#i do like the decision to rewrite van richten and the vistani

[socialmediasocrates]

one of the more funny things that i've seen in bg3 fic, i think because there's a fair number of people playing the game for whom this is their intro to dnd, is the general assumption that astarion wouldn't be able to sire a child

ok genuine question, but how would that happen? is he not undead? because from what i unerstand it can oly happen if the mother is turned while she is csrrying the child.

so while i can't exactly answer why it works, one of the available origins for the dhampir as introduced in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is the most straightforward way a dhampir would exist: one of their parents is a vampire. since this is in canon faerun and it looks like candlekeep is canon, i am operating on the assumption that the new ravenloft lore is also canon (would be cool to maybe go to a domain of dread in a future expansion or DLC; a run-in with azalin rex would certainly be challenging for even a party above level 12 and strahd could absolutely be tweaked that way in barovia; it'd be cool to see the grand conjunction come back into the lore but i digress)

now in fairness, there is also precedent in older editions of DND for some intelligent undead being able to reproduce; my best guess is that the difference lies in if the undead in question was resurrected from the grave directly and started at baseline dead or if they were somehow transformed and therefore started from baseline alive (eg vampires, liches, etc) but this is purely conjecture

so, yeah, no, you could definitely have a kid with astarion, the kid in question would be a dhampir which you can read more about at this link if you're interested

thanks for the question!