D&D 5E 5E has brought this old gmaer back to D&D after 8 years!

[eryndel]

With many arguments ending with, "So what rules are you going to let me play??!? I thought we were playing D&D, not some made-up Dad edition." Usually after I nixed some prestige class he'd found on the (old) D&D tools website.

What?? These aren't typical teenage arguments?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There is the defend action - which lets you force a disadvantage upon your opponent. My Barbarian player used it to great effect in one combat... He raged then defended (at level 2) against a half dozen kobolds... while the rogues sniped at the kobolds.

And you may want to look at the "Defensive Duelist" feat. Proficient finesse weapon wielded? React to add Proficiency Bonus to AC. Sounds VERY much like a parry.

And, of course, the Battlemaster Subclass of Fighter can drop a superiority die for damage reduction using the Parry maneuver, and anyone can buy a superiority die with a feat.

Yeah, I am considering making my Parry maneuver work like Defensive Duelist, only instead of sacrificing a feat and your reaction, you sacrifice an attack. Dodge is useful sometimes but isn't what I'm looking for with Parry--I want something that lets a high-level fighter leverage his advantage over someone with fewer attacks, but if you Dodge you're taking the Dodge action instead of the Attack action so that doesn't work. Today, the closest thing you can get to a parry is to grapple/prone the enemy with two of your attacks and then hit them with the other two, imposing disadvantage on their next two attacks... mechanically that's fine, but fluff-wise it feels more brutish than I'm looking for. I will probably go the Defensive Duelist route.

I will not go the Battlemaster route because it makes zero sense to me that parrying would be something that only certain people can do, only a certain number of times per day. Parrying is the first thing you learn when you learn fencing. It should cost tempo, not resources. I loathe the battlemaster system. (Although, I have a weird affection for the name, due to BattleTech.)