Parrying Rules

My friend brought this up the other day about parrying.

If you are fighting a warband leader in close combat. He hits you model on a 3+. That means you have the possibility of him rolling a 3, 4, 5, or 6. If he rolls anything other than a 6 you have a chance to parry (a 3 would give you a 4+ to parry)

If a dreg (or similar lowly stat model) attacks you and needs a 5+ to hit. He hits on a 5, or a 6. That means that you are only ever able to parry if he rolls a 5. and then you still need a 6.

This means you have an easier time to parry a better fighter then a worse fighter than you.


Anyone ever think about this?

Just wondering what other peoples thoughts were.

siredge wrote:

Anyone ever think about this?

Yes. My personal thought on this was that I don't mind because I prefer not having to parry at all (because let us say the dregg rolled threes and fours) than having to roll sixes. My group though decided that you add the WS into the calculation. So if you are WS 4 against WS 3 (+1) and you hit him on a four, he can only parry you on a six instead of five. That is why now everybody with WS4+ runs around with swords, but noone else. I don't mind much though, both works for me.

I read once about rules for parry that originate from Necromunda.
Parry simply forces the opponent to re-roll attack. Simple and elegant. Attack made by skilled warrior will be harder to parry, because he would still require to score only 3+. Meanwhile, lowly dregs and other runts would not have an unwarranted bonus to their parrying chance. Quite the contrary.

Besides, who would have thought, that attacks made by Aenur (always hits on 2+) would be so easy to parry?

Aureus wrote:

Parry simply forces the opponent to re-roll attack. Simple and elegant.

Not hitting stuff is what always bothers me in the first couple of games when everybody has single attacks only. There hitting or no hitting often is the gambling bit of the game. Would make swords really powerful in the beginning.
BTW do you mean re-roll ALL attacks? That would be WAY to powerful even in late-game.

i like the WS mod into the parry rule idea.

I was thinking (but have not used) the idea to just make Parry a standard roll of 5+ against all hits with a Buckaler giving the re-roll or a +1 (4+). Hits of "6" can not be parried unless a 6 was required to hit.

the way I always looked at it is...

a Low WS opponent needs a good strike to tag a high weapon skill opponent. thus why high rolls are needed. and a good solid hit will be hard to counter.

however

High skilled opponents dont need to put as much effort into tagging poor skilled ones, so even their sloppy swings still manage to get in there. but those sloppy attacks are easy to counter, even by that of a dreg.


thats how parrying plays out in my mind. thus not requiring any modification at all.

Grimscull wrote:

Not hitting stuff is what always bothers me in the first couple of games when everybody has single attacks only. There hitting or no hitting often is the gambling bit of the game. Would make swords really powerful in the beginning.
BTW do you mean re-roll ALL attacks? That would be WAY to powerful even in late-game.

Nope, that would be too much. As I see it, you can parry one attack per round of combat, as it goes with regular rules, and no parrying attacks made with double strength.

I don't think that would make swords too powerful. Mordheim is a city of double wielders (unless some serious home ruling has been made, as per shields and how to make them useful thread), thus only one attack will be parried. Attackers with higher or (more or less) equal Ws still hit on 3+/4+, so its far from impossible to hit the enemy, even if a re-roll has been made.

I really don't see any reason why models with low WS should be rewarded with greater chance to parry - especially that parry supposedly relies on skill Dreg defiantly parries each strike made by mercenary captain armed with halberd or other 2HW - come on!

This is only a proposition though, some additional modifications can be made. Exaple: a natural throw of "6" can't be parried ( because a model has performed an exceptionally masterful/lucky/unexpected strike, that could vex even an expert swordsman)

In our gaming group we house rule the parry:

The attacker roll to hit and add his WS, then the defender roll a dice and add his WS. If the total of the defender is higer then he has parried.

And warriors can parry one extra attack for every WS point over 5.

So a hero with high WS and a sword is a real hero, not a extra-expensive heanchmen XD

The Parry rule doesn't reflect the fact that you can parry *at all* with
a sword, it is more a reflection that it is *easier* to parry with a
sword and then get your weapon back into a threatening position than
with other weapons*.

Every time you roll the dice trying to hit someone and don't roll enough
to hit, then, really, it is most likely because they have parried you.
If you weren't able to parry at all then you would have been *much* more
likely to have been hit.

Compare a warrior WS4 vs a warrior WS3. The grey section marks dodges, and parrys that any weapon could have made; the blue section marks hits, and the red section marks parries that only a sword or other weapon with the 'Parry' ability could have made. Orange marks the section that is auto-parried because the warrior just wasn't skilled enough to hit in the first place.

