The Dune soundtrack tells me that this is actually bangin'.

Don't put this out there, I can't let my players see this!

Any persistent AoE damage spells seem to be extremely good, especially if you can set them up in a choke point and continually shove enemies back into them. Hunger of Hadar, Wall of Fire, Cloud of Daggers, Spike Growth, etc.

Spells that reposition enemies can also take the place of shoves: Thuder Wave, Eldritch Blast with repelling invocation. You miss out on loot if you kill a boss this way, but sometimes the cheese is too delicious.

Spirit Guardians has been good to me. Sometimes I just have Shadowheart cast it and spend her action dashing through all the enemies on screen.

Would definitely recommend giving Astarion the Thief subclass for the broken bonus action economy. It meshes well with his vampire bite ability.

There are several hats that look cowboy hat-ish.

I will pick it up eventually, but I've got too many games to play already!

Some companions will leave the party permanently if you do not bring them with you for their subplots. It's not metagaming to put them in the party for things that are relevant to them, it's the opposite, it's bringing them along for something incredibly important to their personal journey.

No, it's one and done. So is Turn Undead. So are all of the other Channel Divinity options except Knowledge (until long rest) and Trickery (concentration).

So you have Shadowheart, Wyll, and Astarion, at least. You missed Lae'zel? Did you get Gale?

There's a Barbarian character that you can pick up a bit later than the other companions. Make sure to get her before leaving Act 1, she makes a great front-liner.

There will be more companions to get in Acts 2 and even 3.

If you have Withers at your camp, you can also respec companions or get a hireling.

What a cool Easter Egg!

I agree. Beyond the romance bugs making him seem like a skeezy incel, his backstory is some Mary Sue shit and he has a tendency to jump on morally dubious power grabs at the slightest opportunity. (See: book in apothecary basement, Raphael, personal quest events in Act 3). He made a good first impression but he might stay in the wall on my next playthrough.

I turned down Gale's magic show and he still confessed his love for me later because apparently the only answer to "we're friends, aren't we?" is either "let's fuck," giggling coyly, or "ew, I hate you." I just wanted to be friends. ):

Neil Newbon has like 85% of Astarion's face, it's uncanny to look at him. They pretty clearly used the actors' faces/mocap pretty heavily in the character designs.