House Rules for parry

I don't think you'll like the result, for the simple fact that it's almost as bad for low-WS defenders as option 1. When the attacker's WS is more than twice the defender's, the defender cannot parry if he must hit at a -2.

Also I don't agree that other weapons would disappear. While being able to parry an opponent's attack is a great thing, here are the limiters:

1. Parry is more powerful and useful during the beginning of campaigns, when attackers have fewer attacks. A successful parry here may well take away all the attacker's effective attacks - later in the campaign, this won't happen as much, since most attackers will have increased Attacks characteristic and/or obtained better off-hand weapons than the free dagger.

2. Clubs/maces/hammers will always retain their usfulness (well, except against Dwarfs, and Orcs with helmets/'ard ead).

In campaigns where DW is not balanced with armor (we have another discussion for that ), sword/club is already most desirable, so no change there.

Ok, very valid and fruitful words Wyldhunt, but I wanna add a few notes.
Also, please check my previous post... unluckily, i was editing it the same moment you were replying...

wyldhunt wrote:

I don't think you'll like the result, for the simple fact that it's almost as bad for low-WS defenders as option 1. When the attacker's WS is more than twice the defender's, the defender cannot parry if he must hit at a -2.

Hum... Or he could be able to hit rolling a 6 and then a 4+ (much like 7+ to hit for shooting)? I could live with that and seems fair, it would be mostly for WS5 vs WS2. Anyway I'm not telling you that this is the right way, I simply said it's worth considering. The main reason follows.

Quote :

1. Parry is more powerful and useful during the beginning of campaigns, when attackers have fewer attacks. A successful parry here may well take away all the attacker's effective attacks - later in the campaign, this won't happen as much, since most attackers will have increased Attacks characteristic and/or obtained better off-hand weapons than the free dagger.

This is the reason why I was telling that I fear increasing the parry chance could be a balance issue... parrying too easily again means all WS4 heroes get sword as a starting weapon and generally have a 4+ chance of parrying that single enemy attack, favoring DW (which we don't want). Later on parry it's still a chance to remove an enemy attack (and possibly one that's more dangerous as stats and gear gets better), which adds to more armour (more money, hopefully!) and blows that can always miss...

In the end, guys, what are you thinking about this Atl2? Anybody got to play with it?

Cheers!!!

Now we're getting to the same page - attempting to keep parry from being too good for mid-WS models, without being too extreme for low-WS and high-WS models.

Our group and others to allow the extended rolls for targets 7 and higher, but I know not all groups do, so I'd like to see if we can come up with something that doesn't rely on extended rolls.

Here's an adjustment of Alt2 with hero's adjusment, but this may be too complex: if attack hit, defender makes an attack roll back at a -2 to hit. The attack is parried if either: 1) the defender's roll is successful, or 2) the defender rolled a 6 (and the attacker did not roll a 6).

If you don't think the wording is too complex, I'll chart out the results.

I think that looks pretty good. You could also reword as:

If the attacker hits, and does not roll a natural 6 "to hit," then the attack may be parried if the defender makes a successful "to hit" roll against the attacker with a -2 modifier. A result of 6 is always a successful parry.

That's actually different, and produces a different graph, with a wierd mathematical artifact of parry's usefulness dropping to 8% when used against a model with an equivalent WS.

Gotta reword if it's so easily misunderstood what I meant. To break this down, I meant that a defender can parry if he makes a successful attack back at -2 to hit (regardless of the attacker's hit roll). If the defender's WS is less than half of the attacker's WS, he can still parry on a roll of 6 if the attacker rolled less than 6.

Of course, we could just drop that last bit and let a parry roll of 6 always block an attack. This is for simplicity of the rule. The only time this would make a difference from what I posted above is when the defender's WS is less than half of the attacker's WS.

Alright then, Alt2v2 (hero's alteration of Alt2 altered a bit further ): if attack hit, defender makes an attack roll back at a -2 to hit: if defender's roll is successful or is a 6, the attack is parried.

