After playing WFRP for a couple months now, I've decided I love just about everything in the game with the exception of Recharge Tokens. So far they have been overly burdensome and annoying for my group.

To start with why do they even exist in the first place when there are already 2 very effective means of resource management, fatigue and stress. If you're a spellcaster you have a third tool for resource management, spell power points. When you already have a number of means of limiting a players resources why was there even a need to add this additional cumbersome layer?

Secondly, this seems to be one of the things that Warhammer borrowed from 4th edition and one of the things I dislike about 4th edition. Why exactly can I only take a particular action once an encounter or in WFRP's case once every so many turns? From a roleplaying standpoint, I would much sooner have the option of further exerting myself to try and perform a particular action, than to wait for some arbitray refresh time.

Finally, from a pure game play and design standpoint, recharge points are a pain to keep track of. Wounds, fatigue, stress and power are relatively easy to keep track of. You don't ever have to remember to add or remove any. When use an ability or effect that requires you to spend some you spend them, and vice versa when you're the target of an effect that causes you to lose or gain some you apply it then. The need to adjust them is always triggered by some in game event. With recharge tokens, you're forced to try to remember to remove at the end of every turn. It seems easy enough, but without something triggering it, it's often easy to forget. In my experience, this is especially the case when the players really get into the game. The action and roleplaying starts flowing so well that it becomes difficult to pull yourself out of the flow of the game and perform the end of turn maintenance step. I don't think I've had a single session where players have not forgotten to adjust their recharge tokens a number of times.

To finish my rant I have a plea for the designers to ditch recharge tokens altogether. I know this isn't going to happen, so I wonder if anyone has tinkered around and come up with some rules changes that get rid of them without compromising the game. (Additionally, I'm almost certain there had to be a play test version that did not involve them, so please tell us what the rules were devs!)

I think the whole point is to force tactical options. If you have a good attack, why would you not use it over and over and over?

Its one of the reason I like this game (and 4E) because the combat enviornment becomes so much more than "I attack",

I can understand some the frustration with turn maintenance,

If you wanted to ditch the recharge system I'd just turn your cards (ie tap) sideways in a battle once you use them. To use the card again costs a point of fatigue. During the rally step turn the cards back. Anything with recharge of 0 never gets turned.

This is a far from perfect system, but you'd never have to use recharge tokens and it would still provide the tactical options.

I can't think of any token-free method that would come close to retaining the balance, but if the big problem is people forgetting to remove their tokens (which it is, IME), just shift all token-removal operations to the end of the round, where you can easily remind everyone at the same time. Any balance consequences are minor, as far as I can tell.

I do rather like the additional rule of allowing players to spend stress or fatigue to remove a couple of tokens though.

The recharge tokens are all about game balance and the possibilities to create new actions. If you limited actions to be "payed" only through stress and fatigue then you'd be left with a very limited range of possibilities, since you can't really come up with actions that cost more than 3 (and even that heavy a cost would make most players shy away from those actions) and it would also mean that the idea behind what gives stress and fatigue needs to be evaluated since it suddenly becomes the most precious "commodity" in the game.

With the recharge system being seperate from fatigue/stress FFG gametechnically has several options to make actions from and the general idea is that when you have a system with different levels of power and effect in the actions (rather than all actions being essentially equal) then you need to limit the use of those actions that are the most powerful or players will keep spamming them.

To me recharge is a better solution than a powercost for normal (non-magical) actions since a pool of power will have a tendency for players to use their best abilities until they can't pay for them anymore and then either wait for the powerpool to replenish or be annoyed by being "forced" to use weaker attacks. The recharge system means the players have to consider when and how to use their abilities and perhaps to buy abilities that can help each other recharge faster (like Sword and Board for shield block specialists).

FFG's whole system is built up around recharge and I think it'd be almost impossible to change that without either destroying the game balance or turning it into something very differently than intended.

Lord_Daxl said:

From a roleplaying point of view it is an abstract method of representing the fact that the opportunity to perform certain actions only comes up every now and then. It's somewhat arbitrary and gives the player a lot more control over when that opportunity comes up than might be realistic, but it's better than nothing.

