Plotholes and the relationship between gameplay and narrative. This is going to be about Gale.
Gale has a True Resurrection scroll which is the exact solution he needs for all of his problems. It creates a whole new body (mirroring the original with full health) that your soul can inhabit. It's also a cure for vampirism if we can even call it a cure.
Gale somehow went from an archmage who could use Power Word: Blind to a level 1 wizard barely able to cast a single magic missile. This made him lose his proficiency bonus and knowledge about Arcana. The gameplay doesn't support this kind of "depowerment". The only way I can imagine this is through irreversible mind-wipe, that would have more to do with messing around with the soul rather than the actual mind of a character. (I also want to mention that I find it incredibly weird that Mystra seems to "groom" wizards now when she only got interested in Elminster when he was in his prime.)
The above makes it evident that Larian doesn't care about the DnD lore interacting with the mechanics. I guess special special tadpoles are a good explanation for everything now. (there are characters who have special tadpoles but our tadpoles are even specialer) It's like nanomachines.
I have a feeling that the writers themselves want to one-up eachother when it comes to companion backstories. If Karlach is going to be a thing, we could sit around the campfire and watch our companions bicker about their "better-than-yours" backstories while we get to tell them that Tav is indeed from Baldur's Gate.
Gale's introduction is so infuriating that I usually kill him on the spot (there are no repercussions for it). Every camp scene he has feels incredibly forced and awkward, especially his "Go to Hell" monologue.
From what I know, a vampire is basically a distorted mirror image of the original person. This means that the person we call "Astarion" is not actually Astarion but a disgusting joke trying to mimic who he was. I find it incredibly difficult to justify having a vampire in the party. Astarion is only likely to survive in a merciful Neutral Good party that doesn't know a single thing about vampires, and if the player is not a paladin or a cleric of Kelemvor. Evil parties are very likely to just kill him as soon as they find out that Astarion is a threat to them, Lawful Good/Any Neutral parties would behave similarly.
He hits all the clichés from both teenage vampire romances and flamboyant gay coded evil characters and I'm honestly sick and tired of seeing this.
The current group of companions feels incredibly dysfunctional.
They all bring with themselves a bunch of extra baggage/danger. I'm really not sure why the party would stick together after finding out that our tadpole is dormant, or after we find out the whole truth about them and what they are good for. Each one of them has a different idea of what to do with it. If this ends with having to do skillchecks to have party members stay, there's a chance that we might end up with less than a full party later on.
I'm not sure if a Lawful Good main character would have anyone left in the party, considering that all of the companions have committed serious crimes.
Interesting take on Gale and Astarion. Not sure how you feel about the other three although you said you don't like any of the current companions.
