A brief history of shit that has happened to me simply while walking from point A to B!
1: Lost the very first "real" fight of the game (Yourself, an archer, a shitty fighter, and a mage Vs a dozen-ish weak goblin-like creatures). Repeatedly.
2: Lost the very first "real" fight against another human (a lone mage that attacks you when you approach an inn of all places). Repeatedly. I have been ambushed by higher-level characters in two more inns since.
3: Found a lone ogre - a strong opponent at level 1, but I managed to zergling swarm and kill him. He had a couple of magic belts on him, but all magic items have to be identified in this game to figure out what they are, and that costs 100 gold, and I didn't have 100 gold, so I just threw the belts on. One of them was a cursed belt of gender change. I needed 500 gold and a priest to take it off.
4: Found an ettercap, whose opening move stuns the entire party for multiple rounds of combat. I lost repeatedly, because attacks against stunned characters are pretty much guaranteed to hit.
5: Broke two different weapons during the tutorial. Two bastard swords fighting god damn rats!
6: Repeated ambushes while trying to rest, often with the enemy spawning on top of your most fragile characters.
It's, like... if you know specifically how to work your way through the wilderness as you're going about the main quest, you're mostly fine (that second fight against the mage is damn near unavoidable unless you want to pass on two very useful characters, though). And if you've cleared out enough of the wilderness that you have room to run from the vampire wolves that there is no chance in hell you can kill, you're alright.
And if you start as a mage, you will have fewer hit points than most enemies do in damage in a single round. And you expect that, because it's an old D&D game, so of course first-level mages are the single weakest things ine existence. But your first companions are a thief (shit HP), a fighter/thief (shit HP), and another mage.
It's an awkward balance between refreshing difficulty and total
ing bullshit, but I'm mostly enjoying it. That sidequest with the chicken was still one of the dumbest thigns ever, though.
EDIT: Also, these kobolds give 7 EXP each. In 2nd edition D&D, EXP is not so much
shared between party members as it is
divided. That means each kobold gives 1.17 EXP to each party member. My level three paladin protagonist has 8555 EXP, and needs another 455 to hit level four. Unless I let this useless god damn halfing fighter/thief die, that's another 390 kobolds. I'm sure they'll put better kobolds on the lower levels of this place, though.