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Shiloh
2015-06-13, 06:48 PM
(See the Changelog) Debihuman
Xerlith
Admiral Squish
SkipSandwich

With this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?414143-Making-parrying-part-of-AC&highlight=parry) coming up in the 3.5 subforums about a month ago, I decided that I wanted to pull out the parrying mechanics I've homebrewed, dust them off, and bring them to the playground to get some feedback. I know different methods of parrying have been beaten to death, but I was never quite satisfied with the systems I was able to find, and wanted to implement systems that could work well for high-Dex characters who used weapon finesse or for high-Str characters fighting with a greatsword. Although I made these rules some time ago and have playtested them substantially, I've been meaning to bring them here for feedback as I'm absolutely certain that they can be improved. I welcome any criticism on them! Specifically, I think the feats and various penalties can be ironed out better, but I'm a bit stuck with that.

So, without further ado, I'd like to present:

Shiloh's Parrying Rules for 3.5
A skilled duelist may wish to parry an incoming melee attack rather than block the attack as normal. In this instance, the defending character is initiating a parry--an attempt to block the attack using her weapon rather than her armor.

Parry Checks
Two characters in a parry make opposing attack rolls with their equipped weapon (the attacker uses the attack roll that the defender is parrying against; the defender makes a new roll). Whichever character has a higher check is considered to “win” the parry.
Parry check modifiers
Encumbrance: A character (attacker or defender) carrying a medium load receives a -2 penalty on parry checks, and a character carrying a heavy load receives a -6 penalty on parry checks.
Defender penalties: The defending character who initiates the parry receives a -6 penalty on his parry check. This penalty is reduced to -4 for finessable melee weapons, and increased to -8 for ranged weapons that are ineffective in melee combat. If the defender has the weapon finesse feat, all of these penalties are reduced by 2 (to -4, -2, and -6, respectively).
Unarmed: An unarmed character can attempt to parry an incoming attack, albeit at a -4 penalty.
Special: A monk, or other character who does not take penalties on unarmed attacks, does not take this penalty.
Shield Parry: A character who parries with a shield may add the shield’s AC modifier to his parry check, but doing so forfeits the shield bonus to AC for the remainder of the round.

Starting a parry
The possibility for a parry is opened up by a normal attack roll or an attack of opportunity. It is initiated by the defending character, and must be declared prior to the initial attack roll. A parry can only be initiated if a character is aware of the attack: it cannot be initiated to defend against sneak attacks, during a surprise round, or any other time where a character is caught unaware and/or flat-footed. Additionally, a parry can only be used to defend against normal melee attacks; ranged attacks and powers cannot be parried.

Each parry that a character makes uses up one of the character’s attacks of opportunity for that round; only a character with the Combat Reflexes feat or similar ability granting extra attacks of opportunity can make more than one parry in a round, or make both an attack of opportunity and a parry in the same round.

Results of a parry
The result of a parry depends on who wins the opposed parry check.

Defender fails to successfully parry the attack
If the attacker wins the parry check, then the following conditions arise: The attack connects, and the original attack roll is applied against the defender’s flat-footed armor class. A successful attack may deal bonus damage equal to the margin by which the attacker beat the defender in the parry, to a maximum of the attacker’s strength modifier.
The defender provokes an attack of opportunity from any characters who threaten his space.
If the attacker has the Improved Disarm feat, he automatically disarms the defender if he wins the parry check by 5 or more.

Defender successfully parries the attack
If the defender wins the parry check, then the following conditions arise: The attack does not connect, regardless of the defender’s armor class.
If the defender has the Improved Disarm feat, he automatically disarms the attacker if he wins the parry check by 5 or more.

New Feats
Improved Parry (General, Fighter)
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Weapon Focus
Benefit: Choose one type of weapon for which you already have the Weapon Focus feat. When wielding that weapon and defending in a parry that you initiated, parry check penalties for being the defending character are all reduced by 4 (this cannot turn the penalties into bonuses).
Normal: The defending character in a parry receives a -4 penalty on her parry check if she is wielding a weapon finesse weapon. This penalty is increased to -6 for all other melee weapons, and increased to -8 for ranged weapons that are ineffective in melee combat. If the defender has the Weapon Finesse feat, all of these penalties are reduced by 2.
Special: A fighter may select Improved Parry as one of his fighter bonus feats.
You can select this feat more than once. Its effects do not stack. Each time you select it, it applies to a new weapon.

