Agreed. The game sets up the pretense that using the powers and consuming tadpoles would lead to other problems later on. I never played BG3 during EA, but apparently Nere could dominate your mind if you were careless. It was the original intention but for whatever reason, Larian changed their mind.

Much of my first play through was spent avoiding the worms. My assumption was that delving too deeply would lead to the player turning into a mindflayer as a bad end of sorts. Even kept all the worms I collected in a little bag anticipating an alternative use for them later on.

I like to role-playing as a certain kind of character in my head, and the one I had at the time was a revenge driven durge. He truly hated them. He was going to eviscerate anyone and anything to do with the mindflayers and the tadpole placed in his head. Not being able to kill the Emperor as soon as he revealed his true form was already disappointing. Imagine my surprise when we were forced to turn someone into a mindflayer despite rejecting all things illithid anyway.

I still love this game of course, but that soured me quite a bit.