Another AV playtest with unsure results

Played another game of AV with Brian using the flat armor saves. Simple formula: Roll X or higher, defender rolls dice equal to successes and has to roll Y or lower. It was alright. Really hard to save considering most characters had saves of 2 or 3. Nearly all damage getting through.

We also added the Fate Coins. 3 per player and they refill every turn. Pay 1 coin to prevent 1 damage, add 1 die to an attack, and heal 1 on that character's activation. I found that not enough damage was being dealt. You can only spend coins these ways once each per activation. I removed the prevent damage early game and replaced it with "add +2 to your defense" and heal 1hp became a 50/50 roll to heal 1hp. Both abilities could be used multiple times so long as you have coins to spend. If a character died, its controller recieved a fate coin. It wasn't decided if coins earned this way became part of your permanent pool or not. The big problem is, players don't use coins unless damage of 3 or more is going to be dealt, 1 additional die for damage doesn't seem that great for 1 coin.

One of the solutions I've thought up was changing the defense coin to read: add 2 additional dice when rolling for defense. If that seems a little weak, maybe: reroll any amount of defense dice? The last option would be to just limit the use of defense coins to 1 per ability used so you can only use 1 coin to get the +2 defense.

I'm trying to get low, consistant, unblocked damage. Starting out, too much damage was being prevented. Now, it's a bit too random. If I can tweek this into working, I'll use it again, otherwise I have to try the dice negation mechanic.