Greater Parry (General, Fighter)
Prerequisites: Dex 17, Weapon Focus, Improved Parry
Benefit: Choose one type of weapon for which you already have the Improved Parry feat. When wielding that weapon and defending in a parry that you initiated, parry check penalties for being the defending character are all reduced by 2 (this stacks with the penalty reduction granted by Improved Parry). This can turn the penalties into bonuses.
Normal: The defending character in a parry receives a -4 penalty on her parry check if she is wielding a weapon finesse weapon. This penalty is increased to -6 for all other melee weapons, and increased to -8 for ranged weapons that are ineffective in melee combat. If the defender has the Weapon Finesse feat, all of these penalties are reduced by 2. With the Improved Parry feat, all of these penalties are reduced by 4, but this cannot turn the penalties into bonuses.
Special: A fighter may select Greater Parry as one of his fighter bonus feats.
You can select this feat more than once. Its effects do not stack. Each time you select it, it applies to a new weapon.

Parrying and Combat Facing
The Combat Facing variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/combatFacing.htm) provides some extra flavor to parrying: Only a skilled character could manage to parry against incoming attacks from their flank or rear; as such, the -5 flank attack and -10 rear attack penalties imposed by the Combat Facing variant will also heavily affect a player’s decision whether or not to attempt a parry against an enemy (since the result of a failing parry is invariably worse than the result if you had never attempted to parry in the first place).

Parrying and Armor as Damage Reduction
Parrying rules also work exceptionally well in conjunction with the Armor as Damage Reduction variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm), because the results of a failed parry (in terms of damage dealt to the character who attempted a parry) are better reflected as only being protected by the armor. To further increase the risk of attempting a parry against an exceptional opponent, you could modify the rules so that on a failed parry attempt, the attack automatically connects and also succeeds, so that damage is immediately rolled for and applied against the armor’s damage reduction.

Also, for convenience:
Table: Defender's penalties/bonuses in a parry


Weapon Type
Weapon Finesse Weapon
Other Melee Weapon
Ranged Weapon


Regular Penalties
-4
-6
-8


Character has the Weapon Finesse feat
-2
-4
-6


Character has the Improved Parry feat





Character has the Improved Parry feat and the Weapon Finesse feat
N/A
-2
-4


Character has the Greater Parry feat
+2
N/A
-2


Character has the Greater Parry feat and the Weapon Finesse feat
+4
+2
N/A



Things I'm already considering changing
I think I could streamline the system much more by simplifying the feats. Namely: Improved Parry and subsequential feats in the chain do not require weapon focus as a prereq, and apply to all attacks instead of just one weapon. This would be very helpful to characters who use multiple weapons (pretty much all characters).
Greater Parry does not offer an extra attack after a successful parry, or else there is a limit on how many times this can happen in a round (probably as low as 1). I don't want an endless chain of parries, but I also don't like limiting the number of parries for a character who has combat reflexes; at higher levels, there could be some real value in being able to parry every attack coming at you in a round from six different enemies. So if I made a change to this feat, I could remove the "limit three parries in a round" rule. CHANGED. Thanks to Debihuman for pointing out how this trashed the action economy.
Simplify the modifiers to the check in some way; i.e. make it to where a parry doesn't pretty much necessitate a player or DM to look at that table I posted above.

So, that should be about it...PEACH away!

Debihuman
2015-06-16, 10:22 PM
Here are the defensive fighting rules (in spoiler for length):

Total Defense
You can defend yourself as a standard action. You get a +4 dodge bonus to your AC for 1 round. Your AC improves at the start of this action. You can’t combine total defense with fighting defensively or with the benefit of the Combat Expertise feat (since both of those require you to declare an attack or full attack). You can’t make attacks of opportunity while using total defense.

Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action
You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round. See also: Fighting Defensively as a Full-Round Action.

Fighting Defensively as a Full-Round Action
You can choose to fight defensively when taking a full attack action. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round.


