One consequence of the palladium active defenses is that it changes the flow of combat from D&D's quick shoot outs where a person makes an attack with a roll then the action moves on to the next person, to a more back and forth duel with both the player and GM making rolls to resolve every attack and lots of successful attacks being blocked.
This interaction and multiple rolls more than doubles the table time to resolve an attack compared to D&D, and it usually means more attacks are needed to land a blow. Actually landing a blow is more a matter of slim advantages on dueling d20 rolls and having more actions, it is easier to land hits if you still have attacks while your opponent has run out of defenses for the round.
Feeling like you actively defend in combat can be nice, the impact to the pace of resolving a combat turn and getting to the next person's action was noticeable for my group though.
