The problem is people defending the games as perfect 10/10 GOTY. And just the general gamers who get super whiny and mad if anyone complains about anything in Starfield, saying that's just the "Bethesda genre".
Those three fights are the “big ones” in act 1, probably as hard as the goblin camp, what level were you when you did them?
The easiest difficulty make combat a faceroll (which is a great way to experience the story, if that’s your primary goal); balanced makes you care about what level you are for the encounter, positioning, and your party make-up; Honour makes you think about terrain, party make-up, item use, damage types, and resource management.
Your ranged characters shouldn’t be close enough together that they can be hit with an AoE, and ideally, they are somewhere that gives advantage.
:::spoiler Party make up Shadowheart is mean and stupid, and she’s also easily replaced as long as anyone else in the part has “Guidance”. :::
I think I was level 3 for the church and level 4 for the other two fights.
:::spoiler party I mainly carry Shadow because of the Guidance and I want to try romancing her (so I can build up the approvals) but otherwise my paladin Tav can heal as well. I might try switching her for Lae’zel or Karlach. :::
To be fair those are definitely the toughest fight in Act I. I’ve only played on balanced, so I can’t vouch for story mode. I would highly recommend adding Lae’zel or Karlach to your party though. This is a good idea.
I’m on my first honour play though, just hit level 11, and my party is the same as yours, but swapping the person who is stupid and mean for the second person you mentioned.
It might be a matter of changing battlefield positioning, or focusing on “action economy” if you’re not already. Unless you are doing an AoE, someone with concentration needs to be interrupted, or there is an odd mechanic, it’s best to kill enemies one by one. That means one less person is attacking you each round, and this advantage grows each person you kill off.
Make your paladin a 2h smiteadin with a bard dip for college of swords maneuvers. Yes bring karlach and laezel and all 3 of you single-target 2h shredder your way through the enemies.
Assassin astarion is a monster and can usually sneak attack kill targets in one shot. Especially if you go the ranged route and add the extra base damage from that one ranged feat.
Once gale has fireball you can trade him out for astarion and just huck those things around as much and as often as you can and rest every time he’s out. He’s also really good at magic missile spam with those electricity items.
Most importantly, you should always prioritize killing one enemy at a time so that you’re quicker to remove them from the turn order and prevent them from doing damage on their turn. Basically never split damage with your single target party members.
::: spoiler Just south of the druid grove there’s a hill you can climb up that has an amulet that gives Guidance. If that’s your only reason for including Shadowheart, that might be a good alternative. :::
If you are going to keep Shadowheart, I’d recommend respeccing her to switch subclasses (I’m a fan of Tempest cleric, but there are several good options) and fixing her stats (like choosing either STR or DEX rather than splitting both).
Make her a vengeance paladin. She’ll hit like a truck and can still heal. Also thematically she’ll still have the sharran choices as she is identified as a paladin of shar (the only one in the game).
On the topic of utilizing Gale (or Wyll): The spell Cloud of Daggers is pretty useful early on with a bit of positioning. It won’t get you singlehandedly through every fight, but you can make lots of fights easier by casting that spell in a choke point and forcing enemies to walk into it to get you.
Bonus points if you can upcast, more bonus if you position your paladin or cleric on the other side of the cloud to keep enemies in it or push them back in once they’re through it. Ranged enemies will move into it if they can’t see their targets, so hide your party arong corners to lure them in.
If you have gale and wyll, you can get two clouds going.
This is a bit off topic because you don’t use her. But there’s a javelin build with karlach that carried me from early act 1 a good ways through act 3. Theoretically should work on any strength character, but best with a barbarian:
Subclass her into the frenzy barbarian. Take tavern brawler as your feat. Find the ring of flinging from the merchant in the Grove.
The javelin base damage is 1d6 + str damage, ring of flinging adds 1d4, and tavern brawler adds your strength again to the attack roll and damage roll. Plus the feat gives +1 str to bump karlach up to 18(+4 modifier).
Then, frenzy allows you to throw a second (and later third) javelin with your bonus action.
Each hit tends to have 95% chance, has considerable range, and reliably puts out about 15/hit with the potential to hit like 28 Twice per turn.
The frenzy hit also has a good chance to knock your target prone for that extra salt.
Then you can buy the pike of returning from the goblin merchant (must be before you agro them) to automatically get it back after you throw it so you don’t need a ton of javelins. And you can also collect the gloves of uninhibited kushido from the myconid colony to bump the damage up even more.
Casting enlarge on her helps with that damage output, as well as an elixer of the Hill giant, or anything that bumps str up more.
I wouldn’t say wrong - but there’s probably some nuance you’re overlooking. As a general rule healing is not super strong in D&D so you may want to forego having a dedicated healer, you also might want to focus on “control” spells that can either take an enemy out for a few turns or otherwise minimize their threat.
With exceptions… I busted healing with speccing Shadowheart as a life domain cleric and picked up some gear along the way - would not have made it through the game without my dedicated healer.
I found “similar enough” looking models from Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniature Line and the Vulkyn Flameseekers from Warhammer’s Warcry.
Considering one was a bearded human bard and the other was a half-elf with a pony tail, I was lucky to find a bard with a beard and pony tail combo blister that could work for both (converting one with the signature crossbows), then I just picked a random sorceress from the line and replaced a Dwarf’s axe with the everburn blade. With a similar enough paintjob people dismiss all the indiscrepencies like one would a cold reading.
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