With Alt2v2, the parry effectiveness is simple:
--- If the defender's WS is greater than the attacker's, he has a 33% chance to parry.
--- If the defender's WS is equal to or less than the attacker's, he has a 17% chance to parry.

Alt2v2 chance to hit through parry: (<WS Attacker>vs<WS Defender> <Chance to hit through parry>)

1vs1 42%, 1vs2 33%, 1vs3 22%, 1vs4 22%, 1vs5 22%, 1vs6 22%, 1vs7 22%, 1vs8 22%
2vs1 56%, 2vs2 42%, 2vs3 33%, 2vs4 33%, 2vs5 22%, 2vs6 22%, 2vs7 22%, 2vs8 22%
3vs1 56%, 3vs2 56%, 3vs3 42%, 3vs4 33%, 3vs5 33%, 3vs6 33%, 3vs7 22%, 3vs8 22%
4vs1 56%, 4vs2 56%, 4vs3 56%, 4vs4 42%, 4vs5 33%, 4vs6 33%, 4vs7 33%, 4vs8 33%
5vs1 56%, 5vs2 56%, 5vs3 56%, 5vs4 56%, 5vs5 42%, 5vs6 33%, 5vs7 33%, 5vs8 33%
6vs1 56%, 6vs2 56%, 6vs3 56%, 6vs4 56%, 6vs5 56%, 6vs6 42%, 6vs7 33%, 6vs8 33%
7vs1 56%, 7vs2 56%, 7vs3 56%, 7vs4 56%, 7vs5 56%, 7vs6 56%, 7vs7 42%, 7vs8 33%
8vs1 56%, 8vs2 56%, 8vs3 56%, 8vs4 56%, 8vs5 56%, 8vs6 56%, 8vs7 56%, 8vs8 42%

That does look good.

1. The rule is simple enough to implement and remember.
2. The base chance to hit through parry for equivalent-WS models is unchanged from official parry.
3. The effectivess of parry is greater for greater-WS defenders.
4. The extremes of the WS still allow for both decent chances to parry and to hit through parry.

No need to reword it, it makes perfect sense no I just read it in a hurry and wronly assumed that the parenthesized "if the attacker did not roll a 6" applied to all cases, not only cases in which the parry roll was a 6 as well.

AWESOME!!!
Really good job, the result looks fitting in all desired aspects and balanced... looks like we got something here! Or am I missing something? I'm really looking for people to share their comments.

Now, there would be a lot more to define...
What about sword and buckler?
Extend it to sword and sword, or more simply to all cases of dual wielding with 2 parrying tools?
What about Master of Blades and similar skills?

The obvious step seems to be decreasing the penalty to the parry roll. If I'm not wrong, that means re-applying the first tables for Alt2, right?

Cheers!!!

All current sources of Parry re-rolls would still exist - no need to change them. Master of Blades would add 1 to the Parry roll (so that the model would roll to attack with a -1 to hit rather than a -2).

I'd leave sword/sword to your current house rules. Officially, a second sword by itself does nothing to help Parry, which helps preserve the buckler's and spiked guantlet's differentiation. (We've still house-ruled a second sword does allow a re-roll of a parry, but that's us.)

@Myntokk - I actually think it's still better to simplify the rule by Alt2v2. The added complication of "6 except 6" would only come up in a limited number of cases, requiring the defender to have WS5+ vs WS2 and WS7+ vs WS3. In those cases, it reduces the chance to parry for the lower-WS model to 13%, with a 58% chance for the higher-WS model to attack through parry.

Anyone out there to shoot this down (constructive criticism and disagreement does help), or have we hit on something?

This thread is quite interesting. I've been disliking the standard parry rule for several reasons, and have tried some fixes. I'll definitely talk to my group about the (unfortunately named) Alt2v2-fix.

Yesterday we tried another fix, that might make Parrying to good, namely that a fighter with Parry can force his opponent to reroll one successful to hit-roll. I have not done any number crunching on this, but it seems totally obvious that Parrying is alot better in this fix than in Alt2v2.