How do your parry rules stack up compared to what can already be done.

PARRY: "A character that has can use their Dexterity bonus to their attack (if any would apply) can choose to parry a melee attack. You must choose to attempt a parry before the results of your enemies attack are declared. To parry you make a d20 roll that use add your Base Attack Bonus and Dex Bonus and compare it with your enemy's attack roll, if your roll is higher the attack roll the attack is blocked. "

Okay the sentence structure is confusing. A character (singular)/ "his" not "their." A character not YOU. Be consistent.

Parry: A character that chooses to parry adds his Dexterity modifier to a melee attack. The parry must be declared before the attack is made (this has to be an immediate action since it is happening when it isn't the character's turn). This seems to be unfair since parrying gives you: BAB + STR + DEX + 1d20. How does the attacker compete with that?

Also, if you fail your parry then you can't then attack since you've used your action to parry. This means that the attacker is at the advantage. Too risky in combat where every action matters.

I roll to attack; then you roll to parry. If you succeed by more than my attack, you block. Okay. So that may block one attack. Suppose my BAB is sufficient to make multiple attacks? Can you block more than one? Nope because you already used your standard action. I can make a full attack but parry is a standard action so that's gonna hurt the one using parry as well.

Suppose I decide to fight defensively. Now how does that attack work with parry?

I'm not a fan of the feat you have. You are okay with turning from a standard action to a move action. You are not okay allowing 2 move actions especially not on your turn as that totally breaks the economy of actions rules. A more powerful version of this turns it into an immediate action.

Improved Parry (Feat):
Prerequisites: Base Atk. +1
You can make a parry attempt using a move action instead of a standard action. You can spend two move actions during and out of your turn.

You cannot sunder a natural weapon. Sundering can only affect held weapons and shields.

Debby

Shiloh
2015-06-18, 08:58 PM
Sorry for the confusing structure at times. These mechanics have been through a lot of revisions, and I must have missed some of the grammatical changes along the way (for example, I originally wrote them in gender-neutral terms, but when I realized how confusing that got I switched it to male pronouns and apparently missed a few).

I think you've misunderstood the fundamental use of it, though. Parrying isn't an out-of-turn standard action, it's outside of a character's normal actions altogether (like an attack of opportunity). I'm guessing the confusion arose from describing it as an attack roll, but it's not an actual attack action, it's just an opposed check. I do absolutely see the point about Greater Parry adding extra actions, however, and I will remove that capability.

In regards to the other points you brought up:

I looked at the defenseive fighting rules a lot before making this system. Simply put, they weren't enough for me and my group. We wanted something that could represent a skilled duelist's ability to keep away blows with his sword alone; the standard rules just add to a character's AC, which might not help a character who is unarmored (this is especially useful in low-magic settings and could be helpful to DM's working to give martial characters more options in those settings).

Regarding the balance between parry rolls and the opposed attack roll, your formula leaves out the penalties that a defender takes on parry checks. These penalties will usually outweigh the bonus from dexterity, and make it more risky to attempt a parry. They are only negated after a substantial feat investment, at which point opponents who are actually using melee attacks will have access to feats like power attack that improve their attack bonus. I don't want to make parry attempts insanely difficult to succeed on; that would defeat the purpose of implementing them in the first place.

Finally, I'm not sure why you brought up sundering. Could you explain why sundering natural weapons affects these parrying rules?

Thanks for the feedback.

Debihuman
2015-06-19, 06:58 AM
Oops that sundering line belongs to another thread. I must have accidentally posted it here instead of there. Just disregard it.

Debby

Shiloh
2015-06-19, 01:27 PM
Changelog
The formatting representing changes was cluttered and disadvantageous, so I decided to create a changelog post.


Thanks to Debihuman for pointing out that the original system trashed the action economy. To reflect that, extra attacks cannot be made outside of turn just by picking up a couple of feats.



