Building Better Parries

[Jürgen Hubert]

For my Exalted Conversion, I could use help with building better parry defenses.

How would you price having extra parries every round?

And how would you price it if, on a successful parry roll, you could parry any physical or energy attack, no matter how powerful (though the weapon might shatter in the process)?

[Gef]

I would use Gef's variant of Altered Time Rate, and limit it to parries only, net cost 20 points/level, with 2 levels required to parry bullets, as indicated.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=34291

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

For my Exalted Conversion, I could help with building better parry defenses.

How would you price having extra parries every round?

In what sense? You could use a Kromm build that's somewhere on the forum that use Extra Arm as a base. Personally, I would prefer to do it as an Enhanced Parry limited to only reducing multiple parry penalties.

The choice would depend how you see this interacting with things like AoD(Double) and Cross-Parry. If you took the arm form you would have multiple parries to choose from over an ordinary person, and could even make multiple Cross-Parries. If you took the enhanced parry form you would have the same number to choose from as an ordinary person and you would still only be able to make one Cross-Parry.

And how would you price it if, on a successful parry roll, you could parry any physical or energy attack, no matter how powerful (though the weapon might shatter in the process)?

Take Parry Missile Weapon. As mentioned in Supers, you need both Enhanced Time Sense and Precognition to parry lasers, at the same penalty for bullets (-5). Bullet Parry and Energy Parry are separate hard techniques of Parry Missile Weapon.

[vierasmarius]

I think in 3e you got an extra parry for each Extra Attack, but I may be remembering a house rule. I couldn't find that in 4e, either in the description of Extra Attack, in the Parry rules or in the Martial Arts segment on multiple attacks. Instead (though it's somewhat counter-intuitive) you could add Extra Arms (Only for parrying, -X%) since your Parry "count" is dependent on which hand you're using.

As for Parrying anything, that's a pretty potent power. It would probably be best as Insubstantial w/ Requires Active Defense and various other mods.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

As for Parrying anything, that's a pretty potent power. It would probably be best as Insubstantial w/ Requires Active Defense and various other mods.

It's meant to be potent - these kinds of defenses were originally created to protect heroes against the god-monsters that created the world.

And "Insubstantial" comes close, but there is still the problem of attacks that can affect insubstantial things. These defenses work against anything.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

It's meant to be potent - these kinds of defenses were originally created to protect heroes against the god-monsters that created the world.

And "Insubstantial" comes close, but there is still the problem of attacks that can affect insubstantial things. These defenses work against anything.

The Cosmic modifier may work for that. You'd just need to make sure that enemies didn't have Cosmic Effect Insubstantial attacks =P

I think this issue has come up before, on the various attempts to convert spells like Utter Dome to powers.

[Rasmus Wagner]

GURPS, by design, doesn't have absolute invulnerability or most other Perfect effects. Exalted requires Perfects. Thus, an ugly hack is needed.

Insubstantiality mentions different kinds of insubstantiality. You can use regular insubstantiality for Dematerialized spirits and others, and then use Insubstantiality for Perfection as well. DBs would be able to get Insubstantial as an active defense, still beatable by other Perfect effects. Solars would get Cosmic Perfect Insubstantial.

Another way to go is Super Luck. Say a crit parry can parry everything (cinematic campaign rule), and use modified Super Luck to guarantee it.

Another advantage for Perfect defenses could be Warp + Blink.

[B9anders]

isn't parry anything just precognitive parry at a fairly high level, coupled with a high basic parry in one skill? Possibly with luck, to prevent the odd miss.

Sounds to me like you'll want to require Trained by a master for your Exalted characters, Jurgen (though I don't really know exalted). You are already using Chambara rules for dodge steps, which is generally reserved for TbaM, you also want multiple parries and stuff like precognitive parry is also usually reserved for these.

[B9anders]

also, I think others have tried converting Exalted defences here before. Might be worth a search for inspiration.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Rasmus Wagner

GURPS, by design, doesn't have absolute invulnerability or most other Perfect effects. Exalted requires Perfects. Thus, an ugly hack is needed.

I didn't think the OP wanted something absolute, just something that could be used. Nor did he mention area attacks. He wants to parry things. To parry anything simply requires a high weapon skill, a high Parry Missile Weapon skill, ETS and some form of Precognition.

This let's you attempt to parry anything, but doesn't do anything for attacks that exceed you BL (or BL*2) or that would cause odds of breakage to exceed 6 in 6. Either of those cause the parry to fail automatically (but not weapon breakage itself, your weapon can break and still count as a successful parry).

Since this is Exalted, the Quick and Dirty Weapon Damage rules from p.22 of LTC2 seems like it should be switched on (or allowed via an Extra Option perk). This get rids of the 6 in 6 since you no longer calculate it at all. This just leaves your BL. Raising BL just for the purposes of parries seems trivial enough that I would just called it a leveled perk to raise it for that purpose only. Then again, I might use a Rule Exemption perk and be done with it.