Speaking of weak characters jumping, is there anywhere Gale can't actually follow you when exploring and jumping? I only remember ONE jump he can't make to use some minor shortcut in the Underdark. Does the auto-jump ignore the strength based distance?
I’m not 100% sure on this. In some places companions tend not to follow even when the they should be able to, such as jumping back onto the path near where you find Astarion after finding the Harper stash under the rock, and back up from the Kua Toa area in the Underdark, which seem to cause me problems for various companions so it’s hard to be sure when Gale isn’t following due to strength restrictions rather than a bug in following.
But there are at least a couple more locations where this might be what is happening, such as getting to the Harpy nest and the big jump to the ledge overlooking the goblin camp that you can get to from near the gate where you find the githyanki. And there at least used to be a spot in the cave where Rugan was trapped by gnolls where Gale and other low strength party members could get stuck because they could jump down onto a platform but not back up again, but that may have been fixed. Oh, and perhaps a couple of spots in Grymforge, too.
I guess what would prove that auto-jump wasn’t properly taking into account strength based distance is a definite example where you can’t possibly manually jump Gale, but he follows if a higher strength character goes first. I don’t have such an example myself but someone might?
Though, to be honest I do think it’s right that maps are designed so that 8 strength characters can get to the vast majority of places, and areas that require longer jumping/misty stepping etc are there as a discoverable (optional) treat or to enable the odd shortcut that weedy characters can get to via another route. Speaking as a person who often plays wimps myself, it would be annoying if there were lots of places I couldn’t get to without magical intervention.