The oft-quoted example is the Backstab action. Stabbing someone in the back is rarely as simple as just walking up behind them and planting a knife between their shoulder blades, especially when that person is armed and trying to kill you. Once you do perform the action (you managed to slip round behind him while he was distracted), odds are you won't be in position to do the same thing next turn (because your target will either make sure to keep an eye on you, or because your target is dead and you'll need to move into position to strike someone else).

In social situations, using the same action again and again is pretty pointless. You need to keep the conversation moving. Once you've given the target a few compliments to butter him up, there isn't much point giving him more - so you move on to trying to convince him to do (X). Switching back to giving him compliments too soon will disrupt the conversation, as he'll realise you're just buttering him up, Timing is everything.

I agree that the recharge system:

(a) keeps play from being overly repetitive - a set of PC's is simply that many "Best Tricks" used over and over, with slight variations of "best melee, best ranged, best social" - similar to D&D 4e.

(b) simlulates that certain things are hard to keep doing, whether for narrative reasons (it's boring to hear how someone dodges every blow, rather it's parry, dodge, block) or simulationist (after firing off a storm of arrows quickly by using all the ones you had prepped for that, it's hard to do that again right away) - I think it does this better than 4e at cost of more to track.

© is integrated with other system aspects, from how to measure the duration of good effects, to synergistic actions that help remove tokens etc., to the benefit of having multiple actions to use - there is a gamist/system mastery aspect to this in that a player can design/play better or worse to deal with this part of system, and of course not to forget - balancing different actions. D&D 4e achieves the balance but doesn't integrate so much with rest of system.

I find the "recharge" concept easier to "suspend disbelief" over that D&D 4e's "encounter/daily" system which for martial actions makes sense for narrative purpose and balance aspect, but is hard to buy simulationist-wise at times.

I do appreciate that it adds another layer of fiddliness though I don't see how "remember to take one away" is all that difficult end of turns. Being visible to everyone at table everyone else can remind you if you didn't. It makes "tracking time" for things a distributed responsibility, not all the GM's - and that I quite like.

Rob

We can also view these rechargeable actionsas they need time and movement to place them, or maybe some time to recover the balance, or maybe they have been taugh/learned in a way that the combat style need some time to place them again. Anyway, finding rational explanation is nearly always possible, and keeping in mind that's for balance purpose, to avoid repeating the same action over and over again, it's fine for me.

But I can understand that's a mess to keep tracking all action recharge token, don't forget to remove or add some, handle everything, and creates some confusion, mainly when you have a lot of action cards at hands, which can come pretty quickly.

I didn't test the game yet, but you can use dice instead of token, even if it doesn't solve the problem, it'll avoid the "oh **** I just mixed all the token with my shelve, or I just push them by error!"

Otherwise, you can use a recharge system like in the 4th edition, with monster ability, assigning a value for recharging action, making them available again. It uses 6-sided dice in 4th edition, potent abilities recharge on a 6, less potent recharge on a 4-6... and you can adapt this to recharge based on a WFRP3 dice result, you just have to check the probability o each dice and use the one you prefer.

For example cards with recharge of 1-2 would need a boon on a expertise die, recharge 3-4 would need a hammer and recharge 5 more would need a comet. (I didn't check the probabilities, but that's the idea)

Hope this helps,

Ghor²

I like them for all the above stated reasons and don't see the issue with removing them. Getting players 'into' the game is a great... but you always have a second when the next player is determing their action... remove a marker then.

Someone suggested doing it at the end of the round for the whole group and that really doesn't work. If I go in the middle and have one token left on all my active defenses.... I should remove them at the end of my turn and be ready to defend myself. If I don't do that until the end of the whole round then I can't block/dodge/parry until after all the bad guys with bad initiative rolls hammer me!

imanfasil said:

On average you get the same "downtime" for the active defenses regardless of whether you remove the counters during your turn or at the end of the round. It does remove the possibility of deliberately advancing a character's turn just to remove their recharge counters early, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Well, some of this has already been discussed, although I think those threads have passed by already. So, I'll put a few thoughts:

Q: To start with why do they even exist in the first place when there are already 2 very effective means of resource management, fatigue and stress?

