A less transparent Feint?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by kenclary

Feints are not illusion spells. They won't convince you that someone has stepped in when they haven't, or that they've hit you when they haven't.

A Feint that you are able to recognize as a Feint and have the time to react to and negate is a failed Feint. Because you're able to react to and negate it. Realistically, a successful feint is something that you either failed to recognize as such until the follow-up had already played out, or it's something you did recognize as such right after falling for it, but that you didn't have the ability to fully compensate for before the follow-up arrived.

Originally Posted by kenclary

If you make the target choose to defend or not before the success of the attack is determined, then every miss becomes a successful feint. This is poor game balance, and overly encourages attack-spamming.

You apparently missed the bit where, if you succeed at your defense and the attacker missed with their attack, you don't use up a defense at all. The actual houserule back when I proposed it even had an option to make you not use up your defense even if you failed at your defense, IIRC so long as you didn't fail by more than the attacker did (so if they had MoF 2 on their attack, you don't use up a defense if roll MoF 2 or better). I could be misremembering, it was quite some time ago I was thinking about this, but that's where I'd go with it currently. This does mean that it's possible for a failed attack to cause the target to use up a defense, but it's by no means guaranteed.

Originally Posted by kenclary

Similarly, if every Feint can also "waste" a defense, then the mechanics are "doubled up": someone will waste a parry (and have a later penalty that round) and have a feint penalty.

My suggestion wasn't for Feint to actually use up a defense - rather, the target still declares their defense and appears to roll for it, but the GM actually uses that roll as their roll to resist the Feint, and then either tells the player that it was a failed feint (if they won or tied) or that it was a failed attack and they didn't actually use up their defense (if they lost).