Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Patch 8 introduced the first time I've ever been tempted to use the tadpole.

I don't disagree with the idea of the tadpole giving more power to tempt us right from the start. However, again, if they do nothing to make releasing SH NOT a temptation to do something we may later regret, why NOT release her, every time? Suddenly introduce a mind flayer power temptation, and whoa. Wait a minute. Maybe I should rethink this.

As for why? She had it hidden on her, and they didn't have time to extract it before the Gith showed up and it was all hands on deck to ward off the attacks. Best just to seal her in a coffin for now and deal with the rebellious witch later. Make it so only a mind flayer can access it to ensure it is secure.

Again, just one possible explanation. Who knows what Larian's true reasoning is.

If I recall her story correctly (assuming she wasen't lying) She got the artifact elsewhere and THEN got captured by the ship.. so as far as we know the Mindflayers don't know about the artifact yet. So far this is all one big set of circumstances happening one after another.. the group getting captured... then going to avernus while being in pursuit by the githyanki.. from what I also know the Gith ARE in fact in pursuit of the artifact. Both the Gith and the Absolute forces are after the artifact. Then you crash near the old temple to Jerghal wich apparently was waiting for you.

Its also possible there is no consequence for using the tadpole past a certain treshold at the end of the day freeing SH or not is up to the player.. alot of people are speculating now out of meta gaming from some of the stuff we have found out so far.

From what I can tell us being able to resist the absolute was due by SH's very presence with the artifact wich could be dumb luck or some planning from one god or another combined with her memory issues ect its one big mystery wich im intrigued to solve. I won't over indulge in using the tadpole myself but im certainly not doing a yay or nay playthrough until I have beaten the game at least once.

It's up to the player, if he/she wants to play an altruistic character that will help everyone, then the player will release Shadowheart Or the player could "RP" that the character doesn't know what the machine will do to Shadowheart, and thus leave her in. Alternatively leaving Shadowheart in the pod to die is something an evil character would do. But to respond to your first point: I don't think it's a problem that people free Shadowheart every time.

Your explanation for why the mindflayers leave Shadowheart in the pod with the gith weapon doesn't hold much water to me. It would be as simple as grabbing the artifact and placing it somewhere safe. And if an ilithid is indisposedm then have a thrall do it.

We both know the reasoning for why Larian did this: To few people doesn't use the tadpole powers. I personally liked the preavious iteration where they were a shortcut in order to obtain power, but felt like you did not get something substantial to tempt the player. That's why I am of the opinion that an ability score improvement and/or a feat for every milestone you reach in tadpole corruption is a better way to tempt the player. Not locking of Shadowheart away in the prologue to those of us that want to try a no tadpole run.

I think it's a very big stretch to say the MF don't know about the artifact, everything points to it.

SH has special extra security.
Us tells us not to release her.
The Gith and True Souls know it's in the area and the prisoners have it after we crash.

Its pretty clear that everyone knows it's on the ship. Knowing that it's on the ship, all the evidence points to the MFs knowing it's with SH.

As for the reasons they've not just taken it? Umm, it has a will of its own, if SH is killed to literally jumps away from her to you. If you get attacked without SH in your party by the 'visions' then it jumps to you to protect you.

There's plenty of evidence that saying leaving it with SH and locking her up to work out how to get it off her is the logical choice while under attack from Gith. If they just try to take it it could just up and disappear.

It sounds to me like the change is pretty good, but the “retcon” is far to transparent at the moment. It is something that can be addressed though - I would be surprised if they didn’t redesign the introduction for 1.0 once all companions are in place.

But then if you give stuff to the tempted player you create a problem where the one that dosent use it need to get something as well.. not to mention not everyone is gonna get "tempted" by extra stats (seriously feels like a lazy cope out to me) .. I definatly feel like there should be an alternative for getting her out of there.. but also I think its theyre way of introducing you to the tadpole because in reality a new player not gonna question "is this good or bad" Theyre just gonna do the option.. I know I have seen enough streamers clicking the "evil" options in games without even realising it was evil only for them to be all shocked and suprised and when someone died because of it.

How should we know, we didnt created it.

