Parrying with fists SB 4ed

[saintcraft]

Hi, i wanted to ask you guys if you know what happens if a crittical attack with a lormyian axe is parryied by somebody using their hands to fight. i couldnt find anything about parrying using fists on the rule book. im playing stormbringer 4ed cheers saint

Edited September 21, 2015 by saintcraft
wrong format

[Hexelis]

chop his arm off

[Sunwolfe]

Does SB4e use an "Attack and Defence Matrix"?

Cheers,

[saintcraft]

The attacker declares the attack then roll the dice and if he success then the defender choose if he wants to parry or evade. That's the SB4e system.

Seems rational to chop his arm off xD

I'm open to further discussion tho.

Cheers

Saint

[Al.]

4th Ed is the one version of SB which I don't own so I may be off. 

Older versions had a simple rule that defender's weapon breaks when parrying a critical attack (and vice versa) so the previous suggestions that Parrying unarmed a Critical attack leads to chopped off arm* looks bang on to me

 

* Ooh but what if the pugilist also failed the Fist Parry? Give the unlucky combatant the choice; you can lose both arms or lose one and then take the (double damage and ignore armour) damage as well?

[el_octogono]

Rulebook says parry with weapon or shield. I would only allow fist parries against other fists, or natural weapons.

[Questbird]

Another way of looking at it: weapons not designed to parry take damage from parrying. If your fist (not designed to parry, well metal weapons anyway) connects with a weapon it takes damage. Whoops, though, your 'weapon' hit points is the same as your own. Chop his arm off. Try dodge next time.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Questbird

[smiorgan]

On ‎21‎.‎09‎.‎2015 at 10:12 PM, Hexelis said:

chop his arm off

That would definitely be in the spirit of SB4.

By the way, parrying a *ucking Lormyrian ax with your bare *fists*... is beyond ridiculous! The character should have tried dodge...

In contrast, if the character wants to grab the ax with his hands, I'd ask for a successful dodge AND rolling defender's DEX vs rolled damage on the resistance table. If the defender fails the resistance roll he gets the damage despite the successful dodge. In case of success he can wrestle the ax out of the attackers hands with a STR vs STR resistance roll.

 

 

[Al.]

On 11 March 2016 at 6:01 PM, smiorgan said:

By the way, parrying a *ucking Lormyrian ax with your bare *fists*... is beyond ridiculous! The character should have tried dodge...

But what do we mean by Parry?

Even if we happily (and why shouldn't we it's only a flipping game?!) acknowledge that everywhere Chaosium wrote Parry they probably meant Block rather than what sworspeople would recognise as a Parry. Do I have to Parry the axe head? A big long pole arm has a big long pole (stop it) to Parry. Failing the Parry suggests to me that the Parrier messed up, didn't step in far enough or otherwise mistimed and intercepted the heavy, fast moving axe head and got hit. A successfully Parry against a Critical hit with the Lormyrian Axe could just be the same. But I like the game fiction of Parrying a Critical being really bad.

 

[Atgxtg]

On 3/10/2016 at 1:01 PM, smiorgan said:

By the way, parrying a *ucking Lormyrian ax with your bare *fists*... is beyond ridiculous! The character should have tried dodge...

Noreally. The ide of a parry is to reflect or redirect the attack with the parrying weapon. Usually by coming on contact with the non-business end of the weapon. So someone who was trying to parry a Lorymirian ax with his arm would probably push the half aside with his hand. Risky, but not at all ridiculous. Basically you step in after a a swing and press your arm up against the half to misdirect the next swing. But, of course, you need to time it just right or else it will get very ugly.  

 

How to mirror that in th Strombringer RPG is another matter. 

[K Peterson]

Timing, and... how painful could this approach be? Deflecting a weapon haft with a forearm (I'm guessing) sounds painful at the least, and ulna/radius breaking at worst if you don't have armored limbs. Maybe if you closed with your opponent quickly enough so that he wasn't able to get much momentum behind a second swing.

Modeling it in SB4 would be challenging. In Elric! and SB5 you could use the Spot Rule of closing against a longer weapon with an unarmed parry or wrestle? But, frankly, if you're able to close against a long weapon, why not go on the offensive and start throwing some punches, try disarming the opponent, or tripping him, instead of remaining on the defensive? If the opponent doesn't discard his Lormyrian Axe, he's going to have a tough time choking up on it and dealing much damage unless it has a spike on the end. Or retreating so he's able to extend the distance and get a good swing in on you.

[smiorgan]

22 hours ago, Al. said:

 A big long pole arm has a big long pole (stop it) to Parry. Failing the Parry suggests to me that the Parrier messed up, didn't step in far enough or otherwise mistimed and intercepted the heavy, fast moving axe head and got hit. 

 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Noreally. The ide of a parry is to reflect or redirect the attack with the parrying weapon. Usually by coming on contact with the non-business end of the weapon. So someone who was trying to parry a Lorymirian ax with his arm would probably push the half aside with his hand. Risky, but not at all ridiculous. Basically you step in after a a swing and press your arm up against the half to misdirect the next swing.

Points taken. And yes, it's not really clear how to model it in SB4. Also because nobody has really seen a Lormyrian axe and knows how exactly one fights with it, The description in SB says it's the YK equivalent of a poleaxe, but also that it has double blade, a "massive" (!) counterweight at the base of the haft and that it is swung "as if chopping down a tree".

Ah, and the top half of the haft is encased in iron! Not really fun to deflect bare-handed. 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2016 by smiorgan

[Al.]

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

How to mirror that in th Strombringer RPG is another matter. 

A lesson long in the learning for me; use the rules as written as much as possible.

Just stick together the bits that are already there.

20 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Ah, and the top half of the haft is encased in iron! Not really fun to deflect bare-handed. 

Sure but the difficulty is already covered by the rules

Player has to roll a successful Parry before we are even worrying about any rules interpretation.

Which means that their character has to get in close and block the wielder's arms or the haft whilst they are close to the axeperson's body. When they are moving slowly with very little momentum. Get that wrong and they get hit by a fast-moving hurty bit. A missed (failed Parry) describes getting the Parry wrong, which to my mind covers more than just standing still and getting thwacked

Edited March 22, 2016 by Al.
Bloody homophones; I blame the predictive spellchecker but I'm probably deluding myself there, their, they're, grrr

[Atgxtg]

On 3/21/2016 at 5:38 PM, smiorgan said:

 

Points taken. And yes, it's not really clear how to model it in SB4. Also because nobody has really seen a Lormyrian axe and knows how exactly one fights with it, The description in SB says it's the YK equivalent of a poleaxe, but also that it has double blade, a "massive" (!) counterweight at the base of the haft and that it is swung "as if chopping down a tree".

Ah, and the top half of the haft is encased in iron! Not really fun to deflect bare-handed. 

 

 

While it's true we haven't seen one, we could probably make a decent guess about how to fight with it, as it is similar to other polearms. The counterweight makes sense (it's common to swords). Having the top half encased in iron doesn't make it any harder to parry. The tricky bit would be avoiding the blades. 

Not that parrying it bare handed would be my first choice.