Anyway, what are real options in the world D&D?

[Crom]

What are real options in the world D&D to remove that worm from my brain?

How the Lore works?

I mean, i like the story, kinda, but, it feels like in world full of magic, shouldt it be actualy very easy?

[seeker1]

Yeah, and Frodo and Sam could have just hopped on some giant Eagles and flown to Mount Doom. Story over.

That worm has some serious plot armor, mon frere.

Is this a spoiler? There is a way to (possibly) get rid of it: finish the game.

[Crom]

Aaaaaalright...

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Crom:

What are real options in the world D&D to remove that worm from my brain?

How the Lore works?

I mean, i like the story, kinda, but, it feels like in world full of magic, shouldt it be actualy very easy?

Yes, except for the Tadpoles being infused/bound with shadow magic from the Netherbrain + Crown of Karsus (think like Warlock or Eldritch Knight bind weapon... but a tadpole and permanent), which the latter is like the most powerful item ever made on Faerun, with things like Imaskari Imaskarcana etc. being second/third rate to it in comparison.

Yes you could go searching far and wide, but the most direct path and assured path after Act 1 is just dealing with the Netherbrain and the Chosen, because if you don't everything will end anyways.

[A Horrible Goose]

Going by the Lords of Madness sourcebook, the only sure way to kill the tadpole and cure the victim without causing serious brain injury is the spell Heal (6th level spell in this edition).
The "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" options would be having your head crushed, then having a resurrection/true resurrection cast on you, or spells like Wish.
However, BG3-specific spoilers: The mind flayer tadpoles in BG3 have been tampered with using powerful magic, so they have plot armor against these methods.

[Weird Grim]

Originally posted by Crom:

What are real options in the world D&D to remove that worm from my brain?

How the Lore works?

I mean, i like the story, kinda, but, it feels like in world full of magic, shouldt it be actualy very easy?

Yes normally it would be kind of easy, like Gale said at the start if we seen any high lvl cleric for it and we have met Halsin, Omeluum and the hag that could remove it.
Main problem is, this ain't your normal tadpole, main reason of the story.

[Duilf]

Originally posted by Balekai:

Originally posted by Crom:

What are real options in the world D&D to remove that worm from my brain?

How the Lore works?

I mean, i like the story, kinda, but, it feels like in world full of magic, shouldt it be actualy very easy?

Yes, except for the Tadpoles being infused/bound with shadow magic from the Netherbrain + Crown of Karsus (think like Warlock or Eldritch Knight bind weapon... but a tadpole and permanent), which the latter is like the most powerful item ever made on Faerun, with things like Imaskari Imaskarcana etc. being second/third rate to it in comparison.

Yes you could go searching far and wide, but the most direct path and assured path after Act 1 is just dealing with the Netherbrain and the Chosen, because if you don't everything will end anyways.

While there are a few 12th level artifacts scattered around which are capable of ascending a mortal to godhood... the Crown of Karsus like several parts of BG 3 were retroactively injected into the existing narrative with D&D as a whole made no prior mention to any of them. The Crown, the tadpole, and several other things are as Seeker1 said in different words just MacGuffins to drive the plot forward. That isn't an outright bad thing, but it is what it is.

[Crom]

Alright... i will uncover that mystery of myself then...

[alanc9]

Originally posted by Duilf:

While there are a few 12th level artifacts scattered around which are capable of ascending a mortal to godhood... the Crown of Karsus like several parts of BG 3 were retroactively injected into the existing narrative with D&D as a whole made no prior mention to any of them. The Crown, the tadpole, and several other things are as Seeker1 said in different words just MacGuffins to drive the plot forward. That isn't an outright bad thing, but it is what it is.

Hey, learning about things from the past which were never mentioned before is a time-honored D&D tradition.

[alanc9]

Originally posted by A Horrible Goose:

Going by the Lords of Madness sourcebook, the only sure way to kill the tadpole and cure the victim without causing serious brain injury is the spell Heal (6th level spell in this edition).
The "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" options would be having your head crushed, then having a resurrection/true resurrection cast on you, or spells like Wish.
However, BG3-specific spoilers: The mind flayer tadpoles in BG3 have been tampered with using powerful magic, so they have plot armor against these methods.

Of course, Wish and True Resurrection aren't available to the party. (Excepting one scroll, which really shouldn't be in there.)

[seeker1]

You can get those spells through mods, but they still can't change the game's scripts to undo the tadpole anyway.

[Mike Garrison]

Assuming a "normal" mindflayer infection:

Wish can do most anything that the DM allows it to do.

It's pretty nearly canon that Heal can solve the problem as long as the process is not complete. Heal is supposed to cure any disease or injury.

It could be brute-forced by cutting off the head of the victim, then using a spell like True Resurrection to return the victim to life. (Most resurrection-type spells won't heal severed body parts, but True Resurrection will.)

Normally the ceremorphosis process only takes hours, and does permanent damage to the brain of the victim (well, permanent unless Heal is used) within minutes. One 3.5e source said that victims permanently lose 1 point of DEX, INT, WIS, and CHA every hour, and the process completes as soon as the first one of those drops to 0. (In case you didn't know, any attribute dropping to 0 is automatic death.)

Finally, it has long been established that if the process completes and the victim turns into a mindflayer, only a miracle from an actual god can bring them back. Perhaps a Wish, which is nearly god-level magic.

[Riley]

Once it's in your brain, the only way to be free of the tadpole is to destroy your head, die with the tadpole, then get revived.

[Sentient_Toaster]

For a party that lacks a capable caster, finding a capable and willing NPC and performing whatever services are required as payment might be a major endeavor, of course.

If we use the Adventurer's League (official organized play) guidelines that were published with the "Storm King's Thunder" adventure ( 5E, levels 1-11)... getting Resurrection or True Resurrection cast for you is possible, but requires not merely 3K / 50K gold expenditure, but also massive downtime ( 150 or 350 days of downtime in community service, which can be reduced by faction rank). For AL play, the formula used to produce the gold prices (alone) would result in a casting cost of ~3600 gold... at some point the gold cost ceases to matter, but the time spent in service might.

"Wish"-based solutions are deeply problematic, because in 5E using Wish for *any* effect other than replicating the effects of a level 8 (or lower, ofc) spell comes with the very real chance of never being able to cast Wish ever again, in addition to a guaranteed days-long reduction of Strength to 3.

[Hobocop]

Just find someone who can cast Wish and/or True Resurrection a half-dozen times within a matter of hours and is willing to do so for a bunch of relative nobodies.

Easy enough.

[Apollyon]

The reality is that the game would be over before it even began; once the ceremorphosis process begins, the mind flayer tadpole transforms the host rapidly (within a matter of hours) by eating through their brain's grey matter, growing in the process as it replaces the brain with its own tissue and attaches itself to the brain stem like a parasite.

It's only possible to interrupt ceremorphosis and save the host before the initial stage is completed, and even so it's only possible to do so by killing the tadpole, which is complicated by its location. The safest way is to incinerate or crush the host's head and then use spells such as resurrection, or true resurrection. Destroyed parts of the victim's personality could then be reconstructed via restoration and heal spells, as long as the damage was not complete.

So, unless you have a party member or some other deus ex machina at the ready, there simply ain't no way you're escaping the fate of turning into a mind flayer.

It's also interesting to note that normally, Dwarves and Halflings are considered unacceptable hosts for ceremorphosis, despite the fact that BG3 allows you to play as an infected Dwarf or Halfling. So, in actual D&D, if you wanna be safe you can roll a Dwarf or a Halfling character.