As a replacement for the fighting defensively rule.
You can sacrifice any number of your attacks to attempt to block/parry an incoming attack.
You roll an opposed attack roll and if you tie or beat the incoming attack you successfully block/parry the attack and take:
no damage?
or
transfer the damage from the attack to your weapon or shield.
If you use a shield to block the attack you receive a bonus on the opposed attack roll equal to the shield bonus.
Ex. Bob the fighter squares off against Omar the Ogre.
Bob is badly wounded while Omar is looking peppy. But help is incoming.
Bob goes first, but rather then try to hit Omar and give him another booboo, and then risk getting pasted, he decides to spend his attack to try and block Omar's incoming attacks until help arrives. (or if Omar went first. Bob uses his attack for the round to try and block. then when it is Bob's turn he only has a move action left for the round)
Omar goes and hits Ac-18 and rolls 14 damage Bob rolls an opposed roll as if he were attacking Omar and scores a 19! success!
Bob takes no damage and lives another round.
or
Bobs sword takes 4 damage, (14 dmg - 10 hardness = 4 dmg to the sword)
Thoughts? Would you just negate the attack or do damage to the item used?
There's a class that already has this ability as a main class feature. The swashbuckler's opportune parry & riposte deed. If you really wanted it, you can just take the Amateur Swashbuckler feat. I'm not sure how I feel about giving it to every character in the game. It would likely slow down combat considerably, especially with your rules.
Having it work with shields would be a really cool idea and make shields a bit more exciting and useful than a flat AC bonus.
There's a class that already has this ability as a main class feature. The swashbuckler's opportune parry & riposte deed. If you really wanted it, you can just take the Amateur Swashbuckler feat. I'm not sure how I feel about giving it to every character in the game. It would likely slow down combat considerably, especially with your rules.
Having it work with shields would be a really cool idea and make shields a bit more exciting and useful than a flat AC bonus.
I'll have to look at the swashbuckler ability.
I am not sure it will slow combat down. It's not adding extra attacks or actions, your just using existing actions. You would need to track hp and hardness for weapons/shields though.
I am not sure it will slow combat down. It's not adding extra attacks or actions, your just using existing actions.
Attacks of opportunity don't happen regularly. Attacks of opportunity exist to influence how units maneuver on the battle grid. As a result, AoO only happen maybe once or twice per combat, if at all. If AoO can be used to block attacks, then there's little reason for every unit to use one to block an attack each round. It will always come up during an attack unless the target ran out of AoO. Also keep in mind that you can parry attacks of opportunity as well, complicating them further. Ultimately, it just adds an extra step to resolving an attack and making combat rounds slower.
This change would also devalue armor builds because any character can max out their Dexterity and pick up Combat Reflexes. It's better to get a 20 Dex to block up to 6 attacks per round than to get an extra +3 to your AC.
I am not sure it will slow combat down. It's not adding extra attacks or actions, your just using existing actions.Attacks of opportunity don't happen regularly. Attacks of opportunity exist to influence how units maneuver on the battle grid. As a result, AoO only happen maybe once or twice per combat, if at all. If AoO can be used to block attacks, then there's little reason for every unit to use one to block an attack each round. It will always come up during an attack unless the target ran out of AoO. Also keep in mind that you can parry attacks of opportunity as well, complicating them further. Ultimately, it just adds an extra step to resolving an attack and making combat rounds slower.
This change would also devalue armor builds because any character can max out their Dexterity and pick up Combat Reflexes. It's better to get a 20 Dex to block up to 6 attacks per round than to get an extra +3 to your AC.
Hmm that was not the intention, and I am not sure how you would get there.
An AoO is a free attack triggered by an opponents action. I am not seeing in what common situation you would use an AoO to block/parry. If monster A moves past you and triggers an AoO, what would you be blocking/parrying? Nothing, you would just attack, Now Monster A might decide to use his attack action for the round to block your AoO attack, but then that's it. He's used his attack action on you rather then whatever target he was trying to move to.Combat reflexes shouldn't even come up?
The opportune parry and riposte deed uses an attack of opportunity to block an attack.
With your system, it's a bit awkward because you're losing an action on your turn to do an action on someone else's turn.
It should be noted that when you fight defensively, you're flavorwise spending that turn deflecting attacks.
Hmm that was not the intention, and I am not sure how you would get there.
An AoO is a free attack triggered by an opponents action. I am not seeing in what common situation you would use an AoO to block/parry. If monster A moves past you and triggers an AoO, what would you be blocking/parrying? Nothing, you would just attack, Now Monster A might decide to use his attack action for the round to block your AoO attack, but then that's it. He's used his attack action on you rather then whatever target he was trying to move to.
The point is that a typical fighter type will not draw attacks of opportunity regularly, maybe once or twice a combat. But a typical fighter can attack four or five times per round, potentially triggering a parry on each one.
As a replacement for the fighting defensively rule.
You can sacrifice any number of your attacks to attempt to block/parry an incoming attack.
I've played for a few years with a rule like that. Long story made short, it wasn't used much because in order to parry efficiently, you need a good BAB and when you have a good BAB, offense is usually better than losing your action on parrying (and when you have a good BAB, chances are that the party is relying on you to save their ass in melee).
Characters who would use parry (mainly rogues and wizard-type characters) didn't have a reliable enough BAB to take the risk an would rather attempt to somehow disengage from combat.
I would forget about the weapon-damaging part.
If you mean for players to withhold some of their attacks for parry (as opposed to all of their attacks), then expect longer combat. The mechanics of the rule doesn't bog the game down that much, but combats are stretched by a few rounds. At low levels parry is costly and isn't very reliable; at high level a few extra rounds can mean an extra hour of combat, so there is a very narrow sweet spot where it does work as intended.
honestly parrying might stop early game rockettag.