[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Plane

I have no concrete answer for this since they went and took out the explicit note Basic set had for weapons. Despite the comparison they make to that, there are other critical differences AP has (can target extremities or weapons) that make me hesitant to assume it follows Basic Set policy for "free aggressive parry".

To be clear, Aggressive Parry does not state that you make an attack roll, or anything of the like. Rather, it states that, on a successful Aggressive Parry, you roll against skill (with modifiers as described) and, on a success, inflict damage. That's hardly ambiguous, I think.

Originally Posted by Plane

I don't think GURPS has to worry about the endless exchange problem. In most cases you'll just hit a failure wall due to cumulative -4. It might go a bit further for TBAM with their smaller -2 cumulative, but it will still happen.

Endless, no, but with good Parry scores (and using a one-handed skill, where you can keep alternating which hand you use to Parry to slow the accumulation), it can certainly go on long enough to get rather annoying... and potentially silly.

Originally Posted by Plane

That's not even a penalty at all unless you actually have incredibly beyond-DX training in your skill though.

I wasn't saying the penalty for Grabbing Parry was worse than the penalty Aggressive Parry, but rather that it was calculated differently. There are some ST's for which 0.5xST is worse than a flat -1 damage and -1/die or -2 (whichever is worse), there are some where it's better, and there are some where it's equal. For example, a character with ST 10 is at 1d-4 at ST/2 but 1d-5 at -3, a character with ST 20 is at 1d-2 at ST/2 but 2d-4 (which can be simplified to 1d or 1d-1, depending on how you round) at -3, and a character with ST 15 is at 1d-3 either way.