A: Well, I can't speak for the developers, of course. My guess is that they didn't want to tie the recharge directly into the fatigue/stress mechanic. See my next answer for a bit more as to why ...

Q: Why exactly can I only take a particular action once an encounter or in WFRP's case once every so many turns? From a roleplaying standpoint, I would much sooner have the option of further exerting myself to try and perform a particular action, than to wait for some arbitray refresh time?

A: Because, in "reality" some actions take longer to set up, execute, and/or reuse. I once gave an example of this ... Take a boxer. He knows how to perform a jab and how to perform a haymaker. A jab takes very little time to set up and execute. A haymaker requires a longer period: in the wind up, the execution, and the recovery. Given a set period of time, say 3 seconds, the boxer can successfully perform more jabs than he can haymakers. It just isn't possible for him do throw a haymaker as fast or as often as a jab (even if he wanted to). So, if you use the jab as the baseline, say 1 jab every 3 seconds, then the haymaker has a recharge of perhaps 4 (meaning 1 haymaker every 9 seconds or so). With extraordianary effort or luck (ie, using a fortuen point) this time can get shaved down (reduce recharge) but isn't the norm. Looking at this, it seems perfectly reasonable to have a recharge system. Beyond "realism", the recharge forces players to make choices on when to use certain actions rather than always having the action available, which makes the game much more though-provoking and tactical. The player has more decisions to make. That's a good thing IMO.

Q: Finally, from a pure game play and design standpoint, recharge points are a pain to keep track of. Wounds, fatigue, stress and power are relatively easy to keep track of. You don't ever have to remember to add or remove any. When use an ability or effect that requires you to spend some you spend them, and vice versa when you're the target of an effect that causes you to lose or gain some you apply it then. The need to adjust them is always triggered by some in game event.

A: First, this isn't quite true. Spell power/favor adjusts up or down to equilibrium at the end of the player's turn, at the same point that recharge token removal takes place. If you can remember to add/remove spell points you should be able to remember recharge. I admit I've forgotten recharge a few times, but it was usually discovered during the next turn and was no big deal. With practice, it has become less of a problem. You just can't rush through a player's end of turn phase.

Food for thought, anyway.

I still play in a 4E game for some reason... and remembering to do things at the end of your turn is something people can remind you about easily. A few times last night I asked people if they'd remember to make their Saving Throws, and one person had forgot (and did it right then) and the other times they had done it and I had just not noticed.

42! said:

I actually wouldn't mind seeing fatigue/stress take a bigger role in the game. There are a lot of cards such as assess the situation that allow you manage your fatigue/stress very effectively. So far in all of my groups game sessions, the only player that has had to pay attention to fatigue at all is the dwarf soldier who is constantly in a reckless stance and gaining fatigue from the dice results. The other players have barely had to worry about it since they generally favor the cautious stance. Without reckless dice there seems to be many more opportunities for the players to use boons to recover stress/fatigue than for me to dish them out with banes. Unless you tend towards reckless, fatigue/stress seems like an almost not issue most of the time. (I honestly only recall one time when a player other than the dwarf became stressed or fatigued during any game session.) I think it would be interesting dynamic if the characters used a particularly powerful ability and had to make the strategic decision whether to catch their breath afterwards or push on.

I haven't read through all the crit cards, but had several come up the other day that both added stress and fatigue. One made it cost a fatigue to use an active defense, one made each fatigue you take build a stress too, and one had a fatigue/stress generate an extra one. Any one of those really starts it cookin!

My group was using the party card that allowed you to take a fatigue and a stress for +1 damage after you hit and they used that a lot in the beginning and then eased off of it.

Lord_Daxl said:

I have, even before the game came out, 100% agree with you. The game is brilliant and innovative and we absolutely love tons and tons of the new game, but when it comes to recharge, well, it is silly and pointless, except and this is the only exception, when it is used to track duration.

For the last month or so we have been using a system that doesn't include recharge. Heresy, I know.

