here's my save, it is edited to have more of the fun starter perks and early mirror stance cause I thought for certain that would be more useful. I am aware that mirror stance pulls heavy aggro (it would be kind of useless if it didn't) I'm not complaining about the head ache this gave me I knew what i was getting into in this instance. I mostly fought bosses with it changed out if I knew there was a way to get their skills otherwise.I'm not sure if we can do that dynamically but the greyscale thing IS a cool idea.
Post your saves, I'm curious as to what's going on with your character. You're definitely having a very atypical experience and I need a lot more details to diagnose it.