I also got that bug.

Some general user-side notes regarding crashes:

If the game refuses to run or crashes right away, please check your antivirus program – add an exception for the Bards Tale IV install folder.

In rare cases, AV programs will flag and/or quarantine the executable such that even adding the exception won’t allow it to run.
To resolve that after you add the exception to the AV program
You may need to delete the EXE and force steam to redownload it
You may need to uninstall and reinstall the game entirely.

Framerate issues
Make sure to run the game in 1080p – while we do support 4k, it does push even high-end hardware to the limit.
We are actively working on optimizations to help alleviate this.
In higher resolutions, using "Resolution Downscale" will greatly improve performance.
Lowering the in-game option "Shadow Quality" will greatly improve performance.
Other options can be used on lower end hardware to improve performance, but the two above will have the greatest effect.

Make sure all motherboard and video card drivers are up to date.
D3D and low level engine crash - make sure GPU drivers are updated. This will most likely resolve any issues.
In some cases, drivers may need to be rolled back to previous versions, in these instances please leave a note above.

Crash on start
Multiple things could be causing this - double check that drivers are up to date.
Some people with non-Ascii characters in their Windows user name have had success working around this by creating a new Windows user account with only ASCII characters in it.
We're continuing to investigate this and hope to have a solution soon..

My directors cut is crashing at the character creation. i5 8400, 980ti, 24GB RAM, Z370 motherboard. I'm downloading it on my Steam deck hoping it will play on there. I verified the game files. My internet is painfully slow so I really hope I don't have to reinstall it.