@Niara
Other games of the genre have difficulty adjustment settings that allow you to tweak things like that (pathfinder and solasta both have a level of granularity in this regard, with pathfinder having more overall, though both let you nudge dice rolls for or against players at a general/universal level if you want). Larian's game does not have this in any decent way, sadly - it has its three difficulty modes that are fixed packages locked out of adjustment, and to a certain extent the game mocks and insults you for choosing a difficulty that favours you. It's like the sweaty dm that says "Oh, you'd like the dice to favour you a bit more? Oh, I guess you need the easy game for babies then, baby, here you go, here's the easy baby game, where everything falls over in one hit and the enemies are dumb and have no weapons! Oh, but because you're such a baby who can't play the game well, I'll lock out a bunch of your customisation options too, wouldn't want to confuse the little baby now would we? can't have you trying to customise your character and maybe messing up! ha, ha, ha, ha! That's the game you want right?" Sorry if that seems cynical - that was my impression of how the game acted when I changed difficulty settings and saw what it did.
You can work around that because you cna change difficulty on the fly at any time, so, you can turn the difficulty up when you want to, for example, multiclass your level up (something locked out by being on the lower difficulty), and then put it back to story mode when you've done your customising... but the fact remains that you've got to *work around* this 'design choice'...
ROFL, this was to good! Truthfully though how I seen Explorer Mode was like playing as a premade character. Some people just want to get in and go, my cousin was like that, just wanted to do the story and move on. Personally always stayed away from first difficulty for this reason as several games will remove features. I can't remember off the top of my head but I do know I ran into that before.
For OP, I've played Balanced up to probably a quarter into act 2 and tactician just a quarter in. I've been party wiped first round twice if I remember correctly, both in act 1. An actually reloaded cause I didn't like a scenario in act 2. So yeah I save scummed once, still feels bad even doing it the one time.
act 1
First party wipe was a boss acting like he was a follower of Tyr if I remember correctly. He did a move that did 4d8 or some crap and one shot all my characters one after the next getting 4 attacks or some crap.
Second was volcano scenario where my characters were pushed into lava
act 2
The save scum part was at the inn and the scenario goes south hard if you don't save some npc. this was really a wtf moment for me.
For the damage part, I can agree especially on my not so great companion Gale and probably my questionable build for my main lol (Lightfoot Halfling Lore Bard multiclassed into Arcane Trickster Rogue). My companions are not min maxed and they all were one class.
I would say no on crap rolls, I know Karlach hits like a truck and has three attacks as a Frenzied Barb (two main plus bonus attack). An Shadowheart being a cleric was able to main tank act 1 from start, there was a few times where it was just her still standing, so sad but true.
A few fun features, pretty sure there are different ways to increase crit chance, probably a feat is one way, Halflings reroll ones, & there is also a feat to reroll damage which my Karlach has Savage attacker. You can respec your companions an min/max there attributes.
Final thoughts though is if it really really bothers you, just get a mod and make your characters invincible or whatever.
Edit*Oh I turned off Karmic Dice also.