At first we were going to cut them entirely from the game, but they are good at managing some things and add nice flavor to the game: Such as Execution Shot, Powerful Throw, etc. Players have them and use them but they are not the end all be all; we let the dice do that

I planned on posting this up in the future after a bit more play-testing, but since you seem like a sane person, I can give you an overview of what we've done with action cards and how they add a great deal dynamics yet maintain balance even without recharge (in many cases, they are more balanced) and help prevent spam order.

This is the overall idea.

Trim the Deck: We went through the cards and cut the ones we knew how to do without the card. This included cards such as Honey Words since it is basically some kind of Fellowship check that gives bonus black or white. That is easy enough to create off of boons or successes or whatever when rolled so it's not a huge deal to play without it. Next, we cut Assess the Situation as the card is redundant with Rally Step fatigue regain. It also makes the fatigue/stress system nearly pointless other than having fun adding and removing tokens. If a player simply says, I stop to catch my breath in the middle of a combat...oh look, he regained a Fatigue. We also say all players get Dodge for free. You have to buy parry (though we're kicking around you get it if you train in Weapon Skill). You have to buy block.

Active Defenses: (such as Parry) Exhaust after use. To represent this we tap them. Players can use one, two or all three per turn and even all of them on a single attack. They only effect one attack as they do now. So yes, it does help when fighting a Rat Ogre who is about to pound you, but only against one of its attacks unless you spread them out over all its attacks. We have also said you can only buy Improved Versions once you reach rank 2 and believe only 1 Improved should be able to be used against 1 attack, but we have only played that way for a little so I can't say we're sold on it. Cards that exhaust recharge at the beginning of your next activation. There is a high level of risk management there since the player will want to untap his exhaust cards earlier, but other players may need to go before him, so he won't necessarily have them when the Rat Ogre pounds away in round two.

The rest of the Cards, in many cases, were addressed this way:

1) Increase the difficulty on the cards. In most cases this is more than just a black die, sometimes we add a purple die in there as well. It goes card by card based on how powerful it is. We have a formula, sort of, but a lot of it was eyeballing. We wanted to make sure the cards were more difficult to use than just attacking. This way, a player risks more for more "reward" from the card (such as Execution Shots additional attack).

2) Increase risk factor. We also went through and found areas where it could increase stress/fatigue. The most obvious is if it says add a recharge token, change it to add a stress or fatigue. In some cases, such as reckless cleave, they received multiple because that card is great without it. In very rare cases, this was added to comet effects as well. So yes, you hit for +2 Critical Doom, well, it fatigues you out because you put so much force behind it, you burn out a little from it. This also adds to the player choice because they can choose to take the comet or not, knowing full well what they're about to get into.

3) Change conditions. The conditions of when you can use a card also matters to the "spam" order of a card. You want to keep it narrative or cinematic or whatever, then create conditions when the card can activate. Some cards, such as Threading the Needle is very descriptive in that targets have to be engaged so they didn't need changing. What we did though was go through and add a spin to them. Reckless Cleave, for instance can only be activated after you receive a Critical Wound, the idea being you know your about to die so you better kill or be killed. This adds to great fun once it happens but does not become the end all be all of the card itself. Another card I can remember is Thunderous Blow is activated only on the turn you engage a combatant the FIRST time. This prevents engaging and disengaging and goes with the name, that you come down with the force of Thunder. So you get one powerful hit adding accent to the combat, but not being the combat itself. Conditions are very important in adding the depth to the cards and to balance them against each other. Troll Feller, I can also remember, was restricted to only large creatures and was only "earned" after defeating a larger creature.

4) Review the Cards themselves, the specials, etc. After these two steps, in some very rare cases we had to weaken the cards themselves. Sometimes they may be too powerful and outshine the other cards. This is true rarely. You also have to double check the Conservative and Reckless sides to make sure one hasn't just gotten way better than the other (such as Powerful Throw). You also have to go through and every line that says you gain x for each recharge token etc.

5) KEEP: All cards that say while this card is recharging. Duration tracking by card recharge is great and should not, in my opinion be cut. It works great and plays out great.

