Cw: sexual assault
I get what the story is going for with the Astarion camp encounter. I’d just ask you to consider that for some of your players, a companion climbing onto the PC’s body in the middle of the night is violently unpleasant. The dialogue he has afterward is similarly squicky, as he follows up his nonconsensual attempt with minimization and manipulation. Vampires are generally treading in some pretty rapey territory already—but the game is asking me to bring one along for the campaign, and to seriously entertain becoming his bloodbag afterward. I’ve never booted a character from my party in a Bioware-style game before, but I would gladly have killed him on the spot. Knowing that I have to play through this scene again definitely affects my willingness to replay the game.
I’m not even clear on what his plan was—do people usually sleep through someone cutting their neck open?
For people without a similar history, think of it as violence. Anyone trying to remove blood from my body whilst I sleep is going to A) catch these hands and B) be killed or tossed out of the party immediately. It’s difficult for me to imagine many D&D parties where this wouldn’t be true.
This feels like a simple fix, as his vampirism could be introduced through dialogue, through his physical collapse due to blood deprivation, through him draining an animal in the bushes, etc.
History = you eluded to it, my advice is to seek help, therapy works and can aid you in recovery. There are many ways to do so a google search will reveal more.
This game is rated M for a reason, it also states what those reasons are. Noone forced you to buy this game, or replay it, devs even state that you don't have to buy it for whatever reason. If you like it then by all means play it. Noone is taking a choice from you, it's on you. There are other options that you can take in replaying, and also on this play through to make Ast a nonissue, killing him is the most obvious for it completely removes him from the game.
Did you kill him there is that option? If your character felt violated then by all means kill him, noone is stopping you. Your choice. Your other companions would probably applaud you, hell most of Faerun would applaud you. There is a reason why this game is rated M for mature, it is a warning and lists what it's warning you about. Again your choice to buy it.
replayability - If Astorian is a problem for you again don't take him, kill him. They ask but don't force you to bring him along. He is there for those that want him, if you kill him you don't have to deal with him again. Again you have the choice, it is your choice, he is but an option.
Manipulation to get what you want - evil so your problem is that he is evil. Then kill him, or kick him.
Nonconsensual taking of blood - again he's a vampire who are often hunted down and killed because of the fact they are vampires. So don't think he's going to be asking nicely, or that any vampire does. Unless they're sparkly and can stand under sunlight.
Cutting open - They don't cut you open, it's like two needles being stabbed into your skin, then it feels good, it's enjoyable, some even become addicted to it. So no cutting open of the skin.
Draining of animals in the bushes etc. - he does. So it is also revealed that way. Yet he is starving, and getting desperate, add to this tadpole situation so he is not thinking clearly from both his own trauma and starvation.
Vampires = are by nature very rapey, not closeish but very. They are also sluts/addicts/ and several other terms I've called them over the years. They will do anything for food, and that food is what courses through most creatures bodies.
Simple fix = In order for him to be a non vampire they would have to completely rewrite hundreds of hours of code, dailogue, character moments. In that one scene there is again hours, upon hours of work put into it. It is not simple, or a quick fix. Most things in games unless the involve a . or # being put in the wrong place is not a simple fix. Indeed finding that eronous . which may be in a line like this
.00000000001 that first . may be instead in this spot 00000000.0001 or this spot 0.0000001 or it may be in <post> r=2 3-d render item *4 Ast scene 3/5 and that line goes on for sixty more characters, buried in hundreds of more code. and then they have to trace it all down, delete it, find where it's linked to other code delete it from there to make sure it's all gone. Note above from <post> to 3/5 is not actual code. but to many code looks like gibberish anyways.
