Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Astarion is a Vampire?

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?