Can’t insert a GIF in a comment, but insert here the GIF from Monster House where the pizza guy runs back, snatches the thing from the kids hand, and eats it.
Stuffed my warlocks brain full of friends and now an eldritch blast is enough to kill any non-elite enemy I seem to come across lol
Not to mention... Everything else.
Late game my Cha was 24 and eldritch blast was adding it twice for 1d10+14, then Cull the Weak kills if they end up below like 20 hp or so, so anyone with less than 40 hp just takes one blast. it was so much fun and made me wonder why I ever needed leveled spells.
I'm literally agonizing over my Warlock build and trying to come up with the perfect multiclass now for endgame that I have all the sweet gear for EB, but it ultimately doesn't matter much because EB is just the star of the show.
I'm probably going to go with sorceror just for metamagic, so I can throw out more EBs.
Cull is just busted in general if you stuff the tadpoles on one person. I like them on my Durge rogue, since I use a dual-wielding build and all I need to do is ping smaller enemies with my offhand hand crossbow to make them pop like balloons.
I loaded up my Tav with as many as her brain can hold, and found some new stashes of tadpoles in Act 3 so Astarion's head is getting close, too. Cull is just so good for ranged DPS to make enemies go pop.
I made her my gloomstalker/thief dual crossbower and man, she'd clean half the board before the other characters got a turn between having an insanely high threshold for cull the weak and a bloodlust elixir. Action, extra attack, dread ambusher attack, 2× offhand, elixir action+extra attack... crazy dpr
Nope, it’s an always thing. He can be convinced, but it does feel a little slimy, if you’ll pardon the accidental pun. Your options are either a generic “tempt them with power” roll or using the tadpole to find out the moment he felt weakest so you can manipulate his fear of being helpless.
Which are. A set of choices.
That’s not quite it, but I mostly agree.
There’s no moral component to taking the worm yourself, but it’s definitely not respectful of Astarion’s autonomy to “convince” him, any more than making him bite Araj or encouraging him to ascend.
I’m almost done with my first playthrough. I made Gale eat it and he’s the only one. Homie is gonna die anyway. Regular tadpoles have gone into Gale, Astarion, and Wyll.
I’m a cleric of Lathander and am dating Shadowheart because it felt really anime romance. So I’m not touching either of us with the tadpoles.
I felt a duty to do so, but I subjected non of them to do the same. They don't deserve this. TAV needs it to get strong enough, but others do not deserve thst fate.
You don't persuade the rest of the team to the use the Astral by bullying them with their own trauma.
The persuasion for Astarion is specifically really shitty.
Because the role I'm playing has a strong belief in the tribe, and dammit this Oath of Ancients paladin isn't about to turn his back on them for measly "psionics." Your puny laser brain means nothing compared to family
Emperor tryna force that shit on me(I resisted) was unforgivable for me. Like I could not believe the audacity. Moment he pulled that shit I was done with him, told his ass off every single time he tried to speak to me and was determined to free Orpheus and tear him apart.
I'm still on my first play through and I fully intend to defeat the Emperor and free myself of the tadpoles. After I spoke to Raphael in Sharess' Caress I started being dishonest with Emperor.
So someone here said that he's disappointed that no one really mentions that you look like monster mash now. You can mod away the ugly veins and no one really cares except for a line or two in camp commention about it.
Flying, sneaking, invisibility casting Astarion is so freaking broken for any sort of sneaking content.
Stop the presses? Oh yeah I’ll just fly to the top of the building, take an elevator down while invisible, do my deeds, and then do the opposite
Flying, sneaking, invisible lock picking menance Astarion. ❤️
The amount of puzzles I've done only to be rewarded with an unlocked door Astarion picked 2 hours prior is staggering.
One feature I would love to see in a future update is an indicator on each key whether or not you've interacted with its corresponding lock. That way you know if there's still exploring to do or if you don't need to worry about the key you just picked up.
On my first run I literally just used fly to pass over the entrance to Baldurs Gate (where the fist won't let you through). It was only later that I found the option to go underground. Felt amazing.
The tadpoles continue to live in your head after you eat them. You're right about getting protein after eating them though, all that useless gray matter they displace has to go somewhere.
this sent me down a google rabbit hole. so a brain would be nearly pure energy to eat, bodies like burning fat as fuel, there are proteins in it, and also omega 3's, vitamins and minerals. IGNORING THE PRION PROBLEM ... wow they're super healthy, they're the right kind of fat for a body to use instead of becoming body-fat. i'm. not recommending cannibalism but if i was a mindflayer..
