Oh well, to get to this AC is amazing to be honest, in my 17 years career as a DM, it is quite a spectacle. to be at +12 Dex bonus requires a monster to be at 36, besides i don't think you should encounter a monster like that at a low level area, unless you are trolling the players.

Spoiler: Also the CR6 SM in the zone (at least its neutral)

Yes, I was wondering why my characters had a hard time hitting it. Also, that scare ability is a bit much too.

What difficulty setting are you using?

Expect to find those everywhere.

Just got hit by a lvl2 bandit for 27 damage. Turns out his greatsword deals 2d6 + 17 damage at +16 to hit. Can't fear him since his +9 will save easily overcomes the DC of 15 at lvl2.

Can't kill the mites because the average AC is 24 for the non-fodder ones and attacking them at +6 to hit will take some time, and I can't kill the kobold alchemist cause he has 28 AC and deals around 2d6 AoE damage per round.

I do like a challenge, but adding +4 to everything at the early levels is just too damn stupid. If the developers truly are veterans at PnP they should bloody well know that you can't put a static increase like this when levels scale the way they do. They should increase all values by 20%, not +4. A rat shouldn't be doing 1d2 + 4 damage, that's idiotic and will kill half the classes in one hit at lvl1. Likewise, adding +4 to AC and saves is idiotic at low levels since it completely fucks up the RNG balance in early game.

Late game it won't even matter. At +15 to hit it's no big deal if the enemy has 25 or 29 AC (though if the trend continues they will have 75 AC anyway), and +4 to saves won't matter much since the difference between strong and weak saves will outstrip the difference with around 12 points (+12/+6 and then primary stats on that for another +6-8 to strong saves). But as it stands, there is no chance to overcome even weak saves at these save DCs.

I must say I'm disappointed with how little time the devs seem to have spent actually playing the game.

Or getting ambushed by two elder fire elementals in the first part of the game. That's the strongest -if memory serves- kind of fire elemental and a CR 11 monster. There is a time and place for these, and level 3 is not it.

I am a little bit more lenient towards the uber will o wisp. It's a monster you'll only encounter if you want to and its lethality is implied by all the dead bodies on the ground, including one that strongly clues you on his damage type. That being said, that monster is an absolute nightmare. I don't mind the scare ability, but I do very much mind the Shield spell. I have yet to confront it with my higher level party, but due to the monster's natural immunity to magic, I'm not even sure I can Dispel Magic the damn Shield spell, which protects him to pretty much the only low level spell that can hurt it.

Also, OP : While 36 is insane, normal will o wisps at CR6 have 29 dexterity as befitting of air aberrations so while it is definitely a stretch, it is not that insane of a leap.

Ps: What I am quite mad about, though, is the decrease in XP. There is nothing more humiliating than scraping by an encounter only to be awarded 18xp per monster. I have huge pool of radiance deja vu on that.

PPs: Dessembrae: I believe you may be able to change the difficulty in game, mimicking your +20%. Normal enemies early game, +2 mid-game, and higher late game. That being said, all classes and all party members are not equal on the early game power so your choices deciding your starting party members can make a world of difference and even force you on certain pragmatic choices early game.

You'll tell me I have no idea on how to play bards, and I'll agree and if you have pointers on that I'm definitely listening, but Linzi is more of a drain on your early resources than a boon, especially compared to Jaethal. Jaethal, while being finicky to heal, is pretty much immune to dying so you can just send her on an interception course against those damn bandit brawlers (I hate dwarven ones even more due to their bonus to will) while you pelt them from behind your line with arrows or magic missiles if you really don't want to miss, after the combat you can just bring her back up, no need to worry about raise dead spells. Likewise, not having a cleric early game hurts, but Valerie is a great interceptor and will prevent your lines for collapsing way more than Harrim ever will. Buying good heavy armor early can be a bit of a challenge, but with that and defensive fighting, she will hold the enemies' attention for a while, buying you some precious turns. Unlike in a PnP game, enemies do stay stuck multiple turns on your big high AC frontliner, even though there are lines of code for them to rush your backline under some circumstances.

