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Do monsters mostly simultaneously attack? PairedWP inquiry 2

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:41 pm
by Tor
Considering how many lack bonuses or automatic defenses, I figure most of them might do this. About the only thing (besides monsters being weak or scared when overpowered) I could see working against that is a monster may not get wise if they're attacking and their opponent refuses to attack in a way which can be simultaneously countered.

I also noticed that a lot of monsters don't start with hand to hand skills, and many of them can't buy them either (limited or no physical skills) meaning they can't acquire an auto-parry. As rare as auto-dodge is, I think I see it more often than an auto-parry.

Can anyone recall ANY monster or species out there with an explicit auto-parry?

This made me realize a major benefit of paired weapons though. Some monsters that can't select HtH or can't select physical CAN still select WP skills. So while they can't get the universal paired WP from a HtH, they can get paired with explicit weapon pairings.

The benefit there, even though paired WP doesn't give you auto-parry, would be the combined parry/attack. This would essentially give you a free auto-parry, since you're spending the same number of attacks to hit the opponent (simultaneous attacks, in this case) while basically getting a free parry along with them. I think paired WP is a much huger step up for those without HtH than for those with them.

I am wondering about the double-parry that paired WP gives. It's a confusing thing which doesn't make much sense in the context of HtH guys with their auto-parries (why does parrying 2 guys matter if you can parry an infinite amount of guys already?).

In the case of non-HtH guys lacking an auto parry, could we interpret this to mean that for every action spend on a parry, you get 1 parry free in that round? Or at least during that turn of attacks within the round?

Re: Do monsters mostly simultaneously attack? PairedWP inqui

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 5:37 am
by Giant2005
No monster or anything gets auto-pary without a H2H skill as far as I know but most monsters do have access to H2H skills. Almost everything gets secondary skills and secondary skills can be used to learn H2H: Basic if the creature is so inclined.
About W.P.: Paired being used to bypass a lack of auto-parry, I think it is a moot issue really. There are two ways to get W.P.: Paired, one is by getting it from a H2H style (The H2H style would give Auto-Parry anyway) and the second is by taking the W.P. as a skill. Taking it as a skill is an option exclusive to Men-At-Arms classes and I am pretty confident that every Man-At-Arms class has a H2H skill as an O.C.C. skill, so all of them have Auto-Parry anyway.

Re: Do monsters mostly simultaneously attack? PairedWP inqui

Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 4:08 pm
by Tor
I'm not sure if Paired WP is always limited to Man-At-Arms, whipping out closest rulebook (Dead Reign page 215) has no limitations in that regard. Maybe that purchase restriction only applies to games (Rifts/PF) which have a MaA classification?