I would get bored of a D&D session that started the exact same way every time I fucked up and died though. I'm not great at these games and I am embarrassed to say I was killed more than once on my first playthrough before even leaving the crash site.
Hoping mods or expansions (which seem unlikely) open the world up a lot more and allow for other starting scenarios.

The only two times I've truly save scummed are

1. I literally restarted the entire game when Dark Urge chopped off Gale's hand on the option "fantasize about chopping the hand off", that's not the sort of gas lighting experience I want, I'll just play the normal custom character first then maybe play that later
2. I approached some goblins by a windmill and combat started with the narrator saying "you were warned to stay away". Nobody said anything about that, so I reloaded my save and stayed away. The goblins let me into their camp even, why would I suspect these ones wouldn't let me talk to them?

I'm doing mild save scumming, not to have a flawless playthrough but because like you say it's a huge game and I don't have a million spare hours so odds are I'm only going to do one good serious playthrough then take a break and maybe do a evil play through or something later.

It's not like I'm going to see everything so I might as well use the magic of time manipulation to explore alternate realities - the characters talk about that sort of weirdness all the time so for me I don't even feel it's world breaking.

Though honestly the only mistake I wish I could go back and fix is completing pretty much the whole first area with only two characters because I missed talking to all the NPCs who'd join me - did make it more challenging tho which was fun I guess.