If your fighter has the Confident Aim ability, loading a save will significantly raise the amount of damage he / she can deal out. For example, my level 3 fighter should do 17 - 24 damage with his great sword. Having saved and loaded the game shortly after taking Confident Aim, he now deals damage anywhere in the region of 30 - 45 per hit. It seems to be a non-stacking load bug that was introduced in the 3.2 patch, and it hasn't been fixed yet sadly :/