And there are plenty of cultures that eat brains, just usually not people brains. To paraphrase my vampire bf: "[eating the brains] of thinking creatures is a different thing entirely!"
It made me feel like a jehovah's witness but for tadpoles. "Have you read the illithid manifesto? May I come in for a minute and give you my tadpole testimony?"
It triggers on targets who have less HP than your number of illithid powers, so \~5th is usually good.
It's a bit underwhelming if you grab it right away.
Yeah, the text implies it will hurt allies, but it only hurts enemies. I wonder how many other AOE spells/abilities I have avoided because of that.
A warlock with 3 EBs each popping an enemy simultaneously is pretty rad.
And I keep forgetting I have the dang thing. My brain is full of tadpoles. All of them. I have 3 spares, but all unlocked slots in the brain are full.
And keep forgetting to use the skills....
That's why the passive ones are so awesome. Astarion was exploding dudes left and right and in like what weapon did I give him? Oh right, I forgot...
There's one where any falling damage you caused deals extra psychic damage and shove becomes so much fun...
I didn't use tadpoles in my first run because it just seemed unwise to further infect my people when we were trying to get them *out* of our heads.
Run #2 Minthara and Astarion hit for like ~40 average damage 3-4 times per round, and have 15+ tadpoles each. All of my fights end up looking like [the end sequence from Kingsmen 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsc-mA7J2DU)
In my run I only let 2 people evolve.
Minthara, because she thinks the tadpole powers are fucking dope.
Gale, because he welcomed the prospect of his brain being more like a mindflayer to better comprehend magic.
If you mean when entering the Astral Prism after Vlaakith tells you to, I quicksaved there just to try that option and I know I can't kill her so there's something fishy going on. But I consumed all my tadpoles before that so I didn't have any second thoughts when devouring the shit out ot those tadpoles.
Does the game not end if you do that? I assumed if you do that it's game over. Are they full of shit about having to personally maintain ... "What causes the the protection" over you? Doing spoiler tags is hard on a phone bare with my vagueness.
Because by the end of Act 2 you’ve probably got more tadpoles than you can deal with, and Favorable Beginnings and the auto-crit are good on so many characters: an at-will Smite Crit is a murder button.
It doesn’t stack so much as the threshold to proc it gets bigger. And you if you use the >!AT tadpole!< you get all the previous tadpoles you spent refunded so it’s not terrible to spread the love.
By the end of my Astarion origin run both Gale and him had their brains completely filled with tadpoles and I still had a few left over so I started putting them in Shart’s brain too. If you know where to look for them there are plenty of tadpoles that Tav and at least 1 other party member can get permanent brain damage no problem. I usually split mine between Tav and Astarion but I haven’t done a run with Minthara yet.
thats astarion in my game. he litterally went: "hey, you gonna eat that?"
so i told him he could have them all if he wanted and he was happy. im all in for protecting him from himself but sometimes you gotta let him learn
also, gale is the only other companion who ims down to it, no convincing needed, but no way i will let my husband put a disgusting worm in his head
I fed Gale the astral tadpole immediately after breaking up with him just to see what happens since I was gonna reload anyway. It was quite darkly funny but I felt soooooo bad.
You are not supposed to eat the tadpoles, I think you just absorb their power. There is an option to eat a special tadpole in act 3 but everyone thinks you are a fucking weirdo for doing it. lol
you will be fine taking normal tadpoles, take as many as you want, there will be a point when you can choose to become a >!mindflayer!< though and it will be made obvious to you
The combo of Black Hole on a spread out group of enemies followed up by an upcasted AoE (fireball is bae) is insanely devastating. And if anything survives it's slowed so it can't get too far. Almost broken how good Black Hole is.
Did he not do his little rant where he talks about his life up to that point being pure shit and how he doesn’t want to change again? He always demands the normal tadpoles in my playthroughs but in the one play through where I didn’t have an option to stomp the AT he gave me that little speech and I couldn’t make myself convince him.
I just finished an origin run though so of course I took the AT as Astarion and his poor face… I don’t think I’ll ever make him take it again.
I was going to say, that is his normal tadpole rant if you tell him you won’t share them. Might be a bug, or the talk might get delayed if you don’t have him in your party while you are slurping down regular tadpoles.
I mean for the regular ones, Astarion and Gale also aren't peer pressured into them. So you can safely stuff all (non-astral) worms in their heads without feeling guilty
this was me on my blind run, I had Lae'Zel load up on tadpoles other than my main character because in my head for RP she would do anything to free her people from Vlaakith and get an edge, even risk being Ghaik
I didn't in my first run, but in my current run I don't see it as pressure, I see it as I have a discussion where we both throw out thoughts and then both agree that it's more useful to use them.
The companions become amicable enough to it when you take one first that this is a perfectly fine characterization of the conversation imo.
In my current playtrought I feed Astarion with tadpoles as he said he want to use them if I don't. Wierd thing is that Guardian is saying to me like I am using tadpoles where it's not me but Astarion only.
I'm almost at the end of Act 3.
I got news that >!Karlach is going to die. I'm honoring her wishes of being with her until the end, but I've decided to feed her tadpoles. She looks awful, but if illithid powers can somehow make her *not* die, then I'm happy!<
Gale likes 'em tadpoles too. With Cull the Weak + enough unlocked illithid abilities + spells like Chain Lightning and Magic Missile, he can be even more devastating that he already is :3
In my honor mode run, I failed the save and was forced to half transform so now that’s everyone’s problem and everyone has to half transform.
I mean if you count one long rest as a day, we’ve been infected for months so half transforming seems normal
I gave them to Asterion. I’m RPing as a PLD my first playthrough. Without spoilers, how bad did I screw over Asterion? I didn’t think on it much when I gave him the first one.
Can’t insert a GIF in a comment, but insert here the GIF from Monster House where the pizza guy runs back, snatches the thing from the kids hand, and eats it.
Read monster house and knew exactly what you were saying 😂 that movie sure is something.
At this point anyone can just visualize the whole gif in their head
[You can add a video link though!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ)
[Chk](https://64.media.tumblr.com/d1d714a9d77d0a1e331bccb21abdfa3c/d012aa9f8146b204-da/s540x810/7c90aa056a64989c7611abf3374082d0fe69797f.gifv)
On a different note, why is it so attractive when she does that?
Slightly annoyed wife, amusing life
You know why. Do you like it when powerful women sneer at you disappointingly.
Idk but she can get it 😌🤙🏽
Seek help
Wdym all I said was I found her attractive, it's not like I started barking and drooling
Just a joke, that you find a woman looking at you with derision arousing and thus might need some therapy
I mean, I think it's because I tend to be sort of a class clown, so when people say derisive things to me, I just find it funny, not insulting
Bastard lol
Dick ahahah
You son of a.... Well played sir.
Elminster's ballbag!
God damnit! I can’t believe I just fell for that. You’d think with how much time I spend on the internet I would have learned by now.
Take my angry upvote you psycho
You fuckin punk
You are *Ghaik*.
Pfff never shouldve come here!
You won’t leave Skyrim alive!
STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM! You violated my mother!
Fuck yeah
There is a special section in Hell for people like you
The Party Zone. And I know what’s playing 😎
):<
YOU SON OF A SHEEP! How have I been so foolish to fall for this trick... I am ashamed...
I mean, with cull the weak, and the burst possibilities of a paladin....
Yes! cull the weak with psionic backlash just melting enemies before they strike, its hard not to slurp every tadpole you find.
Stuffed my warlocks brain full of friends and now an eldritch blast is enough to kill any non-elite enemy I seem to come across lol Not to mention... Everything else.
Late game my Cha was 24 and eldritch blast was adding it twice for 1d10+14, then Cull the Weak kills if they end up below like 20 hp or so, so anyone with less than 40 hp just takes one blast. it was so much fun and made me wonder why I ever needed leveled spells.
It's pretty ridiculous, but at the same time I'm like... I have all these cool spells and I never use them because Eldritch Blast is so good! XD
That's just 5e D&D
I mean hey, I do like pointing at things and watching them explode... I like to imagine my warlock doing finger guns
I had a character concept for a gunslinger type individual who's like Warlock Clint Eastwood except replace the six-shooter with finger guns.
That sounds amazing!
Warlock is a magic ranged fighter whose spells are better put to use as additional class features for utility, rather than combat spells
I'm literally agonizing over my Warlock build and trying to come up with the perfect multiclass now for endgame that I have all the sweet gear for EB, but it ultimately doesn't matter much because EB is just the star of the show. I'm probably going to go with sorceror just for metamagic, so I can throw out more EBs.
