Parrying weapons with Karate/Judo

[McAllister]

1. Parrying a unarmed attack with a weapon currently has a low chance to deal full weapon damage. I believe it should have a higher chance to deal lower damage.

2. Parrying a weapon while unarmed currently suffers a penalty, takes no damage on success, and can take damage to the original target or the parrying limb on failure (attacker's choice). I believe there should be an option that lets people parry unarmed with no penalty, or perhaps even with a bonus, but that causes them to take damage to the parrying limb even on a successful parry (perhaps the parryer takes no damage with a sufficiently high Margin of Success). If I'm wearing bracers but no other armor, or my vitals might be targeted with an impaling weapon, I may well want to take the damage on my arm.

3. The "parry the weapon" vs. "parry the arm" thing really does bear clarification. I think it's reasonable to propose that there's no penalty to parry a weapon in CC, but not safe to assume it.

[TheOneRonin]

Originally Posted by McAllister

1. Parrying a unarmed attack with a weapon currently has a low chance to deal full weapon damage. I believe it should have a higher chance to deal lower damage.

Agreed. Maybe use some variant of the Aggressive Parry damage rules from MA? Having your punch parried by a knife should suck, but not as bad as having it raked across your stomach.

How do you feel about having the successful parry by the weapon wielder do automatic damage, but at base damage -2, or -1 per die, whatever is worse?

Still makes it scary, but not as immediately crippling (unless he is a ST 20 guy and Parries your punch with his Two-Handed Sword).

2. Parrying a weapon while unarmed currently suffers a penalty, takes no damage on success, and can take damage to the original target or the parrying limb on failure (attacker's choice). I believe there should be an option that lets people parry unarmed with no penalty, or perhaps even with a bonus, but that causes them to take damage to the parrying limb even on a successful parry (perhaps the parryer takes no damage with a sufficiently high Margin of Success). If I'm wearing bracers but no other armor, or my vitals might be targeted with an impaling weapon, I may well want to take the damage on my arm.

I like that. Put your limb in the way deliberately. Better to have your arms cut up than your abdomen. And like you said, if you have armored forearms, you can take Knife Slashes all day.

3. The "parry the weapon" vs. "parry the arm" thing really does bear clarification. I think it's reasonable to propose that there's no penalty to parry a weapon in CC, but not safe to assume it.

True. It would be nice to get some clarification from Pete, Kromm, or someone else officially involved in the rules creation.

[vicky_molokh]

Personally, I think the rules for damaging parries should be unified, and differ in modifiers and damage types, at most.
Currently, there's some perverse situation that when parrying an enemy arm, you need a special Technique and deal reduced damage with your own arms, but doing the same with a carried weapon or a Striker (e.g. built-in shortsword, shark snout, hardened shin etc.) is suddenly full-damage and rolls at full skill (except the -4 vs. Karate/Judo).