Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Finally able to articulate one of the biggest flaws with the main story/writing

Except that when you give this much power to the crown then it doesn't matter if you have an Illithid or not as they too are just mortals and not hyperintelligent (see how easy you can trick them in the tutorial for example), nor do they have any foresight powers. Chances are at least one character in the party ends up more intelligent than a mind flayer.
Neither is there any reason as for why a huge immobile brain requires much foresight to attack as it still mostly relies on minions to defend itself. The only thing needed is Orpheus protection or similar magic.

Because The One Ring corrupts those who are in its presence? And Ring itself seeks to return to its master (Hence why it calls to the Nazgul when it is worn).

It's clearly outlined when the Fellowship of the Ring is created, the reason why Frodo was tasked with carrying it (Despite many powerful people being at the creation of the Fellowship, including Gandalf) is because he, as a Hobbit (Of good nature) was resistant to the corrupting power of the Ring (Though, still susceptible, as is shown when he starts to turn on Sam late into his journey. Even Sam, with his good nature and temporary holding of the Ring starts to be corrupted when he dreams of becoming Samwise the Great).

This isn't a "Tolkien told you so" situation, but the a premise that is built upon throughout the entire story of The One Ring. Even going as far back as when the Ring was first severed from Sauron's hand, where instead of being destroyed right away, it corrupted Isildur who kept it and began to turn evil until he lost possession of it in the river where Smeagol eventually found it (And corrupted him too, turning him into Gollum)

The Rings of Power have influence over people (That is the basic premise of their title "Ring of Power"), with The One Ring having an influence that is pure evil in nature. This influence is more dangerous in the hands of people with innate power like Gandalf because of the sheer evil they can perform when they are corrupted (And being more innately magical, they are more susceptible to the power of the Ring) which is clearly evident in Saruman, who despite never being in the proximity of the Ring, becomes completely corrupted by it and does a lot of evil what with churning out Sauron's army and attempting to corrupt Gandalf.

It is never arbitrarily stated that this is a thing randomly. It's the core premise of the entire setting and thourougly explained and explored over the many works of Tolkien - From the mainstream works like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, to even the Silmarillium (Which is where much of the backstory around the Middle Earth setting is found)

I agree with everything you say, and the way I expressed it was obviously too short and blunt. Sorry for that. Comparing the storyline of BG3 to LOTR is not the best comparison, due to the vastness and amount of detail in the latter, but on the BG3 scale, we do have some similar kind of explanation for the power of the nethercrown. Raphaël wants it to subdue the rulers of all nine hells. Gale manages to use it to enter Godhood. So in the "hands" (by lack of a better expression) of an elder brain, its power would also increase beyond the normal mindflayer standards. (IT doesn't have the stones yet during the endgame, so still not the full power) But yea, I respect every other "founded" interpretation.
Let's say that I was triggered by the remark that "this must be a bug". I hope to show that it depends on interpretation.

BG3 on the other hand arbitrarily states many thing, but then shows the complete opposite.

It states (out of the blue, in violation to all D&D lore) that mind flayer think so much above any mortals that only they can mentally match the netherbrain (for reasons). But then it shows mind flayer that can easily be tricked into believing that you are on its side and masterminds that can do nothing to prevent you getting the hammer and freeing Orpheus, the hight of his manipulative power being "going shirtless", while his fallback plan is "surrender to brain".

(Speaking of hammer, it states that only the hammer can free Orpheus but then shows some random Gith being technically able to free him by punching the chains)

It states that the tadpoles are super dangerous, slowly eating your brain with you losing part of yourself every time you give in to its power. It then makes them a completely harmless powerup system with no negative effects which is completely under your control.

It states that returning to life is a complicated and noteworthy issue, including having a necromancer performing experiments to figuring it out and the whole overall plot in act 2 having the root cause of returning a person to life.
Then it makes death completely trivial to you by giving you huge stacks of revivify raise dead and even a true ressurection scrolls which function a lot better than what the spell normally does and giving you a sidekick that performs the most powerful form of ressurection for pocket change with no one making a comment about that. But both only works as long as it wouldn't inconvenience the plot.

@Ido58

Tks I think that answers my question as to whether it was a rushed release issue or deliberate writing.

I really dislike the whole Emperor storyline and Orpheus having to transform just makes it worse.

It also makes no sense that Orpheus can shield us from transformation but can’t shield the NB from reading our thoughts. I just think they made a real poor decision regarding Orpheus having to transform. The choice should have been either let the Emperor eat his brain or we free him and he fights alongside us as a Gith.

It’s an even stranger decision when you consider how much Larian seemed to like Gith characters. They could have given Orpheus some cool powers.

I never touched any of the later WotC-editions, but seeing from an AD&D (2e) standpoint, the whole Absolute crisis revolves around extremely modified tadpoles, specifically bred at Moonrise Towers, that conserve much more of the host's personality and memories than your standard ceremorphosis ever would. Fantasy aspects aside, Naegleria fowleri can eat your brain. So, they will kill you in pretty much the same way an illithid tadpole would, annihilating any vestiges of your mind. That's why everybody says illithids are eating souls and why you can't just reverse ceremorphosis with a simple spell. The resulting standard mind flayer, however, also needs about 10-20 years to learn how to properly illithid according to the original lore. They don't retain any memories, nor do levels, abilities, proficiencies, powers or traits, like elven longevity, transfer from the host to the resulting mind flayer. They spend the first two decades of their lives in momma's brine pool, learning how to swim before they can levitate. It's however not unusual for illithids to go rogue after their motherbrain dies and enjoy their freedom, like Omeluum or the Emperor. We only gradually find out during the game that there's something strange going on with our tadpoles, which is why I thought the change of theme and tempo is fine. We won't die within the usual few days, but when we're supposed to turn.

They way I took it, the Emperor may have been a standard mind flayer after his transformation, but he also was quite a powerful adventurer before that. Omeluum developed its own non-evil personality, regardless of who it was before, but the Emperor may have held some powerful artefact that preserved at least some of his original personality which made him special. Or yet again, the illithid he became simply got a bit weird with age. In the original game, mind flayers live about 125 years. To me he came across like this illithid-supremacist control freak whose plans were hit-and-miss most of the time and who had delusions of his own and his species' grandeur. In AD&D mind flayers are of "genius" intelligence. That's 17-18, still easily within range of a human. Neurology may play a part, of course, and the Absolute isn't your standard elder brain either.

Taking the illithids-only restriction at face value, my Tav would have preferred, after getting the Foundry Gondians to fix Karlach's heart for good, to give the Netherstones to Omeluum, free Orpheus and kill the Emperor on the spot for even suggesting treason.

I didn't try to use anything else on Orpheus' chains, but when Lae'zel struck with the hammer she shouted "Vlaakith's will be done!" I blame the Zaith'isk.