I’m going to be honest, I find things that can permanently mess up your save (in the sense that you’ll get a lesser experience or not reach the ending) is extremely bad game design. It’s something I’d expect out of a 2 hour arcade game, not a modern release.
There are a lot of horror games in the PS1 that are “if you didn’t do this extremely specific thing, in the right order, with the right coloured t-shirt, on a Tuesday, without any hints whatsoever… Too bad! When you reach the end of the game in another 60 hours of gameplay we will tell you you’ve failed”
Baldur’s Gate might be a great game, but sometimes it’s “dice rolls makes things spicy and each run its own thing!” mechanic gets unbalanced and by a little bad luck you can have a significantly degraded experience, sometimes without even knowing it.
This is bad game design, even if ultimately the game can be good in the end.