Warlocks aren't great front liners in this game. They're marginally effective as front liners in 5E base rules, with a specific subclass (Hexblade) being the best choice for melee warlocks (afaik, that won't be in the BG3 game as they are doing PHB classes/archetypes and hexblade is in a supplemental 5e book called "Xanathar's Guide to Everything").

You COULD get away with your warlock and gale in the party, though it's magical overkill. If you did that, I'd put Astarion and Shadowheart in the party. Astartion is one of the best damage dealers in EA (especially with the thief archetype and dual wielding light finesse weapons). Shadowheart can get enough AC to manage frontline aggro, while Astarion can be used to focus damage on whomever is attacking shadowheart or will be in position to do so next round. Shadowheart would generally want to either boost her AC or bane attackers if she's acting as a frontliner, and Astarion would either make a sneak attack plus two bonus attacks with the offhand OR sneak attack + dash/jump/hide every round. Your lock would target high priority enemies and gale would fill in the blanks witih crowd control or targetted attacks to keep shadowheart from getting overwhelmed.

Alternatively, your 'lock, Gale, Shadowheart and Lae'zel would work incredibly well.

So far, I've found that if you use the skills of your team to compliment each other, almost any class combo will be effective in combat. You just have to play to your team's strengths and weaknesses and use the other game systems to your advantage when needed (like sending every explosive barrel you come across to camp, sneaking into position and transferring them to the player in position from camp through other PC's to set up insta kill traps for encounters that are too hard with your chosen group)

Personally, so far I've found any combination of warlock + wizard to be magical overkill that leaves blank spots in party makeup. Picking one or the other seems the best way to get yourself a balanced party and cover all your bases. I think there was ONE time when I played a warlock build (with laezal, astarion and shadowheart) where I had to switch out a party member for gale so I could access a spell he had that I didn't have as a scroll on my 'lock. And that was when I discovered an alternate path in to the goblin camp that required feather fall.

Last edited by nickabbey; 26/10/20 05:25 PM.