Agreed. I think in higher difficulty modes enemy should use better skills and spells, combining effects like water and lightning and stuff (just like the player). Most of the enemies at this point just uses normal melee or ranger/bow attacks and mages just uses weak (often fire) spells. At the moment enemy AI is just really lacking imo which isn't much of an issue in easy mode but which is a clear issue in normal and especially in hard mode.
But just adding spells and skills to enemies (and giving them a better AI) isn't enough if you can just slay them in one or two rounds because your own skills are too powerful. There should be a way to prevent you from using all your spells and skills from the very start of each fight. Having everything available in turn 1 and with each spell/skill casted/performed in the same turn the player is kind of overpowered by system. That's the reason why I think the system is broken (aka not very well designed) in that respect.
Agreed. But just adding bigger cooldowns to better skills would just lead to using them all in the first round and then using normal melee or ranged attacks until the cooldown is over or the enemy slain. That would just prolong the fights in the same way as giving them more HP...
Greater AP costs for the powerful spells would mean you can't use them in the first turn if you jut don't have enough points.
Adding a cooldown to some spells at the start of combat seems like a break from the rest of the games rules, and would feel somewhat like a band aid fix.
A more elaborate way of fixing this that I could imagine is to instead of spells costing action points up front, finishing to cast them costs action points. And every round you can allocate X action points towards casting them, until the amount needed to cast them is reached.
Essentially we would split Magic into "At will", which would include weaker spells, and "Incantations" which would be really powerful but also costly, and possibly have a limit of how often they can be used per combat.
This system wouldn't make a lot of sense for skills though, so simply re-balancing them would seem like the best way to go for me. Also duplicates should go, the amount of distance that can be covered with 2 charges is ludicrous.
Lastly, in addition to AI improvements enemies would of course have to be beefed up appropriately so that they don't just fall over.
Overall I think adding cooldowns to delay powerful abilities is not the way to go, but rather they should be multi-turn actions.
EDIT: Quick amendment to the casting suggestion: A target for the spell would be chose once the cast is complete, not when casting is begun. This would also have the side effect of adding more reactionary gameplay such as protecting a currently casting Character from interruptions, while trying to disrupt enemy casters.
