Voidspire Tactics

[Eldiran]

How you know this is the best game ever:

I shield pushed a guy with who had the counter attack passive and a great sword, thus he managed to smack both his front line buddies after the push back. I love dynamic rulesets.

Me too. : )

Also, a new patch is out! Only small balance changes and bugfixes, really.

1.0.7

• Fixed Shovels/Pickaxes regaining their maximum uses when game is saved with 1 use remaining.
  
• Disabled cloud cover effect when Intense Visuals are disabled.
  
• Fixed rare case where dialog could repeat in one of the final areas, making you refight one of the final battles.
  
• Fixed price of Ancient Pistol.
  
• Added missing info to the tooltip of Scholar's 'Study' ability.
  
• Fixed Mechanist's 'Remote Heal' being able to miss.
  
• Shiftcloak's 'Shift Stab' tooltip now shows that it pierces 'Guard' status.
  
• Spell Archon's 'Fire Imbue', 'Ice Imbue', and 'Lightning Imbue' MP cost increased from 8 to 9.
  
• Spell Archon's 'Disrupt Lance' MP cost decreased from 12 to 6.
  
• Slightly reduced enemy confidence in negotiations.

For Courtier, and anyone else who had the same issue, the cloud effects on the main screen and at Mt. Jurrin are now toggled by the 'Intense Visuals' option. Hopefully the game should now be completable for them. Thanks to everyone who helped me by reporting bugs and sending saves!

 

[Ludo Lense]

I know that it is optional but I really dislike the design of the encounter in the secret dungeon below the Blood Quarter. The one against 5 ultra zombies. Not because it is super hard but because it is super hard through removing the "tactics" aspect of the game. The zombies have a huge amount of health, move at the speed of light and hit like a truck while the map is relatively small. Mechanically speaking it is a very simple encounter with overtuned opponents that run up and smack in the face on flat terrain. That's lame especially after losing like half an hour to find my way in through the puzzles. I gave up and decided to google it and the answer is basically "Have unmaker and 1 shot with Bonemeld or go home". Given that using "Study" tells you that they are strong against ruin but weak to life, it is annoying that the class that specializes in ruin wins here. Maybe there was some life equivalent of the laser stone or electrical parts which would have helped but even then it still feels like a cheap way to increase the difficulty.

 

[Eldiran]

Yeah, I am actually not fond of how the Bonemeld spell turned out. It's either a useless ability or it trivializes the undead. I'm removing it next game and giving the Unmaker something else.

There are ways to win the encounter without Bonemeld - with stuff like Barrier, Wide Guard, Heal, Break Arms, etc - but really who would bother when you could just use Bonemeld?

 

[V_K]

I'm removing it next game

How's it going by the way?

 

[Ludo Lense]

Yeah, I am actually not fond of how the Bonemeld spell turned out. It's either a useless ability or it trivializes the undead. I'm removing it next game and giving the Unmaker something else.

There are ways to win the encounter without Bonemeld - with stuff like Barrier, Wide Guard, Heal, Break Arms, etc - but really who would bother when you could just use Bonemeld?

Cool to hear, I had a max Sharpshooter/Scout, Max Blade/Warrior, Max Sorcerer/Scholar, Max Guardian/Warrior comp and while I probably could have persevered I just didn't like the encounter.

Great game btw, loved it. My only hope is that you add more environmental interactions, the doggy fight outside the Shredded Temple with all the jumping around was really good. Stuff like :

-Preassure Plates that can be activated by both sides to trigger effects like fireballs of poison clouds
-Having some encounters with tons of pillars/obstacles that block line of sight but you can still be flanked relatively easily.
-Moving terrain coupled with jumping and LOS blocks for high mobility fights

That sort of thing. Oh and this is probably hard to make if you coded the engine in a certain way but 3 way fights. Having to face 2 uber powerful sides that you need to whittle down at about the same time or else you lose is one of my favorite type of encounters in tactical games.

 

[Eldiran]

How's it going by the way?

It's going pretty well! Naturally everything took twice as long as expected, as is normal for gamedev. : P The new systems are pretty much in place, so right now I'm mostly making content (levels, encounters, classes, etc) and fixing bugs.

Since I've pushed the deadline past the entire holiday season (the game would get completely overlooked if I released during that mess), I got some extra time to refine things and do fun extra stuff.

