I don’t think levelling up melee attack and melee defence every time is great when you’re only getting +1 or +2. If they don’t have a talent for it, I either (a) give them a sword/spear/pike so that they don’t need it to be so high or (b) give them an axe so that they can concentrate on smashing shields to lower the enemies’ defences. Then add in the Backstabber perk for everyone and their practical melee skill will be high enough when it matters.
Max fatigue is often very important, especially early on. Even still, once the game gets on and you have more resources, you can just give someone as much heavy armour etc. as possible and a weapon mastery that allows them to keep using basic attacks without building up fatigue, so that they don’t need much more max fatigue from then on.
Adrenaline doesn’t cause you to sacrifice the current turn, since it costs no action points. I was initially experimenting with Adrenaline+Recover, but I rarely used Recover, since that does require the sacrifice of a turn. I had a wildman with the Strong trait whose max fatigue was still over 100 with a hauberk, a metal+mail helm and a kite shield, and that was without the Brawny perk (which, in hindsight, I should’ve given him instead of Recover, since then his max fatigue would’ve been over 100 in scale armour). Adrenaline was most effective when lots of people used it en masse in melee in the 1st/2nd round of battle. The only trouble is that you need to choose it over other perks that are important early on.
