Hi Linio I'd be happy to explain.

It comes down to really understanding how combat works in this game. I think a misconception is that if we add 30% to all our numbers then the individual will be 30% stronger. More often than not the situation is more binary. Did you have enough health to survive the attacks or did you not. Since the game is balanced around levels and acceptable damage output on normal characters it doesn't take a great leap to see how having that extra changes things quickly.

Although the 30% bonuses are just the tip of the iceberg. It is the doubling of invested points.

-results in higher initiative
-earlier power levels with (int/fin/str)
-more spell availability (more for memory and more skill tree options)
-even talents like picture of health end up being multiplied through

Take a level 8 character ready to go up against alexander. Instead of 9 skill points hes got 18. You could in theory put those extra 9 points into warfare or your ideal magic school. Your abilities hit 45% harder (roughly) and the economy per ap is far higher. And, of course you have more AP to use.

Another misunderstanding is that 6 vs 4 ap is only a 50% increase where it really ends up being far more. Each character tends to pay a tax in AP for safety and movement. If for example your 4ap character needs to chameleon cloak at the end of their turn to survive till their next turn - then you really are running 3 ap vs 5ap (with no movement). At this point you are 66% higher damage ap available, and again not at the 45% damage increase per point which multiplies out. Also, since a lonewolf is so much tankier, maybe they don't even NEED to chameleon cloak or maybe that enemy that got down low for the normal character actually died to the higher damage output of the LW.

The thing is all of these characteristics snowball in actually combat. They are multipliers on top of multipliers.

Anecdotally, my last lone wolf campaign had a Shield Toss/Buff/CC character with max wits and con - along side a geomancer. We always had the luxury of being 1st and 3rd in the turn order. My job as the first guy would be to take out #2 or CC him. It usually included a shield toss which 99% of the time would be enough to remove all their armor and then a tremor grenade or battle stomp to cc. I'd usually haste the geo and maybe peace of mind. Now my friend the Geo goes and does his normal routine - something like: blood sacrifice -> turn to oil -> (every geo spell in the book). At this point on Tactician everything on the field is dead or close to it. If a few dangerous things were up Geo would chameleon or invis pot, maybe throwing out a chloroform. My next turn i would usually jump in with medusa head and if i couldn't petrify EVERYTHING - maybe i'd use an ice fan scroll or my own chloroform.

The point is nothing moves, nothing hurts us, and even if we do make a math mistake - we have all that extra vit and armor so there was really zero chance of losing a fight.

Ramping damage up earlier, access to more spells and having the tank aspect to boot doesn't make the game a little easier- it completely compromises all difficulty. Honestly we screwed around in our last run and we never came close to a death. Most combats were over in 1 turn.

Last fight - shield tosser kills dallis in one hit (around 20k damage) - we transition to second phase jump up on a pillar - spider goop braccus. Geo goes and kills nearly everyone with pyroclastic. The dust literally settles and my next shield toss finishes lucian+braccus. We took zero damage. Without lonewolf you don't get those numbers. The shield toss can't one shot - now all the enemies get to go. Now maybe we need to res people, now we are wasting ap on movement and recovery spells. A huge snowball effect of wasted AP occurs. You end up using more consumables and therefore more money - maybe that means you have worse gear (providing for 3 or 4 instead of 2) etc etc etc.

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If you made it through all that rambling - good job and sorry! To attempt a summary - the battles in this game are more tightly balanced than most people think. The constraints employed to allow a large variety of characters to get through the game error to the side of ease. After the first couple levels Lonewolf gives you something like an effective level jump of +4/+5 at nearly any point in the game. The game isn't made to handle those kind of level differences in combat.

Spreading arguably less power through 4 characters creates a lot of fighting vulnerability. Those characters that go 5th and 7th in the turn order are liabilities. It is much better to concentrate damage into 2 characters that are 1st and 3rd in the order. They become untouchable.

Lonewolf doesn't look broken on paper - the reality sets in when you understand this multiplying variables and the real win/lose conditions of fights.