I'm sure I read a while ago that part of the point of the (good) story in BG3 is "are you prepared to sacrifice (things) to save the world?" As I said before, I had the Emperor sort it out so I haven't experienced the same choice as you, but I don't think being good aligned necessarily means sacrificing yourself for the greater good. To me, being good-aligned means generally having good intentions, but maybe turning into a mindflayer is just too far for your character. In my case, my character reluctantly sacrificed Orpheus. Probably not the most good thing to do, but It's what my character would do! (as all bad D&D players say ;-) )
Fair enough! My problem is that sacrificing themselves for the greater good and turning into a mindflayer is, given the choices in front of them, what my two good characters so far would had done (admittedly Karlach didn’t volunteer in either of the playthroughs so whether they’d allow her to sacrifice herself wasn’t tested - I think probably the first would have).
And while I love an HEA as much as the next softie, I have no fundamental problem with a tragic ending for my character or (despite my quibbles on the specific logic of the plotting) a setup where hard choices have to be made, and where goodness isn’t easy. But despite listening to and appreciating the other points of view in this thread, I do persist in my wish that small tweaks would be made to make the self-sacrificing choice just a little bit less of the downer it inevitably is going to be!
