Well, I did both in the past. For example, in EE versions of BG1 and BG2, on that 'new' difficulty beamdog added - 'legacy of bhaal' you kinda have to minmax and abuse every trick in the book or you loose. So far I've fully finished that difficulty only once, before BG3 EA released I was streaming my another full LoB run for funzies.
Anyhow, I generally like to have a character idea and I work around that idea. Come full release I pretty much have my dream character sculpted in my mind, and I don't particularly care if it's going to be strong or super weak, and from what I've heard, my chosen class combo is subpar. Basically, I wanna play draconic blood line drow sorcerer. Seldarine drow of course, but I'm still not sure what dragon I want to be my PCs ancestor, silver or gold, slightly leaning towards gold (mostly because of the way fire works in BG3, so that's a bit of a meta decision), although, Adalon from BG2 made me absolutely adore silver dragons.
