Recently just started the game, and went thru the tutorial mansion as a fighter to get an idea of how it plays. Seemed like it was close enough to NWN that I could play a wizard without too much of an issue. For those of you who have played this game with the turn based combat mod, do you find it makes the game too easy? I was thinking of maybe bumping up some of the difficulty options before I started going all the way thru, but I've read online frow a few places that the encounters are designed to be a good challenge with realtime/pause.

In ToEE everything(apart from 2 bosses) dies on the 1st round. Some real big fights last 2 or 3. Not sure if that counts as more dynamic.

Well I don't remember that well, as last time I played it was years and years ago, but it seems to me that mobs from the very first dungeon of TOEE were able to make a 5-feet step and grapple/trip/hit a weaker character behind the tank. I never saw one doing that in PK, but maybe there are some nasty surprises later. Maybe it was Co8 mod for TOEE doing clever things, or the vanilla game itself, I can't tell.

It's not the problem of what mobs can do. It's the problem of longevity. Things just don't live long enough in ToEE to do much of anything. Maybe if you go in a bloated party for whatever reason it's slightly more fair to the game, but I don't see a compelling reason to do that in ToEE since the game is rather short. Last I played ToEE I ran with a 2 clerics and a wizard/Ro1 with original level caps and wiped the floor with everything, including killing Iuz.

As to PK it's more about monster gimmicks(like only being killed by a certain thing) than actual active abilities, although those are present too. That and permanent stat damage of all sorts galore. Generally things pecome progressively dickish in PK, with things like fangberry cave and ratnook hill giving a taste of what the game is like on the combat side.

I also killed Iuz in the vanilla game without too much issue, it is true the game is quite easy with prior knowledge of the encounters. I remember that with the Co8 mod the Iuz fight was quite the feat, it also did some things to the overall difficulty of the game as well (the node guardians were quite challenging as well iirc). The game was also maybe twice as long as they added a lot of things to do in the later versions so I was much higher level at that time.

I had no issues in fangberry cave as I am well aware of the swarm mechanics, being a former pathfinder dm and player for many years. My only issue with PK for now is somewhat similar to the one in TOEE : the game is way easier if you already know the encounters in advance. There is no way to know in advance if you are going to be faced with impossible odds, and running away from a bad situation doesn't seems to be an option, contrary to a game like battle brothers were it is often a good move. Knights of the chalice seemed to do a better job at offering challenging fights with less chance for the player to run into impossible odds without any possibility to guess, but it is also much more linear.

But all in all, easier or not with the turn based mod, I find PK with it to be really satisfying, more so than the base game. I hate placing a fireball template just to see the targets getting away just before it lands because of the real time...

I haven't played ToEE without Co8 and T+. Or rather I tried years and years ago on release and couldn't stomach it, so I kinda abandoned it till a few years back. There is unfair difficulty for that. There actually is a way for both things. You get the info from NPC's if you listen to what they have to say carefully and are reading journal, so you know what linzy has to say and environment+scouting do tell you what you need to know. For example infamous wisp encounter in sycamore. You get lots of corpses... so you can conclude that whatever killed em could dispatch with a low-level party, at the least. Those were not peasants. Basically, the game expects you to keep more attention to environment than is common in cRPG's. As to running away... it's possible, just not off the map. Basically how it works is if you are far enough away from enemies you pop out of combat. Easiest way to do that is to cast web+haste and book it. There is no question about that. It's easier on lower difficulties and nigh impossible on unfair with TB(at least for the first half of the game). It's easy once you just tie everything up in summons and a frontline and then just cast on the line of engagement. And most of the best spells in the game are party-friendly anyways

Game is still not easy, then it's a good thing. I was hoping with the game being developed as real time/pause, it wouldn't change too drastically. I also come a from PnP background, so for me it just feels more "natural" to have it as turn-based. I shall continue on with my wizard then with the mod.

I did notice I picked up far more potions than I would of thought during the tutorial mansion. Hopefully that's just a signal that you can't rest after every fight as in NWN.

That is indeed the case. The game is on a linear time-table and things happen when they happen no matter if you are ready or not. The world won't wait for you to grow your prized tatos. Time is a resource and a finite one at that. Only exception is Act1 where the game always advances to a set date after stag lord thing is done.

It looks like you can click on delay, and then click/drag within the initiative list to set where you want that character to take their action. That's definitely good to know. I don't remember too many games that give you a time limit, other than Fallout and Starflight. I've always felt it was a bonus to the game to have time restraints, as it encourages more role playing, and gives you more replayability.

It's good when done right, which is luckily the case here. It's horrible when done wrong. What this game does is creates a sense of urgency and forces a bit of basic priority assessment on the player, all while being rather lenient. And quests are not static either. Bad things tend to go worse be it kingdom problem or someone in trouble with time. The game is much closer to PNP than cRPG cousins in many respects.

If done optimally you have like 6 month to skip before the last stretch(on unfair that is), but some people manage to be forced to go into it before they finish everything somehow, so there's that too, so it's not totally fake for the optics either, which is nice.

I rewatched the turn based installation video and the delay mechanics was explained very well... that's better, only thing missing is the initiative score in the tracker.

I finished act 1 with turn based mod on yesterday. It was quite pleasant, and I had no real trouble with any fight. Only thing that surprised me was one opponent that pounced on my backline while being already engaged with my tanks (it took a couple AoO doing so). I don't know if it was the specific IA of this creature but overall the enemies stayed in place when engaged, and always attacked the first character that engaged them, even when a character with lower AC come in range. Foes with ranged weapons seldom fired on my backline, but it happened a couple times.

This is not related with the turn based mod but I find the "mercenary" penalties quite annoying. Being always one level lower and the malus to the advisor stats are a pain and don't make any sense. It also doesn't seem possible to leave one mercenary behind to take a companion to be able to do the quests requesting their presence, at least in act 1.

Mercs don't have the limitations companions do. If you drop 'flavor' stats you will get a better merc than you had companion in a lot of cases. And then there is stuff that companions simply can't do. Octavia will never compare to a merc sorc/AT, no stock priests can be nearly as good as erastil/abadar/gozreh mercs, etc. Not to mention about half of companions also are 20PB just like the mercs. Only companions that are strictly better than mercs are Ekun, Valerie and Jubi. The rest either have bad class/alignment choices or sub-optimal stats. Or a combination of both.
What companions really suck at would be advisor positions.