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BG3: harpies are the worst
I scraped past my first major hurdle with Larissa's team (knowledge cleric/Larissa, trickster cleric/Shadowheart, evocation wizard/Gale, champion fighter/Lae'zel). But damn, it was rough.
It was the level 3 harpies on the beach by the grove.
My paladin's group (the same except for one less cleric and, well, a paladin) breezed past it fairly easily. This group had to keep reloading because Gale kept dying and acquired a necrotic aura that would kill everyone else. I was going to see if a long rest would clear it, but then he wanted to talk and I didn't want to miss a cool cut scene because I died. I finally figured out that I needed to restart, unchain Gale from the rest and keep him juuust close enough for combat, then have him climb up one of the rocks and use crowd control until things turned enough that he could start using the big guns.
(I also had to remember that arcane recovery of his spell slots is a thing. This was technically happening the same day as the crypt exploration.)
So, the final victory involved him using Fog Cloud to blind the harpies enough that my enraptured party shook off the song and would actually attack and hit. The fog cloud was definitely a double-edged sword, since I couldn't heal my party members in it, but at least the harpies couldn't see them without getting in melee range of Lae'zel (that rarely goes well for people, especially with the awesome fire sword I got back on the nautiloid :D). Larissa herself managed to hit once or twice with Guiding Bolt, but was mostly keeping the party standing, while Shadowheart managed a Guiding Bolt crit for over 30 points of damage in one strike. But Gale was pretty critical to the whole thing, so him not dying was really important (much less him not killing the rest of the party by his presence alone).
Afterwards, Larissa listened to Gale's charmingly arrogant chatter about his own childhood misadventures, I think less patiently than just out of genuine interest and finding magic adventures that cool. And it turns out there's a semi-secret treasure that you have to jump around to find, which I totally missed on my other characters. (I am really bad at exploration and puzzles.) The treasure wasn't spectacular but nothing to sneeze at, and there was some exploration XP attached, so ... whew. Satisfying now that it's over, but a hell of a fight.
In conclusion:
It was the level 3 harpies on the beach by the grove.
My paladin's group (the same except for one less cleric and, well, a paladin) breezed past it fairly easily. This group had to keep reloading because Gale kept dying and acquired a necrotic aura that would kill everyone else. I was going to see if a long rest would clear it, but then he wanted to talk and I didn't want to miss a cool cut scene because I died. I finally figured out that I needed to restart, unchain Gale from the rest and keep him juuust close enough for combat, then have him climb up one of the rocks and use crowd control until things turned enough that he could start using the big guns.
(I also had to remember that arcane recovery of his spell slots is a thing. This was technically happening the same day as the crypt exploration.)
So, the final victory involved him using Fog Cloud to blind the harpies enough that my enraptured party shook off the song and would actually attack and hit. The fog cloud was definitely a double-edged sword, since I couldn't heal my party members in it, but at least the harpies couldn't see them without getting in melee range of Lae'zel (that rarely goes well for people, especially with the awesome fire sword I got back on the nautiloid :D). Larissa herself managed to hit once or twice with Guiding Bolt, but was mostly keeping the party standing, while Shadowheart managed a Guiding Bolt crit for over 30 points of damage in one strike. But Gale was pretty critical to the whole thing, so him not dying was really important (much less him not killing the rest of the party by his presence alone).
Afterwards, Larissa listened to Gale's charmingly arrogant chatter about his own childhood misadventures, I think less patiently than just out of genuine interest and finding magic adventures that cool. And it turns out there's a semi-secret treasure that you have to jump around to find, which I totally missed on my other characters. (I am really bad at exploration and puzzles.) The treasure wasn't spectacular but nothing to sneeze at, and there was some exploration XP attached, so ... whew. Satisfying now that it's over, but a hell of a fight.
In conclusion: