- My character failed the saving throw to resist consuming the astral touched tadpole, so ended up a half-illithid against her will.
- She also chose to become illithid rather than letting Orpheus do it, as she believed he had an important role to play for the githyanki.
- She was a risk taker and endlessly curious so chose to live after defeating the netherbrain but didn’t trust herself around others enough to go with Karlach to Avernus, but at least she could persuade Karlach to go with Wyll, and Lae’zel also lived and flew off with Orpheus.
- But she *hated* becoming a mindflayer so everything after unwillingly becoming half-illithid (ie act 3) felt overcast with a sense of melancholy, which only got worse after her full transformation.
- And then at the epilogue party while chatting with Halsin, with whom she’d had a fling, she failed another saving throw and attacked him then got booted unceremoniously out of the celebration by Withers (it didn’t help that this version of the epilogue was really buggy).
The small tweak that would have helped me not feel quite as sad during act 3 and the ending for that playthrough would have been if my character could have appeared as her original self. It surely isn’t too much of a stretch to have an illithid power to project an image of how one wants to appear. My character approximated this by using the Disguise Self spell to appear as the halfling she started off as, but it’s not the same as having the appearance I’d carefully selected. And I know that’s shallow and cosmetic, but it would mean I wasn’t constantly reminded of the fate of my character, and I’m not ashamed to admit that a bit of denial would go a long way in helping me cope better with the ending
Maybe if they had an option to use Disguise Self for any character to look like their original appearence? Given that it lasts all day, you could call that an illithid power if you like; there's definitely another illithid in the game who can project a humanoid appearence. 