I am still reading the rulebook, so I might have misunderstood the mechanics here, but it seems to me that if you have lots of

action cards you don't have to worry about the recharge anymore. Am I missing something?

Essentially, if you have mutliple good attack cards, Reckless Cleave, Trollfeller, Thunderous Blow, you can just cycle through them. This is one advantage of higher ranks, more cards.

However, active defences are still limited by recharge - as you can only have three.

And to get a large number of actions cards you're giving something else up (skill training, traits etc) - so there is a kind of balance there.

Having a lot of actions become even more important if you plan on running high in conservative stance. With 3-4 conservative dice you will get delays on a lot of checks.

But no, the recharge mechanic does not become meaningless. It does three things in general:

- Balances out the use of high-powered cards, some cards are just not meant to be used every turn.
- Makes the battles a bit more varied and narratively a lot more fun.
- Provides a "duration" counter for actions that are sustained.

Fresnel said:

Can someone reference the page number (and book) that details the limit to active defense actions?

there is no written limit, there are just only three active defence cards: block, parry, and dodge. the advanced versions of these cards replace them so as things are now three is the max. i can't even think of anything a person could do actively to avoid getting hit that wouldn't fall under one of these categories.

maybe i am misunderstanding your question though.

Bindlespin said:

Thanks for the explanation. You answered my question perfectly. I'm new to the game and misunderstood Fresnel's remarks about the three defense cards. Thanks for removing my confusion!

Remember that Block requires a shield so your non-melee characters really only have two active defenses.

@khoriboon: no worries, happy to help.