I didnt think Elves could be vampires.

He just walks around in daylight?

He heals from eating food?

He's a vampire?

Do you want the spoiler answer or do you prefer to play and find out yourself?

Sure drop it on me, I've about done lost faith in this title anyway.

He's Vampire Spawn.... I mean... Did you see his teeth?

The tadpole

Elves can be vampires in D&D, it just depends on the edition I guess. I remember reading about a drow vampire in 3.5 ed book about dark elves, there is a vampiric sun elf Jander Sunstar + they exist in Ravenloft rulebooks: http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/monstrousmanual/v/vampelf.html

I'm not very familiar with 5 ed, but I assume they didn't change this.

I'm gonna have to read some 5E rules because I was almost certain Elves couldn't be affected by vampirism.

Elves can be Vampires, there are several examples in Forgotten Realms lore. However, more importantly and relevant to BG3, is that Bodhi from BG2 was an elf and a vampire

Yes, I've been reading. Apparently this is rare and they lose all connection to being an Elf. They lose their spark of divinity. I think the Lore gets a little muddy. I always thought Elves were immune to being raised as undead. The fact the "tadpole" allows him to walk in day and eat food is very, very convenient.

Humans also lose a lot, I mean they become undead bloodsucking monsters bounded to the place they were buried in after all.

Other humanoids also can become vampires. I think one of Drizzt's friends turned into one? And he is a dwarf.

The thing about Elves is that they are divine in nature and nearly immortal already, they don't have "souls" like other races.

I don't remember a Dwarf Vampire, it's probably been 20 years since I read Salvatore's books though.

Bodhi, Irenicus's sister is an example of this from BG:2, before 3e, it was a profane act that, I think, meant she was no longer an Elf whatever that means, but still reason enough not to find Astarion so offensive. Personally I don't think a strict adherence to the ruleset is really a reason to have 'lost faith' in a game, especially one so open to modification/interpretation like D&D.

It's not just that... on top of the tadpole twist allowing him to disregard his vampirism... kinda lame. Theirs not even a day / night cycle in this game, LOL! The blew money trying to create a big budget movie. All I wanted was a solid modern D&D game.

1. All of the flashy cut scenes and animated dialog is just flash, waste of money. I see it once, after that it's an inconvenience /skip. I would have kept the camera top down and spent the money elsewhere, like solid voice acting and the best D&D writers I could afford. An array of simple model emotes could have told the player everything they need to know during dialog.

2. Interface and Menus don't even try to replicate a BG layout. I should feel back at home when I sit down to play this game.

3. Relationships are written horribly, characters throw themselves at you for no reason, it's just weird.

4. Give me Core Rules Mode / Iron Man mode and I can possibly look past everything else and enjoy this game, probably.

The elves can't be vampires rule hasn't been around since 2nd ed and as others have said, that rule was broken back then.

I was a little disappointed when 5th edition eliminated the "healing harms undead" rules because I liked the light / dark -- positive plane / negative plane dichotomy but because 5th is so much better than 4th I forgive its flaws

Oooh, and I was wondering why Astarion can drink healing potions. Now I'm disappointed too :P

If I'm the DM, Healing harms Undead. I don't care what edition we are playing, LOL!!!

Mostly agreed on the criticisms, though I still haven't given up hope. Time will tell if it's reasonable or naive of me.

That said, may I recommend Solasta (currently also in EA)? Haven't played it yet myself, but from what I can see it looks like a great 5e game. Not very similar to BG, I think it's closer to IWD with faithful 5e mechanics. It's small-scope and not very "shiny", but seems to do a great job of keeping the "spirit" of D&D.

Whaat? I didn't know that. Add another soul to the disappointment pile.

Holy mother of God....this ^^

So freaking true. It seems so plain and obvious but no one takes this route?
Imagine the following a company would have if they would just keep to the basics. *Shrugs*

bored. old. game.
only cuz someone 'I should feel back at home' You forget about a lot of people who positively rated the bg3 animation. And there are a lot of them.