If you want to think of the parry hits in a certain way then think of it like this: If you only roll a '3' to hit then you have only just hit and a hit that only just hits is easier for *anyone* to parry. If it was against someone with higher skill, then it wouldn't have been a hit *at all*.




*Or as near as makes no difference for this discussion. No smirking from
the people that actually know how to fight - we will be here all day if
we get into technicalities .

Gherma wrote:

And warriors can parry one extra attack for every WS point over 5.

I like that part, without the first that is like ours. You could even go that far to allow three parries for WS 7+ to maybe encourage people further. By the time even most elves get there, other people should have multiple attacks, strenght seven or should be able to field multiple bandmembers against a single elf, all making it harder to parry.

Another simple splution would be to allow parry-reroll if your WS is higher. High-WS guys wouldn't use parry shields anymore, but, hey, they should dual-wield anyway, right?


@ Lord =: that is a very useful explanation imo. Just to make sure: in the top table WS4 hits WS3 and in the botton one it is the other way around?

I have a question shamelessly stolen from Zekk over at warseer, its not solely about parrying but might aswell go here since it does have a big impact on parrying.

Picture this: You (ws4) hit someone (ws3) with a +1 to hit. Is the +1 to hit applied to your chance to hit (making the 3+ required into 2+) or is the +1 to hit applied to your dice roll making a roll of 2 into 3 with the +1 and thus a hit, but more importantly making a roll of 5 into 6 and 6 into 7. Which means in effect that a roll of 5 or 6 cannot be parried by a normal opponent under original rules (you have to roll higher to parry)?

So, are +hit modifiers applied before the roll, to your chance (or roll required), or applied after the roll to the actual dice roll?

=)

Quote :

You (ws4) hit someone (ws3) with a +1 to hit. Is the +1 to hit applied to your chance to hit (making the 3+ required into 2+) or...

No, that one! I like hitting on twos!

Lord 0 wrote:

If you want to think of the parry hits in a certain way then think of it like this: If you only roll a '3' to hit then you have only just hit and a hit that only just hits is easier for *anyone* to parry. If it was against someone with higher skill, then it wouldn't have been a hit *at all*.

That is some explanation, but still not much to my liking.
In my opinion, higher chance to hit reflects fighter superiority over his foe. Theory, that hits made on a roll of 3+ are just clumsy or sloppy doesn't fit.
Sloppy people don't live long in Mordheim, and a veteran swordsman or elven warrior could be called anything (like pansies in case of elves ) but sloppy. I find it hard to imagine, that some greenhorn easily parries a blow, just because he is armed with a sword/buckler. Should he be armed with anything else, an axe for example, he'd be lying in the gutter dead. If he had worn heavy armour, any attack with a proper modifier nullifies its bonuses (and there is a lot possibilities for that), proving that a sword is a better protection in melee for low Ws fighters than armour .

Simply I don't get, why unskilled warrior gains so much more by arming himself with a sword than a skilled one?

Dont read too much into it, the important thing is that the skilled fighter will land more succesful blows (hits going thru defenses) on the unskilled fighter. Thats good enough for me.

I will happily let anyone trade the weapon skill of their character with that of mine if it they are envious of my high chance of parrying vs their high chance of hitting.

Another way to see it, the parry ability of the sword is a crutch of the unskilled warriors. These warriors are not as likely to hit and they know it, so they try to buy themselves a few more sweet breaths of life by putting more effort into parrying. An extremely skilled warrior benefits less from the specific form of the sword and has learned to dodge and block blows skillfully with any weapon of their choice. They are naturally harder to hit and know it. The lucky strike of their unskilled opponent is as much of a surprise as any of their well placed blows.In essence if you want another explanation of why the unskilled warrior is more likely to parry, you may be attributed it to their more defensive stance. They are still much less likely to hit and more likely to loose.

In general I prefer to think of the final dice roll as having already been modified by their relative weapon skills and odds of hitting. As such, a 5 or 6 rolled by either party represents an equally good strike.

No matter how you think about it, the sword does not seem to unbalance gameplay. Therefore, I would avoid complicating any of the rules just cause it seems not quite realistic enough. If a group demands realism there are much more pressing concerns in my opinion. For example, why can't my archers armed only with knives run away from the well armed champion just cause he is within 8"? Even with the optional rule for breaking from close combat this is not allowed. How about, why can a dwarf can normally only run 6" but may flee in terror up to 12"? Why do Slayers, hell bent on self destruction, have a skill that gives them extra parries when they so badly want to die in glorious combat that they wear little more than a cod piece for protection.