Yes, there will be a combat state.
Also, to build upon the previous comment re: crits when armor is high: crits do make a larger difference when armor is high, but they're effectively helping you to dig out of a hole. The most damage you'll do is in a situation where the target has no DT and you score a crit. Once DT starts being applied, your damage goes down linearly per-hit until it hits the minimum threshold. If you're already being maxed out by DT, a crit can help you bump out of that, but the best case is still going to be worse than if the target were wearing no armor.
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I believe what I wrote before: a 150% max damage crit is not devastating. If the target had no armor, you'd be doing 21 damage on a hit vs. 9 (on average). 8 damage is a big jump from 1-2, but you're still doing less than average damage vs. a 0 DT target. Depending on what the circumstances are, you could achieve a similar (and more reliable) bump in damage over DT by using a two-handed weapon. If that's your damage when using a two-handed weapon, then yes, crits are pretty handy, but you're in a weird and uncommon circumstance.
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tamina currently regenerates (very slowly) in combat, but we're likely to switch it to being post-combat only and very rapid. You'd have to rely on Stamina-healing abilities (e.g. the fighter's Surge [self only], priest's Recovery [AoE, lesser amount], or paladin's Revive [unconscious ally only, but immediately gives a big Stamina boost]) in combat, but would regain Stamina quickly once the combat state ended.
Some abilities or talents may help ameliorate the deficiencies of a certain damage type vs. armor, but our system doesn't reward hyperspecialization as in 2nd Ed. AD&D Combat & Tactics Mastery rules or 3E. I.e., you can't really be "heavily invested" in a specific type of weapon. Our specialization groups always bridge damage types, so if you have access to equivalent gear, there's not a negative incentive to equipping another type of weapon.
If you really want to have "the sword guy" who never switches to non-sword weapons, you're going to have to be more selective with what enemies he engages. In circumstances where every enemy is resistant to slashing weapons, you're going to be at a severe numerical disadvantage. One of the keys to designing good tactical encounters is to occasionally diminish a certain tactic so the player has to seek other approaches. If we allow you to build a big enough hammer that everything can be treated like a nail, that tactical element becomes irrelevant.
That said, our approach is not to say, "This is the tactic you must use now." as much as, "This is a bad tactic to use now." We believe the latter opens up more possibilities for the player than the former.
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Well, I know I'm stretching your patience, Josh, but.. (you really don't have to answer)..
We know spells, based on the new update, will be or per encounter or per rest (seems cooldowns are out), but what about other abilities? Will they also be per encounter / per rest. For example fighter's Surge.
Cooldowns in the sense that most people use them were never really in. Per-encounter and per-rest will likely be the two common types of use limitations. A fighter's Surge would likely be (and is currently) per-encounter.
