I did not read everything above, but my 2 cent:

- Yes, the game is far too easy to cheese.

- Fun fact about stealth: Pillars of eternity (1, 2 or both? not sure, its been ages) had vision cones and hearing rings.
Trying to sneak to somebody from the front would fail, from the back it takes longer to detect you the better your stealth skill is.
There were 2 degrees of stealth: First you are not seen at all. When you stay near NPC too long they notice something and look and move in your direction until they detect you or you move away
so they do not notice something any more.

groovy Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist groovy

World leading expert of artificial stupidity.
Because there are too many people who work on artificial intelligence already :hihi: