Hmm..

Our opinions seem to differ here.

That high level characters have ways to stop rank-and-file to even scratch them seems a good idea.

That two high level characters fighting each other must use every resource at their disposal to win in a fight seems like a good idea.

That even a high-level character finds Treeman/Troll/Chaos Champion/Dragon hits easy to dodge/block/parry/trick seems like a bad idea. Indeed such encounters are supposed to be heroic, and should only be easy with a lot of help from magic. Swings from a Troll should scare even an Inner Circle Knight imho.

Let's take an example:

Mighty Panther Knight of the Inner Circle (3rd rank, full plate with kite shield, sword) fights a black orc (not sure of the stats here, but lets admit Str5+ 1 white and R2), the orc swings for a standard melee attack, Knight Parries (improved):

Str 5 vs. Str 4: 1 Purp difficulty + 1 purp (parry) + 3 black (skill) + 1 Black (specialisation) + 2 black (defense) + 1 yellow (WS trained) + 3 Blue (Str) + 2 red (stance) + 1 white (fortune die) = 3 blue, 2 red, 1 yellow, 1 white, 2 purple, 6 black

Looks good, no?

Plus, if he used any other active defense on top, he would get to choose the defending Ability, and otherwise add the effects of the card. So if he blocked (improved) on top he would add 1 Purple. The orc would very likely fail, leaving allsorts of counterblow/riposte open.

This scenario with a snotling, and the snotling would have no chance of hitting our proud Knight.

This scenario with a Treeman, and our poor Knight would get trampled, unless he was with organized friends, who added guarded position, or some help of magic, which all sounds pretty close to canon.

In that example it looks good but a strenght 2 character vs a strenght 5 character or something similar breaks it for me. As it is now the strenght 5 character already have a big advantage and reducing the chances for low characteristic characters/NPCs chance to hit is not needed at all. It's the high characteristic characters/NPCs that needs balance and your suggestion with opposed rolls goes against that, because the character/NPCs for whom I want the checks to be harder actually get easier checks. That's the reason it goes against what I am trying to do.

When it comes to improving defense I have two important rules I want to comply with

1. No extra dice can be added in any way. Reason being I don't want to screw up boon/bane balance, which is perfect as it is. I also don't want more chaos stars, because that would ruin the balance of those effects on action cards.
2. I want it to be simple.

A dragon is already as easy to hit as a rank 1 character focused on combat. If you remove successes instead based on defence you could easily work this into NPCs/Monsters, so they had a static defence of two automatic challenges for instance (for tough creatures). It doesn't change bane/boon balance or the chaos star rate.

I have thought a lot about opposed rolls, but since they always favor the acting part I don't like it for combat. Outside of combat I usually require competitive checks instead of opposed checks, simply because it reflects the relative ability between the competing parties much better.

I have thought about using competitive checks for combat as well, but ultimately canned the idea, as it would double the number of checks made. The rule with automatic challenges is derived from this idea though as competitive checks does just that... subtract successes.

At first I was toying wity requiring a coordination(Ag) check when using a dodge card and then subtracting the successes from the opponents check. If more than one card was used the player would keep the same dice pool, plus the skill dice from the next defensive skill (weapon skill for instance). No stance dice would be allowed, no fortune dice and the opponents weapons skill or ballistic skill would be added as challenge dice. Never got around to finishing the idea, because I'd hate to introduce more checks, but in terms of balance I believe it would be the best solution.

Gallows, for my opposed checks, I now use that math :

number of challenge dice in opposed checks = opponent's opposed characteristic - 2

You might try it for your fights.

Yep that's a much more balanced way of doing opposed checks will. It scales much better. Perhaps I'd even go with characteristic minus 1, but great idea!

How about this:

Active defenses: When using an active defense, you may choose to make the opponent's roll an opposed check vs. your defensive skill instead of a normal attack. If you do, you may not use any other reaction against that action.

With whatever rules you choose to use for opposed checks.

Interesting discussion. Just an idea for consideration for those more awake and more familiar with the rules than I am... How about high ranking characters using active defences reduce the number of dice rolled by the opponent? You don't want to add (more) dice to an already large pool, but how about removing some.

Without a lot of thought I'm not going to suggest which ones, or how to do it, but I thought I'd mention it in case it gives someone else a good idea.

LordoftheMilk said:

Great idea, if we had good rules for opposed tests. The rules in the Core Set are broken, and scale just as badly as anything else. I have no idea if that has been fixed in the Player's Guide. I haven't seen really good rules for opposed tests yet.

My basic idea for opposed tests is that training in a relevant skill should add extra challenge dice. Challenge dice are roughly the opposite of Expertise dice, after all. How to oppose attribute dice, I'm not really sure. They don't have a good opposite die. I'm afraid we'd need an extra die type.