Like idle animations for the blacksmith:

(I've cut 90% of the hammering to keep the gif small)

Cool to hear, I had a max Sharpshooter/Scout, Max Blade/Warrior, Max Sorcerer/Scholar, Max Guardian/Warrior comp and while I probably could have persevered I just didn't like the encounter.

Great game btw, loved it. My only hope is that you add more environmental interactions, the doggy fight outside the Shredded Temple with all the jumping around was really good. Stuff like :

-Preassure Plates that can be activated by both sides to trigger effects like fireballs of poison clouds
-Having some encounters with tons of pillars/obstacles that block line of sight but you can still be flanked relatively easily.
-Moving terrain coupled with jumping and LOS blocks for high mobility fights

That sort of thing. Oh and this is probably hard to make if you coded the engine in a certain way but 3 way fights. Having to face 2 uber powerful sides that you need to whittle down at about the same time or else you lose is one of my favorite type of encounters in tactical games.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I like those combat ideas. Voidspire has a single fight with moving terrain (the conveyor belt spiders fight in the refinery) which led to some fun interactions. I should definitely do that again.

I actually am implementing 3-sided fights in the next game. They're rare, but you can make them happen yourself if a combat takes place near, say, a rotworm nest. If you poke it during combat you get plenty of 'help'. : )

 

[Eldiran]

Voidspire Tactics is on sale! 50% off for the week.

Also, I wrote a blog post I didn't link here yet. It's about how I screwed up a small mechanical interaction in VT - specifically, slow casters and Act Time - and how I'm fixing it in the next game.

 

[Gunnar]

I just picked it up, looks great. Thanks to the codex for the recommendation!

 

[Eldiran]

Thanks Gunnar!

Just a heads up, Voidspire Tactics is 50% off again for the Winter Sale.

Also, I'm hoping to enter the testing phase for the 'sequel' within a month or two, so you may see me asking for testers here later.

 

[gaussgunner]

Anyone else try the itchio download? Installer fails, something about missing Steam crap.. I think you need to rebuild Eldiran.

I'm playing the Steam version.. pretty cool game, nice change from the story-heavy rpgs i've been slogging through.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Will this game be on GoG at some point?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Will this game be on GoG at some point?

I actually tried to get it on GOG, but it was deemed too niche and low in production value. (Basically my game is too ugly to be on GOG.) I don't really blame them.

 

[Eldiran]

Anyone else try the itchio download? Installer fails, something about missing Steam crap.. I think you need to rebuild Eldiran.

I'm playing the Steam version.. pretty cool game, nice change from the story-heavy rpgs i've been slogging through.

Thanks! Investigating now - will have it fixed ASAP.

EDIT -- should be fixed now.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Shame

 

[gaussgunner]

Thanks! Investigating now - will have it fixed ASAP.

EDIT -- should be fixed now.

Thanks!

Almost works in WINE, but not the load game dialog. Also no sound. Oh well, at least I won't have to wait for Steam to start when I boot windows to play it.

 

[Gunnar]

I finished the game, first on normal(?) and then on RUIN mode. First run through took 23 hours, second took 13. I actually found the game much easier on RUIN mode because I already knew where everything was and I picked better classes.

Game is great, liked all the environmental interaction with shovels, pickaxes, ropes, etc.

A little class analysis:

Fighter is not bad. Gets guard, mighty attack and some good passives.
Enchanter can give a damage buff to themselves and the rest of the party, plus force charge for moving around
Brawler gets an extra offhand fist attack, and revenge for massive damage, cyclone kick for moving around
Breaker gets Shatter for massive damage, stunning blow and counter weapon break
Sage is for healing, rez and placing barriers on the map
Shiftcloak is ok, dual wields crossbows/guns, blinds enemies
Scholar sucks but can regenerate mana, an essential skill
Blade isn't great, gets an area attack Bladestorm and a pretty good moving skill, flashcut but that's pretty much it
Gatekeeper also not great, with area attacks that take time to cast so enemies get out of the way. They do get a teleport spell that can be used to bypass alot of the puzzles in the game though, including all the switches at the end, which is very nice.
Guardian has some good defensive skills but nothing that does damage, only good as a secondary class
Sharpshooter is pretty meh, but their passives Counter shot and Ricochet are good. Use as a secondary for shiftcloak or spell archon.
Spell Archon I used primarily to stun enemies and set them up for a Breakers shatter attack
Balancer I didn't use much. Best skill seems to be Ice carapace, which protects from fire (lots of fire bombs in the game) and does adjacent ice damage
Unamaker I didn't use. The only skill that's interesting is the area effect blindness.
Sorceror I didn't use, just seems like a bunch of elemental damage spells
Mechanist I never unlocked at all.

