>>528045286
Tunarath is the capitol of the gith and features Vlaakith's personal guard. If you infiltrate that and then fight your way back out under fire, you're high level. The character doesn't need to turn to the camera and say "I was high level".

Karl is referred to as Zariels attack dog and her being described as a heavy hitter on the front lines of the blood war is corroborated by her memories and by the teifling children who said they recognized her all the way from their time in Elturel. Karl was very high level before the game as well.

Wyll talks about slaying dragons and wrestling minotaurs, so he was high level as well. He also refers to summoning hellhounds, which astute players will remember is a CR3 monster, so that's no ordinary summon familiar cantrip. He was high level as well. He offers the explanation that the tadpole is nerfing their abilities, and it seems logical.

Gale is unclear how much it was messing with the orb and how much is the tadpole, likely a combination of both, but we know that he was probably the strongest pre-tadpole, given that he was archmage of waterdeep and Mystra's chosen, and peer of Elminister. He's probably level 20 before the game. Wyll, Shart, and Karl might not have been all the way to 20, they're probably 12+ though.

Lazy is the closest to her pre-tadpole self. She was probably level 3-5 before, given that she's a fresh graduate on her first quest, but she did finish creche bootcamp, and we see that the other gith students we meet in the creche are 3+.

Astarion is also a weird one. He's 200+ years old and was in the vicinity of strong magic and esoteric lore in the form of vampire covens. That amount of time and that esoteric magic could allow a person to become quite powerful, but we also know that Cazador intentionally kept them in the dark and would have ordered them to not ever even come close to matching him, so Asty had an actual artificial limit on his ability during this time.