I have a group of players who are also my best friends in life. Two of them play WFRP mostly for the atmosphere and the stories. The third one really loves combat and always plays as a heavily armoured dwarf (we've played other games before, where he also invariably chooses this role).
I've found Warhammer can sometimes be extremely lethal. My party really doesn't enjoy that. More than that, they absolutely hate it. None of them likes rolling up a new character at all. In fact, they dislike any form of character creation. They just want the adventure to go on and have fun.
I've been considering making a very simple adjustment to the combat system that would give the players a huge advantage over their adversaries. Quite simply, the idea is that the heroes stay exactly the same, but the NPCs and monsters are severely weakened by not adding toughness to soak or strength to damage. In other words, they only use the icon values on the cards from the Creature Vault. To at least compensate a little bit for this heavy loss, I would stop using henchmen. All NPCs and monsters are 'normal' versions. I do like the simplicity of it, but it might be a bit extreme.
I wonder what the effects of this approach might be. I know combats would be much shorter, perhaps so short that a lot of monsters will die before they can even act. On the other hand, our dwarf will love pummeling enemies into a pulp and the other two players can concentrate on what they love most about the game: investigation, decision-making, acting out their characters. Is there anyone else who has tried this?
(PS: Yes I am aware that Warhammer is a gritty world where you're supposed to fear death and life is tough ans short, etc. But I'm just thinking of what my group would enjoy most. They want to be heroes…)