I never minded using mods for some games even on first playthroughs. So I understand that
Divinity was an exception though, I played the unmodded game first before getting into modding and learning how to do it, mostly from this forum, especially the stickies.
(To be honest, I don't really play many different games though because I don't find most games interesting enough to pay money for them. ;-)
Of course I also used the 'flashy master spells' in previous playthroughs, it was only on the last playthrough I did no longer use them (and I found the game still too easy). But as said before, I played with my mod which made a lot of other things easier. I might have had better tactics than before but that's very hard to judge.
Modding is very time consuming, you can 'waste' enough time that version 2 is released by the time you're finished. So why not even take Scales which is a balancing mod, maybe make some minor changes and start right ahead.
