PhilHibbs

Interesting. So the first parry, which is reduced to 100 in order to reduce the attack by the same amount, sets the chance for the second parry to 80. Hmmm. I'll have to think about that.

I don't think that the boosted skill would not count for the anti-parry mechanic.

It makes splitting your attacks a tricky choice. If you split your 180% skill into two 90s, then find your opponent has an unexpectedly high parry of 150%, you find your first attack chance reduced to 40%, and the second to 60%, and both very likely to be parried. I think that's fair enough though. Don't split until you know what you are up against. And yes, this thread has become more of a general discussion on the mechanics of high skills and I think that's ok.

Also, as written, regardless of facing or SR. There are no rules about parrying attacks from behind or above, or parrying two attacks that happen on the same SR, on on the same SR that you attack on. I'm sure that is intended to be left to the GM, and the facing bonus to attack already takes this somewhat into account. I just had a bit of a knockabout on another thread regarding this - SR are not literally mapped 1-to-1 to real world time. If you always attack on the same SR, your swings are not always precisely 12 seconds apart, and therefore two people who "always" attack on SR5 do not always attack simultaneously. If you want to model simultaneous attacks, you need a rule that models two coordinated attackers making a deliberate effort to act in concert. Maybe something like the aimed blow rule - delay your attacks, take a penalty to hit (probably not as much as half chance), but with a bigger penalty to the target's two parries. That way two or more organized people can more effectively gang up on a higher skilled opponent, without relying on the happenstance of attacks coming in at the same abstracted SR. Personally I do not want such a rule, it's an unnecessary complication and I prefer the more heroic style of fight where a skilled warrior can take on large groups à la Crazy 88.

We are not talking about coordinated attackers. We are talking about people who happen to have similar DEX and SIZ. They could be bumbling incompetents with no notion of coordination, but the happenstance of their SR being the same should not give them an advantage. Having a similar action speed does not give coordination bonuses, there is no such rule, and nor should there be! Fine, so introduce a mechanic for that, maybe something similar to the aimed blow rules (as in delaying the attack, maybe at a penalty, but with a larger parry penalty), but it should have nothing to do with the Strike Rank conincidence. Personally, I think that such things should just be a function of skill. Your higher skill might be a reflection of your ability to time your attacks more effectively. A mechanic that requires people to figure out whether the "coordinated attacks" option is better or worse than the straight -20 per parry isn't something that I feel would add to the flavour of the rules.

That's part of your attack skill, not an arbitrary function of whether you happen to have the same SR as the guy next to you. Maybe the multi-parry penalties should be greater, maybe a mechanic where one swordsman augments the other would work better. Flanking bonuses and/or penalties are another thing, and maybe there should be a parry penalty as well as an attack bonus, although with anti-parry mechanics they are often the same thing.

You can modify what Strike Ranks mean, and introduce a rule to back that up. There is no such rule in RQG, you can attack and parry on the same SR, and if three people are attacking you and you want to parry them all, it makes no difference if they all have the same SR or if they are all different. If you disagree with me, answer me this. If a line of pairs of people with equal SRs are all attacking each other, or if one side all have SR4 and the other side all have SR5, would a video of the fight look like perfect choreography, a copy-and-pasted loop with arms moving in impeccable unison, a gold-medal Olympic Synchronized Swinging performance? If that is how you envisage Gloranthan combat, then by all means apply penalties for multiple simultaneous parries. If your vision of melee is more of... well, a mêlée, then use the RQG rules as written.

Strike ranks are not an impulse system, they're just an ordering mechanic. There are no penalties for parrying two attacks on the same rank.

I strongly disagree with this interpretation. You are saying that whilst the players sometimes enter encounters with their Rune Points diminished, that NEVER happens to the NPCs. Why is this? How come they are always fresh with full RP pools? Did those bandits not need to use any RP in their last raid? Did those broo not get into a fight with each other, is that ogre close to a Cacodemon shrine and was the holy day quite recent? Personally, my approach is entirely the opposite. The bad guys in any scenario tend to start out on a good footing, everything is going right for them until the players showed up. Why? Because they already spent all their Rune Points to make their plans happen! Unless my bad guys are on the offensive and in control of the narrative, they tend not to have whatever the game mechanic is, be it Rune Points, Hero Points, Plot Points, or whatever. Occasionally I might send an assault team against the players, and they might be tooled up with Shield, Flight, Truesword, and a few spare spells to throw, whatever I think might make a fun challenge. But if the players just encounter some schmucks out in the woods, they are just as likely to be low on RP as the PCs are.

I don't ever remember any rules saying that you either could or could not parry flanking or rear attacks, so I think this is unchanged.

I disagree. You can add me to your "stubborn" list if you like.

Sword Trance is the "Crazy 88 Fight" spell.

I guess you're right, as long as you then don't say "sorry you already used your Sneak to augment your Hide, so you can't use it again"! Per-session augment limits should only apply to runes and passions anyway, in my opinion. And I initially mis-read the thread title as "per season"... 🙄

Well it's cumulative -20 per parry, but it isn't limited. If you have 200 skill, you can parry 6 times before your chance starts to go below 100.

I don't think my post added anything so I deleted it.

Shoot it. Sever Spirit. Thunderbolt. A high sword skill isn't god-mode.

Oh. I didn't think that was ever a rule in RQ2, I can't find it.

What is Anti Parry?

If your Humakti doesn't have over 100% skill with a sword then you kind of dropped the ball at character creation, so he should have 200% and be able to split attacks and make one hit at 100% with no chance of parry and a second at 75% against a normal parry.

Game balance has never figured prominently in other RPGs either, as anyone who has played a first level magic user can attest.

I think Greg's usual comment on the subject was "fuck game balance". And the Sandy Petersen school of game design tended towards the dramatic too, the only damage boost in his computer game Quake quadrupled the player's damage. He highlighted that decision in his frequent con seminars on game design - don't pussyfoot around, give the players big toys to play with.

The rules are a little problematic - you need a Rune Master who knows the spell. That's fine for common spells, someone nearby is bound to know Healing 3, but if the last Rune Lord who knows Bladesharp 8 dies, no-one can learn Bladesharp 8 ever again. Maybe that's true, and the knowledge of these unusually large spells is carefully curated; a PC might get a directive from the high priest that they have to learn Bladesharp 8 because the last person in the area who knows it is getting on a bit or is about to go on a dangerous mission. Personally, I liked the mechanic of learning the spell from a cult spirit. A priest summons a cult spirit that knows the spell, and commands it to teach it.

Other characters can get resurrected.

Forcing the use of an augment? I'd never do that. I think it's a terrible idea.

Spells over 6 points are unusual, but not unheard-of. I once had a character with Bladesharp 10, but that was a created-as-rune-level game set in Dorastor. I'd make it a little challenging to get spells over 6, but not onerous. The largest stackable spell I ever cast was Swallow 10 (damn trollkin parried me, so I only ate his maul), and the biggest extension was Flight 3 with Extension 10. The latter was the same Dorastor game, different character.