Each parry that a character makes uses up one of the character’s attacks of opportunity for that round; only a character with the Combat Reflexes feat or similar ability granting extra attacks of opportunity can make more than one parry in a round, or make both an attack of opportunity and a parry in the same round. Regardless of how many attacks of opportunity a character gets in a round, a character can make no more than three parries in a round. --no longer necessary with the revisions to the Greater Parry feat


Defender fails to successfully parry the attack
If the attacker wins the parry check, then the following conditions arise:
If the attacker has the Improved Parry feat, he may attempt to disarm his opponent as an immediate action without provoking an attack of opportunity provoking an attack of opportunity unless he has the Improved Disarm feat. [/s]If he also has the Improved Parry-Disarm feat, he may make an additional attack following this disarm if the disarm is successful.[/s]

Defender successfully parries the attack
If the defender wins the parry check, then the following conditions arise:
The defender may attempt to disarm his opponent as an immediate action without provoking an attack of opportunity provoking an attack of opportunity unless he has the Improved Disarm feat. If he also has the Improved Parry-Disarm feat, he may make an additional attack following this disarm if the disarm is successful.
If the defender has the Greater Parry feat, he may make one attack against the attacker’s flat-footed armor class as an immediate action. This attack cannot be parried except by a character who also has the Greater Parry feat.--ability removed


Additionally, if a character with the Improved Parry feat thwarts his opponent’s parry attempt (i.e. he is the attacker whose attack has a parry attempt made against it, and he wins the parry check), he may attempt to disarm his opponent (the defender) as an immediate action without provoking an attack of opportunity.
This will be condensed into benefits of the Improved Disarm feat.


Improved Parry-Disarm (General, Fighter)
Prerequisites: Dex 17, Weapon Focus, Improved Parry
Benefit: Choose one type of weapon for which you already have the Improved Parry feat. When wielding that weapon, if you disarm an opponent as a result of a parry, you may make one additional attack against your opponent. This attack cannot be parried except by a character who has the Greater Parry feat.
Normal: If you disarm an opponent as a result of a parry, that concludes the parry and play goes on as normal.
Special: A fighter may select Improved Parry-Disarm as one of his fighter bonus feats.
You can select this feat more than once. Each time you select it, it applies to a new weapon.
This feats effects are either condensed into the Improved Disarm feat, or removed as they break the action economy.


Additionally, a character with the Greater Parry feat may choose to make an attack as an immediate action following a successful parry. This attack cannot be parried except by a character who also has the Greater Parry feat.
Thanks again to Debihuman for pointing out the effects that this had on the action economy.

Two-weapon fighting: If a character (attacker or defender) is wielding two weapons, he receives a -4 penalty on the parry check, but may make the check twice (once with each weapon, at full attack bonus with penalties). A defending character has the option to only use the weapon in the primary hand in order to reduce this penalty to -2; or, she can drop her offhand weapon as a free action to remove this penalty entirely.
Thanks to Xerlith for pointing out that historically and mechanically, this was pretty much nonsense.

Also, Admiral Squish pointed out that as written, a character could only parry one attack per round (regardless of combat reflexes), so I removed reference to parrying as an immediate action.


On suggestion from SkipSandwich: Disarming after a successful parry is no longer a separate action with new rolls; instead, if a character has the Improved Disarm feat, he automatically disarms any opponent against whom he wins a parry check by 5 or more.
A character who parries with a shield may add the shield's AC bonus to the parry check.

More things I'm considering changing Improved Parry and subsequential feats in the chain do not require weapon focus as a prereq, and apply to all attacks instead of just one weapon. This would be very helpful to characters who use multiple weapons (pretty much all characters).
Simplify the modifiers to the check in some way; i.e. make it to where a parry doesn't pretty much necessitate a player or DM to look at that table I posted above.

SkipSandwich
2015-06-19, 02:04 PM
Hows this for simplicity?

Improved Parry [Fighter]
Requires: BAB +3, Combat Expertise
Benefit: You are a highly skilled duelist, capable of completely turning away melee attacks with your weapon or shield. Once per round when you would be struck by an opponent's melee attack, you may parry that attack with an opposed strength check, success causes the attack to automatically miss.
Special: A character with the Improved Disarm feat may choose to treat a parry as a disarm attempt, disarming the opponent on success, however failing the check by 4 or more will result in your character being disarmed in return, you must declare your intent to disarm before rolling the check.