6) Change Double Strike: It has to be done. The card is way too good even with recharge (yes, a guy in my group has done the math) What we've done for now is make it function exactly like twin pistols except increased difficulty.

I know that's a lot, but it sort of has to be done to balance the cards without recharge and keep the flavor still without it overbearing the system. To make the changes, sleeve the cards in the FFG sleeves, rewrite the texts and squares (using Froo's Font editor) and cut and paste the changes onto the sleeve. If you are fine marking up your own cards, be my guest, we just aren't.

We have made a few other changes to the damage/combat system, which I hint at below, but I won't go into in this thread which also explains why we made changes to the conditions. If anyone is interested, me a line via pm and hopefully in the next few weeks, I'll be able to post up our revised action card mechanic and attack resolution mechanic and how the two interrelate.

As for the other replies, here are my quick rebuttles. As D'vang has pointed out, this topic has been exhausted before (especially between him and I) and though I've become busier lately I am still very much active here, just don't post as frequently...especially after having played the game since it came out. Here's the quick run down of the points I strongly disagree with those who support it.

1) Game Balance: These points have nothing to do with balance at all. Accurate Shot which has a recharge of 6 is way worse than Double Strike which is zero. The same goes for dramatic flourish (which is a crippling awful card to begin with) as compared to Double Strike. Nimble Strike also has a recharge and again is worse than double strike. Nimble Strike is also worse than almost all the other 2 recharge cards. I can go on to list other cards with higher recharges being worse than cards with lower recharge but these are the most glaringly obvious choices. Sure you could say its just double strike. But the problem isn't just double strike versus the rest of the cards, its the other cards versus the other cards. Troll Feller is way better again than Accurate Shot though Troll Feller has a lower recharge rate.

2) Simulationist point about reflecting reality: Anyone can make a case for anything and if they believe it's true, it's true. So there's no point in me arguing this because it simply becomes a series of logic arguments. Since none of us are 15th century warriors, there is no real way of knowing how fighting actually goes (even if you do so with foam weapons in a public park). So there is no point, if that works for how you view reality, enjoy. But I heavily doubt most of the notions on the cards have any basis in reality, given by the title and how the card plays out. Reality really doesn't apply to gaming, simple as that, no matter how we justify it.

3) Reflects 4e: It does and it does do it better than 4e did, but it is still just as horrible as what went down with 4e and why so many fans still hate 4e.

4) Action Variance: I can't argue against the fact that it does create "action variance." It certainly does force players to make different action choices. However at the same time as it forces players to make different choices it doesn't really change the flavor all that much. Instead of saying I Double Strike for 15, then I Double Strike for 15, you now say I Troll Feller for 15, then I double Strike for 15, then I troll feller for 15, then I double strike... So sure, it adds some variance, but not really enough for me to justify the amount of book keeping involved with the process (especially for the GM).

At the same time Action variance, if you really think about the system in front of us, comes from a very simple mechanic in the game: The Dice. You roll two boons and two successes, that means something. It's up to the player to interpret that. If successes added damage and boons added description, now you have very dynamic combat system. I hit for 15 and with my two boons disarm the guy. Next turn, since he is disarmed I gain a bonus white, so I charge at him to drive him through, but with two banes, trip and fall in front of him, barely squeaking a cut on him. Next turn, I drag myself from the mud and get three boons. This time I pull him down to the mud with me and the GM gives me and I get a crit for it. There, that is an example of a player doing different things because he interpreted the dice the way he wanted to, rather than having a system and GM arbitrarily tell him how to do everything.

The point with that is, he action cards actually defeat the narrative options and player choices by interfering and demanding the dice play out in a certain way. Sure they don't do it overtly, they do subtly. If a player want to take his time to aim a bow (i.e. accurate shot) can he actually do more damage and hit better as the Accurate Shot card allows or can he not because he doesn't have the card? How do you handle that when there is another character with the card in the party? You risk either making it better or upsetting the player who didn't take the card even though anyone can naturally aim their bow. The dice by themselves can communicate all this information and make it way more interesting by rolling them all by themselves. The Action cards only serve, in my opinion, as a simple way to plug players who can't come up with boon or bane descriptions with the dice and give them a fallback option. Sure, not bad, but for all the book-keeping and the way they overhand the system, not very good either.