OPPOSED CHECK by WILLMANX:

I searched for a simpler and a more balanced formula to make opposed check to keep near of 50% of success when two equal adversaries are opposed. I finally got this, and I've yet used it for many sessions. HOUSE RULE : add a number of challenge dices equal the opponent's active characteristic -2 + misfortune dices as usual.

For the record, I don't use opposed check in standard combat but the 1d+defense... with a defense card houserule really simple...

DEFENSE CARDS by WILLMANX :

1) Dodge, block and parry offers you one regular black dice to defend yourself plus one more when you are trained in a skill, no matter how much you are trained. HOUSE RULE : add one more black dice per training in the relevant skill (so it is up to a max of 3).

2) The improved dodge, block and parry action card normaly replaces these one or two black dices from defence for one purple challenge dice. HOUSE RULE : Improved dodge, block and parry replace the first black dice for a purple dice, but you still add the black dice for being trained (one per training in the relevant skill in my games).

In the newest and very close to final version of my house rules, this is how I handle defence. I wanted a system where higher rank characters had better defence without introducing more dice (which can upset the boon/bane balance, which is perfect as it is and the number of possible chaos stars is also perfect as it is).

Combat Defense
Subtract one success for each improved defense card used or in effect against the attack. Only these defense cards give the bonus: Improved Parry, Improved Dodge, Improved Block, Improved guarded position.

On top of that, very special (and expensive) armor/shields can add one extra defence. These items are super rare however and very expensive, so onli high ranked characters can find hem (with some luck involved to find it).

V3 Naked dwarf syndrome...

I also have juggled many ideas to scale defense vs offense. But since many cards add defensive capabilities to allies in an engagement, coupled with the fact that you can stack Active Defense, I've come to these conclusions :

1) Let's not add too many dice, there's already a lot !

2) Let's keep all things dice based, since that is the gist of the RAW, bonuses and penalties are all represented by dice.

How can we make this converge ?

Here is my houserule for Combat difficulty and Defense.

1) Specialisations in Block, Parry and Dodge all add an extra misfortune die to the corresponding Active Defense card. Apart from that, the cards are used as is. (Gives an extra misfortune that is accessible right from the start, character creation)

2) Combat difficulty in Melee situations (more than two combatants in an engagement) is the regular Easy 1d. In the case of duels, I would increase that to Average 2d, but it is the GM's call, as per RAW. (The object here is to impose a Combat difficulty that is representative of the situation at hand, a duel, where all the combatant's attention is geared against the opponent, makes the basic hit harder to get.)

3) In certain situations, as GM, I will convert 3 misfortune dice into 1 challenge die. This conversion becomes a GMing tool to create modifiers that are even more refined. (Example, if a scene is very chaotic, in a hostile environment, with magic or whatnot involved, I will more often convert Misfortune into Challenge, because of the added chance of Chaos Stars. If I feel lenient, I might convert 4 Misfortune into 1 Challenge, because I want the CS.

The way I would present these houserules to players is that using only ONE active defense is lousy defense. Usually, in combat, you will want to defend as much as possible. Blocking and parrying is an obvious one (shield and weapon up to deflect blows), Dodge and Parry also an obvious one to anyone who has already done fencing. All three defense together would basically imply that you are trying to get away from this fight ! (ducking while putting sword and shield over you, next turn you RUN)

Also, players must understand that in a Melee, use of Guarded Positions and Assess the situation and other support cards is PRIMORDIAL if you want to survive. That's what trained soldiers learn to do. If you don't do that, then by all accounts you are in the middle of a blood bath in the making, a slugfest, and people are going to die very rapidly.

The last statement implies that I play trained enemies the same way, according to there species or origin.

Skaven will use Backstab, Exploit Opening, Assist Manœuvres, Assess the siutation, but not Guarded position or other Leadership actions.

Dark Elves would definitely use Improved Guarded position, Assess the situation, and things like Counterblow or riposte.

The above makes for a challenging tactical level and very cinematic scenes where PCs cover each other, and where non-combat characters will jump into the fray to provide the very precious Guarded position, for example... Great fun !

I was thinking about this whole thing recently and I had this idea. I know it doesn't address OP's orrigional desire but I'm curious as to people's thoughts. What if the basic difficulty to his someone is based upon their rank? how this would translate for enemies is that it would be bases upon their threat level I imagine, with threat a-b=1p, and then b-c=2p, etc. and say for characters it would be roughly 1p per rank. I do realize that this just boots general defenses and not the active defenses and so is not exactly what most people are looking for.

I actually fixed my own issue in my house rules without introducing extra dice that untimately unbalance other things like banes/boons and chaos stars.

When using an improved defence card the attacker must add a single challenge die as normal, but also subtract one success from his result. This works very well and doesn't unbalance combat for us.

Or, as some people have done, give the Chaos Star a double Challenge effect in addition to the CS effect.

That makes Challenge dice much tougher, thus increasing the Difficulty level of the whole game by a margin. Which is good if you think this game is to nice...