Agree. And it's particularly problematic for 3 other reasons in the overall game design:
1) Finding secret doors and drops requires bashing things, which makes your weapon decay faster. Which is particularly bad for the warrior.
2) Hauling loot to sell to make money to cover repairs is doable but a pain.
3) In several chapters you can go a long time without having access to repair at all. If you didn't repair before leaving town, it's too bad so sad, or reload to an earlier save.