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I can't find anything against all of this, as long as the character has uncanny dodge for traps (because you have to be aware of it I believe). The monk thing is interesting, also, a sohei with training in polearms could ride on a mount and deflect up to 8 attacks/round (burning ki or hasted) with a lance in one hand and deflect another (if the creature somehow hits you) with crane style feats, and make 1 AoO. One question, is this for a build, or is this just a thought experiment (like your gunslinger/monk build)?
Could a Duelist full attack the ground/wall/doors/whatever and just say "I give up all of my attacks for parries".
If he could, could he go through a dungeon by only taking 5 foot steps and parrying all the traps (that use attack rolls and not saves).
I don't think fencing with inanimate objects really counts, to be honest. It's not like they hit back or anything. On the flip side, I can't see anything wrong with edging along being ready to counter anything that comes. However, some traps are not attacks - like pitfalls!
Would he get any bonuses he gets for attacking inanimate objects?
I don't see why not, if there are any.
Could a Monk Duelist flurry with an applicable weapon (probably unarmed strike with a feat that makes it piercing, like snake style) and give up attacks for parries? What if he uses Ki for an extra attack?
He can give up any attack for parries, so yes. And he could also blend with Crane Style to get other parries and ripostes (and he gets them free and doesn't have to roll for them). However with Snake Style you are better off boosting AC and letting enemies miss you so you can take AoO's on them.
This is a decent option to a dex-based monk with some intelligence.
Lances can be used with one hand from horseback and it is a piercing weapon; does that make it eligible for the duelist to use for his abilities if he's mounted?
Yes.
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Lances can be used with one hand from horseback and it is a piercing weapon; does that make it eligible for the duelist to use for his abilities if he's mounted?
No.
"Precise Strike (Ex): A duelist gains the ability to strike precisely with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, adding her duelist level to her damage roll."
A lance used mounted remains a two-handed piercing weapon, even though it is used in one hand.
Unless you use the Jotungrip ability of the Titan Mauler.
Design Manager
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Lances can be used with one hand from horseback and it is a piercing weapon; does that make it eligible for the duelist to use for his abilities if he's mounted?
No.
"Precise Strike (Ex): A duelist gains the ability to strike precisely with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, adding her duelist level to her damage roll."
A lance used mounted remains a two-handed piercing weapon, even though it is used in one hand.
Unless you use the Jotungrip ability of the Titan Mauler.
I was actually going to make this same point. It might just be weird rules verbage, but it doesn't look like the lance ever shifts from being treated as a two-handed weapon to a one handed one like an Earthbreaker does with Thunder and Fang, so it probably doesn't work with Parry.
**EDIT** Ooh, although if you're willing to pay a feat tax for Weapon Focus (Klar) and never use a Klar, Thunder and Fang would allow you to use an Earthbreaker with Duelist abilities.
Okay, so I did a quick search and there seems to have been a bunch of threads on this but not with these specific questions, and hey, mythic characters can get parry now as well, so it's a bit more relevant.
Could a Duelist full attack the ground/wall/doors/whatever and just say "I give up all of my attacks for parries".
If he could, could he go through a dungeon by only taking 5 foot steps and parrying all the traps (that use attack rolls and not saves).
Would he get any bonuses he gets for attacking inanimate objects?
Could a Monk Duelist flurry with an applicable weapon (probably unarmed strike with a feat that makes it piercing, like snake style) and give up attacks for parries? What if he uses Ki for an extra attack?
Lances can be used with one hand from horseback and it is a piercing weapon; does that make it eligible for the duelist to use for his abilities if he's mounted?
This sound a bit like the famous DoD 3.0 "bucket of snails" scenario.
Bring a bucket of snails into combat against a huge big baddie. Get within 5' of the monster. Whirlwind attack the snails and take your Great Cleave against the baddie each time. Viola! 200+ attacks in one round.
I would say No to all. My advice, stop gaming the system and talk to your GM.
you are saying I shouldn't play to it's strength?
