I was going to take Ernst down the utility tree to give him Brawny and Weaponmaster, but I gave into temptation and gave him Return Favour followed by Push the Advantage. He now has a cleaver and marches into melee with the intention of being surrounded, and then uses Return the Favour. Once someone is stunned, his high melee skill and the +20 chance from Push the Advantage easily overcome the -10% chance of Decapitate. I’m going to give him a warhammer, as well. His fatigue isn’t that important, since he can generally afford to wait turns to replenish energy while surrounded on all sides. But scale armour would indeed now be a bit too fatiguing for him. Still, the possibility of being suddenly expired by a lucky orcish strike makes it more exciting …
Incidentally, I did have one guy in scale armour+helm, with 40+ melee defence (not Nimble) and over 90 hit points, who was one-shotted by that double-headed, two-handed orcish axe.
