Actually, reading some of this, I wonder to what degree karmic dice is responsible and whether it's having some unintended effects on difficulty. For example some of the complains seem bizarre to me: I basically never encountered cases where my beefier characters were dps'd down in the first turn before they could do anything. But then again, I played with karmic dice off.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what karmic dice does is prevent 'failure streaks', right? When you have consecutive low rolls, it increases the chance that you will have a high roll. It is considered "fair" because it applies to both your rolls and the enemy's rolls.
I've pointed out before how this may actually be an inherent buff to martials (who are often rolling against an enemy's AC) and an inherent nerf to casters (where enemies are often rolling against a spellcaster's DC) because it gives an advantage to *whoever is actually making a roll.*
But could this also be making ambushes more deadly? In ambushes - or any combat where a bunch of enemies get to go before you do - you are already at a disadvantage. But karmic dice actually makes it even MORE of a disadvantage, because to prevent a "failure streak" for the enemy, it ensures some of their rolls will be successful. Without karmic dice, you might have five weak enemies swarm your tank, but all of them miss because your tank has high AC. WITH karmic dice, it would actually change some of those misses into hits, causing them to burst your tank down.
