02-08-2023, 11:32 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Feb 2023
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Newb question re endless parrying
Hi folks, I’m new to GURPS (but very experienced in other games). I’m wondering if I misinterpreted a rule. It seems as though, as characters get more skilled, the chance to parry just keeps going up until it eventually exceeds 75%. Won’t this result in longer and longer combats as everything gets parried? It just sounds…monotonous.
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02-08-2023, 11:42 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
Parry = (50% x Skill) plus 3.
Skill = 10, Parry = 8 Skill = 18, Parry = 12 Skill = 24, Parry = 15 So if every combatant has higher and higher Skill, then Parry becomes less effective not more. Now if only the characters obtain higher skill and enemies stay the same, then sure the characters get more powerful. Which should be the case. Note that repeated Parries suffer a penalty and some attacks cannot be Parried and some attack might break the Parrying weapon. So a high Parry is not a magical defense that renders a character immune to damage. |
02-08-2023, 11:48 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
Yes, that'll happen if you stick to just attacking at base skill and parrying back and forth forever.
Here are a few ways to break that stalemate: 1. Deceptive Attack. You can take -2 to your attack rolls to inflict a -1 to your enemy's defenses. You can do this as much as you want until your effective skill reaches 10. 2. Feint. Make a Quick Contest of your skill vs. their best combat skill. If you succeed, they suffer your margin of victory as a penalty on their defenses next turn. 3. Use a weapon heavy enough that they can't parry it. Shields are good for this. 4. Flank 'em. If you're behind them or on their non-weapon-side flank, they can't parry. 5. Gang up on them. Consecutive parries are at -4, hammer them until their parry is useless. 6. Use a gun/bow/fireball. Parry this, you filthy casual! 7. If they're using a shield to elevate their parry even further, get it out of the way. Hook it or bash it to bits. They can't parry attacks against the shield and it doesn't get a DB against this either. 8. Grab a flail. See how much they like -4 on every parry, or being totally unable to parry if they're a fencer. Last edited by Sabaron; 02-08-2023 at 12:05 PM. |
02-08-2023, 11:49 AM | #4 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
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02-08-2023, 11:50 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Dec 2016
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
Deceptive Attack, multiple attacks, multiple attackers, runaround attacks and feints are a few ways of decreasing defenses.
Highly skilled attackers will use Rapid Strike and Deceptive Attack to reduce the defenders Parry. |
02-08-2023, 11:52 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
The important counter to high Parry (and high defenses in general) is Deceptive Attack (Campaigns, page 369-370). This allows the attacker to accept a -2 to their attack roll in exchange for imposing a -1 to the target's defense roll - and you can stack it as many times as you want, so long as your final skill doesn't get below 10. So, if you had two characters with Broadsword 30, giving each of them Parry 18, the attacker could opt to take a -18 to attack (dropping skill down to 12, for a ~74% chance to threaten a hit) in exchange for their opponent having a -9 to Parry against that attack, dropping their Parry to 9 (for a 37.5% chance to defend, overall a ~46% chance of a successful attack that gets past the target's defense).
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02-08-2023, 12:05 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
In practice, even duels between highly skilled fighters tend to be over fairly quickly. In my experience, 7 rounds is a long combat, and 15 rounds is a very long combat.
I was running an arena combat game last year where a pair of swashbucklers, each with Rapier-22 or better, challenged each other. There was a fair bit of jumping around, tactical positioning, and all that, but I think it took about 8 seconds of game time for one of the duelists to fail a parry and get skewered. It took a couple of hours to play out, but it was tense and climatic and everyone enjoyed it. At more typical skill levels, individual fights are shorter. A skill-20 fighter with a shield has an effective parry of 15, and would expect to let about 1 in 10 attacks get through. There are many ways to get multiple attacks per action in GURPS, so those 10 attacks can come in 5 seconds or less, especially against an equally skilled fighter. An even more averagely skilled warrior with skill-14 gets hit by 1 out of every 4 attacks, so a fight might last only 1 to 3 rounds.
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02-08-2023, 12:18 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
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Of course, highly skilled warriors tend to have other advantages and abilities that make that analysis more complicated. Luck can be used to force the other guy to reroll his critical hits, Extra Attack allows for multiple attacks per maneuver, Trained by a Master or Weapon Master reduce the penalties for multiple parries or attacks per round, and so on.
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02-08-2023, 12:33 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
When I played in an arena I made a spreadsheet to figure out the best Deceptive Attack to use for a given level of defense. Crit fishing is rarely the best strategy unless you can't get their defense below 16.
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02-08-2023, 12:39 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Newb question re endless parrying
This may not have taken into consideration the chance of critical failures. Lower your skill below 16 and your chance of rolling a crit fail quadruple.
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