I think the dodge/nimble issue runs much deeper to the very core of the game design.
Heavy armour offers you the most essential thing -> consistency in survival.
The heavy armoured brother is consistently able to withstand some bad luck. It gives you time to react and adapt to the situation – this saves lives!
The reasoning behind nimble character is sort of a glass canon. You trade consistency for other benefits – while this can lead to positive outcome in the low/mediocre threat battle, in the prolonged tough battles against overwhelming odds (sounds familiar?) the chances of dead brother are higher.
So the question is:
How to make nimble characters consistent in survival, while different from heavy armour?
The idea of damage reduction is simply idea of boosting armour under some (often unconsistent) circumstances… and this I dont like, it doesnt bring anything new to the table.
Personally, I see the way in more movement in the battle. I found most of the battles quite static as I find myself using rotation and footwork to change places (again consistency rules).
So here is my proposition:
-Initiative should be deciding factor in zone of control management – breaking zone of control should be separate entity from normal melee defense. High Initiative brothers can easily break zone of control, while heavy armour brothers have tough time at all.
Also high Initiative brothers have stronger zone of control then heavy armour brothers.
-Dodge perk gives you free 1-tile movement per round (=free of AP cost) when you are successful in breaking zone of control, this can be combined with footwork perk, it cannot be combined with rotation perk.
-Nimble perk gives you active ability (cost 4AP, 15Fatigue) – when the brother is successfully hit the damage which goes through armour will damage Fatigue pool instead of HP pool – if Fatigue pool is depleted then the leftover damage goes to HP pool.
