it ultimately all boils down to the overall tone of the adventure not being well suited to a level 1 party. I've said a few times now that the start of the game should have been the second act, with the first act being more grounded and focused on introducing your character, events dont need to be directly tied to what the main narrative is about. But end act 1 with being collected and pulled into the nautiloid. Then you proceed per the normal game, but the NPCs can be setup more believably.
Admittedly, it'll never happen, and it would require making origin characters true NPCs, and the PC focus being on your custom one, but I also think that would be ultimately better for the game too.
Anyway, as far as Astarion himself is concerned, he probably should have been given spider climb and regeneration (probably toned down regeneration compared to normal vamp spawn). But again, part of the reason its even an issue is because we have pretty special snowflake origin characters/NPCs.
also, to be fair, it wasn't advertised as a game with some D&D 5e elements. It was advertised as a D&D 5e game where some minor things would be changed to make it play smoother as a CRPG, which isn't really what we got.
Last edited by blindhamster; 27/10/20 05:29 PM.
