Originally Posted by JandK
--the thing is, why should there be a consequence?

Fair question,

Personally? Because I feel that using power to dominate the wills of other sapient creatures to make your life easier shouldn't, ultimately, work out well for the person doing it in the long run. Fantasy game or not, I don't think that's a message that needs to be sent. People get off consequence free for horrible violations frequently enough in the real world - I'd rather my fantasy video game not suggest that that's a legitimate and consequence free path to success as well. Yeah, it's taking an element of real life to explain a desire in a video game, but I'm a real person, with real desires and sensations, and a game that says "violate people in this way if you like, it'll make things easier, and in the long run it won't change anything anyway, so it's all fine." just feels icky to me.

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--so what kind of consequence are you looking for? Do you want the tadpole user to be punished? How so? I mean specifically, what should the punishment be? This is a sincere question.
--or do you just want a reward for not taking advantage of power in the game? If so, I think that's fair. What kind of reward do you want, though? An achievement? A special item?

Personally, I'd like it if the more you used the tadpole's powers, the more likely it was to compel you to make further tadpole-oriented choices - positive or friendly resolution options disappearing or starting to prompt wisdom saves to succeed on saying, and even sometimes all options but the authority abusing ones disappearing, if you don't start fighting it. DCs would start low, but increase the more you used the power, making it increasingly difficult to choose something else; I'd like it if over-reliance on them led to a "bad end" situation at the climax, after a well telegraphed no-return lock in point (I consider the permanent character loss of becoming a mindflayer to be a "bad end" situation, for the record; it's the outcome where you Failed to find a better way).

I'd like not using them or using them minimally to mean that this doesn't happen, and ultimately, present an option for resolving the game's climax that does manage to find a better way.