The thing is, the system is purposefully made so that actions usually succeed. When you lower this chance, you just make the combat take a lot more time. Combat oriented character will be a lot harder to hit or hurt once they have gotten through a career or two as long as they try to improve this part of their character.

For example, I have a player in my group who has Th5, good armour, a shield and the Improved Block and Improved Parry actions. I miss a lot against him, and even when I hit, he usually takes just 1 or 2 wounds thanks to his soak.

Starting WFRP characters are supposed to be fragile. It's part of the feel of the setting that they aren't "heroes" like in D&D, but just some guys that got caught up in events. If they want to go toe-to-toe with a beastman gor and walk away without injuries, they have to work at it.

In addition, they have their active defenses to use, as well as a bunch of action cards. There's an article in one of the Liber Fanaticas about combat strategies and synergies with the action cards. I think this is something that may be lost a bit for players used to other rpgs. The action cards and talents all form their own combat system and tactics (along with the initiative tracker) that has players have to think out and plan their actions, similar to playing an actual card game. Combat oriented characters are only going to need 2-3 attack cards to be cycled through, which can be quickly picked up in character creation and the first rank, if necessary. Lots of other cards offer defensive benefits or opportunities to control or maneuver around the battlefield. Try stepping back a bit and visualizing combat in a similar way to a tactical card game and see if that doesn't open up some new ideas for you and your players.

When I started my campaign over 50 sessions ago, I began from the same assumption that things were a little too easy in combat, and I raised the difficulties across the board. Time and XP quickly proved my assumption wrong, and I eventually ended up dropping back to the by-the-books-and-cards difficulties. Increased purple dice made Chaos Stars far to common, which resulted in some truly idiotic situations coming up. There's a lot of location cards, action cards, and published scenarios with really punishing Chaos Star result lines. Things like a character falling overboard three turns in a row, or a PC Knight being unhorsed twice in one combat by their own mandatory ride check. It was farcical, and mostly annoying to the players. That lasted about a dozen sessions or so.

I'm not saying the game is perfect (not by a _long_ shot), but combat is more carefully balanced than it may at first appear. As the campaign has gone on, I've become increasingly happy about my decision to return to the default difficulty and let the official XP options raise the difficulties where and as appropriate.

High-Rank PCs can already get very solid defenses and be rather difficult to land a solid blow against even using the rules as written. There's a number of ways to boost defense or otherwise penalize rolls - equipment choices, a huge variety of action cards, various dwarven options like gromril or runes, high-rank spells, etc. Characters will also increase their Wound Threshold (and sometimes Toughness and/or Soak) as they advance. Not every party is going to have access to all of these, and it's unlikely to be even with the party, but characters that care about combat will gradually acquire ways to avoid or diminish incoming hits. (Or to trigger chains of Reactions that let them attack multiple times before the monsters get their first action.) It doesn't get quite as bad as D&D (where a starting character has a 1 in 20 chance of hitting an Epic character), but it still gets pretty crazy when people build for defense.

Adding another 2 or 3 purple to those difficulties on top of the existing system will result in those characters almost never taking a hit (or more than minimum damage) unless the GM compensates against that by adding extra powers or more A/C/E onto the monsters and NPCs. Either you end up doing more work to undo the efforts you went to by up-gunning the badguys in the first place, or you get much longer fight scenes (in a game where each combat round can already be lengthy at times).

Also, bear in mind that many spells (and a few random non-magical attack actions) side-step Defense entirely. If you're pumping defense across the board, you'll be boosting the most powerful characters (Rank 1 spells mostly suck, but late-campaign wizards toting Rank 3+ spells get absolutely redunkulous) in the end-game. (You'd also be turning a handful of lackluster "opposed check" Actions into unexpected powerhouses when facing the true villains, which is rather less of a problem but still worth noting). The obvious "solution" of adding those penalty dice to these spells as well will likely swing the pendulum very far in the opposite direction because of how nasty a multi-chaos-star miscast can be.

I have to agree with ralzar and nimsim. the combat for early players has to be tough, the warhammer world is brutish and nasty, the game play reflects this and encourages players to take a little more care with their beginner characters. If you rush off into combat against the horrors of the woods or fens without thinking the situation through you pay the consequences.

I like the way this rpg pulls no punches and makes you think of all the possibilities of working around a fight. When the action happens it should be only for a **** good reason and avoided if possible. This adds to the danger and tension within game play i think.

Well, thank you for your opinions. They are most valued. I guess I will have to reconsider my approach. Probably after a few sessions I'll get a better "feel" of combat.

As all the others have allready pointed out, there are several ways to become more defensive.

I'll just give an example as I have a quite defensive build for my dwarf character.

For basic defensive purposes I have:

• Toughness 5
• Armour of D1 S2

This gives an allright base soak of 7. Improving Toughness is a good option for any combat oriented characters who are looking to survive.

I have the following actions to augment my defence:

• Improved Parry
• Improved Dodge
• Celerety

Having these three active defenses makes it possible to use something against almost every attack. Celerety also helps me recharge Parry and Dodge. I am planning on getting Advanced Parry (and maybe Advanced Dodge too) at later ranks.

Furthermore I opted for the following talents:

• Armoured in Speed
• Roll With It

Meaning I have options to get improved soak against attacks. I am also thinking of getting Untouchable as a talent to be able to parry ranged attacks.

All in all, creatures still tend to hit me quite often, but the hits seldom get a lot of successes, boons or comets due to the defences, which also means I can soak most of the incoming damage at all times.

There are other ways to get defence and soak up as well. My fellow players have blessings/spells/actions that can improve defence/soak for the party. Improved Guarded Position for example can benifit the whole party and improve defence quite a lot.

As the WFRP has a lot of degrees of success, often with multiple success, boon, comet, bane and chaos star results on the action cards. Defences are not so much about getting missed entirelly, even if that happends at times. It's mostly about decreasing the risk of getting hit by an attack with a high number of successes, boons and comet(s).

I think all of us who have play this game have gone through this stage, it is normal.