Defensive Beats? Aggressive Parry with a weapon?

[Plane]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Perhaps a better approach to balancing it would just to make the technique harder. Hard at -6 to skill would approximate a rapid strike, but since this is a parry we call that -3.

Relative to thrust-1 crushing MA65's worst of thrust-4 or thrust-2 plus -1 per die works out to a modifier of whichever is worse: -3 to damage, or -1 and -1 per die.

That can be broken into : -1 either way AND the worst of:
-2 to damage or -1 per die

MA90 gives
"+4 to default for -2 damage or -1 damage per die, whichever is worse"
"+2 to default for -1 damage"

This means that Aggressive Parry's attack basically has a +6 built into it...

Which seems to make sense since it's kind of like the -6 you would get from a rapid strike for taking an extra attack?

The confusing part is of course that Aggressive Parry isn't actually and offensive technique using MA90-91, it's a defensive technique which would be built using MA91-MA92...

That doesn't actually list a component from which you'd build Aggressive Parry, so the best i can figure is taking -1 to a defence gives you a "Special Benefit" of making an undefendable attack at -6, and then you can modify that attack using normal rules. In AP's case, buying off that -6 by taking +6 in reduced damage.

Some other rules which seem to apply built into Aggressive Parry's attack
1) only the body part you parried can be targeted
2) any penalties to defend against a body part apply as a penalty to target that body part (example the -2 boxing has to punch a foot or leg, which normally would not apply)
3) any penalties to defend against a weapon apply to target the weapon (example: the -3 boxing/brawling have to target swung weapons)
4) an additional -3 to target weapons on top of that

Other restrictions to the defence overall:

A) hand offered instead of arm as alternate choice on failed parry to unimpeded attacker
B) cannot retreat

Maybe if you bought off those drawbacks, aggressive parry would cost -3 instead of -1?

TG42's Grabbing Parry seems to support that. It's -2 (-1 worse than aggressive parry) but does not appear to prohibit a retreat.

It has some other restrictions (like can't be used to defend against improvement attempts on existing grapples) but I don't know if Aggressive Parry would be allowed against that anyway.

It has the same basic -3 for weapons with additional -3 against swung for non-judo/karate arts. A neat added option where you can bypass the attacking weapon to grab a limb (penalty based on weapon size) which I don't think Aggressive Parry enjoys. Probably paid for by taking damage (possibly MOS-mitigable) on even successful parries against swung weapons.

The advantage Wrestling/Sumo has there is they can spread that swung-weapon-damage across 2 limbs (less likely to get crippled, maybe result in 0 damage if you had DR, not sure if 1/2 rounds up to 1 or down to 0) but that's balanced out by them losing their normally superior CP for a 2H grapple since you get 0.5xST regardless of hands.