Parrying

[BlueCorpse]

I notice a lot of people complaining about parrying being useless and this seems to me to be due to the low AP of most weapons.

The combat table suggests that a parry will block AP or 2xAP points of damage. What occurs to me, and I'm sure I've seen this in previous versions of BRP, that after this value is exceeded the remaining damage should come from the parrying items hit points before carrying through.

This will make some items much better at parrying, at least once or twice before they get broken.

Also are there any rules for reducing AP as armor gets defeated. I seem to remember RQ3 reduced AP by one every time it was successfully penetrated in a single blow.

 

[Loz]

I think for bronze-age weapons what you suggest works fine. But for steel weapons, or weapons of a later era, they don't break anywhere near as often as one might think. Lose an edge, yes, but break very rarely (and which is accounted for in the fumble tables).

 

[BlueCorpse]

I think for bronze-age weapons what you suggest works fine. But for steel weapons, or weapons of a later era, they don't break anywhere near as often as one might think. Lose an edge, yes, but break very rarely (and which is accounted for in the fumble tables).

I see what you mean. My first thought on this was to simply adjust the AP/HP for weapoins made of different materials buti then realised you would end up with some modern weapons with ridiculously high values. The problem would then appear to be that a weapon would stop huge amounts of damage and while the weapon probably wouldn't break there would be some threshold where it would carry through to the target anyway.

If HP aren't used in this way then when would they be used. Can you attack the weapon itself. Does it weork the other way where when the AP is exceeded the damage carries through to the target but the parrying item also looses hit points. Maybe just 1 or maybe 1 per 10 points carried through etc. This would still allow for items to be worn down rather than just breaking on a fumble.

 

[Rasta]

In the official rules, I believe you can only take damage on a fumble or if you do a percise attack (-40) to the weapon.

There are various house rules that people have discussed on here. One variation is that weapons also take damage if a normal success blocks a critical attack.

Another variation says that if the block was a critical as well, BOTH weapons take damage.

You can check out the discussions on "Weapons Being Damaged" thread.