In my group players interpret everything they roll, for every roll. Sure, it does make some checks difficult for them. As the GM I will sometimes jump in for pace purposes and they may add to what I say or not or whatever or I may add bits and pieces or push their idea further, but that is up to us. At times even other players will jump in for suggestions on how the boons/banes play out and it adds tons of fun and a sense that we're creating a story together, rather than individually. At times they have even suggested they take damage from banes they roll, adding more dynamics to the combat than was originally predicted.

My point is, you don't need action cards to do anything or to make your combats more descriptive, you just need these dice and your imagination.

Com:

Thanks for the assessment. Rather than change a bunch of cards, shouldn't we comparing them to a base advanced card and the basic action cards? What is the "balanced" advanced card we should compare to?

As for specific example:

* Double strike seems to be the most broken card. Twin pistols has it's own problem: you never actually use the second pistol, but the difficulty is doubled. Double strike is the opposite. Again, I'm not sure what to compare them to other than ranged shot and melee strike. Thoughts?

Advanced actions should be a base [K] misfortune and balanced from a melee card and worked from there. ...playtesting and/or implementation would have been useful..now we're going to be stuck with a lot of "well, game balance isn't our goal" kinds of excuses from the house.. (sorry, that's just the cynic in me..but mark my words!)

Anyways Com, I'm interested in your house rules.

jh

Emirikol said:

Basic Action Card is Melee Strike for Melee, and Ranged attack I'd assume, if that's what you mean. Advanced Action cards are hard to say. When I was working on (including miniatures systems) I got advice from an old writer of Miniature games who told me you only needed one basic statistic line to balance everything else from. In Warhammer Miniatures you could say that was an Empire Warrior, standard since he has a stat line of three. Any increase or decrease should somehow effect the points costs based on those increases. GW doesn't use this principle, he claimed, and hence why so much of that game ends up being over-powered or under-powered based on the points cost. True there are many other factors, but I think you get the idea. So in my opinion, the Basic Action cards of Melee Strike and Ranged Attack are the measuring stick for all other cards. It should cost nothing and have no modifiers as it is your basic attack. All other cards, either up or down, should be modified from there.

Secondly, you're wrong about Twin Pistols. It does add the second weapon damage, just not on the success line as Double Strike does. With Twin Pistols, you get a +2 for a certain amount of successes (I think 3, but it might be 2, I can't remember off the top of my head). Off either Boons or a Comet you can, on the Reckless side, strike another target for normal damage using your second pistol. On the conservative side you add your second weapon's damage rating to the overall damage rating of the attack. This is nice because it says conservative is focusing on one target while reckless means you're trying to take out as many guys as possible. I like the duality of it and it is the best way, for two black to represent this. Also, the card is nice because it offers fatigue for banes. Additionally, Twin Pistol without a 2 recharge penalty has the built in penalty of reload time. It would take 2 maneuvers to reload both pistols. Therefore, the player has to wait a round to reload or draw out a second set of pistols or 1 Fatigue to reload both pistols in the same turn. This takes in to account two built in limitations: 1 The player can only shoot so many times before getting fatigue. He can avoid fatigue, just not do it every round, or he eventually runs out of pistols as he continually draws out pistols (remember to keep track of Encumbrance and you'll find by pistol weight, they won't have that many on them at the cost of everything else as a good brace measure in I think at 6 encumbrance. So it becomes an off and on, but not a spam power based on the limitation.

To say the best average Advanced Action Card though to base all the others off of is a real pain, because they are so very unique in their fluff and playstyle and what function they provide to the game. Double Strike is not nearly as effective against armored, large monsters as lets say Troll Feller. Execution shot is great, but gives finesse to melee attacks as compared to Twin Pistols which is just a hammer of an attack.

