You do understand the damage dealt (non-mage) and armor are largely from gear stats and not from
attributes and talents.
The way I see it, is that the dev wants you to go through the game progressively while offering you the freedom to explore. This is why there is a lv/AP penalty on weapons and an exponential HP curve. I say the dev have thought about it thoroughly and carefully regarding this aspect.
If you have some attributes point for each level and if they do affect the damage output significantly then you can simply heavily invest in one attribute(str/dex/int) and do serious damage even when you have a significant level disadvantage just like in Diablo and co. (let's say lv 5 vs lv 7). Plus the fact that you have 2-4 party members to control, they can compliment each other and survive rather easily, thus you can skip some parts of the game.
We all see from time to time some players come up saying getting stuck at facing higher level enemies which are too difficult to beat and that they might have missed something or some places here and there. That is what the dev wants. They encourage you to explore, explore the world they have created and look for easier enemies/storylines/quests to progress with.
I think my use of words haven't been very accurate. Sorry for my English.
