I have escaped the Mortuary and I'm in the Hive now, but something bothers me... from what I've heard, the game was supposed to place emphasis on story, talking, and provide opportunities for avoiding combat most of the time. My experience so far is quite the opposite because of constant supply of suicidal Thugs, respawning again and again in futile (thanks to Morte's excellent special ability) attempts to bring me down. It's so bad that most of the time when I want to talk to somebody on the street, I have to clear the area of Thugs first. I've been trying to avoid them, but it just changes the game into a Benny-Hill'esque chase with gangs of Thugs following me all the time, while nobody else in town pays attention.

Another issue is that it unbalances the game - my character quickly got very rich from looting thugs and now whenever a quest can be resolved by paying money, it just becomes too easy.

Did I do something wrong to trigger this endless thug spam or is it normal in the Hive?

I also ran into this same thing at the start.

I suspect that it is a way for you to gain a little copper and experience early on in the game. Although the thugs still attack later on in the game, they do not seem to happen with the same frequency they did at the beginning.

I had the same problem almost every time a group of thugs was on-screen. I thought at first that I had been lingering around them for too long, making them aggressive, but most of the time they attacked as I was running by.

I didn't really notice the attacks stopping later in the game, but once you reach the two Wards and the other areas of the game there aren't many thugs to be seen anyway.

In short, yeah, it's normal. :)

Planescape Torment is a game you play for the story. It's basically a point & click adventure with tacked on RPG elements. The combat, encounter design, frequency of enemies and basically anything not related to the story is a complete mess and just slows down the game with no benefit. My advice is to play a fighter class character with good intelligence, wisdom and charisma. The fighter class will let you use all weapons and give you high (low, i.e. good) THAC0 and the most hit points, allowing you to finish off encounters as quickly as possible. The stats will let you always pick the best dialogue options and avoid as much combat as possible. If you cannot avoid combat just run and if you have to fight just throw everything you have at the enemy until it dies.

Honestly, the combat in the IE games just isn't that good to start with; PST is a great game, but it is very much in spite of the engine. Thankfully, changing the difficulty doesn't incur any experience penalties iirc (making early fights easier to get through), and most of the harder fights happen so late game that your party has amassed enough experience from the plot that they lay waste to the enemy (granted, doing things like splitting the party can change that real fast), so there are almost no opportunities for combat to kill the fun of the game by bogging it down or being unfairly random as to who the winner is.

I think Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 (especially 2) and especially Icewind Dale 1 & 2 do a pretty good job. Depending on the party you are playing with you have a lot of tactical choice, equipping you rchracters andgiving them the right commands is important; there are so many memorable encounters in those games. In Torment all I had to do was just spam everything I had at the enemies, including bosses, and it was over in less than a minute. The reason I remember the boss of Curst (I don't want to write his name, it's a spoiler) is not because he was an interesting enemy to fight, but because of his story.

Oddly enough, I liked the combat in those games a lot less than here. In those games, the pathfinding AI often goes haywire, especially in the many tight quarters fights, making the most brilliant of tactical plans come apart at the drop of a hat; in Torment, it's still the same AI, but using run to maneuver past NPCs and party members that are obstructing your path prevents anyone from falling behind and shoving the wring person into the fray, and AI rarely has to deal with any cramped quarters that make a party member try to travel in the opposite direction (none in the main plot, twice that I can recall in optional bits).

Also, I really have to disagree with you on Trias; I thought he was a challenging fight, as even with throwing people at him, I still needed to fend off his entourage and ensure party survival by buffing party members and making sure they were stocked on healing/miscellaneous consumable gear in between trying to debuff and damage the enemy. Even then, I still almost had people die, but I prevented it by quickly noticing a problem existed and fixing it. In Torment, all I had to do was position my characters effectively to come out on top (busting out the harder stuff in emergencies, as seen above), whereas in the other IE games, I also needed to agonize over whether I should spend money on gear to help me survive or wait on finding some that were better for free (which invariably happened right after I bought some) and memorize a list of debuffs to cast without which there was never a prayer of hitting the enemy.

tl;dr: PS:T's combat's simplicity was its saving grace for me, while the intricacies of knowing what debuffs to cast on a spellcaster in what order in the other IE games felt like busywork.

Well, I can only speak from my experience and even the boss you mentioned (spoiler) I solved just by throwing everything at him, and I wasn't even paying attention to any character's builds. Maybe I just got too many experience points for running around and solving people's problems? As far as pathfinding is concerned, you can increase the pathfinding nodes in each game's settings program or INI file, that should improve the AI. It was kept low because more nodes require more processing power, but that shouldn't be an issue anymore.

Actually, I pumped up the nodes to the maximum after a few deaths and still had problems with the AI, especially when dealing with hallways and cramped quarters, which made them run around like decapitated chickens.

Yes, the game absolutely concentrates on story, but never forget that it's also an experienced based RPG instead of just a point-'n-click adventure game (which it decidedly and thankfully is *not*)...;) Like many, many games, PS:T has a period in the beginning where your goal is to advance your fighting prowess and levels to the point where street gangs are no longer much of a threat to you at all. There's a method to the madness...;)

Instead of beginning the game by free-ranging and wandering and haphazardly asking questions and so on, try paying strict attention to the quests you receive and concentrate on completing them. In this way the game will provide you with the opportunity to advance both the story and the characters until the street thugs are more or less a side-show amusement and little else. As far as "paying for the quests" is concerned, the important ones--the ones that advance the story and the characters in a meaningful way--cannot be bought but must be completed, IIRC. Pay close attention to the dialogue, too, when offered the chance to "pay off" a quest, as there may well be clear clues that it is not to your advantage to do that. IE, don't expect "easy quests" to reward near as much as "difficult" quests.

Your post is a bit puzzling--you're saying it's "unbalanced" in that you are advanced enough not to have a lot of trouble with the street thugs, but you're complaining about them, anyway...;) IMO, you are way too early in the game to be thinking about it being "unbalanced" and so on. As you play through you'll see that isn't the case at all. Main thing, though--work those quests through the journal. A few of those "street thugs" were pretty darn tough as I remember. So, hang in there--you are still in a very early part of the game.

Instead of deciding how it is you'd like to see the game play, just open your mind and let the game take you where it will--as really, that's the only proper way to play this masterpiece, and probably the only way it *can* be played through...Good luck, and happy gaming--don't let preconceptions ruin the game for you!