@KillerRabbit:
(1) If there are exceptions, then evil is not built into their nature. They're typically evil, not intrinsically evil. Which is also the only thing that makes any sense.
(2) Evil is not contagious. Whatever consequences your world imposes for it (as in your Ravenloft example), it requires actual evil actions. Eating some substance is not enough.
@Milkfred:
I don't think these two changes are necessarily connected. I haven't seen Act 3 yet but if the dream presence was always meant to protect us, and had a goal that included engendering some trust, then appearing as that dream lover was always going to be counterproductive, as appealing to our desire was always going to come across as an appeal to throw caution to the wind. The old scenes were good and more impactful than what we have now, and I suspect those who made them were very sad to see them go, but they did not work as intended.
Meanwhile, the illithid powers feel like a last-minute addition that didn't go through enough response testing. This comes across as a typical Larian implementation, they tend to go overboard with both the whimsical and the horrific unless tempered by external responses. If that had been in the EA, I'm reasonably certain we would now have a way to attain those powers that does not involve this level of stupidity.
