Director of Brand Strategy
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I know that a parry mechanic was added to the Neverwinter Nights games, and thought it strange that this isn't in the tabletop rules. While a character can go on full defense, there's nothing you can do on an attacker's round to counter an attack. If anything, parrying a blow could grant someone who would otherwise be knocked out or killed a chance to move away or for their comrades to heal them or take out the monster before or on their next turn. How about the following:
Parry: To attempt to deflect a blow that would otherwise hit you you can do the following action on another person's turn once per round. Make an opposed attack roll with your primary weapon (or shield if you have the shield bash feat). If your attack roll equals or beats that of the attacker's roll to hit you, the attack is parried. Regardless of the success of this action, you sacrifice a standard action on your next turn. Parrying a ranged weapon or parrying with a ranged weapon or unarmed is not possible.
BoXM has a Parry feat that seems to work out ok. You essentially designate one or more of your attacks on your turn to parry. If you are attacked in melee between then and your next round you may attempt to parry the blow, a number of times equal to the attacks that you are giving up -so someone with BAB 6/1 could choose to sacrifice one or both attacks on thier turn to pary one or two times-. When an attack is made, you make an opposed attack roll, if you win the blow deals no damage, if you lose, use the attackers roll he already made to check if it hits the target's AC, then proceed as normal.
I have a TWF ranger in BoXM that uses his off-hand attacks to parry, it seems to work pretty well, although at our level of 7, it seems that much of the time if he manages to parry the blow, it wouldn't have hit his AC anyway, so it didn't much matter that he was choosing to parry. However, his attack bonus will rise faster than his AC presumeably, so I expect it will be more useful at later levels.