I recently came back to this game after about a year of not playing it, and I swear I do not remember literally everyone being capable of master strikes. It's supposed to be this really skilled combat technique but even the lowliest peasant and his bed-ridden grandmother can pull them off now.

Was this introduced by one of the patches at some point? Did they MASSIVELY increase the odds of everyone doing master strikes? I think it's really spoiled the fun of combat. Most fights now boil down to just circling each other and waiting and waiting until the other guy attacks and then you master strike him over and over until his health chips down to death.
I see a recent patch has increased enemy aggressiveness, especially for Runt. I had already fought Runt just before the patch, unfortunately, and just beat him to death with my fists so he couldn't master strike. I guess that's the one good thing, it does make bare-handed kung-fu monk Henry more viable.

I'm sure it wasn't like this when I played it before.

tl;dr, whining about master strikes


Any mods that might revert the chances back to the way they should be? Or is there a particular line to edit?

Can confirm.

Master strikes are very common on enemies and they take forever to decide to attack you.

I've been cheesing by turning around and running, which enables the AI to go into some "chase" code which causes them to attack you as soon as they catch up, and then I master strike on my parry.