To gauge the power of the cards, you have to look at their effects and put them in a tier, we did three levels. Overall, the cards all play out the same: Give more damage, give more critical damage (which ends up agianst NPC'S as more damage), or create an effect (such as Duelist strike). All of them offer a +2-3 damage on some level, be it by number of successes and what not. The other thing to look at is the boon effects. In general, they either: cause fatigue/stress, give a free maneuver to the enemy, increase recharge, or cause a wound. Rarely do they deviate from that pattern as well. Since cards are more about the effects, the tiers should only look at the effects. The drawbacks are generally used to counter the effectiveness of the card. Powerful Throw is a great card, but has a huge drawback upfront of spend fatigue. Other cards have higher difficulties. These two mechanics (potential drawback and difficulty) restrict the actions ability. In many ways, the designers have created a pattern already for action cards without recharge, they just never focused on that. Also, in terms of balance, there are a lot of cards that are more concerned with narrative function than their overall power (such as dramatic flourish and Coordinated Strike - great instead of my 5 damage long sword I can use my buddies 5 damage hand axe. Sure its nice when standing next to a two handed guy, but all of a sudden, you get all the benefits of two-handed without the slow drawback? What?). These cards I sight specifically because they aren't concerned with how effective they are, they are concerned with the narrative idea more than the actual statistics.

The other thing to remember about the cards is it is easy to sight now that one black is a huge penalty at rank one. But will it still be at rank 3? My guess is no, it won't. It will be way easier to do. Sure, part of that is right, but will you end up with players being able to clear encounters without real threat? Maybe. I guess this is one of the reasons why the devs created the recharge mechanic: to prevent high end from blowing through enemies. Except, that is also flawed assumptions because they will blow through enemies at the same rate, just with an action rotation rather than simply straight action.

So yeah, that's why some re-writing has to be done and that is why most of that focus has to go on the three major elements I outlined in my original post: Fatigue, Difficulty, and Conditions of when you can use it. This does not mean you have to lose the integrity of the original card. On the contrary, most of the time, 90 percent of it remains untouched (except for double strike, which has to be obliterated back to the hell it was spawned from).

Fatigue and Difficulty become the base balancing factors in the cards and ultimately you are replacing Recharge with Fatigue to limit power spamming in some ways. This is not to say every card needs fatigue or fatigue generation as an option, it just means that for more powerful cards, the risk of fatigue should be there at all times so the player knows it is risky and they may find other ways to resolve their fights than spamming a card.

Conditions facilitate those conditions by opening up opportunities and closing them off. I know those pre-recharge boys talk about simulation all the time, but fact is, the best way to simulate combat is through opportunities. An enemy lets down their guard, you're hit knocks them off balance, they their sword. Their shield is a little low, you have surprise, you get them from behind, etc. The action cards can reflect these moments better than anything else if used that way. Conditions are also a great way to balance cards (such as Thunderous Blow and all its critical causing cousins) because it doesn't happen as often because the conditions do not present themselves. That doesn't mean someone can't Thunderous blow round one, use double strike to finish someone off, get jumped by someone else and use duelist strike to drive them back to a cliff edge then use a melee strike to knock them off, then Thunderous Blow again as they charge a new opponent. As a matter of a fact, it encourages it, because of how they can change conditions based on needs and circumstances rather than the artificial limitations of recharge.

So yeah, that was our re-design process. The only card we could not fix is ***** in the Armor because that card is stunningly awesome without recharge. Hell, it's stunningly awesome with recharge. ***** + Double Strike should be in everyone's fun pack. You could in a good Reckless Cleave to offset the recharge, but really those three cards are all anyone ever really needs, even up against those fancy Swordmaster cards. They are possibly the best four cards in the game (although that Swordmaster card where you can add additional damage per recharge token on other cards is insanely good as well, don't get me wrong.).

Hope this helps. I'll post most of my re-design when I get a chance in the next week or two.

Accidentally hit publish before I re-read the post for editing. Sorry about that. I dropped a few words, I realize, but you're used to reading Warhammer manuals/cards now so I figure you guys can figure it out LOL! Don't worry, an Errata is on its way!