I'll probably need to spend more time in the difficulty settings, there are probably some important modifiers there.

All this sounds like you guys are playing at a difficulty level over Normal.

+2 for difficulty in the image attached to the post... Means I'm on challenging... Well it's because on normal, the monster don't deal 100% and your characters can't die... So which part of it is normal? The fundamental problem is being lazy with difficulty by adding +2/+4/+6 to all. Which causes a huge problem at the start as you don't start with full party and mages get rekt. Spam magic missile to survive since no saves or hits.

They could have just increase mob group from 3-4 to 5-6 that will increase difficulty significantly without the players feeling they are powerless with all the MISS on the screen my 2 cents.

Yes, I was thinking about that, but I don't really know when to change, nor do I think the difficulty is consistent enough. And changing difficulty from fight to fight is a bit cumbersome. I don't want to change the slider to make it difficult enough, since some encounters are intended to be tough (like the Will'O'Wisp) and some less so. It would feel like cheating every time I lowered it.

The starting party is not optimal, I agree. Not only are the scores off in several ways (15 CHA for Valerie and absolute crap DEX/CHA for Harrim), but sticking with 5 chars for so long in a highly challenging environment is a bad design choice. You really need to have a full party for your composition to shine through, and the absence of a ranged striker really hurts. The lack of a rogue sucks too.

I think it will even out further down the road as my casters get some actual spells, but I just don't know how to get there currently. Every fight that offers even a pittance of XP is tough as nails, and it's pretty annoying to get 22XP for bringing down a tzatlwyrm that annihilated my party in seconds for the first 7 attempts. And since I need about 1300XP to reach the next level...

That's the issue I had with my first game. My advice (as much as it hurts me to say it) is "don't explore"

You'll find fights that give you more than a challenge, but give paltry xp and no good items. The main and sub quests give good xp and some decent/good items (as well as the first good heavy armors in an optional fight in one of the locations. If you reached level 3 then as your progress the main quest line, you should stumble upon a random encounter I don't think spoiler tags work, but just in case.

[spoiler]
I mean the slaver encounter, follow the chain of events (it's a very short chain) leading to you finding their camp and killing them all, that will give you more party members, including your first wizard.
[/spoiler]

I don't feel the absence of a rogue, Linzi (urgh) and high dex high trickery characters can do traps and locks, and potentially contribute more to the fights. A ranger, which would be excellent fire support since you only get the NPC one later, for example.

Anyway yes, shoring up your party should be a big priority and getting to there with rather weak party members (looking at you, Linzi and Harrim) can be hard

You do know the game gives you all the control you need on these factors, right? There's one difficulty slider which lets you set monster damage to 100%, and another that governs monster stats scaling (which you can set to none).

In other words monsters have ridiculous stats because you asked the game for them :D

We asked for difficulty, not absurd stats.
Look at the picture attached, a whooping +28 with a -5 Power Attack so +33AB, that is Base 18 AB (level 18 fighter?), my party is level 5... +14 Str bonus.... DIFFICULTY +2 ..... so its not the difficulty option that is the problem, its the base game itself. Who needs a full plate when nothing can save you...

Did you read my post? There's a specific difficulty option called "enemy stats adjustement", use it. If it still happens with enemy stats adjustment set to none, it's a bug and you should report it. If it doesn't, well, problem solved.

The game goes out of its way to give you tools to set the difficulty and play experience you want, might as well use them.

Have you tried moving the slider? Let me tell you then, it does nothing much, at +14 Str Bonus, it means you are at 38 strength. That is even more then the deities in the game, when they remove 4 from stats its only +2 bonus. 38 AB and 36AB doesn't make a difference, you don't even have a character that can reach that AC, at a roll of 19 that is an absurd 45, yeah try that.

It is not a bug, like i said it is the base core stats that is the problem nothing to do with difficulty. Challenging is only "SOMEWHAT TOUGHER ENEMIES" which is one step above normal.

I am currently playing on "Somewhat easier enemies" and I've still come across untouchable/unkillable monsters.