No, I’m saying you shouldn’t abuse it.
Even besides that, this is NOTHING like the bucket of snails scenario.
No?
Could a Duelist full attack the ground/wall/doors/whatever and just say "I give up all of my attacks for parries".
If he could, could he go through a dungeon by only taking 5 foot steps and parrying all the traps (that use attack rolls and not saves).
No, you are right. this is NOTHING like the bucket of snails scenario. The fighter is attacking a bunch of living creatures and you are attacking the ground in order to abuse a game mechanics, so you are even worse.
You would say No to all that? Then your advice is probably not worth listening to.
The reason I say no to all is not because none of the things can’t be done RAW, it is because it is obvious by the first question that you gaming the system and I suspect that some of the question is put out of context. Perhaps the monk thing is OK, but I suspect in the end that the best thing would be to talk to your GM.
If the advice “talk to your GM” is a bad one, then you have a secret agenda. I’m out of here.
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All cheese aside, I think you are missing one key piece in your dream scenario.
Parry (Ex): At 2nd level, a duelist learns to parry the attacks of other creatures, causing them to miss. Whenever the duelist takes a full attack action with a light or one-handed piercing weapon, she can elect not to take one of her attacks. At any time before her next turn, she can attempt to parry an attack against her or an adjacent ally as an immediate action. To parry the attack, the duelist makes an attack roll, using the same bonuses as the attack she chose to forego during her previous action. If her attack roll is greater than the roll of the attacking creature, the attack automatically misses. For each size category that the attacking creature is larger than the duelist, the duelist takes a –4 penalty on her attack roll. The duelist also takes a –4 penalty when attempting to parry an attack made against an adjacent ally. The duelist must declare the use of this ability after the attack is announced, but before the roll is made.
The ability allows you to forego one attack out of your full attack action, not all attacks. Unless there is some ruling elsewhere that states that you can take more than one parry attempt, the rules themselves would stop you.
Now as a DM I would not allow your scenario because it is in the next county from the spirit and intent of the rules, in my opinion. I do think that parry needs some work and the duelist PrC in general could use some adjusting as it is kind of haphazard, but it should come from fighting defensively and not from cheese.
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So maybe I missed the memo, but why is "spirit of the rules" such a strong argument? Surely, spirit of the game, spirit of the character, etc. should be stronger, even if you consider RAW not to be
...SNIP...
So I just don't see how RAI is a good argument against, well, anything. "The developer didn't intend for this to happen, so I won't allow it!" sounds like a really terrible attitude for a game like PF.
Because the game is designed with a certain sense of flavor for each class, as well as a sense of balance. And while there is a lot of room for creativity and concept building, the idea is to play the game, not break the game. These forums are full of people using selective reading and far reaching interpretations combined with loopholes and oversights to create spreadsheet concepts that not only break any sense of game balance and structure, they also obliterate the basic role play style and setting ideas that are written into the individual character classes.
The flexibility in the system is there to allow the developers and writers the ability to work in a great deal of interesting encounters and future abilities, as well as allowing players the ability to make unique and diverse characters within the basic structure and balance of the game mechanics. The idea, the "spirit" is to be creative and allow for different concepts and playstyles, not to game the system and break encounters by exploiting loopholes and vague wording.
It is perfectly fine to work on efficient or "optimized" concepts without engaging in exploits and gamesmanship. Too many people try to exploit systems to make ridiculous concepts to achieve obviously unintended results, not to be creative, but to break the system and trivialize gameplay... and all that serves to do is take away the main purpose of fun for EVERYONE at the table.
The writes/developers/designers did leave a lot of things vague, that allows for some GM latitude in games, for some creative flexibility, but they also could not cover every single instance because doing so would require constant rewriting of previous material to update it as well as making every book bigger and bigger to write out every bit of legalese that could possibly arise.
