Parrying weapons with Karate/Judo

[Kalzazz]

Force Swords damage the body part or weapon used to parry them except on a critical success, so I always have interpreted parrying weapons as parrying the weapon itself, not the arm. Normal swords not being lightsabres/force swords, when you parry them you do not take appreciable damage from a normal success

However, I find the idea that when an unarmed attack gets parried that its the limb rather than the extremity that takes the hit is very unworking feeling to me. I want people to wear gauntlets not sleeves etc. And I think a horses hooves should protect it somewhat against its hoof strikes being parried.

Parrying with the arm makes sense, but, you usually try to hit someone with the fist rather than the forearm, so this seems a more proper place to get hit.

Also, if you parry someones punch by running their forearm into your sword, it seems equally valid to parry someones knife blow in the same fashion, and only slightly less valid to parry their sword blow thusly

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by Adversary

I'd interpret it as any successful unarmed parry of a weapon is in actuality parrying the arm. That's what I've seen in martial arts training. But getting inside a weapon swing to parry the arm requires good timing, anticipation, etc. In gurps, karate and judo train for this; boxing, wrestling, etc. do not. Hence the penalty--everyone regardless of what skill they are using is trying to parry the arm, but the judo and karate people are better at it. You can't get around this by simply declaring "I am a going to parry the arm instead of the weapon." That is already what you are doing.

So how do I parry a swung polearm at reach 2+?