If you fail to pull Gale through the portal, can you recruit him later?
I failed the strength check despite being a paladin and using inspiration. I never saw him again even after getting through nearly all of act 2. I've asked this before, maybe even in this community, but no one gave a concrete answer, likely because the game was still new.
Maybe. I rage quit the first one. Once I get a new PC I might finish and/or play again. Little shit like this is probably one of the biggest reasons I quit. It's absolutely insane to me to lock a follower behind a random chance. I was over 50 hours in before I began to realize I might not see him again. I would've save scummed if I knew.
I have no problems save scumming, but I never suspected they'd literally design one of the main 6 characters to be missable over a single fucking failed skill check. I thought for sure I'd see him later.
Consequences of your decisions is what makes this game special. You're going to have a bad time going forward with this game if you cannot deal with the fomo.
What the hell do you mean consequences of my actions? I didn't do something dumb, I tried to save him. And it's not like a cool piece of armor or weapon was locked behind a skill check, it's a whole damn character. Arguably the best thing about this game is the characters and their dialogue. Now one of them is gone through no fault of my own. I can understand locking Minthara behind killing the druids and then not allowing you to have Karlach or Wyll in the party. That makes sense. I'd definitely view that as a consequence of my actions. But that's not what I'm upset about. I'm upset that one of the six main characters was locked behind a random skill check! It's dumb. They could've just as easily made it so he pops up again later at a different portal if you fail the first time, but no. So don't say this was a "consequence of my actions." If I was playing Dark Urge and chopped his hand off the argument would be better, but I'm not. I was playing a high strength character and used my inspirations and still failed due to no fault of my own and now one of the characters is just completely inaccessible. That's a massive chunk of content. Hundreds if not thousands of lines of dialogue I can't get to partake in because of a fucking random chance. So don't fucking say it's a consequence of my actions.
I wasn't aware, but I don't think you can kill the tie flings and keep Karlach and Wyll, that would be a fine example of losing characters due to the "consequences of my actions" still and I see no problem with it.
Failing a roll is on you whether you like it or not. The ever looming threat of failure is important in story telling and suspension of disbelief. It's the opposite of dumb game design. So yeah you either reload until everything gets handed to you or you move on. You're talking like he's locked behind a dlc when you're just pissed a dice roll didn't go your way at level one.
Losing Gale due to a failed dice roll is nothing like a dlc that's an absurd claim. You can't just reload a save to unlock a dlc. It was that simple for Gale.
It's a game that's meant to be played multiple times, since you can't experience everything in one playthrough. I agree it can be frustrating when something gets locked out as easily as a failed roll, and that often causes choice paralysis in myself while I play, but you need to go in with the mindset of not being able to complete everything the first attempt (or you'll go insane).
I hope you can try the game again in the future and enjoy it! Maybe having several plays going at once and save scumming at choice points so you can use the same character for most of the options!