Recently, I started my second campaign in Baldurs Gate in addition to the campaign I play with my wife in co-op. My wife and I opted for the easiest difficulty in our playthrough since neither if us ever played similar game.
This time I felt like it would be such a breeze since I already know a bit more about the game and DnD in general. I opted for the balanced mode with my new character and started going through Act I and boy oh boy do I get wrecked almost everywhere. Multiple of my characters already died and I had to revive them.
Characters
Including Gale, which in turn triggered cool mini-quest to revive him, but the magic aura around his dead body killed Astarion multiple times.
I feel very scared going into each combat and trying to plan as much in advance as possible (keep in mind I mostly know what awaits me there, because I've gone through Act I already).
Where I got wrecked
I got wrecked at the church before you get to Whithers, I got wrecked by the hyenas and gnolls by the caravan road, I got absolutly wrecked by the Paladins of Tar and
I just don't know what am I doing wrong.
My party
I play as high elf paladin and most of my encounters so far I've had Astarion, Gale, and Shadow in my party. I feel like the only actually useful member is Astarion. I probably don't know how to utilize Gale well enough and my Tav paladin just feels like a paper-thin wall between the enemy and the rest of the party.
Are these early encounters in Act I intentionally challenging so that the game "force-teaches" you to utilize everything at your disposal and will it get easier later on or am I just on the wrong path with my character and my party? Honestly, I can't imagine going through the goblin camp in this state.
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.