Yes, its one of possibilities.
You can talk to them (also i would not call picking the good answers the matter of luck, that would be RNG ... picking the corect answers is more like matter of knowing what you do), you can sneak past them, if you are cheesy enough you can sneak close to them and then kill them all (maybe except one or two?) by pushing them into the abyss (i tryed this one, it was fun).
Also you can approach them from the other side, so they dont even have high ground if you feel that combat is unavoidable.
And when another parts of Act 1 will be added, you will not even meet them at all. I know this one is
curently impossible, but you get the idea.
So, if you have at least one option except fight, yes i would dare to say that fight is avoidable.
And here you have more than one.
As far as I remember, they're invisible until you're going next to the boat ("far" means 30 minutes ago, I just tried).
Every exemples you gave rely on metagaming and being able to continue the game through another way doesn't prevent you to meet them. 2 dialogs choices rely on dice rolls : fail = combats, 2 options are answers that leads to combats.
All you wrote is "you're wrong, you can avoid combats" but there are 0 arguments related to OP's point (overpowered encounters) except "metagaming" or eventually "save scumming".
Sure, that is why i say its "not" allways just about them ...
Sure, but remember our previous exemple ? You only talked about sneaking, pushing, remove OP advantage/disadvantage from highground to make combats "easier"... Not always... but often, it looks.
My point is that if you are running head first against every encounter and keep loosing, you probably do something wrong.
Have you ever heard in DnD session Ranger or Rogue say something like "i shall go scout ahead" ?
Take that Minotaur encounter for example ...
Yes i know im using my knowledge from previous playthrough, but when your rogue go "scout ahead" preferably with blessing from Shadowheart, to maximize your chances that your will not be spotet ... you can easily lure Bulette to fight Minotaurs ... true, it may seem kinda pointless since Minotaurs heal once fight is done, after last patch, so now you need to time your entering the fight properly ...
No "advantage on every roll" used.
That is what im talking about.
Is that supposed to be easier if you scout or is that supposed to be very hard if you don't ?
Making things wrong and "learn to play" is fine and usual
Being driven to a specific way of playing is bad especially in a tactical game, especially in a role playing game and even more in a DnD based game that's supposed to offer tons of valuable options (you know, "players creativity").
The game shouldn't be harder if you don't use the cheeses. The game shouldn't have chesses (cheese >< choices for fun (i.e barrels) >< unexpected creativity (i.e molotov cocktails)