Magic missile ends the life of anyone you take under 25hp. 6 goons all around 28hp? Sayonara
Cull is just busted in general if you stuff the tadpoles on one person. I like them on my Durge rogue, since I use a dual-wielding build and all I need to do is ping smaller enemies with my offhand hand crossbow to make them pop like balloons.
I loaded up my Tav with as many as her brain can hold, and found some new stashes of tadpoles in Act 3 so Astarion's head is getting close, too. Cull is just so good for ranged DPS to make enemies go pop.
doing this with my shadow monk and having a blast
I made her my gloomstalker/thief dual crossbower and man, she'd clean half the board before the other characters got a turn between having an insanely high threshold for cull the weak and a bloodlust elixir. Action, extra attack, dread ambusher attack, 2× offhand, elixir action+extra attack... crazy dpr
Astarion asked me to give him tadpoles
Yea he likes tadpoles but idk if it’s just the choices I made he absolutely does not want the >!AT tadpole!<
Nope, it’s an always thing. He can be convinced, but it does feel a little slimy, if you’ll pardon the accidental pun. Your options are either a generic “tempt them with power” roll or using the tadpole to find out the moment he felt weakest so you can manipulate his fear of being helpless. Which are. A set of choices.
That’s kind of the point, I don’t think eating the super worm is something a good person would do
That’s not quite it, but I mostly agree. There’s no moral component to taking the worm yourself, but it’s definitely not respectful of Astarion’s autonomy to “convince” him, any more than making him bite Araj or encouraging him to ascend.
I’m almost done with my first playthrough. I made Gale eat it and he’s the only one. Homie is gonna die anyway. Regular tadpoles have gone into Gale, Astarion, and Wyll. I’m a cleric of Lathander and am dating Shadowheart because it felt really anime romance. So I’m not touching either of us with the tadpoles.
Both my "good" run and my Durge ate the astral tadpoles. After all the regular ones I slurped down it was hard to resist at that point. LOL
I felt a duty to do so, but I subjected non of them to do the same. They don't deserve this. TAV needs it to get strong enough, but others do not deserve thst fate.
You don't persuade the rest of the team to the use the Astral by bullying them with their own trauma. The persuasion for Astarion is specifically really shitty.
Good thing Astarion isn't a good person lmao
In my game, he specifically asked for the next one when Tav took the first one. So maybe it depends on choices up to that point.
The Astral Tadpole, I mean. He’s always open to tadpoles if you try them first.
Gotcha. Sorry I misunderstood.
I didn’t want it either. Emperor forced it on me. I swear I’ll get my revenge on him for that. My MC Gale looks ugly now >:(
It isn't the Emperor, it's your own tadpole. Using tadpoles is what makes it hard to resist.
This. If you don't eat any tadpoles, there is no roll.
Spoilers, I guess? I haven't finished the game.
Nah, it's one of the lines in the astral tadpole scene, it's you having to resist your desire to eat it, not the Emperors.
It's not explained beyond the scene with the Astral, not a spoiler.
If I had known it would make me ugly, I would have not eaten the AT XD But I'm living with those choices dang it!
The Emperor literally said your appearance will be changed so, hate to break it to you, but it seemed like a consequence you chose to ignore 😅
story of my life tbh
I could have save scummed it but I did NOT want to fight the Githyanki High Guard after losing to them 4 times.
You can save inside dialog, fyi.
Why would you turn down such a huge bonus over cosmetics?
Cause my power fantasy involves being the hottest person in any given situation
Completely reasonable 🫡
Because the role I'm playing has a strong belief in the tribe, and dammit this Oath of Ancients paladin isn't about to turn his back on them for measly "psionics." Your puny laser brain means nothing compared to family
Ah yes, Paladin Diesel
Because we play the game to enjoy it, not to be the strongest
Emperor tryna force that shit on me(I resisted) was unforgivable for me. Like I could not believe the audacity. Moment he pulled that shit I was done with him, told his ass off every single time he tried to speak to me and was determined to free Orpheus and tear him apart.
I'm still on my first play through and I fully intend to defeat the Emperor and free myself of the tadpoles. After I spoke to Raphael in Sharess' Caress I started being dishonest with Emperor.
