Not to be a "don't like it don't use it"-er, but that's really all I can say. If you choose to use it, well that's your choice, and the thing is BG3 has been HUGE, the percent of people playing it that don't know anything at all about DnD is much larger then the ones that do. So why do you want to actively punish people who make a poor choice simply because they don't pre-emptively understand DnD mechs so they -through no fault of their own, could NOT make an informed decision?
The respec is cheap for THOSE people, not for people who want all their picks to weigh on them
Don't suggest punishing people that don't understand the mechs of a game genre they've never played just because some of us do
You don't have to be a "don't like it don't use it"-er to agree with the points you made. I very rarely side with "don't like it don't use it" and I do not side with it in this case, either. I still agree with your points, though. Indeed, I would make respec FREE for THOSE people. I'd just hide it behind a Difficulty Wall so that respec isn't part of the narrative. Withers doesn't need to talk about respec at all because it is never going to make sense that your high STR Fighter is now a low STR Wizard. And it makes the game worse by trying to pretend it makes any narrative sense at all. Just have players mea culpa click on Story Mode to get a menu that allows them to respec for free and let them deal with the immersion-breaking aspect of that. Like I said above, if I messed up, I'd bite the bullet and respec, but I actually hate that Withers offers respec as part of the story.
So when you click on the difficulty setting, just include a section that says "Respec Character?" and a section that says "Resurrect Character?" Make the selection and move on without a financial transaction with a skeleton.
