Okay!
So round 1, everyone is in the tight formation, they've all eaten apples, and otherwise have not moved or acted (This is deliberate to create a worst-case-scenario).
Madora (level 3, 108 HP) is hit with a fire arrow, 14 damage. She's in the center of the formation, and on the next archer's turn is struck by a poisoncloud arrow, enveloping everyone.
Madora: 41 Piercing damage, 23 poison damage. She's down to 31 HP.
Roderick the Rogue's turn. He has 93 HP (thanks to a +1 CON item), and he has 5% Poison resist on his armour, so a total of +35%. He's in the poisoncloud, and is hit for 8 + 22 + 25 poison damage leaving him with 38 HP. He avoids taking any more damage when walking out of it. He uses his saved AP to use Water of Life (which I cross-classed into), a potion, and turn invisible.
Scarlett the Knight has 98 HP, and takes 8 + 24 + 24, leaving her with 42 HP. She takes no poison damage when leaving the cloud, crushing fists' the bomber and drinks a potion, taking her to 94/98.
Madora's turn is up again. She takes 22 poison damage before anything happens. She, my toughest and tankiest character, is down to 9 HP before she can even act. So did that apple she magically knew to eat in advance save her life? Yes. I drink a potion to get her to 61 HP. She takes 8 damage leaving the cloud (which would have left her at 1 if not for the potion)
Jahan (108 HP) makes his save and takes only 8 damage. He takes 8 more walking out of the cloud and passes his save again, leaving him in super shape with 93 HP. I have him cast healing on Madora (23 HP immediately, taking her to 84)
Now the enemies go again:
Madora is hit with a Silver arrow (19 damage), Scarlett is hit for 14, Madora is hit for 23 and 25 damage, knocking her back down to 11 HP. Oh, and she's still poisoned.
The bomber has exploded now beside the ooze barrel, detonating it. A lucky break as that kills an archer instantly, and badly damages one of the swordsman (who Scarlett almost kills on her turn).
Madora's turn comes up, she takes 25 poison damage, dies, is auto-rezed by her Talent and is healed for 23 HP. Sitting pretty at 24 HP. She drinks a potion to get up to 76 and crushing fists's an archer to knock it down.
Jahan uses bitter cold to freeze the remaining Wet archer.
Scarlett is knocked down to 10 HP by the two melee undead. She's still poisoned, but it ends on her turn and she survives and uses Cure Wounds to heal to full, and has enough AP to use her single-handed sword to finish off the wounded undead.
Meanwhile, Roderick polishes off the knocked-down archer. Madora's poison ends, and with two enemies left, only one of which can act, the danger is past.
I was deliberately playing worse than I normally would have - disabling the archers earlier with bitter cold and knockdown. So yes, the apples did save my life and no one needed a rez scroll.
But now the merchant is out of apples.
That strategy did work, if you magically know what to do ahead of time and/or gear up full of anti-poison stuff, but calling the game too easy just means you should increase the difficulty level on your end. I'm all for higher difficulty levels being added, but I maintain that Poisoned and Burning do a bit too much damage currently in Normal difficulty.
