The game tells me that on Hard there are more enemies. Is that the only difference? Because I'm getting utterly roflstomped. I'm starting to wonder if they hit harder or get more 'friendly' dice rolls or something.

Temple of Eothas, level 3 Cipher, Eder, Aloth, plus a level 2 Rogue for traps and more hands on deck. Shadows et al are tearing us to pieces, and the Skuldrs too. 60HP Cipher just died in 2 hits in a second. Nothing I could do. Even Eder is getting torn a new bumhole every fight, and he's got a shield with extra 12 deflection.

Had planned to not use Durance, but I may need his spells after all, and now even use the healing spells, which I barely touched at all through the game on Normal.

Opponents are more numerous, yes, but more importantly, composition of enemies is different too. Nonetheless, their stats really are precisely the same as they were on normal.

As for you getting your arse handed to you, temple of Eothas is difficult. Generally speaking you either want to return when you level up a bit (like lvl 4-5) or try and toy around with your tactics - remember that you have stealth and spectres won't teleport to characters they don't see and fan of fire works wonders against them.

After a couple of rests and too many character deaths, I did manage to get through most of it yesterday, but there were some skuldrs near the bottom that wiped the floor with us, which included two skuldr kings. Those things hit HARD :(

With your comment in mind, I probably went there too early, at only level 3. But I was genuinely surprised at how difficult it was compared with on normal, which got me wondering if their stats or even rolls were spiked as well. Or if I had run into the stacking problem, despite playing the game on 3.0.3 patch.

Took this screenshot during an encounter, but after looking up some stats on GameBanshee, it may appear to be correct, so maybe I just suck :(

We did survive that fight, overall, but were getting hosed. 40 freeze damage is pretty rough with so few hitpoints... and as you can see from Aloth's attack, basically nothing hit. The Cipher main character hasn't been up to much good so far, and many attacks just graze or miss, but hopefully things will improve with a few more levels under our belts.

edit: A few party wipes later, including one incredibly close call with the last Skuldr King on "Near Death" and we finally pulled it off. Very tough fight though! But this time we actually all survived without deaths, oddly enough. Focused more on CC, and must have been luckier with grazes/hits/crits. Also spent two Fan of Flames scrolls, which did good damage. Sure would be nice if that was party friendly, as unrealistic as that is.