Funny that nobody ever mentioned any discomfort about the fact that you actualy *dont* need to find some runic key to control the transponder, or instant ceremorphosis device ...

Also i can think about two reasons for transponder:
1) You DONT actualy use it ... you just connected two tentacles (feel free to imagine them as wires) ... there was no direct control on your side.
2) That would actualy be bad design we are talking about here ... you would be forced to use tadpole in order to finish tutorial, and that would indeed be cheap ... this way, if you decide not to use tadpole, nothing really changes* ... you still get to the helm, finish tutorial and your story continues.
(*unless you REALLY want to kill everyone in the Helm even tho, Shadowheart is hardly any strong help in order to achieve that since you cant adjust her spells)

Different point of view:
There is also possibility that we had to use our tadpole, bcs usage of Shadowheart pod was in direct contradiction with its purpose ...
I mean Ceremorphosis chamber was created to ceremorphosing people ... and we ceremorphosed person in there ... that is fitting to its purpose.
The transponder in the helm is controlling the ship movement ... and we controlled ship movement with it ... again fitting to its purpose.
But containment pod for Shadowheart were suppose to contain her ... and we were acting against the purpose, since we wanted to free her, even Us was against it ... therefore we had to use our psyonic power, to persuate (for lack of better therm in my vocabulary) the devide that this is something Mind Flaer comands ...

---

Exactly ...

Either that or she is the only prisoner in some sort of sense ... i mean her pod was the only one we have found that was locked after all ...
Maybe we were in just some sort of "containment vessel" ... but she was locked in regular prison pod, for dangerous specimens ... if that makes any sense.

---

Asuming they can touch it.
Surely you noticed that when you try several times to drop the box, it "hurts" your haracter (it makes zapping sound and flash a little) ... maybe is is capable of even stronger attack, i mean we dont really know what killed those Mind Flayers, do we?

Yes, i know its just theory ... but i dare to presume that if Mind Flayers let Shadowheart keep the weapon, they had to have some really good reason.

There is also second option, few times mentioned here ... they simply didnt know about it.

---

Then i presume you are also happy about this change?

Just wondering, how do you feel about the ability score improvement you get from sparing the Hag? That's where I got the idea from. Then instead of an ability score improvement, let the tadpole reveal some tiny tidbits of information about the mindflayers plan to us, that out of context it's of little use, but later it maight be important?

I think it was interesting since its an optional path.. and to be honest knowing hags it probably screws you in some ways later...You still need to either give something up or pass a check to get it. While you don't know the long terms consequence for it you do know the immediate ones wich with the tadpole honestly all we have is speculations nobody the the dev know right now. I honestly would like to see something similar done for a good decision.. lets say you take on a super hard fight to protect somebody then later get rewarded a blessing...there is a captive thats about to get thrown to the spiders in the goblin camp that you can save if you act fast enough.. as far as I know you get nothing for it..maybe some xp or an inspiration point (I think maybe not even that). Pathfinder games had alot of things like that.. choose a particular path you get benfit A choose the other you get benefit B.

But to the back to my point from the main feature of the game I think leaving somekind of suspense on whenever its good or not to use the power to be left a mystery is a good thing. Like I have pointed out before you could never use the tadpole then it grows anywways if you decided to drink Omeluum's potion..drinking the potion is not exactly evil temptation nor is it good. You get the ring of psionic protection in exchange.. I am curious how important that ring might be later for either path.

I disagree that it's a mystery as our characters are kidnapped by monsters that eats brains in order to sustain themselves and they have infected you with a parasite that will eventually turn you into one of them. Most people who knows D&D lore will quite quickly and reasonably presume that the tadpole powers are bad. But to your next point, I think the ring simply prevents you from being controlled by true souls and stops you from using the tadpole.

And yet every single person you meet that tries to help you remove it tells you there is something weird with your tadpole that you should already showing symptoms..netherese magic,the thing is in stasis ect. True each time you use it its like the stasis is undone for the use.. like its frozen in time unless used all at the same awhile giving you some powers....we also know the tadpole is not the only thing fighting for control in your head.. You both the the dream AND the presence in the dream telling you to kill the dream apparition... wich you can either give into one or the other or neither... once a player has all of those information I can see alot of path's branching from stopping to use it entirely or trying to follow either path in your mind. But for any of that decision making to happen your gonna either have to use it OR wait to find someone knowledgeable enough to tell you what the heck is going on.