I didn't like how you couldn't see what skills locked classes will have, only their name. You have to carefully plan your classes and where to put exp/skill points, and the first run through you have to do it completely blind. I went for gatekeeper because it seemed like a cool class, and it has big requirements, and I was disappointed with it.

Looking forward to the sequel!

 

[Eldiran]

gaussgunner : neat! Exciting to hear it runs in WINE, shame it can't save or load. Maybe I can fix that when I finally find the fix to the manual overwrite save issue I've been wrestling with.

Gunnar :
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Especially that you enjoyed it enough to play through RUIN mode.

There are ways to make the classes you didn't like more useful, but generally I agree with most of your class analysis.

Regarding the locked classes, that's a fair criticism. The intent was to not overwhelm with choices right at the beginning. (As a mitigating factor, XP rewards never diminish, so you can quickly grind the respawning encounters if you feel you wasted important XP unlocking a class you didn't like.) But I can see how hiding the info can be a pain once people grasp the system.

 

[Kaivokz]

Voidspire Tactics is on sale! 50% off for the week.

Also, I wrote a blog post I didn't link here yet. It's about how I screwed up a small mechanical interaction in VT - specifically, slow casters and Act Time - and how I'm fixing it in the next game.

It seems like a more robust and intuitive solution (from the player's perspective) would be to allow the player to delay their action by a set 'Act Time' -- if someone has 10 'time' left before they act, and your spell targeting them takes 12, you could just wait half of a second and then cast the spell. There's something like that already present in the 'you get bonus act time for not acting' idea, and maybe your thought is that the player shouldn't have such precise control over combat, but I think it makes sense; a skilled warrior can very precisely time his swing when an opportunity arises, though that might make AI programming more difficult if skilled enemy combatants also wait outside your range (so the player doesn't always get first strike by baiting the enemy out) or have other inventive ways of countering that kind of tactic.

Loving the game though! Just about to finish it, I think--

Spoiler

everyone is dead, including Lissa (sniped by those pistol soldiers) and Jin wouldn't fight Vise with me, so... climbing the tower now (or... gate-ing through all the doors without solving the puzzles.)

 

[Zetor]

Just read the post about slower casters having an advantage, and can confirm... the main damage-dealer in my first run was a Scurio mage, and there were only a handful of encounters where I could hit people on the first turn -- in fact, I usually just fully passed his first turn so it'd offset his turn timer. It was kinda sorta situationally advantageous for dropping Fire Whirls on turn 1, but that's about it. In my upcoming Ruin run, casters are going to be all snakepeople all the time! Well okay, gotta have a faceless dude to, uh, facetank things.

post-game stuff

Did anyone try out the extra races that unlock after finishing the game, btw? Bugmen may be good for a tank, though the flanking protection of the faceless may be better. Diecast HP boost looks good for melee, but that 30% cold vulnerability is scary.

How's it going by the way?

It's going pretty well! Naturally everything took twice as long as expected, as is normal for gamedev. : P The new systems are pretty much in place, so right now I'm mostly making content (levels, encounters, classes, etc) and fixing bugs.

Since I've pushed the deadline past the entire holiday season (the game would get completely overlooked if I released during that mess), I got some extra time to refine things and do fun extra stuff.

Like idle animations for the blacksmith:

(I've cut 90% of the hammering to keep the gif small)

Sooo... we're past the holiday season now, which means that Voidspire Tactics 2: Electric Boogaloo More Tactics is coming out soon, yessss?

 

[Gunnar]

post-game stuff

Did anyone try out the extra races that unlock after finishing the game, btw? Bugmen may be good for a tank, though the flanking protection of the faceless may be better. Diecast HP boost looks good for melee, but that 30% cold vulnerability is scary.

post-game stuff

I played through with bugman and Diecast. Bugmen are nothing to be too excited about but the +10HP on the Diecast is fantastic, maybe even OP.

