so.. tried this out for the first time last night and there was a lot of things I liked about it, but.. being level 5 and losing to a rando lv 2 ratboy in two turns due to overwhelming physical damage taken.. despite me fully blocking on turn 2.. -really- soured me on the whole thing.. well, that after getting destroyed by Brax and losing all my money in an encounter I couldn't back out of and had no idea would even happen in the first place (but at the time had just chalked up to something that was storyline intentional)
The game's balance is a total mess, so don't feel too bad. It is, however, incredibly exploitable. Some tips:
Almost no one has a realistic way to resist or overcome overwhelming burst damage short of massive health pools. That goes for both you and the npcs. You could probably tank yourself up with custom defense potions, but the amount of essence you'd need is impractical. Defense can't keep up with higher level enemies, and there is no real reason to waste time with it on lower level ones.
When the enemy's health is 0, you win. It doesn't matter if your health is at 0 too, the game counts it as a victory. This means you can completely ignore defense as long as you can end the fight in one turn. This can be accomplished super easily.
Prioritize damage. If you start with the soldier profession you can easily start deleting enemies as soon as you can get brass knuckles(probably even earlier). Brass knuckles are super common on alley thugs, and if you aren't willing to risk a fight to get them they are cheap enough(I think) to be bought with your starting cash.
Outside of a handful of dialogue checks most perks do fuck all. Most primary attribute increases that will be actually meaningful are going to come out of race transformation or self-made enchanted items. Your power derives mostly from your equipment. Enchantments and potion-making are part of that and are super exploitable for both profit and power.
I kinda got carried away here, so I'll cut this short before it becomes a textwall how-to guide on breaking the game. I got a lot more cheese to share, especially if we get into specifics.