Raoul

The problem I have with those tactics is that they are puzzle-oriented. The idea is that you canvas, plan your strategy and execute. If you fail, you try again, using the knowledge from you prior attempt to refine your tactics. The majority of the late game encounters in BG2 fit this model, you had to memorize spell sequences, plan your buff according to the monster you know will spawn. Sometimes you could play it by ear, but often that meant you'd only win if you got lucky on rolls. I've always thought combat worked out better when the situation developed organically and couldn't be solved via brute force. The near invulnerable character I was thinking about in BG2, is the thread's namesake, the Paladin. A high level Paladin in BG2 had a low enough AC that only a handful of monsters could hit it, depending on their subclass, they could have enough immunities to shrug off any debuff and many late game enemies had further penalties due to being "evil".

Call me silly, but "bait them with the invulnerable PC" stops being a tactic once you use it on the fifth group of enemy NPCs. Sure, it make sense when you are attacking wild dogs that are using strength of numbers as a strategy, but against equally leveled sentient enemies it always smelled like an exploit, even if BG2 made it more or least mandatory to win. If "run in and draw aggro with the monk, sit him inside the paladin's buffing aura while the enemy pummel him, and after the monk has powered up from the beating, deploy his nuke" wins 90% of battles, the devs will have to balance around it and we're back to BG2's reload fests if you didn't cheese all the battles.

I'm curious, will the AI be smart enough to have melee fighters pile on the party's Paladin? Seems like the Paladin is a high value target in the front line of combat, but historically, Infinity engine games have had issues with ensuring the that AI doesn't just fixate on a target that is invulnerable to the particular attack it's using or chasing around targets it can't hit while getting picked apart by ranged PCs.