Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The Failure of Astarion's Bite Scene

I don't find it less egregious tbh.

Agreed ...

BUT!

On the other hand, one cant really blame him ...
He was tordured and kept in misery for last few centuries ... its quite possible that he no longer even remember anything else. :-/
I mean priness Sisi was known for leting her servants be beated for each single hair they brush out of her head ... not bcs she was cruel, it was the way at that time ... it was perfectly normal for her. :-/

//Edit:
Me neither ...

Also im not really sure if that is even possible to make it right ...
Most of my characters have strong survival instikt ... to put it simple: You draw your weapon against me > you die. :-/

Dont think there is anythin they could do, except change that whole scene completely. :-/

Astarion is a 300 year old vampire spawn, slave to a tyrant basically, who got reduced from a position of power in Court, to a slave that pretends they have power somewhere. He was forced to feed on disgusting things and had no freedom. Then suddenly he gets power and a sense of freedom.

The guy's a walking time bomb, it shows, and Larian i think is purposely giving red flags about him, if anything, i think we haven't seen anything.

You have to understand however, which i'm sure you do, that he is an actually evil and narcissistic character, that was suppressed in what he can do through fear for 2+ centuries.

One thing i agree, is that it should probably be game over if the he kills your main char. Also, any normal real life character would chop his head off 5 times already. Even before we get to that. The character is well writtern in my opinion. The only problem stems from actually being able to revive your char after they die.

Actions should have consequences. If you allow a starved and tortured vampire for centuries to suck on your blood, while he was not allowed to have human blood all this time, then it's not gonna end well. Vampires are notoriously bad at controlling their urges.

Still, you shouldn't be able to just "rez lol", and if you can, the others should cause a scene.

I think the only 'out' he has is that as an undead, Astarion is evil on a metaphysical level and without magical intervention he basically can't be anything else (I believe that's how it works in D&D, not certain). If we're going to say his behaviour is just a matter of environment though, then one can absolutely blame him. Being brought up in an environment can absolutely twist one's perspective and I believe there should be some grave given for such situations, but if he's a sapient being with full capacity for choice, then he's still responsible for those choices. You provide the example of Princess Sisi, but I'll point out that even during the height of the slave trade, in fact from the very beginning of it, there were abolitionists who argued against it. But that's getting into philosophy, admittedly.


Yeah, that's about where I'm settled at this point. He's definitely a consistent character, but being able to be revived just screws up the whole thing.

Didnt know that about undeads ...
But after litteraly two seconds of googling i have found this: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
So ... really not sure.

Not even sure if tadpole that negates every single other aspect of his undead nature counts as proper magical intervention.

I wasnt purposefuly talking about slavery ... but about cruelity.
I meaned to point out that while we see Astarion actions and prefferences as cruel, maybe even sadistic ... he may see them as something perfectly normal, and concider us to be weirdos for our kind and understanding acts.
And all i wanted to point out that while he is indeed narcistic asshole for many reasons ... this one in particular may (just maybe!) not be token of this part of his nature ... but only mark of that how much broken he is as a person from the way he "lived" (for lack of better therm). :-/

As for people talking about things ... society allways have those, on both sides of every topic or problem ... but we were talking here about individuals, not societies.

(Just a little offtopic to think about:
When you take under concideration things people concidered to be "perfectly normal" 20/50/100y ago ... did you ever wondered how incredibly discuisting and savage we will seem to peple after next few generations? )

The character himself may be well, or a least consistently written - but our capacity to react or respond to him is not; It's like having a play where one actor is a professional thespian, but they're acting against a large sheet of cardboard with a stick figure on it; it doesn't matter how much attention you give to getting the professional character, and how focused you are on getting them believable, consistent, immerse and compelling; the scene itself still falls apart entirely as long as the other half of the cast is so stunted and lacking in nuance.

From a role playing standpoint, I think it makes sense. You're trying to pool all your resources together. Everyone with a tadpole working together to solve a problem. Yeah some of them are loose canons and liable to turn on you at any point, but for now, there's a sense of desperation holding everyone together. I could understand not trusting him enough to have him in your party though. For my character, as soon as he/she realizes Astarion has a tadpole, it's worth keeping him close. My character is probably more of a mediator though, trying to make everyone get along

Naah, I don't play my characters that desperate. Just because he has a tadpole doesn't want me to invite the murder hobo into the group I have a sense of self preservation . If that would be a real DnD group Astarion would be the classic That Guy.