The "Spirit of the Game" is the bit of common sense that is expected to be applied to every game that says, "Does this combination/concept seem unbalanced in such a way as to break the game and go far beyond the power level of the encounter/adventure as well as disrupting the immersion/flavor of the game?", if so then it is most likely not what was intended and it certainly is not a good idea for your typical gaming group. If you come to my table/game with a character deigned to game the system and break encounters, I will say no, because the game is not about just one person and anything that ruins the fun for the rest of the group is never acceptable to me.
YMMV,
~Foms
Parrying an arrow trap seems like it'd be within the spirit of the class. At the very least, it's the sort of thing that people could have differing opinions about without being cheesy.
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Parrying an arrow trap seems like it'd be within the spirit of the class. At the very least, it's the sort of thing that people could have differing opinions about without being cheesy.
I don't disagree. In fact I don't disagree that the parry ability is a bit lackluster and could use an overhaul, but using cheese to accomplish things is not the way to go.
That's just it. I don't consider it cheese to use the rules creatively to solve a problem--I consider it cheese to use the rules in a way that gives a character abilities it clearly should not have.
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Yes, I meant the "attack the floor to get parries" bit. I mean come on now, that just screams of "I am attacking the darkness!". Also, as the Duelist later gains the ability to use the Deflect Arrows feat, which -would- cover the arrow trap, then adding in a way to allow the parry to do it is circumventing the rules, not being creative, in this case.
So maybe I missed the memo, but why is "spirit of the rules" such a strong argument?
Because the rules were not written by lawyers with mounds of small-print. They list what you can do, but not what you can't do, and rely on common sense (always an oxymoron) on behalf of the DM to carry it off. Too often on these boards people moan "But the rules do not say I can't do that!" To which the answer is "Indeed not, and they do not say tat you cannot take actions when dead, either."
So yeah. Ultimately your DM has the say on whether this would work, but 5' stepping around the place isn't much fun...
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Exactly. And you can't fight with no-one there to fight, so it'd be redundant to say so...
Personally I have no problem, if you want to make 5' steps every round, for you to be ready to parry with your highest attack bonus any attack from a trap or suddenly revealed foe, within the limits of parry, but that's a DM call. It's not RAW, and you can't expect any DM to just go along with it.
There are rules for attacking squares, for that matter (in case an invisible creature is there).
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And of course the intent of the class and it's abilities are to "Attack the darkness", or in this case the floor? The air? I am sorry, but if you can't see where that becomes a stretch in an attempt to game the system and achieve a result unintended by the class abilities then perhaps I should turn your previous insulting reply to another poster back on you...
Then your advice is probably not worth listening to.
And say that you are probably not worth trying to hold a discussion with.
Cheers.
The intent of the class is to use offensive resources to prepare to deflect an opponent's attack. There's little reason that, given sufficient time, one could not be prepared in such a manner simply because the opponent in question is across the room. That would essentially penalize the duelist for beginning combat further from the opponent.
Similarly, there's no break of the class's spirit by allowing a duelist to prepare a parry against an attack that she knows is coming in the next six seconds. (Note that parry works against any attack, not merely the opponent(s) she targeted during her full-attack.) This really doesn't enter cheese-level until the duelist decides to crawl around the dungeon using 5' steps.
Note that there are already rules for dealing with the parry-stepping dungeoneer--the GM can simply rule that they're hustling. While this normally applies to taking double-moves or move-and-standard actions, a full-round action is essentially a move-and-standard, so it could apply here. After an hour of this nonsense, tell the player that their character is becoming fatigued, the same as if they full-attacked a wall for a solid hour.
I'd let 5' steps and ready actions to parry. I'd also say that you must be 'aware' of an attack to parry (so no parrying traps you just set off etc)
RAW, you can't ready an action to parry. Parry is part of a full-attack, and you can't ready a full-attack.
One would think they would change the duelist's parry after introducing crane style; a feat tree that lets you auto-parry, with all your other attacks intact, which you even can use together with cool duelist things like spring attack or acrobatic charge. One difference being that the duelist has to trade attacks for parries, they should at least be able to trade in more of them.