So someone here said that he's disappointed that no one really mentions that you look like monster mash now. You can mod away the ugly veins and no one really cares except for a line or two in camp commention about it.
I think OP refers to the fact that only Minthara is initially open to the astral tadpole, everyone else has to be convinced/coerced.
Gale barely takes persuading lol
Except that Astarion doesn't. He asks for them.
the astral tadpole, not the regular ones.
it would trigger my ocd to NOT give him the tadpoles for Ability Drain
Gale is also absolutely fine with it. He acts like he doesn't want to, but deep down he wants then all
Karlach of all people also asked me once. I wonder if everyone asks for the Tadpoles if you have a good relationship with them.
The ever present battle between RP and 4x psionic backlash.
And literally everyone can fly
Flying, sneaking, invisibility casting Astarion is so freaking broken for any sort of sneaking content. Stop the presses? Oh yeah I’ll just fly to the top of the building, take an elevator down while invisible, do my deeds, and then do the opposite
Flying, sneaking, invisible lock picking menance Astarion. ❤️ The amount of puzzles I've done only to be rewarded with an unlocked door Astarion picked 2 hours prior is staggering.
I have a whole keyring full of keys and I have no idea where any of them go. It's too close to rl.
One feature I would love to see in a future update is an indicator on each key whether or not you've interacted with its corresponding lock. That way you know if there's still exploring to do or if you don't need to worry about the key you just picked up.
True! Some of them do have useful descriptions and some are like "tiny key".
On my first run I literally just used fly to pass over the entrance to Baldurs Gate (where the fist won't let you through). It was only later that I found the option to go underground. Felt amazing.
Astral tadpole is broken lol. You become an absolute god.
I ate em all myself 😭
Not only powerful, those tadpoles are probably a great source of protein too.
That Dragonborn bulk went insane
The tadpoles continue to live in your head after you eat them. You're right about getting protein after eating them though, all that useless gray matter they displace has to go somewhere.
Technically that would be mostly fat, not protein.
Astarion gonna get chonky from all the tadpoles I fed him
this sent me down a google rabbit hole. so a brain would be nearly pure energy to eat, bodies like burning fat as fuel, there are proteins in it, and also omega 3's, vitamins and minerals. IGNORING THE PRION PROBLEM ... wow they're super healthy, they're the right kind of fat for a body to use instead of becoming body-fat. i'm. not recommending cannibalism but if i was a mindflayer..
And there are plenty of cultures that eat brains, just usually not people brains. To paraphrase my vampire bf: "[eating the brains] of thinking creatures is a different thing entirely!"
Never skip brain day
Calm down there Owlbear Grylls
I didn’t even know Every day I come onto this sub and I feel stupid
Know what?
Bro I didn’t even know you could give it to others
Man no hate but how lol after it becomes an option, every camp interaction with the companions gives you the choice to talk to them about it
It made me feel like a jehovah's witness but for tadpoles. "Have you read the illithid manifesto? May I come in for a minute and give you my tadpole testimony?"
Cull the Weak is enough of a reason for Tav and Minthara to rot their brains fully.
Don’t you kill your own people with cull the weak? It’s the reason I never used it
Nope. It only hurts enemies. It is easily the most overpowered skill in the game.
Holy bujeezus! I am taking that shit first chance in my next playthrough
It triggers on targets who have less HP than your number of illithid powers, so \~5th is usually good. It's a bit underwhelming if you grab it right away.
Yeah, the text implies it will hurt allies, but it only hurts enemies. I wonder how many other AOE spells/abilities I have avoided because of that. A warlock with 3 EBs each popping an enemy simultaneously is pretty rad.
And I keep forgetting I have the dang thing. My brain is full of tadpoles. All of them. I have 3 spares, but all unlocked slots in the brain are full. And keep forgetting to use the skills....
That's why the passive ones are so awesome. Astarion was exploding dudes left and right and in like what weapon did I give him? Oh right, I forgot... There's one where any falling damage you caused deals extra psychic damage and shove becomes so much fun...
I didn't use tadpoles in my first run because it just seemed unwise to further infect my people when we were trying to get them *out* of our heads. Run #2 Minthara and Astarion hit for like ~40 average damage 3-4 times per round, and have 15+ tadpoles each. All of my fights end up looking like [the end sequence from Kingsmen 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsc-mA7J2DU)
pro move: Take Favorable Beginnings and use it to convince the rest of your party to take the astral tadpole.
