My biggest issue with Gale is that he costs loot to maintain so to speak. In early access I was lucky enough to have on hand items I wasn't going to use anyway, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to put up with it in the actual game. It might be better for me to simply not recruit him. But I'm also interested in seeing where his story goes and how we can affect it, so he'll probably get to come along. Undecided, but leaning in his favour.
I don't want to go into the spoilers, but you can keep him around even if you deny him the items.
While true, I don’t think it will lead to a good path/ending for him.
If he is as cunning as he presents himself initially, I think it'll be just fine. I am personally against babysitting a grown man by feeding him magic on the schedule. Once? Sure. Twice? Fine.. but more? I say learn to provide for yourself, sir!
My thing with this line of thinking is, Gale is part of your party. He's contributing to getting those items. Really he shouldn't need to be asking the way he does, he should be framing it as getting his own share of the items he's earned as partof the party. At least in my playthroughts, no matter my character's class, he comes in and fights with the party, he contributes to exploration, so as far as I'm concerned he's entitled to a share of the loot.
Also, unrelated to the above, but I think people are way too hard on Astarion's introduction, and that's as someone who doesn't really like Astarion. He tells you why he attacks you; he thinks that you're one of the thralls from the ship, there to attack him. That is to me, a perfectly reasonable justification. Sure some more brutal characters would take that as cause for a death sentence but I think any reasonably tolerant individual would be miffed but understand. I'm certain that most players would do the same thing if they saw someone they assumed to be an enemy.
And related to the poll itself, I'm not killing any members of the party unless it's really a kill or be killed situation. The only situation where I've ever killed a companion in a game is WotR with Camellia, and she turned out to be a straight-up serial killer.
