Parrying unarmed attacks with a weapon

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

But wouldn't a melee attack blocked with a sword be blocked by the flat of the blade? The damage would then be crushing.

Parries are usually done with the flat. Even the rapier's edge*, despite being just a secondary attack* and sometimes mainly to keep it from being grasped it has enough value to take reasonable care of it.

So yeah, you are perfectly right. Almost all parries would be done with the flat. In fact almost all uses except actually trying to injure someone (like getting troops under control) would use the flat. The edge is purely offensive and there are few situations where a blow is coming so fast that you have no time to turn your wrist to use the flat.

*A rapier does not have enough mass to make a lethal blow with the edge. The only exception is when major blood vessels are near enough the surface to cause exsanguination. If the fight is to first blood it becomes a different matter of course.

[AlexanderHowl]

Yes, any attacking while parrying would be a form of Aggressive Parry (-2 Parry, -2 normal thrust damage for the weapon, and it would replace the normal ability of a weapon to damage an unarmed attacker when used). The advantage of an Aggressive Parry for a weapon is that it could damage other weapons, though it may have limited utility against metallic weapons).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I will say that it's unusual to parry an attack by poking at it, so thrust is less likely.

To be honest, the rules for parrying unarmed attacks in Basic are pretty unrelated to reality. The normal way to parry is not specifically trying to cause injury. If you're unarmored, getting your arm pushed aside by an edged weapon may still cut you up, but it's still way less force than a deliberate attack.

Of course, it's also perfectly possible to use a Wait and then attack the incoming limb. That lets you use any attack you want, and is a more realistic representation of armed vs unarmed.

[lachimba]

Mainly I just want to reduce the damage because a monster striking a ST 25 DF Barbarian with a sword is a suicide move (and furthermore, worse than punching ST 1000 Superman) .

I don't believe these rules were built to account for ST 20+ weapon master armed DF PCs with parries in the high teens.

[Mister Negative]

I experienced this as well. I love throwing weird animals/monsters at the PCs, and I disliked either option of 'the monster gets hurt with each parry' or 'the monster's attacks are all treated as weapons'.

I've tried two options.

One is allowing the damage as written, but specifying that the parrying defender cannot use his weapon to attack in his next turn (or, rather, he gets 1 less attack in his next turn). That way, he gets an automatic hit on a successful weapon parry, but doesn't get twice as many chances to do damage just because he's got a sword and the tiger doesn't. This was kind of fiddily in practice.

The other was to specify that you HAD to choose an Aggressive Parry in order to do damage this way. That made it work more the way I wanted it to work. People who were confident in their defenses, or who were fighting a less dangerous foe, might choose to do it, to wear down their inferior foe quickly. People who were facing off against really deadly attacks, or who weren't particularly good fighters themselves, didn't risk the -2.

I'm gearing up to run a DFRPG campaign in the next few months and I'm leaning towards using the second option again. It's more 'crunch' than standard DFRPG, but the penalty and reduced damage make it an option, rather than just a 'free shot' as written.

I also feel like you get the benefit, as an armed defender, of being able to target things like limbs (or heck, heads, vs. biters) without a penalty to hit in these cases, so you're already getting a pretty good deal, even with the -2.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by lachimba

Mainly I just want to reduce the damage because a monster striking a ST 25 DF Barbarian with a sword is a suicide move (and furthermore, worse than punching ST 1000 Superman) .

The normal solution is to give things natural attacks that count as weapons, making the entire issue moot.

[Bruno]

I have used half defenders damage for a long time, because it still allows the effect (which I'm fond of) while reducing the tendency to parry yourself to death.

I have also adjusted the skill roll to convert to damage to be skill -4, but I could also be happy with a penalty to the Parry and no skill roll to convert.

[AlexanderHowl]

I often give animals and monsters the following abilities to allow them to be more effective combatants:

Dangerous Bite (+70%): Cutting Attack 1d+1 (Alternative Attack; Brawling; Melee Attack, Reach C, No Parry, ST-Based, +65%; Variable, +5%) [16]

Dangerous Claw (+95%): Cutting Attack 1d (Brawling; Melee Attack, Reach C-1, Dual Weapon, ST-Based, +90%; Variable, +5%) [3]

Dangerous Bite replaces Sharp Teeth while Dangerous Claw replaces Sharp Claws, so it normally only changes the template costs by 13 points. Since the attacks are ST-Based Melee Attacks that use Brawling, I allow them to receive the normal benefits and penalties of Brawling attacks. Dangerous Claw would allow a ST 17 Tiger with Brawling-15 to make one 3d+1 cutting attack at skill 15 or two 3d+1 cutting attacks at skill 11 (the Tiger could also parry two attacks with Dangerous Claws, though it would be at -3 against any non-thrusting weapon attack). Dangerous Bite just allows the tiger to make one 3d+2 cutting attack at skill 15 without risking damage if its attack is successfully parried.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The normal solution is to give things natural attacks that count as weapons, making the entire issue moot.

How is this normal?

The overwhelming majority of DF Monsters (for example) do not have natural attacks that count as weapons. So its not normal. Then there's GURPS Fantasy and so on when its not normal either.

If what you mean is "I "normally" design monsters with natural attacks that count as weapons" then post that. If you mean something else post that, but your original statement is unhelpful.

[Maz]

I would use the rules for Aggressive Parry from Martial Arts. With a few modifiers based on the last line stating that "Weapon parries against unarmed attacks are essentially aggressive “for free”;".


So an armed parry would not have to be chosen beforehand, and would not suffe a -1 penalty. But it would never happen on a retreating parry (making it less likely for fencing weapons, witch is fitting IMO).

On a success you get a free hit, but you still take location penalties, and you deal thrust-4 damage... this is independent on weapon type, but can be cut or impaling if you want to and the weapon is normally able to do those.