Greater Parry [Fighter]
Requires: Improved Parry, BAB +6
Benefit: You may make one additional parry per round, you gain a 3rd and a 4th parry per round when your BAB reaches +11 and +16 respectively.


How does this look? (fyi, Improved Parry is the start of the feat chain since 'basic parrying' is supposed to be already accounted for in your AC stat)

Shiloh
2015-06-19, 06:31 PM
Hows this for simplicity?

Improved Parry [Fighter]
Requires: BAB +3, Combat Expertise
Benefit: You are a highly skilled duelist, capable of completely turning away melee attacks with your weapon or shield. Once per round when you would be struck by an opponent's melee attack, you may parry that attack with an opposed strength check, success causes the attack to automatically miss.
Special: A character with the Improved Disarm feat may choose to treat a parry as a disarm attempt, disarming the opponent on success, however failing the check by 4 or more will result in your character being disarmed in return, you must declare your intent to disarm before rolling the check.

Greater Parry [Fighter]
Requires: Improved Parry, BAB +6
Benefit: You may make one additional parry per round, you gain a 3rd and a 4th parry per round when your BAB reaches +11 and +16 respectively.


How does this look? (fyi, Improved Parry is the start of the feat chain since 'basic parrying' is supposed to be already accounted for in your AC stat)

I'd rather avoid the opposed strength check idea, since part of the goal was for this system to lend well to high-dexterity characters. And Greater Parry offering additional parries is redundant since that is accomplished with Combat Reflexes.

I get that basic parrying is supposed to be accounted for in AC, but my reasoning for developing this system was that, for me and the players I play with, the existing system did not sufficiently represent the ability to parry.

Takewo
2015-06-20, 08:22 AM
Okay the sentence structure is confusing. A character (singular)/ "his" not "their."

For the record, "they", "them", "their" and "theirs" can be used as singular pronouns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Singular_they
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they


That said, I would just ask how do the parrying rules add something new to the game? Why don't you assume that a character is trying to parry an attack when using his dexterity and shield bonus to AC? What about the total defence action?

I guess the main thing I want to ask is why do you think that parrying is not well represented in AC rules already?

Xerlith
2015-06-21, 11:44 AM
Why would two-weapon fighting be worse at parrying? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrying_dagger)

The whole POINT of two-weapon fighting was mostly to grant a blade to both parry and stab at openings...


Not to mention the mechanical awkwardness of nerfing the weakest combat style even further...

Shiloh
2015-06-21, 12:23 PM
I guess the main thing I want to ask is why do you think that parrying is not well represented in AC rules already?

The existing AC rules don't represent a character's ability to use his skill with a sword in order to reflect an incoming attack. Yes, if the AC blocks an attack, the DM can fluff the description as "You parried the attack," but that's if the AC blocks the attack. My point with these rules is to give a character a chance to counter attacks from an opponent who will have no trouble beating their armor class.

I suppose I should also note that my group is fairly low-op, and generally we just want to have a lot of fun in our games. So, the parrying rules are implemented not only to fill a gap we identified, but also to add more flavor to the sessions (and make certain martial characters more interesting).


Why would two-weapon fighting be worse at parrying? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrying_dagger)

The whole POINT of two-weapon fighting was mostly to grant a blade to both parry and stab at openings...


Not to mention the mechanical awkwardness of nerfing the weakest combat style even further...

I'll admit that I didn't consider historical two-weapon fighting in the slightest.

Mechanically, I think part of what drew me to imposing penalties was 1) due to houserules in my group, two-weapon fighting isn't ridiculously underpowered, and 2) I added extra options for a character parrying with two weapons. However, the extra options go against my streamlined goal, and upon further inspection don't balance at all with the penalties imposed. So, I've removed that clause.

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

Admiral Squish
2015-06-21, 12:53 PM
Hmm. I'll be honest, this just seems extremely complicated. It adds a lot of rolls and feats and it just seems like it would slow down the action for what would essentially amount to 'once per round you block an attack'. (Whatever else you do, you have to drop that 'immediate action' bit if you want this to be useful)

I'd say there are a few simpler ways to run this. Perhaps by fixing fighting defensively to add some fraction of the defender's BAB to the AC bonus. Perhaps just saying you can use an attack of opportunity to add a portion of your BAB to AC. Or maybe go with something like deflect arrows for melee attacks. Or maybe something like mounted combat, where you can make an attack roll and use the result as your AC in place of your normal AC.