 

[Eldiran]

It seems like a more robust and intuitive solution (from the player's perspective) would be to allow the player to delay their action by a set 'Act Time' -- if someone has 10 'time' left before they act, and your spell targeting them takes 12, you could just wait half of a second and then cast the spell. There's something like that already present in the 'you get bonus act time for not acting' idea, and maybe your thought is that the player shouldn't have such precise control over combat, but I think it makes sense; a skilled warrior can very precisely time his swing when an opportunity arises, though that might make AI programming more difficult if skilled enemy combatants also wait outside your range (so the player doesn't always get first strike by baiting the enemy out) or have other inventive ways of countering that kind of tactic.

Loving the game though! Just about to finish it, I think--

Spoiler

everyone is dead, including Lissa (sniped by those pistol soldiers) and Jin wouldn't fight Vise with me, so... climbing the tower now (or... gate-ing through all the doors without solving the puzzles.)

That is a possible solution, though I'd have to think hard about the ramifications of being able to control your Act Time like that. Might make players just always spend their first turn delaying so that they have the perfect act time unless, as you said, the enemy AI knew to do the same.

Spoiler

Also, nice work defeating Jin & Vise! That's the hardest fight in the game for sure.

Just read the post about slower casters having an advantage, and can confirm... the main damage-dealer in my first run was a Scurio mage, and there were only a handful of encounters where I could hit people on the first turn -- in fact, I usually just fully passed his first turn so it'd offset his turn timer. It was kinda sorta situationally advantageous for dropping Fire Whirls on turn 1, but that's about it. In my upcoming Ruin run, casters are going to be all snakepeople all the time! Well okay, gotta have a faceless dude to, uh, facetank things.

Sooo... we're past the holiday season now, which means that Voidspire Tactics 2: Electric Boogaloo More Tactics is coming out soon, yessss?

Good luck on Ruin mode! With a setup like that you should be good.

Voidspire 2: Tactics Harder is coming along! Lots of design changes mid-development means it is later than expected. I'll be writing a big blog post on that after release. But, the end result is finally fun and nearly complete (minus all the playtesting, bugfixing, etc...).

 

[Zetor]

Finished my Ruin run -- very enjoyable! I'm posting some assorted thoughts here because some of it is related to the combat engine and may be relevant for Voidspire Tactics 2: The Tacticsening.

• In general, I thought the 'everyone has Counter, meleeing in Ruin mode is hopeless' thing was a bit overblown, even though I used a ranged-heavy party. It's true that a lot of mooks and melee specialists have counter, but it's possible to deal with them from range or using a diagonal weapon like a flail or greatsword -- or just stun them to preempt the counter via a shock weapon (can get shock parts pretty early on) or the Breaker 'stun on hit' passive. Failing that, there are always some targets that don't have Counter... plus enemies can't counterattack if they're dead! In general, the Breaker stun-on-hit ability is pretty bananas.
• Investing in HP is no longer optional once you get into the mid-late game, unlike in my previous playthrough -- I agree with Gunnar that a certain postgame race really wins out here. There are some fights (hi anti-air!) that open with unavoidable - usually AOE - damage, and even with prebuffs you need to be able to take a few hits. I went with base HP for most of the game, pumped everyone up to 36ish by midgame (mostly from consumables and 'throwaway' stars from unused classes), and spent my unused stars just before the last fight to get everyone to 50 (less than that and someone was almost guaranteed to die every other turn or so).
• Definitely agree with the massive jumps in character power as they gain PA / MA or weapon skills (this also means that getting a high-damage weapon early can be a massive game-changer), and Ruin specifically pushes for specialization or you just won't do enough damage. Crazy character builds that try to be too many things at once may suffer a bit -- has anyone successfully used a hybrid in Ruin (outside the sage/support slot, of course)?
• This wasn't apparent to me before this run, but bombs are really, really strong with some time gauge manipulation that make you go RIGHT after the enemy (or just straight up luring the enemy into the blast radius), as they do 60+ aoe damage easily. Highlights include the spidest boss in the mines, the double anti-air fight, and the penultimate boss encounter.
• I'm not sure how I feel about prebuffing. In many fights you can walk 1 tile from the enemies' detection range, shuffle until your team is arranged in a T, move the guardian to the center, cast regen->ward->wide guard (first two from your sage, obv you don't need ward if the enemy is physical-only), then open with some long-range attack like a bow or firebomb... huge advantage to the player.
• Freeze, even at level 1, seems horribly powerful against anything that isn't immune to it, which includes... all 'hard' enemies except for anti-air and the final boss. Scary secret bosses that take up half of the screen? Permakilling&paralyzing horrors? Story bosses? Just keep casting freeze and they will never get a turn. Of course it's expensive to cast, but a Prayer-bot can keep it going indefinitely while the two other characters take care of any other enemies, then the boss. Something like an adaptation / diminishing return system on hard controls for tougher enemies could work... it'd also make immunities and veil (status duration reduction) unnecessary.
• Chokepointing and blocking the only approach with a corpse with the PCs standing right behind it is extremely effective as long as the enemy is mainly melee -- they'll just mill around the mini-blockade and get murderized from range. One consideration may be allowing enemies to shove corpses aside (exxxtreme version: CONSUME CORPSES \m/) or perhaps ignore friendly corpses completely for movement (player corpses should still act as obstacles)? This may be difficult to do with the engine, since I assume 1 tile = 1 unit. Making the AI run away if they can't get to the player is probably a bad idea, since then the player can just keep moving the body with one character to have all enemy melee waste their turns running away and back.

