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.
No offense but I feel like you're reaching here. Astarion is a vampire. Drinking people's blood is what vampires do. Is it messed up that he was trying to do that while you were sleeping? Yes, but that's the traditional way vampires have always been depicted. As for Astarion, he does apologize and does tell you if you let him drink your blood that in the future he will ask for permission or only feed from animals as he has already been doing. The reason why he wanted to drink your blood is because he was feeling weak but if you let him drink your blood and tell him when to stop so he doesn't kill you, he gets a new power which is pretty useful in battle.
