PARRY and RIPOSTE - are they balanced feats?

[Sciurus Rex]

From the swashbuckling supplement presenting the 7th Sea campaign in d20 form, the two feats Parry and Reposte: the former allows a (defending) character to roll against a successful melee attack to avoid the hit; the latter allows an immediate attack response after a successful parry.

(I'm at the office, so I can't recite the details from memory. Sorry.)

The prereqs seem fair enough, and the mechanics/language makes sense to me so there's not any interpretative loopholes to abuse.

But your opinion, please. Is each feat under- or over-powered, pretty much useless, or a fair deal?

 

[Epametheus]

As long as Parry and Riposte are once per round, it's probably comparable to Mounted Combat. I have no clue what the pre-reqs are, but it sounds pretty reasonable.

 

[LokiDR]

Sciurus Rex, could you post details when you get home? I would like to hear the exact pre-reqs.

 

[Apok]

They sound fine to me. Can you do this for every attack made against you or only a certain number?

Personally, I like the parry feat system from Dragon magazine. It's smooth and easy to use and fits right into the existing mechanics with no fuss.

 

[LokiDR]

Personally, I like the parry feat system from Dragon magazine. It's smooth and easy to use and fits right into the existing mechanics with no fuss.

Help out a poor fan who doesn't have a subscription. What is the Dragon Magizine style?

 

[Apok]

Help out a poor fan who doesn't have a subscription. What is the Dragon Magizine style?

Okay, keep in mind I don't have access to my magazines right now so I'm reconstructing this from memory (God help us all...).

The first thing mentioned in the article is that you have two choices from which to start; Parry as a feat or Parry as a new combat maneuver that everyone can use. The former is if you want Parrying to represent special training, the latter if you think it's basic training for anyone who can swing a weapon.

Your basic Parry works thusly; whenever someone attacks you, you may choose to sacrifice an AoO to make an opposed attack roll. This decision must be made before your opponent rolls his attack, IIRC. If you equal or beat his attack roll, you have sucessfully parried the attack. You can only make one Parry attempt per opponent. So, if you've got Combat Reflexes, a 16 Dex, and 3 guys are wailing on you that round, you can choose to Parry one attack from each guy.

There are, of course, certain penalties that come into play depending on the size of the attackers weapon and some other things, but that's the basic gist of it. They also have a bunch of other feats that either eliminate certain penalties or expand on the Parry's basic function (Riposte, parry more than one attack from a single opponent, etc).

Needless to say, if you want to use the parry feats from Dragon mag then I strongly suggest picking up Combat Reflexes since performing a Parry "costs" you an AoO attempt. I like this system since it's much neater than giving up iterative attacks and worrying about different to hit bonuses.

I'll come back and post more later when I get a chance to ponder my Dragon mag tonight.

 

[0-hr]

Honestly, much of the 7th Sea stuff is overly powerful when put into a "normal" D&D campaign. IIRC, that parry feat is usable as often as you like. If it were once per round, or even once per AoO, it would be better balanced. Regardless, it's quite a bit better than the Dragon mag version.

 

[Ravellion]

I thought you could choose after you knew whether he hit or not with Dragon 301s parry feat...

Rav

 

[noretoc]

I have used a version like the one in Dragon for a while now, almost since third Ed came out. I do it a bit diff though. I let you parry one opponent as many times as you have AoO, and you have to take a feat. You can take a second feat to allow you to parry attacks from multiple opponents. And a reposte feat. It seams to me it should be harder to defend againt multiple people than one. Two fighter with parry can make a long battle though. But think of the story it makes. Fatigue rules anyone.

 

[LokiDR]

Thanks Apok.

I will have to look into this for my next campaign: Thief I like the concept a lot better than the duelist flat bonus. Do you find that this takes more time or slows the game?