Most encounters are designed for the players to savescum

[Robotnik]

Hear me out now, I know you see the title and think: "Get a load of this hotdog I bet he can't even get good."
I fought this encounter on normal difficulty and I've noticed several encounters, for example 3 culitsts in the mines, seem to be designed for they player to fail so hard upon initially contacting them that they will reload a save, go back, prebuff the party with every spell, and then fight.
This is why I think this:
These particular enemies turn 0, (yes turn zero) upon seeing the party: Transform, Cast a large number of buffs including mirror image, and get their normal turn. This is a trend I've noticed with a lot of miniboss encounters. That certain groups of enemies get a bunch of full turn free actions instantly to buff up or already have a ton of short term buffs already active. If this were in an area where they are aware the party is attacking and they had cast several buffs that last an hour, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But they will often have a bunch of 3-4 round duration spells either already cast on them or a turn 0 where they buff themselves up like crazy.
This wouldn't have a problem with it if they had to use a full turn or two to buff themselves up when caught by surprise, but their action economy basically makes a group of 3 into a group of 15 for the first several rounds since they never have to spend any of their actions using their spells.

[Madjar]

Originally posted by Athos Atreides:

Hear me out now, I know you see the title and think: "Get a load of this hotdog I bet he can't even get good."
I fought this encounter on normal difficulty and I've noticed several encounters, for example 3 culitsts in the mines, seem to be designed for they player to fail so hard upon initially contacting them that they will reload a save, go back, prebuff the party with every spell, and then fight.
This is why I think this:
These particular enemies turn 0, (yes turn zero) upon seeing the party: Transform, Cast a large number of buffs including mirror image, and get their normal turn. This is a trend I've noticed with a lot of miniboss encounters. That certain groups of enemies get a bunch of full turn free actions instantly to buff up or already have a ton of short term buffs already active. If this were in an area where they are aware the party is attacking and they had cast several buffs that last an hour, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But they will often have a bunch of 3-4 round duration spells either already cast on them or a turn 0 where they buff themselves up like crazy.
This wouldn't have a problem with it if they had to use a full turn or two to buff themselves up when caught by surprise, but their action economy basically makes a group of 3 into a group of 15 for the first several rounds since they never have to spend any of their actions using their spells.

I would legitimately stop being an angry little goblin at this game if mobs had to buff.

[kiloromeo]

+1

[MrFrengLitch]

Yes. I tend to save scum a lot of fights too. Im probably spending more time reloading than actually playing lol...

Also on harder difficulties if your main character dies, you have to reload. So its even more savescumming. Why is this even a thing?

Anyway. Game is fun but its godd*mn tedious a lot of times.

[kiloromeo]

Pitty

[urartu]

The frequency of savescumming increases at optional bosses. They are generally like "We prepared a kill room for you, will you survive?" But that is part of the charm. You want your party and tactics to crack that kill room.

[Robotnik]

Locations that have a lot of buildup or look like they are leading into a kill room with blood streaks on the floor and stuff aren't too bad. A lot of the encounters like this so far have 0 indication that around that corner this particular normal modeled enemy is as strong as a demon lord.

[phadin]

There are some cases in APs where the bosses do get forewarning and buff the hell out of themselves before the party arrives. I know one occasion in particular in an AP I'm running where the boss will, by the time the party arrives, have some 7 or 8 different buffs up... hour and minute per level varieties, but none of the round per level ones.

However, what they do here is outright cheating. For example, the wizard in Drezen (humanoid, not a demon) with a 36 dexterity that comes prebuffed with a permenent haste, blur, true sight, an Agile Knife, and casts transform during a cutscene before battle actually engages. It's obvious what they were going for in terms of the challenge here, but it's also obvious they're cheating the system creating opponents like this.

[Snefru]

I play on daring. Don’t save scum or pre-buff. I might die a few times and even then I don’t prebuff. I just change my strategy in the fight, not before. Never felt under powered (unless optional boss fight) or like I had to be optimal.

[StingingVelvet]

The challenging encounters are, yes. Was the same in Kingmaker, it's just how Owlcat designs the games. Get wrecked by death spells, reload, cast prevention buffs, try again. It's annoying but doesn't ruin the experience for me.

[Pogey-Bait]

Just play in ironman mode. Then you don't have to worry about save scumming. Plus, you get really insightful experience on how to properly create characters !

[MrFrengLitch]

Ironman mode? Yeah no. You'll die 100% a lot of times and will probably never finish the game. Dont do that.

[Pogey-Bait]

Like I said. You'll get really good at creating characters. Do it.

[Damedius]

Originally posted by Pogey-Bait:

Like I said. You'll get really good at creating characters. Do it.

Then you get unlucky rolls and still die.

[Butcher]

Originally posted by Pogey-Bait:

Just play in ironman mode. Then you don't have to worry about save scumming. Plus, you get really insightful experience on how to properly create characters !

And then get game over by random crit killing your MC anyway.

[Butcher]

Originally posted by StingingVelvet:

The challenging encounters are, yes. Was the same in Kingmaker, it's just how Owlcat designs the games. Get wrecked by death spells, reload, cast prevention buffs, try again. It's annoying but doesn't ruin the experience for me.

Big random is the basis of combat system. Has nothing to do with Owlcat.