Also weirdly enough I don't know if its a bug but several usage of the tadpole does not seem to progress the dreams. Such as trying to read SH's mind when you tell her " You know this could be our last night togheter" or trying to mind control Droz Raxin to ask the wrong questions in the goblin camp...tho checks have the particularity to have DC's above 0 so thats an interesting tid bit to add to the pile of mysteries.

The mindflayer doesn't want to to use the controls to change that woman either probably. I wouldn't be happy, if my slaves would be running around, touching everything and probably disturbing processes along the way.
And the beach thing is entirely different - it's subconscious to save yourself, more a reflex than anything else. I do see a difference there. Plus, you don't get a tadpole dream from that.

... or it could simply be an overlook by Larian. If we can get the artifact, why not some random mindflayer? And yes, they know about the artifact - as was stated a few times, US warns us of opening SHs pod, she is sealed in by a console and the gith attacked and followed the mindflayer ship to Avernus (which is strange as Lae'zel admitted) - so it can be assumed that it was known, that the artifact was there (with the gith not knowing, where on the ship).

And I'm pretty sure, the mindflayer would have had enough time, to take the artifact from SH, since they had time, to infect all those people in teh ship with tadpoles after teh raid from teh prologue.

True, this option is allways present.

No idea ...
Why can we easily walk under the sun, but its unpleasant for Mind Flayers?
(Rhetoric question.)

It may be bcs it radiates some energy that harms them ... it may be bcs its defending against their touch, but not ours, since we protect it (even unwillingly) ... it may be thousand more reasons, or none of them at all.

Im sory i dont follow ...
Where it was stated? O_o

I also fail to see any conection to the rest ...
- Us warns us that she is supposed to be locked in ... that is certainly true, but there dont need to be any connection to the artefact, if someone is in jail, people who put him there usualy dont want them to be just let out.
- Shadowheart is sealed ... that is also true, but once again we dont *know* why, we can certainly speculate it have something to do with that box tho, but that is just our speculation.
- Gith attacked the ship itself ... and acording to Kithrak, they have no idea about any woman who should keep the weapon, all they knew was that it was on that ship.

Agreed ...
So since time was not the essence, there was probably different reason they didnt take it.

If we put aside that option that Larian simply made a misstake ...
I think its quite reasonable to presume they cant simply take it for "some reason" whatever that would be ... so they decided to lock up Shadowheart to especialy guarded pod (we can call it jail for its purpose) and leave her be, until we reach Moonrise Towers, where Absolute makes her True Soul.

And once she will ... they will posses the weapon.

I did say, that the gith don't know about SH, just that the artifact was on the ship. And other people stated the reasons, why SH was sealed in before me. That's what I meant.
I'm pretty sure, the mindflayers had time enough to secure the artifact- If they can't touch it themselves, there are enough non-minflayer thralls in the ship.
All I want is a bit of logic.

But to give you a bit of logic, they'd have to reveal more SH story.

I say, as far as story goes, trust it will make sense in the end. If the pod requires ILLITHID powers, there must be a reason.

Right?

Riiiiiight?

Nope, I don't trust, that it will make sense. They wanted a tadpole decision early in and crammed it into the console Interactions. I bet, that is as much sense, as we get.

Good point ...

It seems like the Illithids was learning from Dr. Evil.

Tempting the player to release another prisoner is OK, I guess.

but without meta gaming:
- Do we know that the prisoner in this pod is a potential party member?
- Do we know she has an artifact?
- If the Illithids know about the artifact why did they not take it?
- If they did not know, why put her in a special pod?

About the last question: Maybe all prisoners are in such pods. Ours broke during the attack, this one not.

Maybe only Illithids can open pods because they fear that some slaves are just pretending to be slaves and they free others when Illithids are not looking.
OK, but spies can cause big damage even when they cannot open pods so this makes little sense.

When I first started playing this game, before I knew anything about it, I tried to free Us even though the narration told me the creature was a servant of the mind flayers.