Shiloh
2015-06-21, 01:17 PM
When I originally wrote these, I forgot that a character only got one immediate action per turn, so that's just a terrible blunder on my part. I've removed the reference to parrying being an immediate action, although the post-parry disarm is still an immediate action (that shouldn't happen more than once a round).

I'll have to consider your other ideas about adding a portion of BAB to AC. That would be a simpler way to handle it, although while I want this to be fairly simple, I don't want to simplify it to the point that it's hardly distinguishable from the existing rules (and while I know many players dislike opposed roll rules, I've always thought they add an extra element of variation and excitement).

Admiral Squish
2015-06-21, 02:20 PM
Well, if you want to keep a roll involved, how about this:
When hit in combat, you may attempt to parry by rolling an attack roll as a reaction to negate the hit. The hit is negated if the result of your attack roll is greater than the opponent's attack roll. Essentially, the result of your attack roll becomes your armor class for the purposes of that attack. An attempt to parry, successful or not, consumes an attack of opportunity. You cannot attempt to parry an attack if you would be denied your dexterity bonus to AC against it.

This way only adds one roll instead of two. You can add in something about disarming on a failed parry if you want.
Maybe a feat that lets you focus on parrying the same way you normally fight defensively. Say, take a standard action to make your AC=10+attack bonus until the start of the next turn.

SkipSandwich
2015-06-21, 02:53 PM
I'd rather avoid the opposed strength check idea, since part of the goal was for this system to lend well to high-dexterity characters. And Greater Parry offering additional parries is redundant since that is accomplished with Combat Reflexes.

I get that basic parrying is supposed to be accounted for in AC, but my reasoning for developing this system was that, for me and the players I play with, the existing system did not sufficiently represent the ability to parry.

I get that, but my reasoning is that just like with attack rolls, a high strength character can simply smash attacks out of the way, you'll note that I did account for more skilled characters by allowing a character with Weapon Finesse to apply Dex instead of Str on the opposed check. In my proposal Parries are a separate resource from AoO and have no interaction with that feat at all.

If this is to be a Group-wide thing, why not just make it a house-rule and give parries to everybody? Maybe something like this?

Parrying in Combat

Any character with a BAB of at least +1 may attempt to parry an incoming attack, deflecting it entirely with their weapon or shield. Once per round when the character would be struck by a melee attack, they may attempt to parry the attack with an opposed attack roll. This roll is at the character's highest BAB, plus or minus any applicable modifiers such as non-proficiency, weapon focus, power attack, combat expertise or Two-weapon fighting. A successful check causes the attack to miss as if it had failed to hit your AC, a failure causes the attack to hit as normal.

A character wielding more then one weapon or a weapon and shield may parry one additional time for each extra weapon or shield. Shields are especially well-suited for parrying, and gain a bonus on the opposed attack roll equal to the shield's AC bonus.

Expanded/Modified Feats

Deflect Arrows
Requirements Become: Combat Reflexes
Benefit: While wielding a light, heavy or tower shield, or a light/finesseable weapon, you may parry ranged attacks as well as melee attacks.

Improved Disarm
As normal, plus a character with this feat that wins a parry check by 5 or more automatically disarms their opponent as well.

Design decisions

BAB requirement is just there to establish the minimal amount of training required.

Parry check is just a straight attack roll with all applicable modifiers. TWF does grant extra parries, but they suffer the same attack penalties as any other TWF attack, shields grant extra parries with a BONUS instead (finally, Sword and Board love!). Currently, even though extra parries are gained from extra weapons, it's not stated that you cannot use the same weapon/shield to parry everything, this is somewhat intentional, but if you feel it makes shields too powerful, you can always add in a clause specifying that each weapon may be used to parry only once in a round.

Deflect Arrows lets you parry ranged attacks, improved disarm makes your parries better but only when you are able to win the check by a large margin.

Thoughts?

