If I look at the fights that caused me the more trouble (for now as I haven't yet finish), I give up only two fights to make them later, and one for which I exploit a design hole to be able finish it asap:
- One was against 3 blood mages one of them was yellow, some archer and 2/3 close fighters (one of the last fights of the blood mage house sub quest).
- The other was against a pack of rogues/assassins with some archers (last Crows of Antiva quest).
- For the third I didn't gave up but was close to when I found a weird trick. It's the final fight of the Warden Keep. I noticed I could find a place far enough to have my party rest here during each summon wave. Fight state was stopped and summons could not see my party (nor was attacking the mage).
There's other fights that caused me troubles but only those 2 that I give up to make them much later. For both I started them before Orzammar and finished them after and still found them not so easy at least the Antiva quest, less for the blood mages.
The "problem" I had with the blood mage fights was that I could not setup well an ambush, both because not be able attract them and also have the mages throwing spells through walls. And front/sneak assault was just not possible at my first attempt, that's what I did when I came back later.
For the Crows final quest fight when I came back later it was still a a rather rude one but I managed it like I did with the Zevran Ambush, both are rather similar involving similar problems.
It's not fully cool to use weird tactics but the difficulty isn't low, for me, so I used such tactics relatively often. All have the effect to avoid traps during the fight and break a pack in multiple parts. In a way this break the original fight design but well I consider that for me the difficulty was too high in those fights.
Mainly it's:
- Sneak in the battle field to detect and disarm all traps before the fight.
- Move sneak character right back a mage, or more if I use multiple sneak characters. Then some long range and the ranger summon attract the attention and once mages has cast once, sneak fighters attack them. This can work very well… or not.
- Find a long range position where I see few enemy and they don't attack, then I use one or more long range character to shoot the enemy, other members aren't allowed to move until something get close. This often either break a larger pack either allow easy kill from far and reduce the pack size.
- Move in a place good for fighting, have all member wait here for an ambush and use a goat to attract enemies here, the ranger summon can be nice for that purpose but my rogue do the goat very well too.
Well I should have make my mages learn some area spells for more weird variation, and still not have try use traps myself. Also I have still not remind to use some tactics around the use of the spell Force Field.
It's clear that the overall system is deep with many possibilities, too bad there isn't more pause options, plus correction of some weird behaviors around the selected character and around tactics. In fact I never disable tactics only used the no move option sometimes, for sneaking or setting ambushes.