this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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I think there's a pretty clear disconnect between the power levels of the implied background of the PC and the backgrounds for the other party members. Like okay I'm a Paladin/Warlock who was apparently a Guild Artisan and there are occasionally dialogue options based on these, but generally I'm a blank slate normal guy; the perfect example of a level 1 character background.
Then you have the party members (massive spoilers)
Every single one of them (except arguably Shadowheart) are way too powerful in-setting to be a level 1 character in D&D.
Everyone of them will tell you they lost considerable amounts of power when they got infected.
I guess I haven't gotten those dialogues yet. So far the only ones with an explanation had explanations from what they were doing before they got infected.
spoiler
Wyll got his powers removed for breaking his pact, Gale lost some magic when he opened the evil book, Shadowheart could conceivably have had her powers erased along with her memories.But that was tangential to my point, which is that all of the party members have backgrounds stating that they were operating on a higher level in a way that contrasts with the blank slate of the player character. This is not to mention that a high-level character in D&D should be swimming in magic items, even if they lost their actual character levels.
You think the mindflayers just let their abductees keep powerful magic items on them while incarcerated? Why wouldn't they just have confiscated them?
Maybe it's revealed later, but the nautiloid's tendrils looked like they just grabbed people and put them in the pods with all their stuff. IIRC the PC starts the game with a Revivify scroll, which is a 3rd level spell, so they don't take all magic items. I know the obvious answer here is "balance reasons", and I'm mostly just nitpicking, I just have a really fundamental dislike for this style of character backstory in D&D and every one of the main companions suffers from it.
Ah you see, they placed those there so their new Absolute thralls would have a good head start in the world without being powerful enough to overthrow the mind flayers.
Kinda just feels like you are trying to nitpick plotholes which is my least favorite type of media criticism, so I guess we are at an impasse here