[Lord Twig]

Originally Posted by Shaira

At the risk of muddying the waters still further, I do think the entire Attack / Parry / Dodge system does need to be laid out, explicitly, in one place at some point.

Here is what I have pieced together so far - I know Jason is having a good look at the entire issue before posting his response, so I could be completely wrong, but this is what *seems* to be the likely way it works:

1.) Dodge is treated as an Opposed Roll vs. Attack. You don't use the Attack & Parry Matrix, rather a successful Dodge vs a successful Attack will reduce the success level of an Attack as per Opposed Skill Rolls on p173, with the caveat that the success level of an Attack can be reduced to no further than a Failure (see the Dodge Skill description on p55). Basically, a successful Dodge, no matter how successful, cannot make a successful Attacker Fumble - the worst they will do is simply Miss.

I can see treating Dodge as an Opposed Roll, but the caveat makes no sense. If I am reading the Opposed Roll rule right, you can't reduce an opponent to less than a success anyway, and that is only if you lose. If you win you don't reduce your opponent at all. You won, he missed.

Originally Posted by Shaira

2.) Successful Attack vs Successful Parry. My assumption here is that the Successful Attack rolls its damage and compares it to the HP of the weapon or shield which has Parried. If the damage exceeds the HP of the weapon or shield, one of two things happens:

i.) If the parrying item is a weapon, that weapon breaks.
ii.) If the parrying item is a shield, that shield takes the extra damage to its own HP. If those HP are reduced to 0, the shield then breaks.

In both cases, if there are any damage points remaining, they "go through" and damage the target.

This would be the RQ3 way of doing things, except that weapons would break FAR too often. I can guarantee that my players would never go for such a rule. (Please note that it doesn't matter if it is realistic to have weapons break all the time, having your magic sword break every few battles just sucks.)

The way I ready it a successful parry against a successful attack is a parry that blocks all damage. Period.

Originally Posted by Shaira

3.) Special or Critical Attack vs Critical / Special / Normal Parry. This is where the Attack & Parry matrix needs to be clarified. My assumption is that the dodgy "OR" is actually an "AND". So, on a Critical Attack vs Normal Parry, for example, you get:

Attack does full damage plus rolled damage bonus, and has its special effects based on impaling, bleeding, crushing, etc. I *think* that you then DO NOT match this damage against the parrying weapon or shield's HP, but I'm not sure. In any case armour seems to protect. And, finally, the parrying weapon or shield takes 2 HP damage anyway.

I read it as a successful parry blocks the attack, but takes damage from it. So a Critical vs. Success does 2 damage, Special vs. Success does 1 damage, Success vs. Success of course does none. Against a failed of fumbled parry the weapon does damage to the target of course and in the case of a fumble the target also rolls on the fumble table.

This of course runs afoul the problem of "I parry a critical dagger strike with my Hoplite, it takes 2 damage. I parry Big Club the Giant's swung tree with my buckler it takes... 2 damage.

Originally Posted by Shaira

I *think* that the principle behind the Attack & Parry matrix is that Attack/Parry is being treated as an Opposed Roll. Thus, if you get a Critical vs a Success, what's actually happening is that the Success is being bumped down to a Failure and the Critical to a Special, for the purposes of determining effects. NB: the Successful Parry doesn't actually *become* a Failed Parry, but is simply treated as one for damage purposes, etc.

In the Opposed Rule only the winner's success is downgraded, the loser just failed.

Originally Posted by Shaira

If this is the case, then Critical vs Critical, Special vs Special, and Success vs Success should all have the same result: looking at the Matrix, they basically do. However, when you try to extend the theory further, it starts to fall apart quickly - you can see *similarities* between Critical vs Special, Special vs Success, and Success vs Failure, but that's all they are.

They are the same except Special vs. Special, and I believe that was an oversight. Agree with the rest.