If this game didn't have cinematic dialogues I wouldn't even be interested in it so, you know, not all of us want "just the basics". These scenes can be done better - maybe they will be, it's EA - but I really prefer them to look like this than not existing at all, like in DOS. For some players less isn't more.

I would be okay with narration over animated cut-scenes, but if you don’t know that most gamers prefer the latter over the former then are sorely out of touch. Larian is trying to break into the AAA market. They can’t do that with the bare minimum. Most people’s expectations are higher.

Count me in as one of the those who wouldn't be as interested if the game was just the basics.

Good for them, I hope they will succeed. Companies also learn and you can't learn without making mistakes. Compare CD Projekt's Witcher 1 to Witcher 3 - there would be no Wild Hunt without 2 previous games. I'm happy Larian is trying to make new stuff and evolve. I don't mind if they are not perfect yet.

Actually no. Bodhi lost her elvenhood and then became as vampire to stay alive. So basically she was explicitly a non-elf vampire.

Certainly there, Thibbledorf Pwent if I am not mistaken.

Curious, why'd you assume that?


It's hardly a normal illithid tadpole, while we don't know what exactly happened, it seems to have been tampered with using Netherese magic. Not sure if that makes a difference to you.

Seriously? BG 3 and DoS 2 have like the best voice acting by far i witnessed in a video game ever, even without fan boy mode activated you can not critizise that

Elves by nature are banned from Elven heaven by Cor himself. Elves have souls, they just get sent back to the mortal plane. If they get corrupted then they won't even be sent to his realm after death and won't reincarnate. They are lost. Same with cross breeding. Elven trance is them reliving past lives and if they are young enough they relive the time before Lloth's betrayal and Elven banishment. Essentially reliving the last time they were in heaven. To cut an elf off this with vampirism is far worse than it seems. It is the thing elves treasure the most. They even stole a piece of heaven a hide it on an island. Half elves are unclear as to the nature of their soul though so they may have a chance to reincarnate. Drow are 100 percent cut off. They might have a chance at peace with Elistree but she won't return them to Cor she would just take them since she is banned as well but by choice.

Thats what I know in short of Elven history. Astarion has probably been cut off for so long he does not remember much and it could be what he considers "home" in the scene with the magic mirror. Being cut off from the Elven cycle and the Elven connection to the weave was probably devastating. Elven communites would know instantly that he was not right and probably kill him the moment he was in range of the sort of sense they have that connects pure elves that I think is divine in nature too. Especially Elven mages trained in Elvish high magic.

All this assuming the lore was not changed.

Also flashy games are superior is my stance.

That's true about Bodhi. However, it's not true about another elf - Aerie, whom Bodhi can potentially turn into a vampire. Unless Aerie counts as a gnome?

Does the fact that Bodhi was stripped of her Elvenhood preclude something similar happening to Astarion?


yes, and I'm a little concerned by how much of a zero-sum people regard cinematics, dialogue, and writing.

EDIT: I also think that this bit of lore has just been dropped by WotC based on their reluctance to get too deep into their own lore. i.e. two recent reboots

If I wanted cinema, I would buy a movie. I'm a nuts and bolts gamer. Give me solid mechanics and as much playable content as you can stuff into the game. Cut scenes and flash are really not important to me at all. I still play BG1 and BG2 because they are solid games with a lot of content. The graphics are really not an issue at all.

A couple other series that went bad for graphics is Heroes of Might and Magic and Ghost Recon, Final Fantasy is hit and miss, I'm sure you guys could think of a handful of games that sacrificed gameplay for flashy graphics and half the content.

That would be a real shame since dnd lore is my favorite part of dnd.

Edit: You don't have to choose between gameplay and graphics. Dev blow too much on PR stunts to maximize profits. If the goal was to make a good game instead of maximize profit then it would be a different world.

I still don't get the health potions and healing spells... Sure the tadpole affects his vampire curse but it shouldn't do anything to his dead curse.. Potions and healing spells are for living creatures, Vampires are dead, dead is dead..

How does the tadpole even survive in him..

Just off looks and not mechanics I'd guess he would be classified as cursed mortal rather than cused undead. Gale mentions to Wyll that the tadpole nerfed and changed them to some degree already.

