You may be misreading what I wrote there but no, I wasn't thinking of kiting there. If you position what looks like good target upfront and the enemies make beeline for them, clustering together in the process and rendering themselves as good target to drop aoe spell or rain of arrows, this allows you to take out multiple enemies effectively and there's no "kiting" involved. Similarly, focusing your entire team on enemies one by one and cutting them down fast this way, instead of everyone getting tangled in their own little duels for prolonged lengths of time. Finally, the 'divide and conquer' tactics of trimming down groups with CC abilities to allow you to tackle them in more manageable numbers, maybe even to the point where the number advantage is actually on your side. All this can be done in RPGs (it was certainly possible in DA:O) without use of stealth. Yes, it can be called "alpha strikes" but that's perfectly reasonable combat tactic, and it works. I don't consider using your heavy-hitting abilities from the onset to be any kind of "exploit".
Now, as far as "kiting" goes, some sorts of this have plausible use in combat as well, imo. And not just in RPGs, but it's hardly uncommon in normal fighting to present part of your enemies with what looks like target they can tackle easily, only to have that target flee and lead its pursuers into what turns out to be a trap. Reducing you enemy's overall numbers in the process. And the mechanics which allow for this are already present, it's not something that requires total rework.
And heck, even the most blatant form of kiting is something that's regularly featured in all these 'heroic fight' scenes in movies and such, too -- when you watch them then it's not like one hero just stands there in the middle of 50 and lets all them stab him/her repeatedly like some giant, patient sponge. But instead they're moving and weaving all over the place, taking advantage of every cover, corner and other way to split their enemies and make them pointlessly flail about while some of them are being taken out.
Let's address it in order, because all these tactics are basically just assymetric combat, except it falls on the AI side and the ability side instead of the raw damage numbers:
- Alpha Strikes. This tactic is viable because it is asymmetric, in the sense that enemies never do the same to you. You don't have 9 enemies combine all of their special attacks - which they don't even get in DA:O/DA - against your single NPC, so that they eradicate your health to 0 in a matter of seconds. When it comes to numerical superiority on (almost) even strength, alpha strikes aren't in our favour.
-Divide and Conquer (CC-Moves). This is another example of assymetric combat. The player has lots of 100% stunlock - and AOE stunlock abilities, without FF - that the enemies do not have that allow you to mop them up rapidly. Just look at the number of complaints people had about that AOE stunning arrow attack that DA:O archers could use because it stunlocked the whole party. That is an example of symmetry and people hate it.
-Divide and Conquer (Ambush-wise). This tactic only works when enemies are already divided into small groups and you can take them out without raising alerts (so like I said, it turns into a stealth heavy mechanic), or when enemies are basically unthinking and divide themselves in an "ambush". In most RPGs, your party is fully visible in an open space - the idea of the enemy splitting up to chase you is just plain silly.
I don't disagree with you in principle - but the reality is that the game relies on a great deal of poor AI and exploits to make AOE alpha strikes work. It is one thing to have mindless beasts - like animals - cluster themselves so that AOEs can obliterate them en mass. We might even say that completely untrained soldiers - or soldiers who lack experience against mages - would do something similar, not understand how artillery works.
Once we get to enemies that are mind controlled by some sort of archfiend - such as the darkspawn during a blight - or enemies that are supposedly trained or knowledgeable about magic - cluster together becomes silly. We have lots of IRL military tactics to keep troop squads from getting blown to shreds by mortars.
As for the example of moving and weaving - now we're talking about things that are literally a fundamental violation of how RPG combat is designed to work, i.e., mobile and avoiding injuries instead of standing around like a brick. You might say this is just animation, but that's not right. It goes beyond that, to the fact that real combat against superior numbers is all about fast dynamic movement which really becomes so-called twitch action.
And enemies can, and should, do the same.
I don't think it's insane at all. Yes, humans don't generally stand a chance against ogres, dragons or even bears or wolves when both sides fight unarmed. But that's why we use our ingenuity to even out the field -- why we clad ourselves in steel that protects us better than any hide protects our foes, why we bring weapons that can cut better than any claws. That's why, lacking the natural strength of much larger animals we again invent devices which can shoot projectiles with strength that can pierce not only hides of these animals, but even that steel we protect ourselves with. And if all that wasn't enough then in the fantasy settings we always can fall back on the convenient "the wizard did it".
Can the PC and friends be somewhat better skilled, stronger and/or more determined than average town guard? Sure (especially when it comes to that last department) But that power difference doesn't need to be at absurd level where you can wipe out entire city worth of town guards with a simple sneeze. Personally, I'd probably draw a line somewhere around being able to fight on even terms at 1:2 odds. As I don't find it too unreasonable to expect 10-12 well equipped and well trained 'town guards' backed up with magic to take down an ogre or even a dragon, if only they actually had guts to face one in the first place and then stand their ground, level-headed. Ogres and dragons are supposed to be powerful, but not invincible.
"A wizard did it" doesn't really work as a defence when the setting pretends to be realistic about the threats that enemies pose. We can use DA:O as a great example here:
When we have Duncan and Cailan fight an Ogre, the Ogre crushes Cailan in his bare hands without any effort. Then Cailan is dead. Duncan can - despite being exhausted - kill the thing, but in this 2 v 1 situation we end up with one person dead as a doornail, because one hit is absolutely fatal. And that's just raw strength against an unarmoured enemy. And that only works because Duncan does something that IRL is impossible - he leaps onto that Ogre higher than Lebron does when he dunks.
With a dragon, it can just fly and burn everyone alive. 10-12 guards backed with magic maybe could take something like a dragon down, with 50-80% casualties.
That's the reality that this absurdity about PC equivalence to trash mobs hides - that in real war our vulnerability leads to death, suffering and maiming, and that's why in the real world we don't have superlative murder monsters like the Warden: because someone who sees that much combat at that level of overwhelming disadvantageous odds generally winds up dead.
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