As for the game being too hard. I could imagine it being too hard for people, especially people that haven't played a whole lot of cRPG's in the past. I think most of what's causing the current difficulty is that DnD's armor system (AC ratings) doesn't really gel well with Larians unavoidable ground-effects. Low level dnd characters survive by virtue of not getting hit a lot. For fighters this means wearing a lot of armor and putting points in constitution, for mages it means staying out of harms way, and blasting away anything that comes close. Unavoidable damage that ignores AC ratings is therefor a bit painful.
This! I've not had any problems with the battles so far. I played from start to druid grove without taking a full rest. This includes the ruins and the harpy fight in the druid grove itself. It's though but not that bad. The ground effects are a pain in the backside though. I know that's what Larian is known for and everything, but losing 2 points of AC for walking through a puddle of acid is seriously crippling! I'm also not sure about the logic behind this pools of fire, I've lost so much health to those!
I'm also wondering how much those effects have helped me though. I play a mage, together with Gale you can basically lock any enemies that try to get close to you down by using ray of frost. Even if it misses and doesn't do any damage the chance is very high the enemy you where shooting at falls over. When that happens it's a ripe sneak attack target. So, yeah, needs a LOT of tuning.
