I skipped the forge in my first playthrough. In my current (Honour mode) run I thought it would be a good idea to try to get the adamantine stuff first time in the game. It was not. Anyway, I survived the fight.
My party now in the Shadowlands normally consists of my main Alicia (Sorcerer), Shadowheart (Thunder domain), Karlach and Astarion (as ranged Fighter, as Lae'zel was gutted by Shadowheart unfortunately, and I hate Rogue gameplay). Grym helmet + YuanTi armor + 18 Dex gloves go to Shadowheart, adamantine Scale to Karlach and the adamanine shield with a Scale Armor +2 to Astarion. By far the most important stat for Honour mode is initiative, but having three chars with crit immunity is comforting.
As I'm constantly broken in the game, I like that you get relatively decent armor for free (kind of) from the forge. The adamantine Scale sucks a bit because it has no + initiative, but on a Barbarian I can get over it, Karlach still has + 5 initiative.
