Lord Thousand

one of the differences that i like the most, between old RQ and new brp parryng method is that skill (and luck) is more important than equipment. with the old rules having a weapon with lots of ap was very important to get trough a fight specially with high skills, and a warrior with 95% in shield parry and a great parry divine spell, enchanted iron hoplite with armoring or humakti's gifts could easily beat an elder vampire with 200% attack or even old ralzy with his 350% in greatsword. this is in my opinion not realistic, even with my not extensive combat experience i can easily beat a newby and be easily beaten by a master fighter equipment can aid but, if you both have two weapons, skill must be the important thing this is better represented with brp method since we use brp instead of rq in our games, time taken by combat has become 2/3 shorter with the occasional fight and about the same lenght (maybe a little longer) for great "campaign session ending" battles, this suits well my (and my players) tastes. the idea of using shields like a passive protection leaves me dubious, while it's real that when using a shield it's difficult to being hit on certain locations, it not impossible and certainly it depens not on the quality of the shield (with some exeptions) but more on the ability of the wielder.

i think this is a VERY good idea!

The mixing of sword and wrestling in western martial culture developped to counter the increased efficiency of plate armour, to face a fully armored warrior the best technique was to wrestle him to the ground and then hit him trough the joints of the armour in not heavy armored combat those wrestling techniques are too risky to be practical and are not used in other less selfdefence oriented martail arts like kenjutsu or modern kendo

The GM should viglilate and give consistent malus to dodge if the defender has not enogh room to maneuver, dodge is easier than a parry if you have lot of room around you but is really difficult if you must close to attack or have obstacles or walls around you.

I have recently converted to brp a long lasting campain originated in rq3 and lately in rq4. I am very happy of the results, combats are really much more fluid and dangerous and depend more on skill than equipment. I have abandoned Strike ranks for dex and int rank and find the result satisfactory. I have introduced some house rules: 1) you cannot attack and parry on the same dex rank with the same weapon and any attempt to dodge in the same dex rank of an attack are difficult (1/2%) 2) damage modifier applied to bows are limited by the type of bow 3) if a character is brought to 0 or negative general hp he/she must roll con x5 or die if sucessful he/she must subtract -1hp to general hp and reroll next round, if general hp reach - total hp the character dies 4) crushing special does not break parryng weapon and stuns only if the head hit location is rolled (we use hit locations) 5) the bastard sword does 1d8+1 one handed and 1d10+1 two handed We where considering some special rules for shields and to give the two weapons user a chance of sacrificing all defensive actions to gain a consistent bonus to his attack (+ the skill of the secondary weapon or + the special of the secondary weapon) I apologise for my english... Manuele