If anybody is a Windows user, let me know if there are permissions you wish to set from IntelliJ, I have no idea if that's needed or not on NTFS

You do not need the permissions, but sometimes you need to set antivirus scan rules.

is that common across all antivirus software?

Yes. The problem is that if you have a lot of files that are changing rapidly, defender indexing could impact performance. But Idea is actually setting correct exceptions automatically.

Hmmm, I have trouble seeing how the plugin would be of any help here then.

I do not see in either. I remember some problems with setting permissions for gradlew from windows, before deploy, but it is solved with CI configuration.