• you can go anywhere with your "low-ass level gang" without a warning because it doesn’t matter, within the same act you’re more or less on a similar encounter difficulty (even considering bosses).
• given point one, why should there be grind? Every encounter has its purpose and the game is carefully scaled so at no point you should feel overwhelmed by difficulty (as long as you somewhat prepare for encounters)
• as someone else said, the game is beatable on lvl 1, according to the official stats some even managed to do that in honor mode
• if you really have that much of an issue with leveling and combat difficulty you could play on a lower difficulty, install an exp multiplier mod or install a mod that adds more encounters so you can "grind" (note that the latter two methods will make you hit a ceiling at lvl 12, so act 1 and 2 might be slightly easier but act 3 will be pretty much normal)

This was definitely a game design choice and issue for me in DOS (1), but I didn't feel the same about BG3, it seemed pretty well paced to me

Um, what? 😅😶

I'm currently stuck in the Underdark because I'm in this bind...