Like others have mentioned you have solid advice thus far. It will take a little bit to understand the rules fully, but you will come to realize Action Economy is King, and finding synergies that work out well.

For spell casters, try and pay attention to what spells are concentration and what are not. Its a good habit to only have a couple concentration spells in your line up as you dont want to get caught up as a one trick pony. Try and find synergies between casters concentration spell options.



I can list a few things below on what I currently run and how it works for me:

Shadowheart:
For survivability you can have shadowheart cast Mirror Image on herself as that helps her avoiding direct attacks except silly ground effects or aoe blasts. I use her concentration checks for mostly Hold Person or Silence. Hold Person if it lands ( Humanoids only ) causes any Melee to hit gain advantage and IF it hits its an auto crit.
( At this point in the game with the goblin camp I ended up having 2 major magic items that helped her healing become quite nice. On healing another target she was able to give blade ward for 2 rounds: resistance (( Half damage )) to blunt,pierce,slash and also able to Bless target for 1 or 2 rounds cant recall ) This helped a ton as I was able to throw out healing word when needed and hit things with her mace that also did a self heal on hit.

IMO Since she is not a Life cleric I find that Healing Word is better than cure wounds due to the fact its a ranged, and a bonus action allowing you to still cast a cantrip or even attack.

Gale Evocation:
Gale try and make sure you have mage armor on all the time if possible as it lasts until next long rest. The AI targets people with the lowest HP and AC if they can help it so this may help average out the hits. There are plenty of those scrolls out there or just cast it himself as he has plenty of slots. Fog Cloud is useful if you are having trouble with mobs gaining the height advantages as it forces them to change positions. I also made gale an Evocation wizard meaning I can cast aoe spells and keep my party members safe for the most part ( 1+spell level of targets you can have them avoid all damage ). I usually cast shatter if i can get 3 or 4 mobs together.

Main Ranger Beastmaster:
My current play through is my Ranger Beastmaster as well. I went with Dual wield + Dual Wielder Feat to equip magical Rapiers for higher damage output instead of a stat boost to see how it feels. The damage output is nice with Hunters mark. Getting behind mobs right now is almost always key to success.
Currently the Spider seems overpowered compared to its other summons for the fact it can CC, Jump anywhere, higher AC AND HP than any other animal ( they need to balance this )

Lazell Battlemaster:
I ended up switching out Astarion for Lazell due to the fact that Rogues I feel are not in a good place mechanically as they are not implemented well at this time with their class features.
Lazell I went sword and board and high defense. With no magic armor I have her AC at 20 and battlemaster. The Rally is nice to pass out temp HP to anyone getting a tad low but I really enjoy menacing attack mostly due to the potential fear and CC it causes on some big brutes which then force Attacks of Opportunity with my melee characters.

This is just a few tid bits of advice hope it helps!

Jaz