In truth, you could say the same for every companion. They certainly don’t feel like level 1 characters with such exceptional backstories. I guess it will be explained away by the tadpole.
It already has - there is a conversation between Gale and Wyll, where both complain, that they lost a lot of their abilities, since they got the tadpoles.
Plus Gale lost the favor of the goddeess of magic.
