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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sorites" data-source="post: 5707335" data-attributes="member: 64431">The idea is that some weapons are better than others for defense, but they're still only as good as the wielder. So if you have two fighters wielding longswords and one has a Martial Weapons skill of 2 and the other a skill of 9, the one with the 9 will be better at parrying. So the Parry rating of the weapon is the *max* skill rating that can be added to Parry AC. The newbie fighter would have a Parry AC of 10+Armor+2(skill) and the advanced fither would have a 10+Armor+8(skill). Longsword has a Max Parry rating of 8, so the advanced fighter only gets to add 8 to his Parry AC.As for the death spiral . . . I see what you mean. Since the penalty only applies to rolls, it does not actually lower your AC. You are just as hard to hit when unwounded as when critically wounded, but it is harder to pull off your saving throws, so  you are less likely to stage damage down and will therefore potentially die more quickly. I thought about making saves immune to penalties to fix the problem, but to me, it makes sense that a penalty from being wounded would make it more difficult to Reflex away from an attack. I could see making the Fort save immune to wound penalties. That would mean that Block AC and its accompanying Fort save would never decrease in effectiveness as a result of wounds, and neither would Parry AC and its Fort save.I have playtested it in my head. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />See, my guess is that the hardest thing will be to remember what the attacker rolled. Because the defender has to use that number as the DC for his saving throw. I honestly think the would penalty will be remembered because it applies to every roll while the character is wounded (so it has great consistency). Tracking the condition of each enemy might be a little bit of a pain -- as you say, testing is needed. --One aspect of this that might not be readily apparent is that Parry AC (which is based on weapon skill) can be improved as the character levels up, but Dodge AC (which is based on Dex) and Block AC (which is based on your shield) do not improve, or at least not nearly as much. Also, Parry AC cannot be used against ranged attacks, so at high levels, the archer will have the advantage. If I instituted the idea above concerning Fort, it would mean that Block AC would be the most reliable AC since it never decreases in effectiveness due to wound penalties and it can be used equally well against both melee and ranged attacks. I personally find this nuanced level of detail fine--I think complexity can be enjoyable. I'm wondering if some might find it unbalanced.</blockquote>

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