I am hoping that the player can select the stats if choosing to play an origin character. None of them are ideal for me, and having fixed stats adds yet another reason I have no interest in playing one.
As for balance:
Wyll's rapier is useless unless Hexblade gets added so he may as well not have it.
Astarion's bite attack is useless to me and the water thing is only a slight inconvenience. Not having Expertise hurts more.
Gale's need for magic items isn't really that bad since we find so many of them, and depending on choices he nay not even need them after a point.
I expect Shadowheart will have more plot related stuff simply because of her item being so important, hopefully this will not be the case and all of them will have equally interesting stories.