Originally Posted by Shaira

Hopefully Jason will get back with some clarifications on how all this works pretty soon. I'm sure it's actually extremely straightforward - you seem to have SB5 with Criticals and Specials rather than just Specials, so it should be just a question of clarifying the permutations and making sure the whole narration flows from top to bottom. At the moment we have the rules scattered about rather, and some *seem* contradictory (but may not be!).

One thing I will say: having seen the farce which was MRQ's muddy and confusing portrayal of combat 18 months ago when the rules first came out - and the fact that people on the MRQ forums are *STILL* asking today how combat works, I think it's worth making sure this is CRYSTAL clear in the BRP rules! I know the BRP *rules* work fine in this respect - we just need to make sure the *wording* of those rules is completely and unambiguously clear, even at the risk of repeating things.

Cheers!

Sarah

It is unfortunate, but probably true that BRP will suffer enhanced skepticism because of MRQ. Even though they are different companies the claims that MRQ is related to BRP is enough to link them in people's minds. Being burned once before, people will be extra cautious before buying BRP. It really needs to be pretty tight.

I am encouraged that Jason asked for input. It reassures me that the book will be pretty clean when it is finally released.

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

And SB5 / Elric! DID have "impales" for some weapons, which we're even more effective than specials, so I suspect the confusion has arisen from translating that table (which had five levels of skill roll for Attacks ("impale", critical, normal success, normal failure and fumble) but only four for Parry or Dodge) to the BRP table (which has five levels of for Attack, Parry AND Dodge).

And speaking as one of the play testers, I'm kicking myself for not spotting these ambiguities at the time. *sigh* sorry all.

So how did you actually play it in the test? This could go a long way toward clearing up the confusion that those of us who didn't are having.

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

It might be worth going back to teh SB5 / Elric1 approach and having separate tables for spell out the Att vs. Parry and Att vs. Dodge principles.

Agree.

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

What's particularly galling is that (unlike MRQ), Jason / Chaosium haven't tweaked anything substantial at the 11th hour... But you are absolutely right, this needs to be absolutely crystal clear.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

Agree again.

To bring this back around to being a "Typos, Errata, Corrections, and Clarifications" post...

One of the best things about RQ3 was that you never needed to look at a table. You rolled the dice and the result was the result. With that in mind I suggest the following (and I hope I am not being too bold).

I think Dodge as an opposed roll would be fine, as long as it works the way I think it does (and if it doesn't it might still be fine, depending on how it works. ).

So a Dodge that wins the opposed roll means that the attack failed, no damage is done. A losing Dodge that still succeeded on the roll reduces the degree of the attack if it lost by degree (Special vs. Success for example) but not if it tied the degree of success but still lost (or it would reduce it to a success regardless of degree more likely). A Failed Dodge of course does nothing to reduce the attack and a Fumble could make it worse.

For parry I honestly saw nothing wrong with how RQ3 did it. Attacker always rolls damage regardless of the parry (Unless it was a Crit parry of course) and if the damage exceeded the AP of the shield the rest of the damage went through to the defender and the shield was damaged in the process (usually just one point).

Looking at that table in BRP maybe it could be an Opposed Roll as well. So If the defender wins, no damage is taken, the shield is fine. In the case of the attacker winning the result would depend on degree.

Critical vs. Success = Attack rolls damage plus gets special effect depending on weapon type, defender subtracts shield AP from damage (not armor), parrying weapon or shield takes 2 damage.
Special vs. Success = Attack rolls damage plus gets special effect depending on weapon type, defender subtracts shield and armor AP from damage, parrying weapon or shield takes 1 damage.
Success vs. Success = Attacker rolls damage, defender subtracts shield and armor AP from damage.

A Special parry would use the same results, just shifted down one. Critical shifts it down two (to a regular success). A Failed parry of course would be like he hadn't tried to parry at all. A Fumble would require the defender to roll on the Fumble table.

Make sense? Or is it done a different way?