The system is fundamentally bad. Linear scaling is bad. Accidentally wandering into an area that is +1 level? Oops, looks like you will suffer a tpk because linear scaling means that not only will you miss every swing, they will hit every swing. Accidentally didn't pick up some expensive fireball scrolls while exploring a cave? Lmao have fun suffering a tpk from a swarm of spiders since you need area of effect spells to kill them. Excited to kill the bad guy with 24AC to get his armor? Lmao actually he has 4 AC armor and the enemy was just hard coded to be hard to hit.

This is Artificial Difficulty: The Game. It isn't even fun challenging. Compare this to a game that isn't bad like DOS 2. In DOS 2 you can count on your party to hit things and proc their spells, which means that if you lose an encounter, either you made a wrong choice or you attacked a party far too high a level, which is easy to see since enemies have their levels in bold directly under them. You are aware how lethal an encounter is just on its face. You can make plans, you can combo skills, because you have a 95% chance of landing them. "Oh I can rain on them and follow that up with global cooling to freeze everyone solid." I don't have to wonder "well I mean, I have a 40% chance of casting rain and then I have a 30% chance of casting global cooling and they have a save vs 12 to..." No, you cast the spells. The spells do the thing.

No challenge here feels legitimate, everything seems comically arbitrary and you become obsessed with numbers go up because the only thing that matters in combat is numbers go up. It fundamentally does not matter how big your brain is, your party comp, your build, or your decisions. If your numbers are big, you win, and if your numbers are small, you lose. This is the worst balancing act possible. This is fundamentally poor game design and I will never, ever understand how people can take it seriously.

The system is fundamentally bad. Linear scaling is bad. Accidentally wandering into an area that is +1 level? Oops, looks like you will suffer a tpk because linear scaling means that not only will you miss every swing, they will hit every swing. Accidentally didn't pick up some expensive fireball scrolls while exploring a cave? Lmao have fun suffering a tpk from a swarm of spiders since you need area of effect spells to kill them. Excited to kill the bad guy with 24AC to get his armor? Lmao actually he has 4 AC armor and the enemy was just hard coded to be hard to hit. This is Artificial Difficulty: The Game. It isn't even fun challenging. Compare this to a game that isn't bad like DOS 2. In DOS 2 you can count on your party to hit things and proc their spells, which means that if you lose an encounter, either you made a wrong choice or you attacked a party far too high a level, which is easy to see since enemies have their levels in bold directly under them. You are aware how lethal an encounter is just on its face. You can make plans, you can combo skills, because you have a 95% chance of landing them. "Oh I can rain on them and follow that up with global cooling to freeze everyone solid." I don't have to wonder "well I mean, I have a 40% chance of casting rain and then I have a 30% chance of casting global cooling and they have a save vs 12 to..." No, you cast the spells. The spells do the thing. No challenge here feels legitimate, everything seems comically arbitrary and you become obsessed with numbers go up because the only thing that matters in combat is numbers go up. It fundamentally does not matter how big your brain is, your party comp, your build, or your decisions. If your numbers are big, you win, and if your numbers are small, you lose. This is the worst balancing act possible. This is fundamentally poor game design and I will never, ever understand how people can take it seriously.