoles...but what if I don't try to convince them at all and only use them myself? So yeah I think that might be one way to go.

Now obviously that would be less than ideal because some of those abilities are powerful and the party could benefit from the whole party using them...like have Shadowheart cast the healing spell that applies weakness to all damage on a boss before my rogue from stealth drops an auto-crit on a handful of dice +10 damage? So it will be interesting to see how that all plays out.

I feel like Larian has pretty consistently demonstrated that they don't really care about balance unless they're forced to. The people going on about fireball and dropping magic items all over the place seem entirely capable of putting in something as broken as the tanky displacer beast shape for any class. What about their design approach makes you think they wouldn't do that?

They already showed us the consequences in the form of a new gameplay element - the Illithid power screen. Again, it is not about pleasing everyone, you and a couple of others are missing my initial point, because it is about balancing the game systems around each other. Obviously not everyone is going to proactively use the power in question, if at all. The power itself is not some neutral gameplay element like Alchemy or Crafting. It is heavily embedded in the story, moreover it is tied to the particular playstyle. Every game is a big scale balancing act that needs to take the opportunity cost of any action into account. I was wondering if people are happy with what the 'team healthy' is getting, which is supposedly useful and supposedly interesting story bits and interactions. This narrative payoff and the Illithid gameplay changes do not exist in the same realm, mechanically. Thats why it is so important for the payoff to be good enough.

Sanity?

Sounds like a good question for folks who have played the game and know the answer.

If the trade-off is, in fact, that the "clean" brain doesn't have to worry about the consequences of using the powers and expanding the powers, then the consequences are important, and none of that has been shared yet. And I maintain that it would be a terrible idea to share that information.

We play the game, we find out. Some will like it. Some won't. I'm sure there'll be debates online either way.

I think this is one of those things that are going to fit into the "agree to disagree" bin.

Some people think that game combat mechanics must be roughly equal despite and separate from narrative consequences. Others find it refreshing that you can CHOOSE to close off an additional game mechanic because of a narrative choice they make.

In real life the "good guys" have rules they follow to protect the people around them, while the "bad guys" don't. If a character seeks out an evil power because they want to be as strong as possible, that is a CHOICE they can make.

A good guy whining that they can't buy an illegal grenade launcher because the bad guys have one doesn't garner trust or sympathy from me.

I think gamers have been conditioned by decades of games to think that the morally "good" path must always be the most at least equal if not more rewarding in terms of in game items, currency, abilities, etc. Most don't really want to think about complex issues, they just want to press the button that says "good" and win for it. A huge portion of the more casual fanbase never experienced anything else. What do you mean there could be something I might consider more fun locked down the evil path?! That's an outrage, I press "good" button, I should get everything all the best, that's how life works, right?

@benbaxter, @Darth_Trethon, respectfully, you are either generalizing much or blowing it out of proportion, if we are talking about this thread in particular. That said, the phenomena described by Darth_Trethon is real, yet it is seemingly not in BG3.

I've already mentioned here, that when it comes to the 'team healthy brains' then I am fine with narrative payoffs only, but it can also get complex to implement it this way, because narrative elements can't be directly evaluated against gameplay elements. I think it would have been much simpler and satisfactory to introduce mind shielding abilities for abstaining from the tadpole use, in the exact same screen. Those could be mutually exclusive, but focused on completely different things. For example, Illithid options would target power and influence still, while mind shielding options would target psionic defences and psionic detection. Just an example.

Evil playthroughs have often been made an afterthought even in very good CRPGs. To me it seems like Larian has invested in fleshing out features for various kinds of evil playthroughs (factions, dark urge, illithid powers). It also seems like they've made principled roleplay demanding (thinking of oath of devotion mechanics here). Gotta say, in this larger, in fact genre-spanning context I appreciate what they're doing. The dark urge is not so tempting to me (it leashes you to Larian's idea of edginess, which who knows, maybe includes urges to consort with bears and whatnot), but this other mechanic sounds like a lot of fun. Hunting down tadpoles, assassination - smidge of a bhaalspawn feeling even - and a few extra build options.

That's true, and I've been complaining about that more or less forever. Which is why I'd appreciate it if there was some imbalance in this setup. If I choose the more questionable path, I expect to get something for it I couldn't get any other way - else why go down this path - and if I play "good", there are some options I will not have because I will choose not to pay their price.

However, narrative elements are different. Should we, for instance, never get those dreams if we don't use the tadpole (as it is in the EA), we'd be missing opportunities for character expression which would be relevant to why our characters make their decisions in that regard. There's also this seduction element that might make some characters act against their better judgment, and that would it make it justifiable for smart characters with good intentions to, say, fall under the dream lovers' spell and embrace illithid ways. If things still work that way.

Again personally I don't mind if we "miss out" on narrative elements if we don't use it. Or miss out on other aspects in other games.

Aren't the dreams you get as a result of using the tadpole? So if we don't use it, we shouldn't get them.