Pre-declares a parry. When can it be useful?

[gautxoriak]

What is the purpose??? Is there any situation It is goung to be useful?

I mean... You can choose to parry every attack, and depending of the roll, you can decide If you like to parry or not.

Maybe i have not understood the rule, but I can´t imagine a situation that It would be good to pre-declare a parry.

 

[Deleriad]

What is the purpose??? Is there any situation It is goung to be useful?

I mean... You can choose to parry every attack, and depending of the roll, you can decide If you like to parry or not.

Maybe i have not understood the rule, but I can´t imagine a situation that It would be good to pre-declare a parry.

If you pre-declare a parry the action is available until your next SR this combat round. So you can take an action that you would normally have to use to attack with and save it for a parry instead. E.g. say you're being attacked by two opponents and you want to put everything into defence while you wait for help. Then on your SR rather than attacking one, you reserve your action for your next parry.
E.g.
SR 15 A and B attack you. You parry twice. You have one CA left.
SR 13 Pre-declare a parry.
SR 15, you parry one of A & B.

It can also be useful if you are suspecting an attack but don't know where and when it will happen as it prevents an action from potentially going to waste.

E.g. SR 15 hidden creature does something
SR 13 pre-declare a parry
SR 15 hidden creature leaps out and attacks and you use your pre-declared parry.

 

[gautxoriak]

If you pre-declare a parry the action is available until your next SR this combat round. So you can take an action that you would normally have to use to attack with and save it for a parry instead. E.g. say you're being attacked by two opponents and you want to put everything into defence while you wait for help. Then on your SR rather than attacking one, you reserve your action for your next parry.

And can you choose the action "delay" in order to see what happens?

Do you have to spend 1 action to delay and another action for the action you will do? Or delay is free... and you just spend the combat action in new strike rank and the cost of delaying is only to act later.

 

[Deleriad]

If you pre-declare a parry the action is available until your next SR this combat round. So you can take an action that you would normally have to use to attack with and save it for a parry instead. E.g. say you're being attacked by two opponents and you want to put everything into defence while you wait for help. Then on your SR rather than attacking one, you reserve your action for your next parry.

And can you choose the action "delay" in order to see what happens?

Do you have to spend 1 action to delay and another action for the action you will do? Or delay is free... and you just spend the combat action in new strike rank and the cost of delaying is only to act later.

Don't forget that you cannot delay past the end of the current Strike Rank cycle and if you don't use your delayed action it is lost.

Remember
A Combat Round consists of 1 or more Strike Rank Cycles in which each character gets to act once on their Strike Rank. A character can delay their action until they are the last person to act in the current cycle but they must act in the cycle or else their CA is lost. Defending (as in evading, parrying or counter-spelling) doesn't count as the action.

Pre-declaring a parry lets you save your action for a parry which can happen any time before your next Strike Rank, including in the next Strike Rank cycle. It therefore lets you potentially save an action in this cycle to use as a parry in the next cycle.

 

[PhilHibbs]

E.g.
SR 15 A and B attack you. You parry twice. You have one CA left.
SR 13 Pre-declare a parry.
SR 15, you parry one of A & B.

If someone decides to shoot or charge at you on SR16 of the second time down the SRs, can your pre-declared parry be discarded in favour of an Evade?

 

[Deleriad]

E.g.
SR 15 A and B attack you. You parry twice. You have one CA left.
SR 13 Pre-declare a parry.
SR 15, you parry one of A & B.

If someone decides to shoot or charge at you on SR16 of the second time down the SRs, can your pre-declared parry be discarded in favour of an Evade?

That's a good question. The action has been committed to a parry so you can't get it back to do something different with. I personally would say that if you Evade then you need to spend the usual action on the Evade and lose the action spent on the parry because you just had to get out of the way in a hurry. So, pre-declaring a parry could end up being a bad idea. Makes sense if you set yourself to deal with a goblin when suddenly a wyvern drops on you from above then the time you spent setting yourself up to deal with the goblin has just been overridden by events.

 

[andyl]

E.g.
SR 15 A and B attack you. You parry twice. You have one CA left.
SR 13 Pre-declare a parry.
SR 15, you parry one of A & B.

If someone decides to shoot or charge at you on SR16 of the second time down the SRs, can your pre-declared parry be discarded in favour of an Evade?

That's a good question. The action has been committed to a parry so you can't get it back to do something different with. I personally would say that if you Evade then you need to spend the usual action on the Evade and lose the action spent on the parry

The rules back you up. They say if you commit a parry for later it cannot be converted to any other type of action. As you say if you still have CAs left (or a last ditch Hero Point spend) you could then Evade.