Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Tadpoles and consequences

Whether the player uses or doesn't use the tadpole is a choice which the game reflects on in the very 2nd conversation with the Guardian during ACT 1. I played my first playthrough without using them because I wanted to keep my character a pure Drow and enjoyed it thoroughly, so there's that roleplay choice I spoke of.

So what you consider a "real" or "meaningful" choice is irrelevant. It's a choice which the story reflects on and it's very much real. Is it meaningful? To each their own, it is to me. I enjoy when a story takes actions & choices into account and reacts to them.

Same. I'm currently doing a playthrough without the tadpoles, and I've had zero issues.


1. It is clearly a choice, as my current game is ongoing, and as the poster above me indicated.

2. Have you actually played the game yet? --note: this is not a sarcastic question. kanisatha has been upfront about having not played the game at all.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer -- the spirit eater curse. The best execution of a harmful curse giving you powers, while also becoming increasingly problematic the more you used those powers. It even solved many balancing issues from the main game by severely limiting resting, something that could definitiely benefit BG3.

I loved it, and I really wish Larian had taken some inspiration from that mechanic.

My only issue with the "ugly face" consequence is how absurdly "relative" it is. On drows and half-orcs the change is barely visible, but if you want to have a pretty human or elf, going to half-illithid route is a no-go. You either get an obvious power buff, or a situational RP nerf. It is a weird design choice for sure. Turning ugly should at least interfere with romances. Or come up in any other way.

I agree with most of what has been said and I'm glad @fylimar raised the topic.

Yes, there needs to be consequences for tadpoles. I've not used tadpole powers except for the railroaded "you need to have or be a mind flayer" at the end but I cannot agree that the powers are insignificant. Black hole gives you insta kill with a great many enemies, a free counterspell that automatically levels is incredibly powerful and fly is nothing to sneeze at.

I like @Niara's suggestions! I would add having reduced wisdom saves to The Guardian at moments that you defy it. At present it only expresses annoyance or contempt when you have the Orphic hammer. While it claims it will never let you into the Astral Plane it decides to anyway and lets you get right next to Orpheus hold the hammer before it says anything. Which is pretty dumb even by end boss standards.

(I also think the fight with The Guardian should start right away but that's a different discussion)

Other places will checks would be appropriate:

* When recruiting Minsc. Of course let Jaheria save us at the last moment but I think the story would improved if you saw how the tadpoles were sapping your will

* When speaking to Voss in the sewers

* When walking into Ansur' lair

It would give the "you are my puppet" moment more gravity and make the moment when you free yourself from the leash of the gaslighting ghaikboss feel like a victory.

Other ideas:

* Require clerics to atone. (ceremony spell with some sort of sacrifice - magic item or gold) In Larian's interpretation of mind flayers, illithids are soulless. Clerics are in the business of getting souls to their god's afterlife choosing to inch closer to becoming a soulless being "devoid of hope and conscience" has got to irritate your god - especially after you discover that tadpoles are integral to another god's evil plot.

* Have Withers remind you of answer to his question - if you thought souls were priceless why are you chewing away at it in hope of gaining more power?

* Reduce persuasion checks and heighten intimidation checks. Because eldritch horror eyes tend to put people on edge.

Those are really great ideas. I really hope, there will be some mechanics and consequences surrounding the tadpoles.

Roleplay choices are certainly personal choices you can make, but for a choice to be something that the game is credited for providing, I feel it really needs to be a choice that the game can acknowledge, and ideally give a variant outcome or some other in-game effect for taking. Many games give tangible choices for the player to make, which impact things, and this is substantively different from elements in a game that are 'things you can decide to do on your own with no acknowledgement'

For example... in BG3 you can make the roleplay choice to never steal from anyone. It's not a 'choice' that the game provides for the player, however, because it's not something the game is capable of acknowledging you doing, and it doesn't cause any tangible effect or impact.

Similarly you can make the roleplay 'choice' not to use the tadpoles... but unless the game can acknowledge that you have chosen not to, and provides some tangible in-game result of you making that choice, it's not a 'choice' that the game provides. It should.

