Active Parrying in Combat


Homebrew and House Rules


So my players and I all come from years of playing Call of Cthulhu, which utilizes the BRP system. We've been playing Pathfinder (and d20 in general) for about a year now, and we love it. One thing that my players really miss from BRP, though, is active defenses. With the d20 system, all of your defenses are passive (they're a number that the opponent is trying to beat). In BRP, when someone hits you with an attack, you are allowed a "dodge roll." You basically just make a roll to see if you avoid the attack, at the cost of your attack action on your next turn.

My players really miss this. They say that actively trying to avoid attacks made them feel more immersed in combat. So I was thinking of giving it back to them in Pathfinder.

Here's what I've thought of:
When an opponent successfully hits you with a melee weapon attack, you can attempt to parry it. You'd make a single attack at your highest base attack bonus, and if your roll + modifiers is higher than the attacker's roll + modifier, you successfully parry the blow and negate the damage. If you choose to do this, however, you forfeit your standard action on the next round.

So what is wrong with this? How will this blow up in my face? I've only been playing for about a year, as I said, and I still haven't grasped all of the little nuances of this game. If you see some gaping, terrifying hole in this home brew rule, please point it out to me.

Thanks!


I feel standard action is too much of a thing to give up. I'd say let it eat up your attack of opportunity, like the Duelist or Swashbuckler does.


Can use the old ConanD20 (i think) where you roll the d20 and add your AC (-10) as a dodge/parry roll instead of having it be a flat numeric target number.


Rathendar wrote:
Can use the old ConanD20 (i think) where you roll the d20 and add your AC (-10) as a dodge/parry roll instead of having it be a flat numeric target number.

That's pretty interesting. I'll have to give that a try. Would be good and still help differentiate that parry ability from the Duelist's.


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Rathendar wrote:
Can use the old ConanD20 (i think) where you roll the d20 and add your AC (-10) as a dodge/parry roll instead of having it be a flat numeric target number.

I seen these rules in unearth arcana, I liked the idea of opposed rolls. Both for defending against attacks (ac) and for casting spells (setting the base spell dc to the roll in place of the 10). Down side is that the extra rolls slow down combat.

I've have an idea for handling counter attacks that came from this. On Your nat 20 Defence/AC/[Whatever you call it] roll your opponent provokes an AoO... If the opponent still hits (in spite of the fact that your AC is 10 higher than normal) and you hit with your AoO then it would be a cross counter. :P

Don't forget to put a feat in to expand it to 19-20.


Remove the +10 base AC. Roll a d20 when you are attacked, compare it to the enemy attack roll. Boom, active defense.


Best part about the Active Defense Rolls suggested above is that if they bog down gameplay too much, you can just use the normal rules by 'taking 10' on your Defense Roll.

My group was especially happy with the critical defense AoO's, which is kinda like what you're looking for in a parry system.


The optional dueling rules have an active parry.


Perhaps instead of consuming the PC's next standard action, you count a dodge/parry as an immediate action - either that round's immediate action, or if already consumed, the one for the next round. Additional dodge/parry in the same round would count against attacks. (so a character with Bab +6/+1 could actively dodge three attacks in a round, using an immediate action and his two attacks)

If that seems too costly, count dodge/parry as free actions, maybe up to the limit of dex modifier, the next one as an immediate action, then against attacks.

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