Does the combat alertness talent add a difficulty die to every attack directed to the characeter as long as no active defences are recovering in melee? If so, what is the point of using an active defence? The normal defences only add a misfortune die, and the advanced defences also add a difficulty die, but have to recharge?

It seeems that this talent is very good compared to many others. Or that I do not understand it correctly of course

The only real difference is that the talent can only be used against melee attacks, but that seems a small point.

Active defences could add 2 or 3 black dice each (depending on how your GM rules parry/block/dodge specialisation to work) and you can use all 3 against a single attack - so 6-9 black dice if needed.

It kinda depends on how many attacks/round you are facing which s better, if you are taking 1 attack a round, the talent gives you 1 black dice per round, your 3 active defences with no appropriate skill training give 3 a round so block/dodge/parry are better. If you face 2 attacks per round then the talent is slightly better - of course if you have weaponskill trained your parry gives 2 black dice so they actually work out to be even. 3 attacks per round would require either training in all 3 skills or your gm to allow an extra black die for specialised in block/parry or dodge to "break even" but dont forget that combat alertness does cost both an advance/creation point to buy and a talent slot to equip in so it should be "better" than not having it right?

Don't forget that each of the active defenses has an associated skill that if you are trained in, adds a second to the pool. Two is a better defense than the one provided by Combat Alertness. Furthermore, the Improved versions of the active defenses add <P>, which is better still. Add to that the fact that Combat Alertness takes up a Talent slot that you may want available for something else on top of the fact that it does nothing against Ranged attacks, as you've already stated, and I don't think Combat Alertness is unbalanced at all. It might be handy for a social oriented starting character that put his creation points into Int and Fel and doesn't have a 3 Agility or Str such that he doesn't qualify for Dodge or Parry, but for most other characters, I think the active defenses are going to be better.

Thanks for the replies. I misread the rules, and thought that defence added a purple die, so combat alertness would have added also this die. Instead it seems a black die is added for defence, so now I understand this talent better.

supergoblin said:

The advanced defenses do, that's probably what caught your eye.