Tips for bypassing a parry

[King Leonidas]

i need help on how to fight through an enemies strong dex or parry this can also include grappeling as my charcater is quite strong. i have lost an Eye sadly due to this mistake of not being able to bypass a parry.

[mlangsdorf]

In rough order of effectiveness:

1. Be invisible or otherwise undetectable. Most people can't make defense rolls against attacks they can't see and if they can, those rolls are usually penalized. Attacking from behind is almost as good as being invisible.
2. Have more skill, the Extra Attack (Feints Only -40%) advantage, and the Feint technique if possible. Use your extra attack for a feint, win the quick contest, and on the same turn make an attack while the foe has a penalized defense.
3. Have more skill in general and make Deceptive Attacks.
4. Have more skill in general and make Rapid Strikes, or use Extra Attack if you have that advantage, or make an All-Out Attack (Double). Two successful hits means the foe has to defend twice, usually at a penalty. Rapid Strikes work best with Trained by a Master or Weapon Master. Though if the foe retreats, they get the retreat bonus against all your attacks, and All-Out Attack is very risky.
5. Slam or shield-rush the foe, do more damage, and knock them over. After they're prone, they have a defense penalty. The effective weapon weight of a slam or shield rush is usually pretty high, so people with light weight weapons can't parry them or may have their weapon destroyed if they do.
6. Position yourself at your foe's flank, which usually gives them a -2 defense penalty and may cause them to lose their shield DB or prevent them from parrying at all.
7. Use your maneuver on your first turn to Feint, then follow that with an attack on your next turn. If you have access to Martial Arts, strong characters can also use Beats, which are ST-based Feint variant.

My general experience is that grappling is not a good way to get through a high parry. You have to make an attack roll which can be parried to achieve a grapple, so if you can't get through a parry with a weapon, you probably can't get through it without one. Grappling is useful for taking people prisoners or improving your position against heavily armored foe that you can't normally damage with your weapons. Its possible to build a wrestler who turns people into pretzels fairly consistently, but he doesn't get through excellent defenses better than a really skilled swordsman.

[Fred Brackin]

Also, get a bow. A bow for your high ST won't even be any more expensive. You can't Parry arrows without the Parry Missile Weapons Skill and that's totally different from regular melee weapon skill and expensive too.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, get a bow. A bow for your high ST won't even be any more expensive. You can't Parry arrows without the Parry Missile Weapons Skill and that's totally different from regular melee weapon skill and expensive too.

Even absent a bow, throwing weapons are more difficult to Parry than melee ones - -1 for most of them, or -2 for small ones like throwing knives and shuriken (see B376). Another option is to use weapons at the limit of your ST (possibly calling for using the rules from LTC2 to beef up an existing weapon to a higher weight), which can make characters using lighter weapons unable to Parry without risking weapon breakage. Flails and the like are also markedly more difficult - indeed, outright impossible with a Fencing weapon or a knife - to Parry. A morningstar, scaled up to ST 18 (roughly appropriate for an SM+1 character) would I believe be something like sw+4 cr (might be sw+5 cr, currently away from my books), Reach 1-2, Parry 0U, Cost $180, Weight 13.5 lb, ST 18. That's going to risk breaking any weapon that is 4.5 lb or less (which includes the King of Parrying, the Quarterstaff), if they can even Parry with the intrinsic -4 for Parrying a Flail, is still one-handed so you can keep a shield (or another weapon) in your offhand for defense, and deals some pretty heavy damage while it's at it (3d+4 cr at ST 18 - note this gets boosted to 3d+10 cr - optionally converted to 6d-1 cr - if you have Weapon Master and skill at DX+2 or better).

[King Leonidas]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Even absent a bow, throwing weapons are more difficult to Parry than melee ones - -1 for most of them, or -2 for small ones like throwing knives and shuriken (see B376). Another option is to use weapons at the limit of your ST (possibly calling for using the rules from LTC2 to beef up an existing weapon to a higher weight), which can make characters using lighter weapons unable to Parry without risking weapon breakage. Flails and the like are also markedly more difficult - indeed, outright impossible with a Fencing weapon or a knife - to Parry. A morningstar, scaled up to ST 18 (roughly appropriate for an SM+1 character) would I believe be something like sw+4 cr (might be sw+5 cr, currently away from my books), Reach 1-2, Parry 0U, Cost $180, Weight 13.5 lb, ST 18. That's going to risk breaking any weapon that is 4.5 lb or less (which includes the King of Parrying, the Quarterstaff), if they can even Parry with the intrinsic -4 for Parrying a Flail, is still one-handed so you can keep a shield (or another weapon) in your offhand for defense, and deals some pretty heavy damage while it's at it (3d+4 cr at ST 18 - note this gets boosted to 3d+10 cr - optionally converted to 6d-1 cr - if you have Weapon Master and skill at DX+2 or better).

we are in neolithic times so weapon choices are limited. i'm currently using a spear as a quarterstaff at 19 strength. i googled weapon master it seems like a cinematic skill? we are trying to avoid cinematic skills

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by King Leonidas

we are in neolithic times so weapon choices are limited. i'm currently using a spear as a quarterstaff at 19 strength. i googled weapon master it seems like a cinematic skill? we are trying to avoid cinematic skills

Longbow, regular bow and shortbow are TL0 in the Characters book.

