The best build I’ve played is my Bard in this playthrough. Swords bard, dex based sharpshooter, 2 hand crossbows, 2 hand fighting style, and 2 levels in paladin oath of the Ancients. You’re a skill monkey with dex and charisma, so you can do almost anything in the game as good as any other character, you have sleight of hand and persuasion expertise so you can disable traps, pick locks, and persuade conversations. You get medium armor proficiency, or heavy if you take pally first, so you have high AC and high dodge, so you can front line. You have smite and a ton of spells slots. You can one-shot big bads. With the ranged slashing flourish you can attack 5 times in a single turn for high damage. And to top it all off you have heals, crowd control, and a pretty great spell arsenal. There’s literally nothing this build can’t do. Not only can it do everything, it can do most things better than dedicated classes. The only two things I’ve found done better by other classes are mass healing from a cleric, or lots of AOE damage from a wizard. Anyways, I absolutely LOVE this build.
Astarion is my second favorite companion. Karlach is too cool to not be my first favorite, but Astarion with his scheming and sassy attitude is such fun! Astarion was also my most powerful companion, and group face in my first playthrough, so I very much needed him in the party. This time I’m playing as a Bard and don’t need him, but I just added him back to the party to take on Cazador, and he’s still a badass. I’m rolling with him as a Monk/Thief now and he kicks major ass, and doubles as a pack mule.
Resources are finite, especially during war. They don’t want to poison or burn food that they need to eat. The idea is that you stop the forward march of the enemy before he gets to your food stores. If you can’t stop his advance then you have bigger problems than the enemy looting your food supplies.