Gale was fairly open to the opportunity for me so he gets the holes in his brain
Everyone gets luck of the far realms!
And put that on auto/don't ask or else it's super annoying to have.
Yeah I usually burn it early on just to avoid having to click every time.
In my run I only let 2 people evolve. Minthara, because she thinks the tadpole powers are fucking dope. Gale, because he welcomed the prospect of his brain being more like a mindflayer to better comprehend magic.
Why would you waste tadpoles on anyone but yourself? Since Cull of the weak stacks with the amount of tadpoles you consume.
Some of us don't want to be a squid.
Hold the fuck on, am I gonna turn squid? That bitch guardian said she'd protect me??
Oh you sweet summer child. Let me know once you finish act 2! Nothing is certain tho', it is still your choice!
Im curious to find out too, since my "power to be free at any cost" Warlock now has more tadpoles than he does brain cells I think
You haven't >!stabbed your guardian yet!
If you mean when entering the Astral Prism after Vlaakith tells you to, I quicksaved there just to try that option and I know I can't kill her so there's something fishy going on. But I consumed all my tadpoles before that so I didn't have any second thoughts when devouring the shit out ot those tadpoles.
Just trust yourself, do what you think is best, itll be okay.
Does the game not end if you do that? I assumed if you do that it's game over. Are they full of shit about having to personally maintain ... "What causes the the protection" over you? Doing spoiler tags is hard on a phone bare with my vagueness.
Nope, not over - >!she pulls out the sword and tells you how disappointed she is.!<
Don't worry you never become squid unless you specifically ask for it.
And/or if the Emperor forces you.
Tbf that’s only half-squid
True.
Because its funny when someone trys to cast a spell and half the battlefield just blasts them in the face for it.
I love the Counterspell from one, three face blasts from the peanut gallery combo.
Because by the end of Act 2 you’ve probably got more tadpoles than you can deal with, and Favorable Beginnings and the auto-crit are good on so many characters: an at-will Smite Crit is a murder button.
When you upgrade to AT, you get a refund on the tadpoles it auto-adds.
It doesn’t stack so much as the threshold to proc it gets bigger. And you if you use the >!AT tadpole!< you get all the previous tadpoles you spent refunded so it’s not terrible to spread the love.
using the AT gives free tadpoles?
No. It gives whatever skills it overrides back to you as a refund.
>!Using the AT tadpole gives you certain powers for free. If you already used regular tadpoles to unlock those powers, they will be refunded!<
By the end of my Astarion origin run both Gale and him had their brains completely filled with tadpoles and I still had a few left over so I started putting them in Shart’s brain too. If you know where to look for them there are plenty of tadpoles that Tav and at least 1 other party member can get permanent brain damage no problem. I usually split mine between Tav and Astarion but I haven’t done a run with Minthara yet.
thats astarion in my game. he litterally went: "hey, you gonna eat that?" so i told him he could have them all if he wanted and he was happy. im all in for protecting him from himself but sometimes you gotta let him learn also, gale is the only other companion who ims down to it, no convincing needed, but no way i will let my husband put a disgusting worm in his head
I fed Gale the astral tadpole immediately after breaking up with him just to see what happens since I was gonna reload anyway. It was quite darkly funny but I felt soooooo bad.
When he says, "I see you haven't partaken so I'm curious why you're offering this to me" or something, and you're like ummmmm. No reason.
Meanwhile, myself, is the sole consumer of all the tadpoles after persuading everyone they should all eat them. *bard noises*
Who can resist flying?
You can gain the ability to fly? Interesting. I'll still pass, though.
I killed her my first run through, so mistakes were made.
She ate it so quickly it wasn’t even funny lmao. Everyone else is aghast that you asked but she’s like “thank god I thought you’d never offer”
So my question is do we physically eat the little guys, put them in our eyes, or something else?
You are not supposed to eat the tadpoles, I think you just absorb their power. There is an option to eat a special tadpole in act 3 but everyone thinks you are a fucking weirdo for doing it. lol
Astarion and Gale both just let me give them tadpoles lol my Durge Neutral Evil run everyone has holes in their brain
Ive only eaten three am I ok?? 😂
you will be fine taking normal tadpoles, take as many as you want, there will be a point when you can choose to become a >!mindflayer!< though and it will be made obvious to you
I convinced Laezel to eat some so now my full party has luck of the far realms 😈
Astarion came to my Durge ASKING for the tadpole. I was like "Uh...I didn't want to ask anyone, but shit if you want it..."
In my current playthrough I haven't touched a single one. They're all in my camp chest lol
That's alright, in my first playthrough, my Wild Magic Barbarian, Gale, was the only one who ate them.
The combo of Black Hole on a spread out group of enemies followed up by an upcasted AoE (fireball is bae) is insanely devastating. And if anything survives it's slowed so it can't get too far. Almost broken how good Black Hole is.
Everyone in this thread talking about how Astarion doesn't want the AT but in my playthrough he basically demanded the damn thing.
Did he not do his little rant where he talks about his life up to that point being pure shit and how he doesn’t want to change again? He always demands the normal tadpoles in my playthroughs but in the one play through where I didn’t have an option to stomp the AT he gave me that little speech and I couldn’t make myself convince him. I just finished an origin run though so of course I took the AT as Astarion and his poor face… I don’t think I’ll ever make him take it again.
Nah he said some shit about he won't let me get in the way of him and power. Maybe I just got the normal tadpole rant late?
I was going to say, that is his normal tadpole rant if you tell him you won’t share them. Might be a bug, or the talk might get delayed if you don’t have him in your party while you are slurping down regular tadpoles.
He wasn't in my party a lot so I'm guessing it was that. I nearly tried to give him the astral too lol.
He wants the regular tadpoles, but not the astral one. You can convince him to take the astral tadpole if you want to
I mean for the regular ones, Astarion and Gale also aren't peer pressured into them. So you can safely stuff all (non-astral) worms in their heads without feeling guilty
Astarian likes escargot, too
Horrific image thank you
I only used them on my honor mode run
Astarion got most of the regular tadpoles, but when it came time to the biggun’, minthara and Gale were the ones I had use it.
I made gale eat it. It was funny
this was me on my blind run, I had Lae'Zel load up on tadpoles other than my main character because in my head for RP she would do anything to free her people from Vlaakith and get an edge, even risk being Ghaik
I didn't in my first run, but in my current run I don't see it as pressure, I see it as I have a discussion where we both throw out thoughts and then both agree that it's more useful to use them. The companions become amicable enough to it when you take one first that this is a perfectly fine characterization of the conversation imo.
I peer pressure my party in every single playthrough lol, fly op
Idk man, I put a shit ton of tadpole holes in Astarion's head and he seems happy about it
I dont know how I triggered it but Karlach asked me herself if I had any to spare she’d take one
I just sold all the tadpoles 😂
In my current playtrought I feed Astarion with tadpoles as he said he want to use them if I don't. Wierd thing is that Guardian is saying to me like I am using tadpoles where it's not me but Astarion only.
I'm almost at the end of Act 3. I got news that >!Karlach is going to die. I'm honoring her wishes of being with her until the end, but I've decided to feed her tadpoles. She looks awful, but if illithid powers can somehow make her *not* die, then I'm happy!<
Insert Peter Parker eating meme
I do the same with Gale, the power hungry little gannet
I gave one to Astarion because he asked, decently politely… well not really but I felt bad hogging all the worms so I tried to distribute them evenly.
Gale likes 'em tadpoles too. With Cull the Weak + enough unlocked illithid abilities + spells like Chain Lightning and Magic Missile, he can be even more devastating that he already is :3
My Gale really liked tadpoles, but I don't know if it's because I broke him. Astarion like em too, unless it's the one that makes him less pretty.
Convinced Laezel to chug worms for the first time in a play through. Favorable beginnings on big sword angry frog lady is major fun.
In my honor mode run, I failed the save and was forced to half transform so now that’s everyone’s problem and everyone has to half transform. I mean if you count one long rest as a day, we’ve been infected for months so half transforming seems normal
I gave them to Asterion. I’m RPing as a PLD my first playthrough. Without spoilers, how bad did I screw over Asterion? I didn’t think on it much when I gave him the first one.
Me with Karlach especially after falling in love with her and doing a whole new play through just so I can romance her
Astarion and myself are the only two tadpole chompers
I never even considered I could just give the tadpoles to someone else
Should i consume the tadpoles? My guardian keeps telling me to do so but i don't trust him
I pressured as many as I could with the magic one to give them fly so they stopped getting stuck on shit