I may have just experienced that. The bugbears on temple level 4 are some of the most vitriolic enemies in the game. They stop at nothing to kill my characters as efficiently as possible.
Strategy.tab is certainly worth a look if you haven't already, almost all the AI is determined by that file.
I hate that happening and generally tried to reserve Coup de Grace in KotB only for particularly evil creatures, but then I throw a tantrum any time a character dies.
In my current in person Pathfinder game of Rise of the Runelords, Coup de Grace has become a favourite maneuver for my daughter's Cleric of Pharasma, she's so far blissfully unaware that because of this, she has accrued enough Wrath Sin points to be welcomed into the Wrath wing of Runeforge as a trusted ally of the enemies within.
That sounds awesome, actually! We're just starting a new Pathfinder campaign too and only couldn't play Rise of the Runelords because one of the other players had already played it elsewhere. We're going to play Carrion Crown instead. We'll see how that turns out heh.
I did not know about strategy.tab. Took a first glance, and I am unfamiliar with how this layout is supposed to work. Is there a tool like worlded that can explain this in a more readable form? Regarding AI/strategy, I have a concern with the Ice Tyrants. The very instant that they enter combat, their first turn will be to fire off a cone of cold no matter what from what I've seen. I love the cone of cold, it's a nasty surprise, but the problem is that when combat is initiated with your characters all out of range, they still fire off their single cone of colds anyway, wasting them prematurely. How could this be changed so that the Ice Tyrants will intelligently wait to cast their only cone of cold until the first time they are within range of your party members for it to hit them?
Personally I use Phalzyr's ProtoED (you can download it from sorcerers.net since it no longer seems to be hosted on our boards) to edit strategy.tab. Each row is the named differently, and called directly from Protos.tab for each monster and NPC, each block of 3 columns beyond column 1 is one turns AI command, so column 2 - 4 is the first turn in that strategy, 5-7 is second turn etc... The 3 column blocks are split up thusly: Targeting method/Action type/Spell selector (if applicable). So it may be "target closest/cast fireball/'fireball_domain_special' to do exactly what it says on the tin (note 'cast fireball' can be applied to other ranges AoE spells. *Edit Ninja'd by Ted*
I can confirm correcting the bardic instrument arguments to these values corrects the music played when performing bardic performances with each instrument type.
I made a thread on the AI, shiuld explain how it wotks. You can also see the code for the AI system in T+, Ive recreated most of it.
Until the birth of Temple+ (which is still years beyond my understanding in terms of coding), such .dll fixes were so far out of reach that I've grown accustomed to making the simpler fixes that avoid the .dll wherever possible, old habbits die hard I guess.