The Magic Pockets, personally does not bug me as the party would be talking through things and would hand over an item if needed.
The Permadeath and my decision to use scrolls is a concession to the game. The scrolls make you pay attention and by not using the "God of Death" revive at your camp not paying attention can mean the lose of a character. I think the game is a bit unforgiving in some ways with death. I have seen the AI often of out of it's way to double attack a downed partied member despite them being out of the fight. I personally think they would ignore him as they have active targets.
That being said this was just my concession, Permadeath is a very viable play rule for this kind of challenge.
Oh, I get it. I just find that those two additions really impact my playstyle, making me more cautious. I end up approaching scenarios with a bit more respect for them.
Regarding the magic pockets, I get using it for keys and such out of combat. But in combat, if Billy has a potion of speed and he's halfway across the room, Sally can't easily ask him to hand it over. After all, she's got Dror Ragzlin breathing hot breath in her face. Ultimately, it makes a bigger difference than you'd think in the overall difficulty level, carefully parceling out which companion gets which consumables.
I get where you're coming from with the scrolls, but there are soooo many of them to be had. And, at least for me, the danger of suddenly losing, say, Astarion forever, looms as a major consequence. Again, it makes me respect the scenarios more and increases the overall difficulty.
I also do a few other things that I figured weren't worth mentioning. Like, I don't use barrels or fog cloud tactics, and I avoid using certain elixirs
Personally, I'm really hoping that Larian gifts us a harder difficulty level, one that is carefully thought out rather than a heavy fisted hp, attack, and damage bloat. I've always dreamed of playing a game where the NPCs follow the same rules as the PCs and still pose a threat, due to either sheer numbers of combatants, or better AI that learns from all the millions of players. Call me a dreamer.