Omg, I didn't even think about Mask of the Betrayer. Yes. That system was very good. It was always a hard choice, do I want this powerful ability and risk possibly dying from not being able to consume enough spirits?

The more you used the Curse the more powerful you became but this also made you need to consume more spirits. Also using the abilities also made your hunger go down faster but the abilities were scaled so well that using them made the game easier but the game also became harder because of the hunger level.

Edit: Also the more you used the Curse the less control over it you had.

MotB is in many ways superior to BG3, including choices and overall story and how it ties to mechanics

There were a lot of us who were expecting something reminiscent of MotB when the tadpole/power thing was first introduced and were... well... sorely disappoint at how flat and meaningless what we actually got has turned out to be by comparrison.

There will probably be none added, lest the target playerbase gets scared of having to actually suffer some kind of consequences for their choices and runs away.

As for Daisy being rapey - the whole point was to make the player uncomfortable, no? You penertrate the brains of others, only fair to have your own be subjected to the same fate, albeit more (or actually less?) metaphorically to showcase exactly how everyone else you do that to is also an unwilling puppet, only that you are capable of resisting the influence.

I feel like we've had this conversation before... it's less about the rapey behaviour, and more about the way the game, at a meta-game level, dictated for you how your character felt about the things that happened, after the fact.
It's one thing to inflict something like that on a character, in story, but following it up with a meta-game statement of "And it was hot, and you think it was hot, and it was so tempting, and you think it was alluring and tempting!" - No, I didn't, and that's my right to decide, not the game's. To use the parallel example, yes, you might have (as one possibility) brain-controlled a goblin into letting you pass (but not to touch or lay hands on them, it might be added), but what you didn't do, and couldn't do, was turn around after the goblin recovered and insist, to the Game, not to the goblin, that the goblin liked that, that it found it a pretty nice experience, and insist to the game that that was the truth of it, in a way the game was forced to accept.

The game can absolutely give our characters consequences for their actions, and they can be dark and dire, but outside of moments of direct influence, it must not impose upon our character at a meta-level to tell us how we feel about what happened; that is being disrespectful to the player, which is inexcusable. Even if the intent is that our characters are left with a lingering influence still trying to affect us, the game must make it clear that such a sensation is unnatural or alien - that it comes from something other than our character's own natural emotions and inclinations on the matter, which must, Always be ours to decide in a game of this nature.

Roleplaying choices are fundamentally different from gameplay choices. Using or not using the tadpole powers is a gameplay "choice." But it is a "choice" where the options are either (a) all reward no cost or (b) all cost no reward. As such, it is patently illogical for any reasonable person to "choose" b over a. "Choosing" b over a is a "choice," sure, but it is choosing to deliberately screw yourself over within the game. Therefore, it is no choice at all.

And no, there are no meaningful story consequences to using v. not using the tadpole powers. All consequences are mechanical, and you either get those mechanical benefits or you don't. That's it, and nothing more.

Using or not using the tadpole is also a story choice which the story reacts to, as has been pointed out already.

Proof;

There are numerous other situations where the story keeps reacting to tadpole usage as well, such as companions and their reactions. The consequences regarding the tadpole is mostly tied to the giga-tadpole as soon as the player gets into ACT 3, at which point there is no more playing around the bush if the player chooses to consume it, which comes with immediate consequences and opportunities.

Whether they're meaningful or not, subjective opinion that is entirely irrelevant. It's a choice which the story reacts to, therefore not an exclusively gameplay only choice.

For all the narrative import put on the choice to use/not use the tadpoles, the threat of turning into a mindflayer, *and* the threat of seeing what has happened to other true souls being brainwashed....I expected more than just personal headcanon as acknowledgement to the central thread of player character investment in the main plot of the game. The fact that Larian promoted these expectations throughout EA right to the end is a big point against the game IMHO. Hell, earlier in EA we were told about having multiple ways to remove the tadpoles, and the theme of increasing desperation seemed to be a big part of the plot, Raphael obviously being a part of that, with the theme of 'embracing' the power and seeing if you could harness/control it on the other hand, with Asterion specifically being called out as a character who would try to use the tadpoles power even against the group's best interest.

We lost a *ton* of what should have been the meat and potatoes of the game's plot when Larian ditched all that and it turned into a generic powerup system. They still failed at that IMHO, because they made it revolve around 'consuming' tadpoles which runs int on he same problems with using the powers did in EA, in that you can't tell people that something is going to have horrific consequences and expect them to engage with it unless you provide a good in-universe incentive to.

Mask of the Betrayer and the Geneforge games are two instances where the whole 'indulging in corrupting/dangerous power' theme was done much better.

As I stated previously, I've played through the game four times, completely un-screwed. If it screws with *your* game to not use the tadpoles, then use them. I'm sure an improvement in the balance between using and not using them would be welcome by most, but I fail to see myself as screwed for not sharing that opinion.

Also,

As far as mechanics go, I'm willing to stipulate other games have done it better, and perhaps Larian will improve BG3 in that respect. But it is nonetheless a choice one can make in BG3 to not use tadpoles and still make it through to the end. If that makes me stupid, well, just think how much more impressive magic is to me than to anyone else!

Same, from someone who plays exclusively on Tactician and will be playing Honour Mode.

As a Ranger Hunter who just auto-attacks enemies, I pretty much do not benefit from Illithid passives/abilities at all because of how much damage I dish out each turn, so I don't even get to use them. In fact, funnily enough I actually would be gimping myself IF I was using them because my *Bonus Action* is a difference between doing just 30 damage or 45+ damage

That isn't to say that Illithid passives are entirely useless, they have their tiny little fun utility niche as toys to have fun with. But what they provide in actual gameplay is so inconsequentially minor that there is zero difference between my Illithid/non-Illithid playthrough. Both are breezed through without any challenge.

Which is why my choice is entirely based around the story itself when it comes to using tadpoles.

I do think it's a problem that non illithid parties get no mechanical benefit at all.
I'm glad that those of you who enjoyed playing no mechanical benefit at all did so but I think it's problematic that is

I never played MotB but I played the BG series and in it resisting the pull of evil came with mechanical benefits - lesser benefits to be sure but benefits nonetheless. It does sound like the MotB system is superior to the one we have now.

Now it is true that non tadpole parties get some minor alterations in the dialogue but those a simply a mild flavoring of the text. You can either get something like "you haven't been using the powers from the tadpole" or "you've been using powers of the tadpole, good"

Nothing about your relationship changes the game acts as if you trust The Guardian and will be working with them. You don't even get an opportunity to state the obvious: you are asking me to empower the tadpole while I am seeking to have it removed, that puts us at odds.

This becomes more problematic later in the story when it's crystal clear that your guardian is an evil figure who is manipulating you using morally objectionable means but the game assumes that they only reason Tav's objects is that Tav fears the other. Tav is disgusted by the alien physiognomy and not the morals of a brain eating, enslaving, gaslighting, manipulating crime boss. When we do express our upset The Guardian always has the final word - even on no tadpole runs.

Tav: "I'm nothing like you"
Guardian: "You are more like me than you wish to admit and you would do well"

Oh. Guess that statement stands then. I guess I my options are to be annoyed that the NPC gets better lines than my character or not . . .

I'm all for a predicament system that provides more of a plus and minus thing to either decision. But I never found the illithid powers all that empowering, so leaving them behind didn't feel like much of a sacrifice (or one at all, honestly.) They mostly seemed like slightly repackaged versions of abilities other party members already possessed. I'm not suggesting you or anyone should feel the same way, and I hope neither is anyone else. I confess, after CP2077, re-playing all the Mass Effect games... the idea of something taking over one's mind from within now seems altogether trope-y, just from a coincidence of recent gaming experiences, I'm sure. So perhaps that's clouding my perceptions of the issue.

This game did seem to be filled with stories that seemed important but turned out... not so much. . So if the argument is that the entire tadpole system kind of made a molehill out of a mountain, then I entirely agree.

But of course, that doesn't really affect the central story of BG3 like the tadpoles do.

I wish there'd be a way to get rid of the Emperor earlier, release Orpheus, side with him and get some mechanical bonus from him in return.

That said, for me the mechanics wasn't the motivation to use the tadpoles. But when Lae'zel , I couldn't keep her from following his lead and devouring the whole pile of tadpoles within a second.