He Just Has A Concept Of Self-preservation - Tumblr Posts

Astarion IS a deeply selfish person BECAUSE no one helped him.

Yes, he wanted someone to rescue him, but no one ever did. The mindflayers didn’t rescue him; that was AT BEST him being like a stolen farm animal, meant to be consumed one way or another. Him escaping the nautiloid crash was a goddamn fluke. After nearly 200 years of literally having his free will overpowered, never seeing the sun, being forced to eat rats and bugs, being forced into being a sex slave, and being forced into being an accessory to what had to be hundreds if not thousands of murders, of course he’s not going risk the freedom he JUST GAINED (as fragile and limited as it is) to save a bunch of people he doesn’t know nor care about.

He has all of his own issues. Being someone else’s savior isn’t a priority for him. He’s not going to be Mr. Let’s Save Everyone while waiting for the ticking time bomb in his head into making him into a different but equally mindless monster.

Also, a fact about vampirism in D&D, which BG3 is based on: The vampiric transformation, even to a spawn, changes the person’s moral alignment to Lawful Evil. Obviously, alignment is a finicky thing when your dealing with 3 dimensional characters with actual depth, but basically, Astarion’s transformation fundamentally leaves him predisposed to enjoying murder and cruelty (mostly to cope with the needing to consume blood to live part). Additionally, according to Neil Newbon (Astarion’s VA and partial character developer), Astarion was already a rather harsh magistrate. He literally gets killed by the Gur because they didn’t like a particularly harsh sentence he passed down when Cazador finds him dying in the streets. So we’re dealing with a person who was already rather comfortable with handing out death as a punishment becoming forcibly more comfortable with ending people’s lives through both magical and tortured means.

To encapsulate his character: Purely for self-preservation. Anything that doesn’t preserve him (tangentially through the party or directly) he will dislike. He likes playing politics and lying. He enjoys power and it tempts him because he’s fearful of being taken over again.

The arc he goes on can either feed into his fears, paranoia (enchanted by his vampiric transformation), and bloodlust, or Tav and the party can provide him with a safe place to begin unpacking his trauma and growing to be better than it (romance or not). [I do not like calling him broken and in need of fixing, because literally all of us are broken, and he’s (in the context of Tav to him, even though he IS a ball of well-sculpted pixels) not an object like a broken cup to be fixed. He’s just traumatized and in deep need of therapy, and probably a really good nap.]

So no, he’s never going to like mindless heroics, but you can definitely play a good play through and have him like you if you play politics a little and ask for coin for services. Also, letting him eat people you’re already planning on killing makes things a lot easier.

You have obviously missed the main point of Astarion's plot. Like the man legit had 200 years of slavery and tortoure....

no no, you missed my point.

I will absolutely be the first to advocate this man feeling the sun on his skin for the first time in centuries. And being finally free from his tormentor and getting revenge.

Of learning that he CAN trust other people. And actually grow into something more than a sexual beast that allures people to slaughter.

I am all for that. Give me a bloody, hard earned, revenge plot with some sweeter experiences in-between for the poor guy. Let Astarion enjoy something outside of sex and blood for once.

What I don't like, is his absolute cruelty to other people. During my playthrough, I helped people out of cages and aided the normal folk. I gave money to npcs and offered aid in battles.

He DISLIKED THAT!!! I am near red with him because I am actually trying to help people.

But if it was him in a cage, which he had been at some point, praying for someone to help him, (which is something he says to Tav) he'd obviously want someone like Tav to unlock the cage and let him out, no?

He'd want someone to help him, if there was ever a time the opportunity came up. Astarion would want freedom!

But heaven forbid, someone else wants the same thing and actually gets the opportunity to be saved from cruelty.

That's not result of him being tortured. That's just him being an asshole.