I have a character in my party who has maxed out his strengh and is using the reckless strike action in his combat rotation.

Buy just schiving three hammers and one eagle he is doing around 20 damage (6 for strengh, 5 for weapon, 3 for extra damage and 6 again for the extra strengh bonus and one for thug bonus I think). I combination with pretty low colddown (2), he can pump it out very often. I don't think its balanced with the penalty that you must put 2 recharge tokens on a active defence to use this ability, becuse its not that much and you can always put it at at the same one, or one recharging... But what do you think? I just reflected about this, as the insanly good Double Strike got nerfed too.

AstaresVimes said:

How did double strike get nerfed?

Also, I find reckless actions blow up in the player's face just as easy, remember that skull, and that fatigue. They build up, especially when rolling three dice. After a fairly standard combat, my troll slayer is on a punishing seven fatigue. So, in essence it pays for what it earns with a LOT of exertion.

Its not that hard if the player has 5+ toughness

Fatigue is not very hard in most combats, often the players can keep it down and use actions like access situation if necessary.

Crazy Aido said:

Double strike got an errata-card on the support page for WFRP.

Reckless Cleave is excellent at dealing damage to one large target, but not so good for dealing with multiple smaller targets. If you want to challenge this character in combat your options include swarming him with lots of smaller bad guys (not henchmen though), or putting him in a scenario where only ranged attacks are helpful (an ambush in a swamp where charging the archers gets you drowned).

That's before you start on plunging the hapless character in to some awkward social situation that he can't cleave his way out of!

Reckless strike is a good card but I think it's necessary - PCs don't really have a chance against Rat Ogres and the like without an action card that can stack this much damage in one hit.

commuterzombie said:

+1, reckless characters tend to push themselves up the track like mad-un's, so even a simple social encounter is likely to start hitting them with stress. True, you'll be in story mode, but that doesn't mean he gets to just use assess the situation without some kind of blowback. In my case I'd say he just sits down and does nothing for the rest of the scene.

Remember aklso the recharge tokens you have to put on your defense. And the extra ones for banes...

Even a single big foe hits back. So if you can't defend because your active defenses are recharging...

And against such a player, my npc would max out his extra-dice. So, if I know, this combat will last only 2 rounds because of a mean pc, I play it like this. So max out everything. If he survives, he deserves to win...