Evidently if you make them bards, they have a whole new round of voice acting lines. loke the actors specifically recorded a bunch of bard lines, just in case you made them one. I’d make karlach a bard but she’s so strong as barb
I want to spec everyone into at least one level of bard and give them all different instruments. Most of them are non-charismatic so having the thaumaturgy cantrip might be a necessity.
Can’t you just have everyone talk to Alfira for musical instrument proficiency? They won’t have performance proficiency but at least they can play instruments. Mostly.
I always respec Shadowheart into anything but Trickery domain, usually Light or Life. I also generally respec all companions just to fix their ability scores, some of them are terrible by default.
I didn't realize till my second playthrough how much better light domain is. It's massively more powerful. You get a great support reaction, more useful channel divinity (massive AoE radiant damage), and a bunch of useful fire spells including fire ball and flame wall. 10/10, would respec again.
Shadowheart I'll move out of Trickery domain, always. There's a brief point early-to-mid game where it's pretty good to have Blessing of the Trickster up to set up an opening Concentrated Blast for a resource-free, guaranteed hit, but that falls off quick. The domain is so bad otherwise. I wish there was a more fitting option, but I've put her in either Life or War.
I also put Karlach in Ranger. Had a blast with her in Hunter + dual wield spec.
I've got Wyll in Monk in my current playthrough. Something about his physical build makes me feel like he's suited for it. Or maybe I'm just playing too many RPGs where the men are ridiculously top-heavy.
Shadowheart I changed to life domain and really leaned hard into healing/supporting. I've also tried multiclassing her into wizard or sorcerer to get access to some other support spells
Karlach I made a Paladin. She can tank hits, has great damage output with smites and has minor healing. You can also multiclass her as a warlock to get 3 weapon attacks per turn but you do lose out on some of the higher paladin stuff. Temporary hitpoints on kills also works with the build nicely. I don't think I would consider Karlach warlock lore friendly though
I respec'd Lae'Zel to a Paladin, she's about as fight-y as she was before but now she can heal and fuck up the undead a bit more.
I want to respec Wyll into something else 'cause I like his story so far but he's pretty useless in a fight, especially since I'm a wizard and I pretty much always have Karlach and Shadowheart on the team, so anything he can do there's usually someone who does it better. Maybe either a monk or a bard?
How is wyll useless in a fight? Give him the +cha to cantrip robe and at fifth level he's doing 2d10+20 +2d6 every round. At 11th level he gets a third beam for another 1d10+10 +1d6. The d6s are hex, but you could drop that for something else I guess. Darkness + devil sight is very effective.
Though I guess if you long rest a lot, a class with consistent output isn't going to seem as nice.
I'm still learning all the ins and outs of builds for each class so I haven't even thought about doing respecs yet. There is so much depth for a relative DnD newb to unpack.
After shadowheart got her cool weapon and armor, I felt like it was a bit of a waste for her to still be a cleric, so I ended up respecting her into a paladin.
I have karlac lvs in rogue just to get the extra bonus action from thief. I had way too many turns where my bonus actions were really strained. Also I guess being able to sprint more was also really helpful.
My dark urge character started out as a warlock. When I got the form change I wanted to see if there were any classes that buffed that up. It didn’t seem like anything gave much of a bonus to it so I gave up on using aside from one fight in act 3 where it was too thematic to pass up on.