Top 5 memorable encounters:

Spoiler

1. Ekrast v2: Low mobility of my team (other than the sharpshooter) really hurt here, I don't think my breaker landed a single hit on him other than firebombs... and his melee AOEs are devastating even with guard up. This was probably the only battle where I was very conscious of my sage's MP (just 22) as I didn't have the luxury to use prayer every 2-3 turns (she was also in charge of pushing people out of death lazers in addition to buffing/healing).
2. This is going to sound silly, but... the 4 birds on the mountain right after you leave town for the first time. They can gib everyone in two hits (and they will gang up on your squishiest guy), they have a better movement range than you, they can FLY (so no chokepointing / positioning tricks), and at that point you don't have anything good to deal with them quickly, whether skills or items (no firebombs yet, f'rex). I ended up throwing everything I had on the frontmost bird to kill it ASAP, then bunching up (deny back attacks and only allow two birds to attack one character) and sandbagging with bandages and stuff while my highest-damage characters killed them one by one, also sending my sharpshooter wannabe off to sacrifice himself and buy some time. In retrospect, I should've just picked up the bomb from Morin to blow them up!
3. Ekrast v1: That melee attack is brutal, and the gate attacks aren't much better... worse yet, his huge HP pool and condition resistance means that I have to recast ward and guard at least once during the fight, which just gives him the opportunity to straight up gib people if I mess up the timing. OTOH after I discovered that he isn't immune to sleep darts, the fight became much simpler, basically just had to rotate my control abilities on him (Freeze was the other one) and prevent him from casting spells while beating his face in with my breaker spamming Shatter. I suspect blind works well too. Now I wish I had fought Ekrast v0 (in the forest) with the same tactics, but I assumed he was immune to status effects.
   
4. The 3 snakes in one of the secret areas: I managed to cheese them out by grabbing the loot, using the crystal, then returning later on to engage them outside melee, but their ranged attack hurts a lot, too -- unless it's magic damage in which case I was just dumb not using Ward. Sleep darts may have helped here, but I left the wine marsh for last...
5. Any of the anti-air -- the dual anti-air fight was especially rough. People get gibbed unless I stack up to recast Ward, but that means a bombardment, so everyone needs to be topped off. A single mistake / miscalculation and someone goes boom! Tons of HP too, immune to pretty much everything, and not easy to restrict their movement especially with lower-mobility characters.

+1: the worm that splits on physical damage in the starter cave. I figured this was going to be super easy, then when it was getting below 11 hp, BAM big heal. I check its skills, and sure enough, the jerk has the "recover HP when critical" passive. Thankfully my warrior could do precisely 11 hp with a hammer, so I just min-maxed my damage to put the worm at the threshold then hammer it for the kill. Of course some of that damage had to come from my sharpshooter, so there were quite a few worms running around by the end. Oh yeah, that reminds me that the little worms in the tangle all have the "restore 3 hp to adjacent allies at beginning of turn" passive too, though they're easy enough to one-shot, so no big deal.

I think I missed some secret area in the Blood Quarter (necromancer and zombies?) Though zombies were kinda trivial via Unmaker + Sage nuking + walls to block their movement as well as the aforementioned corpse bodyblock 'technique'.

I didn't dare try Vise and friends. Just looked at all the classes and passives they had and went "nope, not happening". I have a save just after arriving at the tower, may try beating my head against the Seartial army at one point -- the melee guys should be easy enough, it's all the support / ranged units that are going to be a massive pain.

 

[Eldiran]

New patch out! 1.0.8 fixes some obnoxious save bugs and hopefully achievements too.


