Help with Shield/Parry/Dodge Examples

[Stan Shinn]

I'm a bit confused about how shields, parry, and dodge works in the new edition. 

Let's say I've got a shield and sword, someone is attacking me, and I want to parry with a shield. What do I roll? And is using a shield considered a parry, and having parried, I can't dodge, is that correct?

Thanks in advance!

[Mugen]

On 4/16/2023 at 7:24 PM, Stan Shinn said:

I'm a bit confused about how shields, parry, and dodge works in the new edition. 

Let's say I've got a shield and sword, someone is attacking me, and I want to parry with a shield. What do I roll? And is using a shield considered a parry, and having parried, I can't dodge, is that correct?

Thanks in advance!

Disclaimer : I have not read the new edition, but nothing in the reviews I read made me think there was any change on this specific topic.

BRP has a long tradition of considering shields as just another type of weapon, only better suited for parrying and defense in general. A notable exception is Pendragon, but it differs in many ways from BRP.

Using a shield to protect yourself in melee is a parry, yes. And you should have a Shield skill to use it, just like any other weapon.

You roll under your Shield skill.

[Barak Shathur]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

BRP has a long tradition of considering shields as just another type of weapon, only better suited for parrying and defense in general

Except in BRP BGB (and UGE by the looks of it). Rules-as-written the only thing it is particularly good at is parrying missiles. 30% for medium shields and 60% for large. In melee, the only benefit is that if you fumble your parry with your shield (which should be a 1 in a 100 chance for most warrior types) and drop it you still have your hand weapon (which parries just as well). Might as well have a backup hand weapon instead. Even better if you have a twohander for the extra damage. Shields are really just extra encumbrance. 
 

I have to houserule them to make them at all useful. Either I penalise parrying with a weapon that you also attack with in the same round, and/or I use the ‘slung shield’ rule so that they can be used simply as extra armour. Preferably both, they were popular historically for a reason. 

[Stan Shinn]

Thanks for all the feedback so far! I think I'm starting to get how shields work. Let me toss out an example and let me know if I got it right.

Sir Celderic (I'll use the 'Knight' statblock on p. 241 of the latest BRP) has these two stats: 

• Long Sword 75%
• Kite Shield 65%

Here's the combat example:

In round 1 of combat, Sir Celderic is standing and parries an attack from NPC #1 and uses his Long Sword to parry, with the skill at his normal 75% rating. The parry is successful, and future parries (even with shields) will be at -30% this round.

NPC #2 attacks, and again Sir Celderic parries with his Long Sword, this time his skill is rolled at 45% (75% minus the 30% prior parry penalty). This parry fails (Sir Celderic takes damage) and the parry penalty is increased by another -30%.

Then, a group of enemy archers in the woods shoots a volley of arrows and one of these flies towards Sir Celderic.  Missiles work a bit differently ("while used in hand-to-hand combat a half or small shield has a base 15% chance to block a missile, a full shield has a 30% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 60% chance. If your character kneels behind it, a full shield has a 60% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 90% chance."). The Kite Shield is a large shield so it has a 60% chance, but Sir Celderic has already attempted two parries, making the parry penalty -60%. Due to the parry penalty of -60%, Sir Celderic cannot roll his 60% large shield defense. If Sir Celderic had earlier declared he was going to kneel behind his shield, then his shield would have had a 90% chance, and be rolled with a -60% parry penalty.

If Sir Celderic survives the incoming arrow, as the new round starts, the -60% parry penalty goes away and combat continues.

Does all this sound correct?

Am I correct that you cannot kneel as a reaction, and you'd have to have earlier declared that you were kneeling behind the shield? Maybe you could have said during the statement of intent that 'If I hear the hiss of arrows, I will crouch down behind my shield' and then you'd have gotten the 90% rating?

From a strategy perspective, it seems that you'd always want to parry with the highest-rated parry skill device (in this case, a Long Sword) unless you are defending against a missile weapon, with the downside being that (a) parrying weapons can take damage, and that a sword could eventually break if you always lead with it to parry, and (b) as Barak mentioned, if you fumble your parry with your shield and drop it you still have your hand weapon with which to parry and attack.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Stan Shinn

[Mugen]

On 4/18/2023 at 3:48 PM, Stan Shinn said:

From a strategy perspective, it seems that you'd always want to parry with the highest-rated parry skill device (in this case, a Long Sword) unless you are defending against a missile weapon, with the downside being that (a) parrying weapons can take damage, and that a sword could eventually break if you always lead with it to parry, and (b) as Barak mentioned, if you fumble your parry with your shield and drop it you still have your hand weapon with which to parry and attack.

