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Generally you wear light armour because you have abilities that benefit from you going first - such as Air Dance and Anticipate Blow - and to prevent other people from using such abilities against you. There is definitely a trade-off, it just has nothing to do with armour-defeating hits. Going Insid...

But wasn't one of the stated purposes of the new rules to make it more plausible to build a combat character with a lower Dexterity? It doesn't sound like that part is working. The problem with trying to use shields to make low dexterity builds more viable is that a high dexterity character will al...

I'll take "real world" characters. The pregens from the 3e Players Guide. I'll even take the LD's 'main combat' Disciplines; the Swordmaster and the Warrior. With the new rules. Swordmaster: Initiative 6, Physical Defense 12, Armor 5, melee 10, damage 11, wound 10, uncon 28 Warrior: Initi...

I would very much like to see an solid description of how the probability works under the step system. The 3e Player's Guide covered the basics briefly, and that's probably enough for that book, but something a bit more detailed would be really nice for the GM's Guide.

Then you missed "That incentive being having a better chance of going 'first', hoping to get that armor defeating hit, leading to the other being knockdown..." Never said it was a guarantee. I didn't miss it, I'm saying that this hope is ephemeral, an illusion. Consider two equal opponent...

The main combat concepts in ED has been: High Physical Defense is a great idea. Light Armor goes before Heavy Armor Heavy Armor absorbs more than Light Armor Armor Defeating Hits trumps all. This is the quintessential combat concept of ED for 20 years. Everything in the combat chapter(particularly ...

Generally speaking, for on the fly bonuses it's most convenient to just add it to the test result rather than the step. So under the new system, if you roll a 19 swinging your axe against a Physical Defence of 9, and your axe does Step 12 damage, you roll Step 12 damage like normal and then just add...

You actually seem to have the right of it for the most part. To clarify, if a Talent is "Karma: No", and it's a Discipline Talent, then you can spend one karma to roll an extra d6. If a Talent is "Karma: Yes", then you have to spend one karma to activate it, but you do get to add...

The final direction regarding many of the expanded disciplines is still in discussion. A discussion which hasn't really been addressed in a while given the other, much more pressing, matters at hand. Major points of discussion include themes and mechanics. Specifically, each discipline should have ...

I think this answers the original question, then. Death Magic isn't viable as a regular combat strategy because you need an unresisting person upon which to use it, and using it gets you the attention of Horrors. Thank you for your time! ^.^