STOP USING HITPOINTS
Remember everyone, doppelgangers can read minds, including the minds of someone they capture before killing. So learning to act like you convincingly is more a function of time, and the fine details of manipulating your friends is then reinforced by reading their minds. Their biggest hangup is probably how lazy and selfish they are. They know what you'd do, they know how convincing their acting job is on your friends, and they may have even watched you, but they still aren't all that motivated to do it all the time. And I mean, hey, if they get caught then they just kill the person who confronts them if they can and run if they can't.
But yeah, a doppelganger would never pick Konsi to imitate for very long. She works too hard.
This is just my guess (I must solidly highlight that I haven't played the game), but in normal D&D conditions its because you don't survive Illithid tadpole implantation. Within about an hour or two you're dead, and even if you kill the parasite before it completes its job you're left pretty much brain-dead without a higher level Restoration or Heal spell because they directly eat gray matter.
They don't just plug into your brain, they eat the gray matter and perform some sort of biological grafting between themselves and your nerves, then generate some sort of alien chemicals/hormones to morph the body over a week or more. So, despite BG3 letting you live, likely due to some sort of plot complication I'm unaware of slowing things down, killing the host isn't likely to drive the parasite out of the body until its finished chowing down on your brain matter. (Even wild tadpoles left unattended eat brains until they grow into monsters.) Either way at this point you probably can't actually be resurrected with Revivify, you'd need higher level Resurrection because your body isn't fully intact anymore. (I mean, maybe you could but at best you're in a brain-dead vegetative state with 1HP because Revivify doesn't replace lost parts.)
Also a good chance the creature only abandoned the other host because they were already close to being out of brain food or something weird. Like them psychically being forced/ordered out of the host.
I mean, your argument is "we can't ever be perfect so we should never even aspire to be good", which is sortof putting the cart before the horse. That we can even recognize the distinction of not being special already places in a position where we can try and do a little better. What is better, how much, or how? What even is good or morality? All of those questions are at necessity to even define good, let alone become it. Before even glancing at perfect. Sure it might be an eternal inane treadmill, but just as fish have gills to breathe, we by chance of fate have the organs necessary to think. And that's just as much in our nature. The fish doesn't consider how long it has to swim, it just does it towards a target it can see/sense. By the same mechanism that means we aren't special, why shouldn't, why wouldn't, we do the same thing? Just because what we can see/sense may be artificial, imagined, or drempt?
I hadn't heard the Wolf's wife part, but I'd always heard said that it was a "Fox's wedding". Which is pretty similar. I've heard sunshower and that "The Devil's beating his wife" but the fox one was more fun so it stuck with me.
Marrow isn't really meat. Its more like complex fat.
Okay, chad faced joke aside (which is what I was going for there and couldn't undercut it with =P) I do prefer more simulation based ruleset which sortof demands that at least some basic rules of physics are able to be mapped between reality and the gamestate. Abstractions can exist, and explanations can be provided (like the idea of a potion only being a mouthful/shot in quantity and/or size), but strain of an increasingly divorced rulest from the actual narrative is always a problem and should be avoided, imo.
Looking at some Pathfinder 2e stuff, you could maybe use a dimension. The Sphere of Annihilation doesn't really annihilate you, it forces you to a different contiguous dimension with strange physics and alien creatures/growths. Off the top of my head my idea is something like:
1 - A world of boney growths that work like a cross between coral and fungus, with microorganisms spread as sporelike beings (that can grow in the players). The other dangers are lack of normal weather, clean water resources, and giant insecticide creatures (predators and prey) living on, what's revealed to be a ball of rotting flesh and impacted bone. A literal world made of the the banished and slain by the Orb.
2 - The world is littered with the discarded possession of the dead, lost scrolls rotten by strange conditions, weapons rusted or eaten by the inhabitants, and fragmented journals and maps carved into chitin and bone that direct newcomers towards brutal settlements of inbred survivor clans. (Your choice if they're hostile, creepy, friendly, or any insane mix of the 3, but they should probably be powerful to survive)
3 - Magic is wild here, gravity strange and inconsistent (and tiring to continuously fly in for non-native creatures)
4 - They can catch glimpses through to the real world by painting the inside of skulls from their world with the blood of insect monsters and staring through its eyes (forehead to forehead). (They can see their friends journeys if you want, or maybe just random glimpses of whatever plane/setting is closest)
Then have one group be on a survival journey in an alien world and the other a "how do we get them out" journey. You could maybe even imply the lich could know, complicate the issue by requiring them to confront him once without the phylactery (or with it as a bargaining chip) for information.
