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JKnight wrote:If you have a sword can you parry someone is is trying to hit you with their fist?

If so do you do damage that person's hand? If yes, is that damage normal weapon damage plus physical strength?

What if you have a sword and a dragon tries to bite you... can you parry that attack? If yes, do you do damage to the dragon from the parry? (Assuming you get over the AR in an SDC setting on the parry roll?)

If you do damage to creatures through parry's then it seems any "monster" without a physical weapon is at an extreme handicap. Is that correct?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

JKnight wrote:If you have a sword can you parry someone is is trying to hit you with their fist?

Of course

A common house rule is that in order to parry in this situation, the parrying weapon has to be one handed, and shorter than an average arm length, eg: Sword, short sword, dagger, baton mace etc, claymores and flamberge, no. Due to of course space limitations. Of course if the attacker is attacking from range, eg leap kick or charging, then by all means use the spear to parry the moron.

If so do you do damage that person's hand? If yes, is that damage normal weapon damage plus physical strength?

No, it is impossible to do damage with a parry under any circumstances, except via the "Power block/parry" provided by certain martial art forms.

Again, another house rule is that yes in this case the parry will damage the attacker, but at half damage for that weapon and no strength bonus. Also the parry roll must beat AR etc.

What if you have a sword and a dragon tries to bite you... can you parry that attack? If yes, do you do damage to the dragon from the parry? (Assuming you get over the AR in an SDC setting on the parry roll?)

You can't do damage parrying with a sword, although you could parry the dragon, yes.

Again, a housie rule. Mainly because being able to parry said Dragon with your knife, just sounds really stupid. Any attack that can do more than 3 times more than what your weapon can do at max rolls, cannot be parried without taking at least half damage.

If you do damage to creatures through parry's then it seems any "monster" without a physical weapon is at an extreme handicap. Is that correct?

Yes, they would be at a good disadvantge--which is precicly why you can't.

Rimmer wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

JKnight wrote:If you have a sword can you parry someone is is trying to hit you with their fist?

Of course

A common house rule is that in order to parry in this situation, the parrying weapon has to be one handed, and shorter than an average arm length, eg: Sword, short sword, dagger, baton mace etc, claymores and flamberge, no. Due to of course space limitations. Of course if the attacker is attacking from range, eg leap kick or charging, then by all means use the spear to parry the moron.

If so do you do damage that person's hand? If yes, is that damage normal weapon damage plus physical strength?

No, it is impossible to do damage with a parry under any circumstances, except via the "Power block/parry" provided by certain martial art forms.

Again, another house rule is that yes in this case the parry will damage the attacker, but at half damage for that weapon and no strength bonus. Also the parry roll must beat AR etc.

What if you have a sword and a dragon tries to bite you... can you parry that attack? If yes, do you do damage to the dragon from the parry? (Assuming you get over the AR in an SDC setting on the parry roll?)

You can't do damage parrying with a sword, although you could parry the dragon, yes.

Again, a housie rule. Mainly because being able to parry said Dragon with your knife, just sounds really stupid. Any attack that can do more than 3 times more than what your weapon can do at max rolls, cannot be parried without taking at least half damage.

If you do damage to creatures through parry's then it seems any "monster" without a physical weapon is at an extreme handicap. Is that correct?

Yes, they would be at a good disadvantge--which is precicly why you can't.

Most monsters would dodge, not many are smart enough to be able to parry, if they are smart enough, they would have a weapon. Just IMHO of course.

khyron1144 wrote:Here's an odd, related question:

Is there such a thing as an attacker too big to parry?


Here's what happened: I was playing a True Atlantean Undead Slayer in a campaign with some fairly heavy houseruling anyway (4d6, drop the lowest, and arrange for attribute generation; and anybody who could get their HtH up to Martial arts could actually take a Ninjas & Superspies martial arts form). I was pretty much engaged in a one-on-one duel with a demon. There's about a five point disparity between my Parry bonus (good) and Dodge bonus (adequate for relatively normal fights). In the middle of the fight, the Demon gorws to giant size. I keep fighting. Eventually the Deomn makes what ought to be a good hit, I roll to Parry, it's a good roll and ought to have parried.

Then the GM says, well because of your relative sizes, you can't really parry effectively, consider this a dodge attempt instead. I figure out that it hits because the die roll I made would have been successful with my parry bonus but not my dodge bonus. End result is, I've got a squished Undead Slayer.

I'm not that upset, and I mostly agree with the GM's judgement call, but does he have any rules backing or is it mostly just a GM call?

JKnight wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

JKnight wrote:If you have a sword can you parry someone is is trying to hit you with their fist?

Of course

If so do you do damage that person's hand? If yes, is that damage normal weapon damage plus physical strength?

No, it is impossible to do damage with a parry under any circumstances, except via the "Power block/parry" provided by certain martial art forms.

What if you have a sword and a dragon tries to bite you... can you parry that attack? If yes, do you do damage to the dragon from the parry? (Assuming you get over the AR in an SDC setting on the parry roll?)

You can't do damage parrying with a sword, although you could parry the dragon, yes.

If you do damage to creatures through parry's then it seems any "monster" without a physical weapon is at an extreme handicap. Is that correct?

Yes, they would be at a good disadvantge--which is precicly why you can't.

This answer makes complete sense from a numbers point of view... but I can't help this nagging little feeling that tells me if I tried to punch someone, and they parried my punch with a sword, then I would probably get hurt. The situation in practice doesn't work so hot if you actually do damage with a parry... but there is a certain logic to it which is hard to dismiss.

I don't like the idea of houseruling much as I feel that quickly gets out of hand and creates for unwanted imbalances in the system... but I do like to understand the logic behind the situational rules such as these.

Can anyone explain to me WHY a parry against flesh with a sword would not harm the attacker? Something that would make it easier to swallow and visualize?

Mouser13 wrote:

darebear wrote:I was wondering, how does a monster/bear/animal parry a weapon? Is there some penalty that is applied to the monster's parry roll?

Well, PFRPG it says there is penalty for a person to parry a weapon with-out another weapon. Though I would think most monsters should be considered armed at all times in my opinion.

Voran wrote:A time honored gaming question Our group consensus changed a bit when we played rifts, as it introduced a few things not usually present in a fantasy setting. Though, in some cases we had previous experience with this question in a star wars setting. "What happens when you parry someone's physical attack with your lightsaber"

Houserule wise, we figured if the thing used to parry did damage just by sheer contact (lightsaber, flaming sword, psiblade) then an attacker would take some damage if parried with said object. We usually went with half base dmg, no strength or additional bonuses. As it was a narrative damage description setting, you wouldn't say 'you parried his fist, and chopped his arm off' unless that parry 'damage' took the guy (NPC) to 0 or below in hp/md anyway.

For other stuff, like parrying with a sword, we said that unless you already had a skill that let you do parry-damage, just because you parried with the sword doesn't mean you did damage. It means you could have deflected it with the flat of your blade, the hilt, or the way you held your sword dissuaded the attacker from actually attacking in the first place.