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This is from the Conan RPG (2nd Edition).
A picture of Conan fighting. No dodging, but a parry might happen.
A player may use his character's CMD to parry or dodge. But he has to declare wether he is dodging or parrying.
DODGING: When declaring that he is dodging, a character needs at least one adjacent square to either be unoccupied or be occupied by friendly creatures to be able to dodge effectively. He need not necessarily move into the space as part of his dodge but he does need a certain amount of room to move around in. If at least one adjacent square is not unoccupied or friendly, the character has a –2 penalty to his CMD. Bonuses from the Dodge and Mobility feats are applied when actively dodging.
PARRYING: A parrying character must wield a weapon, shield or at the very least an object of some kind in order to fend off his opponents’ blows effectively. It is possible to deflect blows without having an item in hand; however, if a character is completely unarmed, he receives a –4 penalty to his CMD. Characters with the Improved Unarmed Strike feat count as armed for the purpose of Parrying.
If a character attempts to parry with a weapon with which he is not proficient, or with an improvised weapon such as a bar stool or length of firewood, he suffers a –1 penalty to his Parry Defence. A character from the barbarian class with the Versatility ability suffers no penalty under such circumstances, as barbarians are so adept with improvised weapons. The Games Master is at liberty to apply additional bonuses to a character’s CMD when he uses especially suitable or obstructive improvised blocking weapons.
If a character is using a reach weapon, he can parry an adjacent attacker with it even if he is not able to attack the adjacent attacker. It is not normally possible to parry an attack from a thrown or ranged weapon (an improvised Feat can make an exception to the rule with a shield).
Picture of Conan who has parried arrows with a shield (from Marvel).
I think this is really interesting, I just haven't got anything to say about it.... yet.
Dodging and parrying are already included in the AC rules. That's the base 10 bonus you get. Adding more rolls just increases the complexity of the rules without adding anything of great value in my opinion. If you really want to simulate it, have the defender roll a Defense roll, get rid of the base 10 bonus and use that die roll. If you really want a character who specializes in dodging and parrying, describe their actions that way, fight defensively and find as many dodge bonuses to AC as you can.
That's my advice.
Dodging and parrying are already included in the AC rules. That's the base 10 bonus you get.
Yes! Although, it is pretty abstract, and it does often get missed in descriptions of combat. Especially Parrying.
Adding more rolls just increases the complexity of the rules without adding anything of great value in my opinion.
You may have missed this, but the OP was using CMD, which is a static value like AC. So no extra rolls. But for a number of characters, it would allow skilled, strong, fast characters to go without armor if they were willing to expend actions in their own defense.
I think it is a really interesting idea which helps the "swashbuckler" problem created by Pathfinder's legacy armor rules, without adding any extra rolls.
This makes dodging very good for platemail fighters (high Str and BAB) and very bad for nimble rogues (lower Str and BAB, already have Dex to AC). That seems to run pretty heavily against the intended flavor.
True, but it might work well if you used armor as damage reduction rather than AC. I'd probably apply the armor check penalty as a penalty to dodge and / or parry. It would make the heavily armored character easier to hit, but they'd take less damage. Of course we're basically talking a whole new combat system now, but it sounds interesting!
You're right about the rogues though. Perhaps dodging shouldn't be able to add strength, or parry not add dex to the CMD. I dunno - it's not a perfect solution there.
Also, it might not be a good 'rogue vs fighter' scenario, but it would definitely open up some interesting possibilities for rangers or 'light' fighters like the cad or Lore Warden, for example.