Shiloh
2015-06-23, 12:57 PM
Well, if you want to keep a roll involved, how about this:
When hit in combat, you may attempt to parry by rolling an attack roll as a reaction to negate the hit. The hit is negated if the result of your attack roll is greater than the opponent's attack roll. Essentially, the result of your attack roll becomes your armor class for the purposes of that attack. An attempt to parry, successful or not, consumes an attack of opportunity. You cannot attempt to parry an attack if you would be denied your dexterity bonus to AC against it.

This way only adds one roll instead of two.

This is essentially how I have it set up already, just with a few other modifiers put in (which I might want to pull out after seeing how simple it seems written like this; I'll have to look it over some more). There already is only one extra roll; the attacker doesn't re-roll an attack, the defender just makes an attack roll that takes place of his armor class, as you described.


I get that, but my reasoning is that just like with attack rolls, a high strength character can simply smash attacks out of the way, you'll note that I did account for more skilled characters by allowing a character with Weapon Finesse to apply Dex instead of Str on the opposed check. In my proposal Parries are a separate resource from AoO and have no interaction with that feat at all.

If this is to be a Group-wide thing, why not just make it a house-rule and give parries to everybody?
That's how it already is. I'm not sure I understand your proposition? Any character can parry, but a character with the Combat Reflexes feat (who is therefore better at siezing opportunities in combat) can just parry more.


A character wielding more then one weapon or a weapon and shield may parry one additional time for each extra weapon or shield. Shields are especially well-suited for parrying, and gain a bonus on the opposed attack roll equal to the shield's AC bonus.

Expanded/Modified Feats

Deflect Arrows
Requirements Become: Combat Reflexes
Benefit: While wielding a light, heavy or tower shield, or a light/finesseable weapon, you may parry ranged attacks as well as melee attacks.
I really like these suggestions, and when I have more time I'll definitely look over how to best mesh them in.


Improved Disarm
As normal, plus a character with this feat that wins a parry check by 5 or more automatically disarms their opponent as well.
I do see this simplifying the disarm feature, but I feel like there should be another level to disarming. I'm probably overthinking it, though.

These are all excellent analyses that I'll have to look over later (I don't have a lot of time at my computer at the moment). Thanks for taking a look!

SkipSandwich
2015-06-23, 03:59 PM
That's how it already is. I'm not sure I understand your proposition? Any character can parry, but a character with the Combat Reflexes feat (who is therefore better at siezing opportunities in combat) can just parry more.


My 1st proposition was just a couple of feat to replace your original proposition, with the intent of making something a little less complex.

my 2nd proposition was to house-rule that everybody can parry as a normal part of combat, using the right gear and feats just makes them better, it's not as fleshed out so you would be able to easier tweak it to suit your group. I've consistently been leery of allowing characters to make too many parry attempts since I can just foresee two parry-optimized characters spending an hour and a half trying to hit each other and failing because they don't' have enough attacks to make it past the other's parries. Under my current proposition, the only way to get more then 2 parries is to have more then 2 arms.

I'm glad you like the suggestions! The bit about improved disarm auto-disarming is taken from my own house ruleset that for special combat maneuvers that provoke retaliation on failure, you simply automatically perform that retaliation when they fail by 5 or more.

So where normally if you attempt to disarm someone and fail they get to make a free disarm attempt against you, (including roll to hit and opposed roll to disarm), under my house rule the opposed roll is either a 'near miss' with no penalty beyond failure, or a 'critical miss' and the opponent auto-disarms you, no extra rolls required.

Shiloh
2015-06-23, 07:37 PM
After your clarification, your point about parrying with the off-hand makes much more sense. Part of me really wants to keep the skilled-characters-get-lots-of-parries aspect, but another part sees how the system would be harder to break if I went with your suggestion. I'm trying to think of a balance between the two; maybe in line with your suggestion, but an "Improved Parry" type feat could offer one additional parry per round? Or maybe working in something with the TSF feat tree; TWD could lend itself to some additions, or maybe extra attacks with the off-hand could be spent as parry attempts? I know that this could get counterproductive pretty quickly, but I feel that a character who's getting seven attacks in a round should logically be able to parry more than once (twice with two weapons).