This is the question that gets overlooked the most. Why would a tadpole ever enter a dead body?

This whole vampire story seems so out of place with everything else that is happening. They just wanted a vampire companion because someone thinks vampires are cool and forced it in.

For me, this is a really watered down version of a vampire slapped on top of an already complicated plot. They should have shown restraint and waited for an opportunity to tell a proper vampire story later in the game.

Or, you know, magic. Why can't the tadpole feed on vampire flesh? I mean, if nothing else, it could feed on the living blood the vampire feeds on.

It's a magic tadpole which magic magic.

But Astarion doesn't seem all that dead, really. I'm not sure a tadpole could tell, as it was crawling in, that he was a vampire, and once inside it apparently goes into stasis, so it doesn't need to feed. Would Astarion become a vampiric mind flayer if he transformed? Who knows at this point?

Another thing about the party building. I felt like just around every corner was another party member just jumping out of nowhere... literally to join the party. This could just be an easy excuse for early access but, I hope this changes. I would like a little time and exploration to find new party members. They just seem thrown at me.

All 8 party members have corrupted tadpoles and are survivors of the wrecked nautiloid, so unless they decide to add some non-origin companions you will meet all companions on the first map.

You could say the same about writing, you know. The dialogues, the plots. If I wanted a book, I would go to the library.

Wait, Astarion is a vampire?

No. Of course not! How could you think that about our ‘chaotically good’ elf?

This is me too... this is imo the base of what determines whether a game is good or not... determines whether i play through and move on or play through again and again... and again...

While i can appreciate some flash in game i can totally take it or leave it with the cinematic cut scenes... nothing to do with 1/2 of the current ones im seeing not working correctly(mouths not moving with the words etc). My imagination can still carry that load, often better...

Like a nice balanced platform you can run a bunch of different characters through to varying outcome... still on board here atm but not quite as optimistic as before 150+ hours of play... won't judge until i see a final product.

Lol My guess is that the vampirism is their gambit to create a canonically (or "mechanically"?) evil party member, since based on the lore, whatever the person was before, they evilify once they're turned. Idk if that also applies to spawn, but I suppose it would? So far they seem like they're being consistent relative to Astarion's approval system (he's literally the only part member who doesn't get an approval bump if you shell out the 200 gold to revive a downed companion—unless that's a glitch and my game's not reflecting it).

I'm more bothered by how the tadpole could be infecting him—like how does it even work? That being said, based on the fact that it can infect something like that gnoll character whose name I can't recall, even though it seems to have some serious compatibility issues, it looks like the tadpole's not too fussy, He is the only party companion so far who seems to have different dreams, though, so I'm guessing his vampirism does affect the tadpole's expression.

Because the tadpole is not a biological parasite, it literally consumes your consciousness and your soul, your body is merely a vessel for an illithid consciousness, that is quite probably poured into you by an overmind.
Imagine a tadpole like an antenna, it hooks itself onto your brain stem and waits for the signal from the overmind. When the signal arrives, the overmind uploads a unit of illithid consciousness to the tadpole and the tadpole transforms the body to reflect the consciousness of a mindflayer. It might sound like a bit of a reach until you realize that the mindflayers can build flesh-airships with psionics. Compared to that, transforming a mere body, even if it's undead, is nothing.
This also fits into the way mindflayers feed. They don't actually need the brain, they merely eat the brain for the psychic potentials it contains, memories, etc.

It'd be interesting if having the tadpole has fundamentally changed our creature type, say from Undead to Aberration

Ahhh, that's good to know! Ok, then I can rest easy, the antenna analogy is great and makes a whole lot more sense. So you're sort of saying that it works like a type of malware?
So that could still account for incompatibilities or differences in how any given organism coexists with a tadpole (again thinking about that gnoll), but it wouldn't hinge on their biology, then, but one some kind of metahpysics. I do wonder, though: if it's consuming the soul, does Astarion even have one that the tadpole can consume or utilize? Maybe that's the key difference with the dreams—is it latching onto his memories instead of whatever his soul/consciousness might be? We haven't seen another tadpoled undead, have we?

