Agreed. It should probably still exist as an anti-softlock measure, but i personally think it should only happen after like... 100 or so rounds of combat, not the 10 or so it seems like currently. That way the battle of attrition the first character seems built for is actually viable.
I am working on implementing these suggestions! I agree, with dodging, Apolonia's special can feel useless.
Although, if an encounter is to go past 10 turns, I don't think it should be as it is with no 2x per turn damage multiplier. Maybe there should be something like a shared damage multiplier (both you and the enemy get it) or maybe the battle rapidly speeds up (a sort of "frenzy" occurs).
I really don't like the idea of a new player allocating a lot of health and defense, and then fighting an enemy in a level 25+ area. They might be in that encounter for 30 seconds if they don't have enough attack. I don't think that is a good introduction to the game.
But I hear these concerns, and I will update the game to address them.
A fatigue mechanic makes sense, but I think it ramps up too fast. If it kicks in as 2x at round 12 (or whatever it's set to now), it should maybe double every 5 rounds afterwards, or increase by 1x every round, but doubling so quickly means the fight just instantly ends as soon as it kicks in. Apolonia's DPS is so lacking that I found myself having to dump 100% of my points into attack when I was first reaching the level 2000-3000 range in order to kill anything.