Yes. But you can also carry a second sword in case the first one breaks. Even if shields are cheaper, being killed because you rolled 60 when your skills were 65 and 55 is a pity.

In older BRP games such as RQ1 to RQ3, weapons (and shields) had different attack and parry skills, and the main weapon usually had very low parry skill compared to the shield. If you have Attack/parry 75/25 with your sword and 15/50 with your shield, it's a good reason to not use your weapon to parry.

But, on the other hand, I wouldn't go back to attack/parry skills.

 

[Eric L. Webb]

I house rule shields to have some armor. 1-3 points. If you succeed in blocking but fail due to the opposed roll or a special or critical result during the attack they still remove some damage. 

[Susimetsa]

I'd perhaps try to make shields more useful by allowing them to provide an automatic defense bonus (penalty to attacker's attack skill). However, that doesn't really work that well with the "roll under" system, since the players would need to recalculate their critical success thresholds etc. on the fly for each enemy they encounter. 🤔

[Questbird]

A quick and easy buff for shields is to allow them 1 free Parry without the 30% penalty.

It's easy to remember and makes them a bit more desirable.

[Mugen]

41 minutes ago, Questbird said:

A quick and easy buff for shields is to allow them 1 free Parry without the 30% penalty.

It's easy to remember and makes them a bit more desirable.

It's good, but it's likely a fighter will still use his weapon for his first parry unless his Shield skill is superior. 🙂

In fact, the problem is not with the shield itself, but with the Shield skill, and the fact fighters that use it need one more skill to raise

After all, we all agree shields are useful against missiles, even without any skill.

My own preference would be for skills that reflect one's training, and not individual weapon skills. For instance, one might have a Sword plus Shield skill. If he parries with his Shield or attack with his Sword, he'll use his full skill value. If he parries with his Sword, then his skill will suffer a malus. Another one with a "Sword" skill will be able to attack and parry with his sword at full skill, but will have a malus if he uses a shield, as he's not trained with it.

Or it could be done the other way around, with a base "Melee" skill (or maybe a few Melee skills : 1 handed weapon, 2 handed weapon, ambidextry), and weapon trainings as bonuses to that skill. 🙂

 

[RosenMcStern]

On 4/18/2023 at 3:48 PM, Stan Shinn said:

Then, a group of enemy archers in the woods shoots a volley of arrows and one of these flies towards Sir Celderic.  Missiles work a bit differently ("while used in hand-to-hand combat a half or small shield has a base 15% chance to block a missile, a full shield has a 30% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 60% chance. If your character kneels behind it, a full shield has a 60% chance to block a missile, and a large shield has a 90% chance."). The Kite Shield is a large shield so it has a 60% chance, but Sir Celderic has already attempted two parries, making the parry penalty -60%. Due to the parry penalty of -60%, Sir Celderic cannot roll his 60% large shield defense. If Sir Celderic had earlier declared he was going to kneel behind his shield, then his shield would have had a 90% chance, and be rolled with a -60% parry penalty.

Honestly, I would not apply the cumulative -30% to the fixed shiled defence against arrow fire. Regardless of the wording, these percentiles represent a general chance of the projectile hitting the shield rather than some active defence on the part of the target. You mighty object that this makes someone kneeling behind a large shield almost invulnerable to missile fire, but this is exactly what happened with legions or phalanxes: even when showered with arrows, they took very few casualties.

[Barak Shathur]

29 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

Honestly, I would not apply the cumulative -30% to the fixed shiled defence against arrow fire. Regardless of the wording, these percentiles represent a general chance of the projectile hitting the shield rather than some active defence on the part of the target. You mighty object that this makes someone kneeling behind a large shield almost invulnerable to missile fire, but this is exactly what happened with legions or phalanxes: even when showered with arrows, they took very few casualties.

I agree here, I think the cumulative -30% only applies to the active parrying of melee attacks. 

[Stan Shinn]

I like the shield not suffering the -30% parry penalty, but on the other hand, I keep wondering if there is some way to make the 'kneel behind your shield' action have some sort of ripple effect. In D&D 5e for example, that would be going prone, and cost movement to rise from prone. Wondering if I should have some rule like once you've knelt behind a shield you forgo all further movement this round or something.