In general I like all of the alternate rules that are presented, but I'm not too sure about the rules that affect the recharge mechanic. Is anyone using these rules and, if so, how are they working out? I'm especially interested to see how the rule about using the prepare maneuver to reduce recharge by one plays out in actual play - it seems like it might unbalance some of the actions with a recharge rating of 2.

Also, how do people like the Higher Lethality option? Again, the idea appeals to me, but it seems like it might benefit the PC's more in the long run.

The ones we are using are GM can spend Aggression dice to nave NPCs take additional maneuvers (instead of wounds), players can forgo taking an action to take an extra free maneuver, and players can spend a fortune point to take brief narrative control. None of these seem to muck with the basic game balance, whereas the two you mentioned I think might.

Beginning characters might be disappointed on those rare occassions where they roll 5 or 6 successes and the extra successes don't mean anything. Introducing this rule might be okay in the early game, because it rarely comes up. After they've been playing awhile and start getting multiple ranks of training, specializations, extra fortune dice on prime characteristics, etc. the incidence of multiple successes is going to go up. With the basic rules, this just means the 3 hammer line gets invoked more often, which as experienced characters it should, but when they start doing extra damage with every roll because they are routinely rolling 5 or 6 hammers, it's going to make combats even shorter and deadlier than they are now. Meanwhile, most of the Bestiary I don't think is going to benefit from this as much as PCs do, which will make the PCs even more heroic by comparison. We're just at 13/14 XP now and are content with the leathality as is.

Also don't care for using recharging actions sooner. It might make it too tempting to reuse certain actions more frequently countering the desire to expand your action card options. One of the things I like is that using a variety of actions promotes better scenes. Also, in combat, certain low recharge actions being used sooner might end the combat sooner, thus making the additional recharge that gets added moot, unless you immediately enter a fresh combat.

I steer clear of the house rules section of this forum because I have little interest in tweaking the game. It appears that the core system was fairly well playtested and thus far our experience has been that we feel the game is fine as is. I'm not so sure that was the case with these optional rules, so I tend to view them the same way I do most of the house rules suggestions I've read (because they were posted outside of the house rules subforum), just ideas that you can try at your own risk, but you might not like the consequences.

I agree with you mac40k that the game is fine as it is. and that I too mostly ignore the house rules section. I have no interest to tweak with the rules (perhaps other than expanding on existing rules).

I use most of the new optional rules, except the one with recharge. Higher Lethality optional rules was something my players really liked (no surprise there). But I compromised with my players informing them that Higher Lethality would also be applied for monsters as well. I have made no hard rules about which monsters would be affected by that rule (certainly not henchmen).

Any ideas?

I was thinking for most creatures with 2 or more expertise dice budget.

Good gaming

I'm using exactly the same ones as Mac40k for exactly the same reasons!

My jury is still out on the spell difficulty one, but think I might introduce it, especially when winds of magic comes out, as I think it might help prevent eizards trygin to buy too many high rank spells.