Well, I for one agree with you BugMeNot. I too really dislike the turn based combat. But I'm afraid that opinion isn't going to win us very many friends around here.
Anyway, I've been experimenting with a few mods trying to improve the combat. Ideally, I'd like to implement real time combat (but I've a horrible suspicion that it's just not possible without re-writing a whole heap of code that's just way beyond my capabilities).
However, your wish to lower the HP of the Hero's and Enemies can very easily be done with a mod. I believe removing the annoying cast times of spells can also be easily achieved. Action points are another easy one to manipulate.
Also, I've just discovered an entry in the Data.txt file 'NPC Max Combat Turn Time' which I intend to experiment with. At the moment its default value is set to 20, so I'm going to try lowering that number to see what happens.
Unfortunately, all this experimenting takes time. So it might be a little while before any useful combat mods are available.
But I'd be very interested to hear what else you (or others) think could improve the combat.