Zetor: I love reading thorough posts like this.

Some thoughts:

• Stun on hit is crazy good.
• Yeah, I didn't test balance very hard on the Diecast. Maybe they only deserve like +8 Max HP.
• Stat ups are too good in VT (in my opinion) since they are multiplicative with the weapon power. Next game is bringing it down a few notches thankfully.
• I may have given bombs a bit too high damage, assuming they'd be very hard to hit with... but hey, at least it's an interesting strategy to set up, so hopefully it's not a detriment to the fun of the game.
• Each action taken outside of combat increases timers by 20 tics, hopefully limiting how many buffs you can stack pre-combat. Buffs get pretty abusable if you upgrade them I guess (Regen goes from 60 to 180 once you max it. Probably too much). On the one hand, it's extremely rewarding and immersive to prepare for combats beforehand. On the other, it can be tedious and cheesy at times. I'm not sure what the best solution here is.
• A lot of bosses actually take reduced duration from Freeze, (ex: Aeshra takes 35%, Eye 50%, spooky underwater monster 70%) but I guess it isn't quite enough.
• Probably something I should address at some point. I'd have to puzzle out how the AI will know the corpse is the issue, so it doesn't start just shuffling the dead around when it's bored.

Spoiler

Glad to hear some encounters were rough. >D

I'm actually also glad to hear your control strategies worked out, even on Ekrast. If someone sets up a party to combo Sleep Darts, Freeze and a Breaker, that is a strategy that should work.

Just checked the snakes, their ranged attack deals physical damage. I guess they're just strong for how early an area they're in.

I completely forgot I gave that to Splitworms. I love it.

The necromancer is a fun encounter (probably 2nd hardest in the game after Vise & Jin). Might be a huge pain in Ruin mode though.

By the way, I have not beaten Vise and Co. on Ruin. I had to use Barrier cheese just to beat them on normal. Good luck.

 

[Gunnar]

• Yeah, I didn't test balance very hard on the Diecast. Maybe they only deserve like +8 Max HP.

You could have them level HP like everyone else, that is, they start with the extra HP as though they had leveled it up, instead of just getting the flat bonus, so increasing the HP further costs more.

 

[Zetor]

Eldiran - Yar, achievements seem to be working now. My life is complete! The next step is, obviously, Steam trading cards -- proven to be the 1000% most important thing for any game. :p

I think bombs are fine. I only found like 3-4 in the entire game, and they need quite a bit of setup to use... plus they can act as an almost-literal nuclear option if a particular encounter is really pissing you off. I'm not sure what makes Freeze work too well, though my caster was a Fareem this time, so she may have just gotten turns directly after the boss... also, you don't need to move while chain-casting Freeze so your turns will be coming up faster anyway (she had 0 ice skill fwiw, though I don't think it matters). edit: now that I think about it, Aeshra was also immune to being perma-frozen, just about... but it was still worthwhile to cast to push its turn back a bit.

Pre-buffing is... tricky. It's true that in the early game it's not THAT big a deal (in fact, I just used a buff ability to draw the enemy team's attention and initiate the combat there since otherwise the buff'd run out by the time I managed to actually start the fight), but getting even a single buff on everyone before the combat starts is a significant leg up. The main advantage is not even necessarily the extra action, but rather the tactical advantage from being able to spread out / reposition immediately instead of having to gather around and wait for a Ward/Growth cast to finish -- or in case of having a Fareem, the party having to stay at the starting position on turn 1 so the tank can hit everyone with Wide Guard. For solutions, I don't have too many ideas myself... one thing I've seen in the Sword Coast Stratagems mod of BG1-2 was simulating the enemies also being smart enough to pre-buff by having buffs active on the enemies at combat start. In the context of VT this'd mean that certain enemies (depending on the encounter setup, ie. each warrior-class enemy could buff themselves OR someone else with Guard, not more) could have ward / regen / shield preapplied to them on turn 0, perhaps with the same slightly reduced duration to mimic player prebuffing. This could be a difficulty toggle option, though it'd probably make the difficulty options a bit too cluttered...

I think Gunnar's idea about the Diecast is good - get some survivability up front over a longer-term advantage like the Rasmen or Scurio, and it'll still make them very attractive for a Ruin playthrough. Also, I think the other problem is that there just aren't many enemies who use frost damage, so the disadvantage doesn't really come into play (not that I think there should be frost spammers in each fight, either).