Weapon Master is an Advantage rather than a Skill and though it is a prereq to a number of Cinematic Skills WM itself is not marked as anything other than Mental. It is not indicated as either Supernatural or Exotic.

I'd rate Weapon Master: single weapon at 20pts to be worth it even without any Cinematic Skills. Either as a player or a GM I don't think I've seen any Cinematic Skills used but the damage bonus and the Rapid Strike reductions are bread and butter stuff.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by King Leonidas

we are in neolithic times so weapon choices are limited. i'm currently using a spear as a quarterstaff at 19 strength. i googled weapon master it seems like a cinematic skill? we are trying to avoid cinematic skills

Neolithic is going to restrict things, yeah. Something like nunchaku would be makeable (it's just a stick, broken in half and connected together with string, a leather thong, etc), but perhaps a bit difficult to justify*. And, yeah, Weapon Master is a cinematic Advantage, so if you're avoiding those, it's not an option for you. You may want to talk to your GM about possibly making a much heavier weapon for your character - in theory, you could wield up to a 29.5 lb staff (a quarterstaff is ST 7† and 4 lb; an ST 19† one would be ~7.37x the weight), although you'd need to drop that to "merely" 18 lb or so to retain the ability to wield it as a spear (a spear is ST 9, or ST 9† when wielded two-handed) - either one is going to be problematic to Parry (the first one requires ST 13+ to even be able to Parry). Failing that - the GM could well rule such a weapon would require too wide of a staff portion to be gripped - if you're willing to pick up some different skills (or already have them) you could opt for a stone axe and a shield - the axe you should be able to scale up more readily (most of the weight is in the blade, so you can just have one that looks like the typical comically-large axes seen in fiction), and from that base you'd wind up with a 12 lb weapon at ST 19. For ranged weapons, in addition to the bow an option would be the atlatl, although you'll want to check with your GM first if they consider such projectiles as thrown weapons (for only -1 to Parry) or as proper ranged attacks (cannot Parry), considering the projectiles used actually are throwing weapons (the atlatl just throws them a lot harder, for sw damage instead of thr - for your character, that's 3d imp for a dart, 3d+2 imp for a javelin, either of which will drop most foes rather readily).

*EDIT: I just noticed bolas are listed as TL 0 in Characters. IIRC, the Bola Perdida (basically bolas with only a single head, and usable both as a thrown weapon and as a flail) is in Martial Arts and is also TL 0, so a scaled up version of that could be an option. It won't be as good as a morningstar, but it may well do the trick.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Weapon Master is an Advantage rather than a Skill and though it is a prereq to a number of Cinematic Skills WM itself is not marked as anything other than Mental. It is not indicated as either Supernatural or Exotic.

GURPS lacks a symbol for Cinematic, but the last paragraph of Weapon Master states "This trait is best suited to a “cinematic” swashbuckling game. The GM may wish to forbid it in a realistic campaign." WM is certainly worth it without access to cinematic skills and the like (note it's also suggested as a prerequisite for Enhanced Defense), but as it's cinematic itself, it's probably not appropriate for this campaign.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by King Leonidas

we are in neolithic times so weapon choices are limited. i'm currently using a spear as a quarterstaff at 19 strength.

Broadly speaking, your options are grappling (probably no judo, but wrestling should be fine) and thrown weapons; without heavy armor going over ST 13-15 is usually not all that valuable.

[hal]

Page 100 of GURPS MARTIAL ARTS describes rules for Beats, which functions as though a contest not unlike a feint. Difference is - you can use your strength based skill roll vs their Dex or St based skill roll. If you have sword at DX+2, you would instead roll as ST+2 versus their skill.

Not sure what your ST is, but if significantly higher than foe's Dex, go for it.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Broadly speaking, your options are grappling (probably no judo, but wrestling should be fine) and thrown weapons; without heavy armor going over ST 13-15 is usually not all that valuable.

As noted earlier, the issue with grappling is that it still relies on landing a hit (and with ST 19, the character has a pretty decent shot at ending a fight in a single successful hit), and it can be Parried just as readily as a spear thrust or staff swing (and unless doing armed grappling, has the issue that an armed foe can harm the character on a successful Parry). If the character can force their foe into close combat and keep them there without grappling for a round, then on the next round they can initiate a grapple that no weapon with Reach 1+ can Parry (although there are optional rules in MA to let longer weapons do so at a penalty), leaving the foe to rely on unarmed Parry or Dodge.

The best way to overcome a Parry is to avoid it in the first place - attack from ambush or hit them with an unParryable ranged attack ("Parry this you filthy casual").