I've played WFRP and don't feel the need to house rule a lot, but one thing I might do is make the standard difficulty for a vs Defence roll 2d instead of the default 1d. This would increase the difficulty of hitting and the number of Chaos Stars that come up. Hopefully it would slow things down a little, without reducing the 'whiff factor" to that seen in 1e/2e.

Then I figured, SOMEBODY here must have tried that already. Does anybody do this? Did it affect combat in a good or bad way?

I am thinking about tying it myself, atleast make it 2d for some tougher monsters or battles. (fighting a giant would be more challenging then fighting a nugling)

I might be having a game of this in a day or two, I will try it and let you know if it works, if i get a game in.

Using 2d for combat won't help much. The whole system is tilted towards a high success rate.

What will help however is a simple house rule:

• When you roll a chaos star on a challenge die it also counts as two challenges and reroll.

That will fix the issue without changing balance with defence cards for instance. If combar is 2d by default then the defence cards will still be quite pointless.

Seems to me that if you're raising the basic difficulty on attacks it would make more sense to just use the opposed roll mechanics, comparing the maneuver's attack prereq (usually STR/Weapon skill) against the defender's choice of STR or AGL in melee, or just vs AGL in missile combat. This would also make buying up AGL a more attractive prospect even for dedicated melee combatants.