I think we haven't, but it's worth to mention there must be an explanation for vampiric illithids existence. As far as I know it's a mystery how there are "made" so is would make sense if Astarion was about to turn into one.

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Good point! And those ones are canonically barely sentient, right? And have the double penalty of needing brains and blood. So presumably that's where we got the divergence: no soul (or non-compatible soul?) to begin with => no sentience (or barely any). I wonder why they can't create spawns?

Maybe they are made of vampire spawns, which - as we know - can't make another spawns until they become vampire lords? This raises the question what would happen if a tadpole were put into vampire lord's brain...

Thats not really how it works. The tadpole in the end eats and replaces your brain, similar to an intellect devourer, and then transforms your body into a mind flayer. Its 100% biology. The list of viable races for ceremorphosis is actually quite short, restricted to a few races and the body has to be within certain limits for the transformation to work. Gnomes actually do not work at all, at least not as intended.
And considering that vampire spawn regenerate its rather unlikely that the tadpole would even be able to consume the brain. But as it was said, Larian wanted an emo vampire, so those things get overlooked.

He's just LARPing as one. He's actually an Oxford law student named Ogbert Lungbottom who gets really bad swimmers itch.

Where's our Dark Academia crpg guys?

Pretty sure he must be a vampire, since he even sparkles in the 'sunlight' thanks to new patch! (I am only half serious.)

This is the skin of a killer Gale

Nothing new, he could shine during my first playthrough too.

Can turn into a bat, but with tentacles. Cthulhu, is that you?

Undead is not the same as dead. In fact, just judging by the linguistics involved, it's kinda the opposite.

Also, of COURSE it's "convenient" that the tadpole just so happens to alter the nature of a vampire spawn in such a way that they become a functionally playable character in the game. This is what game designers do all the time. Sometimes, a particular bit of story or setting is SO important that you tailor the gameplay itself around that narrative element. But most of the time, you design the gameplay you want, and then come up with whatever story excuses you have to in order to fit that gameplay. If this is done very skillfully, it's invisible to the player, but often on big projects with a lot of moving parts, you just don't have the time to perfectly craft an airtight narrative justification for every little element in the game. Especially when 90% of the players literally won't care anyway.

Drow even make it a point to raise their own fallen into skeletons. Elves are still flesh and blood at the end of the day. Vampires just aren't common in general. So of course they won't be common among elves either. It only looks like it's most common among humans because that's where most games take place. But if you had a game set in an elf city with vampires nearby then I don't see why not.

It's already happening in Spellforce 2, Skyrim, Neverwinter Night 1, Baldur's Gate 2... There's PLENTY of proof that elves are affected. And no book stating otherwise is going to change that simple fact.



Actually, it's the opposite. If something "just exists" with no good reason then it's shoe horned in. So it shouldn't be invisible at all. Reverse that logic. A gameplay mechanic should make sense in the game world/setting. Currently we don't know. Which we'll probably find out later. Likely because the "bad guys" wanted it that way to make sure the party reaches them, for whatever reason. If that's the route it's going then that leaves the "why" of it all.

My guess would be that they ARE kind of thrown together. They were all on the same nautiloid ship. They all have the same batch of magically enhanced/controlled tadpoles, they are literally being psychically drawn together. This is the case in the real world, AND in their dreams. They are literally linked by their tadpole's magical/psychic connection.

As to OP's question re Astarion, he's a vampire *spawn*, not a full vampire... maybe that has something to do with it? Regardless, there are other elven vampires within the D&D law, so he is unique because of the tadpole, but he's not the only vampire infected elf.

Also, for those arguing that elves stop being elves when they turn... if this IS the case even for a spawn... loss of religious connection does NOT change their race, just their religious connection. He's still of elven blood, he still has pointy ears, he's still an elf. He's just a mostly undead elf with no connection to the standard deity and afterlife he would have had before he was turned.

Astarion is a vampire? No--say it isn't so! Do tell!...;) And all of this time I thought he was a starving Santa Claus during a Christmas pandemic. What gave it away--his fangs, maybe? Who'd have thunk it...;)