many of the companions you get are terrible (e.g. a cleric who loses his cleric powers if he wears armor ... like fuck right off. Or a wizard/rogue multiclass with 8 CON).

You start on your own, quickly gain a bard and a sorcerer as companions, but if you created a ranged/spellcaster lead character, getting through the first scene is brutal as everything any party member does until you pick up a melee companion provokes attacks of opportunity.

Once you leave the initial location and set off into the wilderness to the trading post, you’ll have access to a merchant (arms, armor, and wondrous items) and an alchemist (alchemical weapons and potions), but it’ll take a bit before you have access to a cleric (rods, wands, and scrolls). I’ve yet to see a wand of cure light wounds available (15 gp/heal), scrolls are 25 gp/heal, and potions are 50 gp/heal, so you’re starting out with only the most expensive healing option available.

Lots of enemies, even at low levels, are forcing saving throws during combat (fear and poison are the most common I’ve found), so utilizing remove fear and potions of lesser restoration is common (remove fear lasts 10 minutes, so you should only need to cast it once for most areas).

In dungeon crawls, there are way more enemies to slog through than in the tabletop version, so you chew threw a lot more consumables. For example, in The Old Sycamore Tree dungeon, there are dozens of centipedes, spiders, and frogs, all dealing poison damage to STR/DEX/CON. I went in with 10 potions of lesser restoration and it was nowhere near enough.

Flanking rules are different in the video game; you only need another character threatening the target to get flanking bonus/sneak attack regardless of actual positioning. Ranged sneak attack is much more common in this game than the tabletop and it doesn’t appear to require it to be within a 30’ range (which requires snipers goggles, a very expensive magical item, in the tabletop version).