[quote=Gnarsh;7172]Well, that's the tradeoff, isn't it? In some situations, dodge was innately superior (high damage foes), while in other's parry was (low to medium damage, with better defense against specials and crits). Most of the time, you're going to be better off parrying, but if you're fighting something that will blow right through that shield parry and whack a location off/down, you might just want to dodge. Sure, if the other guy specials or crits, you're probably in trouble, but if he doesn't, you're better off.
Not exactly. A good parry in RQ can stop the high damage attacks. Truthfully, and this has been raised elsewhere. The RQ parry isn't. It is more of a block. A real parry would work against such attack, but is harder to pull off. In RQ terms there is the rule for special and critical parries and that keeps parries ahead. That and the fact that parry chance is usualy much higher than Dodge, especially after ENC.
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Originally Posted by Gnarsh
The other advantage to dodge is that once you get a sufficiently high skill with it, it becomes incredibly useful in conjunction with higher AP armor. Assuming you use the "success levels subtract" method (which we do), then if you succeed at dodging, your opponent can *never* critical you. If you've got good AP on your worn armor, this can be huge. It's quite possible to end up being better off dodging against a critical hit from an opponent, then parrying.
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If you are running that house rule. The subtraction method wasn't part of RQ. You example is a good reason why I'm not thrilled with it in BRP.
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Originally Posted by Gnarsh
How you balance these two will have a lot to do with how your game is set. The balance between worn armor versus ap on shields in your game will be a significant determinant as to which skill is "better", and should be taken into account when deciding what sort of rules to use.
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Quite true. I think that is also true of a lot of the combat options. Just using hit locations makes a big difference, as does strike ranks.