As for the Grim Reaper? You could use him as an example of the dangers of the place. Have him do something (cut through some of the dangerous coral-fungus to get to a player or something) and merc him on the spot as a warning. You don't need to necesarily take it easy on the party from there, but really put the fear into them that this place should not be messed with (and maybe make them afraid that their friends are trying to save them).
And for the character who cast Planar Anchor? Maybe kill him? Send his body, dead, to the alternate dimension but his ghostly soul stays with the other group. Until he's resurrected have him be able to occasionally hear the surviving players in the alternate dimension.
Not sure how much customization on the alternate world monsters you'd want to do, maybe just use regular giant bugs with far realms templates or something (not sure all what Pathfinder 2e has) but you could give the remains of them extremely weird powers that might later come in handy. (Like strange multi-planar scent based stuff which could be useful in tracking down the phylactery later, just in case they do trade it). Although you could also imply that they could be importing an infection coral-fungus thing into their real dimension.
I fully expect Starfield was going to be disappointing, full stop.
If you play Planescape:Torment after this you might dig the Sensates/Society of Sensation. (Assuming that character has similar tastes to you.)
On top of some of the commentary here, I'd like to add that I think there's a real chance that WoTC's put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I'll admit there's more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don't even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)
Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some "tried it didn't like it" people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn't seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.
I mean the first two parts are definitely true.But then we stayed for 10+ years attempting to rebuild some form of stability, decided to finally pull out after more than a decade, and what was built broke down disappointingly in the face of the first threat.
Tmu, the reasons for that are varied, although some of its definitely on us. We approached the entire region's politics wrong apparently and with a very modern western mindset of a country held together with an idea of some unified identity that doesn't seem to really hold true for the region (or any region at first probably). I believe station/position abandonment in the fracturing nation was problematically common as people rushed back to their homes/families, or just to generally flee, instead of actually being a larger regional barricade against the threat, as an example.
IIRC, there was a similar problem with even the First Continental Army and Congress early on actually. With regional interests often superseding national goals in the minds of individuals and representatives.
So far as power vacuums go, as I alluded to, they had an elected government (there's probably some debate on the accuracy of those elections while being occupied by a foreign government of course) and a standing military that was actively deployed. A not insignificant number of them tried to hold out, to not undercut their efforts, but its also true it wasn't a truly unified defense in the end. Whether or not they would have been a more effective void-filler if we'd stayed longer or left sooner are just huge what-ifs.
There also seems to be a bit of weirdness even surrounding what "conservative" means. It used to mean an intent toward preservation of certain existing institutions/trends and preexisting stability, with a distrust for new institutions that may upset existing social calm. Which often is at odds with beneficial change but isn't inherently against it, favoring instead that it be slow and precise. When I think of myself as conservative that's the concept I have.
The problem is that "conservative" now can also include a group of people for which preserving an existing state (as in condition/mode of being ) is no longer acceptable, the demand either a reverse or entirely new directions.
As an example that's a little less hot button - vouchers for private schools. That's an active novelty and a change from an existing institution, rife with potential long-term impacts on both culture and stability that could be negative, and yet some positions push for it (often without addressing those problems). That's not a conservative position. That's a progressive one (maybe not in the direction someone on the left would want obviously).
Conservative got irrevocably linked with Right due to some preexisting social constructs and the urge to preserve them, but realistically it should hold just as well that a conservative would seek to preserve left-wing establishments as much as right-wing ones, or at least advise any changes to them be slow and incremental to avoid pop-up problems. Admittedly things like technology complicate that due to the speed with which it changes and demands response.
I adore Minsc but feel like WoTC has started flooding him into stuff once they realized that he was popular. He's in a comic, in Magic the gathering now, and I think even showed up in modules and games. Their involvement in any of this has made me trepidatious, tbh. It sounds like Larian may have made a good game despite them. (I have my own nitpicks there but I'm a very inflexible and nostalgic person, so that's to be expected.)
I'm always thrown that the concept of managing inventory is always treated as such a huge burden. Most of the time its just a list you update with quantity and weight. It always feels like such a low lift thing for everyone to hate so much. Like seriously, even if you just want people to track how many arrows they fire some will get grouchy.
It is worth noting that the -Con score was a 3.X house rule but Pathfinder 1e raw. It was just -10 otherwise, which could get pretty punishing if you were dropped by bad luck.
5e's up-and-down approach to unconsciousness isn't really an ideal resolution, although making them gain levels of fatigue almost makes it functional.