(And yes, I'm ignoring the whole "don't use it if you don't like it" defense, because that's such an arbitrary defense of poor game design.
You dont even know what "game design" even means.
Withers is an option. You can remove him per mod just like that. Nothing else has to be changed.
You cannot change game design. Not without completely rewriting huge parts of the game code.
I think you are kind of missing the point. It doesn't matter if you call it game design, story design, or whatever else. The point is if you add something that breaks immersion, it is always bad. If thing you add is "worth it" then you get more good than bad. Telling someone who obviously feels that some immersion-breaking thing is fine because you can ignore it is as helpful as telling someone they should just ignore it if they get punched in the nose.
The goal should be to take this bad thing "broken immersion" and try to keep the good thing "respec." The way you do that is by moving respec out of at least one game mode, with Tactician being the most appropriate. If you want to break immersion, fine, go to story mode and respec. If you don't want to break immersion, you need Larian to make the change because "ignore it" when immersion is broken doesn't unbreak immersion.
