Originally Posted by Lyelle
Originally Posted by Princeps08
Astarion: It actually kind of makes sense to me you don't recognize him as a vampire spawn right away even if you had some familiarity with the creatures. The tadpole changes all the rules for Vampirism. Kind of hard to accuse a dude of being a vampire when you first meet him under a very bright sun. He then has no problem crossing water or entering homes uninvited. Even if there are some vampire flags I feel like the oddities would give enough cover to throw suspicion for a little bit.

You are right, since he is able to do all these things everyone knows a vampire is not able to - first and foremost walking around in broad daylight- our characters would not really have a valid reason to be suspicious. He might look like a vampire, but he cannot be one, since he has no problem with the very bright sun.

Taking this into consideration, I think his secret would be a secret for our character, and we wouldn't really need a check. Unless we see that he has no reflection in a mirror wink

The only thing that bothers me a bit is the visibility of his bite marks. He must have been abducted at night, and in a world where vampires exist, I think he would have tried to hide these scars.
(I have to two chickenpox scars with the appropriate space between them near my collarbone, but in a world where vampires do not exist, I should be safe grin )
So you're actually buying into how the tadpole conveniently explains everything that would be challenging about vampires because of game mechanics? That's precisely what makes the writing feel weak to me. They cherry picked the vampire traits that caused probelms and explained them with a really weak plot device "because tadpole". Daylight, entering houses, crossing water.. not a problem. Drinking blood, still a "problem" because you can have a fun ability and an extremely cringe camp scene.

I'm actually still stuck on why the tadpole, a living parasite organism, would ever enter a dead body and brain in the first place. It turns a living host into a living Mind Flayer. Clearly a dead or undead body shouldn't work in the first place.

Also stuck on how a "centuries old vampire" is mechanically level 1. Oh that's right, "because tadpole" again.

They wanted a "cool" vampire companion, and conveniently ignored literally everything that makes a vampire, a vampire. This is by far the lamest vampire story I've ever witnessed. Astarion could just be a living High Elf with an evil sadistic character because of a history of abuse, and he would be a much better character for it.