Hi,

I'm just wondering, how do encounters look like at higher ranks? Do players kill their enemies with one blow?

I've noticed that some cards (for example, spells or blessings) can deal a huge amount of damage. What is more, the damage potential that the Players can deal increases with a rank of action cards they use. However, Players wound treshold rise slightly (only few careers allow to purchase wound advances more than 2-3 times and even the strongest monsters do not have 50+ wounds) compared with the damage potential at higher ranks.

Regards

No I don`t think so. although I have yet to get my party to rank 2 (11 to 19 xp), I still don`t think combat will be that much easier.

Reason why, all the best and potential best damage dealing actions can allready be taken during character creation, including rank 2 spells. Over the course of advancing only a few things make you actually increase your dice pool. that is training in a skill (gives expertise dice), adding fortune to characteristics (adds permanent fortune dice to a characteristics), and finally picking more specializations.

but what I`ve noticed is that players soon take action cards that can prolong their life in combat, like improved Parry, Dodge or Block. These action cards alone can make a fighter very resilient to damage.

I always encourage my players to take the Wound(s) advancement available for a career, since as you mentioned are very limited.

the action card that definitively has the biggest damage potential are Bolt of Aqshy rank 3

with 3 successes, 5 boons and a comet the damage will read like this:

9 +Int+WP+Fel+2(comet effect) damage and finally 3 criticals. (and most wizards will tend to have 4 or 5 in Int and WP). but remember the odds for that to happen is rather low.

What I think increases alot in higher ranks is the amount of dice. Possibly with the results not being much from what they are now. attackers will have more yellow dice and fortune dice while defenders will deal more misfortune and challenge dice. so the out come will be much the same except with a greater chance of getting sigmars comets and chaos stars. And alot more calculation from players to figure out the end result of each roll.

I have the Player who's playing Priest of Sigmar (2nd rank - 16 exp) who is able to finish each party member (Thief and Wizard) with one blow.

By the way, there are 3 rank spells or blessing which can deal at best around 30 damage, so I'm curious to know how 4 and 5 rank action cards will look like and what damage will they deal.

As far as defenders and attackers are concerned, I would wait for the Omens of War - I wonder what desiners will present to make attackers life more difficult (next generation of Advanced Parry, Block and Dodge?).

Yeah. My biggest worry (though I haven't experienced it yet) is that at higher levels, everybody will hit almost all the time, which would make damage and soak the deciding factors in combat, and trivialize the impact of skill, characteristics and defense.