If that's the way you play your character then yes it doesn't make sense to have him join your party. What doesn't make sense for one character/player makes total sense for someone else. To me, the scene with Astarion comes off like he thinks we're a thrall or working with the mind flayers in some (he says, "What did you and those tentacled freaks do to me?"). Then once he realizes his mistake, he apologizes. I don't get murder hobo vibes from him. Admittedly he does try to bite you later, but most of the companions at the beginning are untrustworthy or shady. Lae'zel also threatens you with a knife at one point.

A vampire spawn doesn't sound so bad when you realize your other choices are a ticking timebomb, a lying dude who hides his affinity with a demon, someone who tries to kill you in your sleep and a more than shady cleric with more secrets than anyone else.

Honestly I think that Wyll is still the least objectionable companion we have. Sure he's a liar and has a cruel side, but his secret thus far doesn't risk harming the group as a whole. And he's at least trying to be a good person and use his powers to help people.

No, he literally says "Hurry! I've got one of those brain things cornered! There, in the grass, you can kill it, can't you? Like you killed the others." And the the knife scene. Why would he try to get our help at killing the brain thing if he thought that we were WITH the brain things? He didn't think that we were under midn flayers' influense. He just tried to kill us because it's what he wanted to do. I can't see how ANY character who is not insane would not kill him right then and there.

Because the scene has been rewritten and now his reasoning is inconsistent? He says that to distract you, but then when you've tussled he accuses you of being a thrall, because he saw you walking around the ship.

There's also a theory that the mind-flayers are in the middle of a civil war, who knows, maybe he watched thralls and intellect devourers killing each other.

Unless your main character is built to pick locks and disarm traps, Astarion is simply too useful. Truly, it drives me to build my own thief so I can afford to drive a stake through his heart.

You don't need thief to do this stuff, not in 5e. Any class with high dex and right skills will do.

Just use Shadowheart for that. You really don't need Astarion.

I disagree it portrays Astarion perfectly, you just expecting a D&D vampire.. Astarion is not a D&D vampire, he is clearly an attempt to portray vampires similar to vampire the masquerade bloodlines.

Astarion is meant to be a noble, and independent to a fault. He is tricked into being a vampire. His attempt to drink you is in defiance of his master [long distant domination like Lecroix does]. This goes wrong and he ends up killing you. Astarion portraying a noble sees you as lesser but still cares for you. His apology perfectly demonstrates a refusal to accept guilt but still saying he is sorry on his terms.

Astarion may come of as arrogant because unlike the other companions he does not follow the standard good-evil, or lawful to chaotic alignment- just like the other companions.I am happy with this as i can’t stand the 6 pager weight companions D&D is known for. It’s really well written scene.

Well to start off, I think that when playing a D&D game it is very reasonable to expect a D&D vampire. As for not following the standard alignment chart, I'd say that he definitely does, and he is definitely evil. If you help the tieflings, he'll outright say that being a hero feels awful. That's cartoonishly evil.

I'm not objecting to the scene being well written, I just think that the part where he kills us and 'apologizes' afterwards is basically slapping us the player in the face and at that point it doesn't make sense for us to keep him in the party. If that's what Larian's intention is, to provide a point of no return where players will just find sticking with him untennable, then they did a great job.

Another issue with him killing us that isn't related directly to Astarion though, is the fact that it really messes with the canonicity of death in the game. In most crpgs, deaths are just non-canon. But here, you can die and be brought back and there's a specific reaction to it, cementing death as canon. And I worry that it will have weird knock-on effects down the line. There's already the issue of why our tadpole doesn't leave us when we die.

Which is, I think, the lack of worldbuilding that bites the narrative in the arse.

Resurrection always felt to me like a problematic mechanic, but I can't figure out how and if it is a thing. Someone suggested that resurrection is not a thing, and our ability to come back to life is a gameplay contrivence. But then the game openly acknowledges it. But then again being able to resurrect characters would solve some key problems - if we can bring Anabella back to life then frankly Kagha's snake accident is not that much of a biggie.

From a game development perspective reviving yourself always seems stupid to me. I think I will eat a lot of hate for this, but I agree with how pathfinder wotr solved the issues.

The solution: your MC goes to 0hp go into limbo in the form of Down. If that goes below X/Y you die, and it’s game over. I think reviving your Mc should be impossible… the MC being either you origin character or the custom one.

Now 5th edition does not really use this system, which is why we should home brew it in. And it could fixe the cutscene because if Astarion drinks your blood, every time you reject to intervene you loose X hp, and you must make a strength check to yell to a companion or a will check to cast a cantrip in his face to knock them off.

Yes it requires to rework the scene and requires more work. However it could fix a lot of issues, since the tadpole could have its own DR and be physically placed in our heads. Us dying would not kill the tadpole unless our brain took enough damage also.