The best cheesing I can come up with is to forgo one of the attacks during a whirlwind attack, that way if you're fighting one big bad guy and a bunch of mooks, you can skip hitting one of them, and still get both a normal attack and a parry on the badass. Carry whips and use quick draw to in some cases get this parry while hitting everyone surrounding you (rapier to off hand, draw whip, forgo unproficient attack on enemy with cover, 15 ft away, drop whip, change hands on rapier again, continue with a normal whirlwind attack). You may even get this done with the whip in your off hand, as it's not actually attacking.
About RAI, the ones who wrote the parry ability obviously intended that the duelist should be in melee combat for it to work, but as it has not been updated after crane style, it seems like one of its strengths should be to deflect ranged touch attacks as well. RAW, that means if the duelist full attacks his ally, skipping an attack for parry, ending the full attack and using a move action, he will be able to parry that ranged touch attack, having, in effect, just used a standard action to set it up. Or he could just "attack the darkness". This is a ridiculous notion when all you're really doing is nothing, showing that there are a lot of loops to get that parry outside of melee anyway, the most effective on being to simply ignore the duelist parry and go crane style. This should be fixed.
One way to make that parry a better deal would be to make it an attack of opportunity, where the riposte is a part of it (meaning you don't spend two AoO to parry and riposte). This means you can't parry while flat footed (i.e. Against traps you haven't noticed), and it lets you use the acrobaticness of the duelist. Another simple option would be to make it similar to crane style. In duels, boosting AC to the point where the opponent needs a natural 20 to hit where the opposite is not the case will set the duelist up for winning, and not having to choose between fighting defensively and parrying would be very nice.
The best cheesing I can come up with is to forgo one of the attacks during a whirlwind attack, that way if you're fighting one big bad guy and a bunch of mooks, you can skip hitting one of them, and still get both a normal attack and a parry on the badass. Carry whips and use quick draw to in some cases get this parry while hitting everyone surrounding you (rapier to off hand, draw whip, forgo unproficient attack on enemy with cover, 15 ft away, drop whip, change hands on rapier again, continue with a normal whirlwind attack). You may even get this done with the whip in your off hand, as it's not actually attacking.
Unfortunately, "Using a whip provokes an attack of opportunity, just as if you had used a ranged weapon." You'd probably blow your parry on the unnecessary AoO, anyway.
About RAI, the ones who wrote the parry ability obviously intended that the duelist should be in melee combat for it to work, but as it has not been updated after crane style, it seems like one of its strengths should be to deflect ranged touch attacks as well. RAW, that means if the duelist full attacks his ally, skipping an attack for parry, ending the full attack and using a move action, he will be able to parry that ranged touch attack, having, in effect, just used a standard action to set it up. Or he could just "attack the darkness". This is a ridiculous notion when all you're really doing is nothing, showing that there are a lot of loops to get that parry outside of melee anyway, the most effective on being to simply ignore the duelist parry and go crane style. This should be fixed.
This is a decent argument for home-ruling the parry ability. However, like any home rule, it's totally up the GM.
I also think trying to come up with a reasonable home rule is a different thought experiment than trying to get the majority of GMs to agree with a particular reading of the rules, RAW or RAI.
Unfortunately, "Using a whip provokes an attack of opportunity, just as if you had used a ranged weapon." You'd probably blow your parry on the unnecessary AoO, anyway.
Ah, that's a very good point. Normal reach weapons it is, then, if there's someone out there you can opt not to hit. Sadly, Whirlwind attack specifies only opponents as legal targets, so this won't be used on your allies who are flanking the bad guy.
This is a decent argument for home-ruling the parry ability. However, like any home rule, it's totally up the GM.I also think trying to come up with a reasonable home rule is a different thought experiment than trying to get the majority of GMs to agree with a particular reading of the rules, RAW or RAI.
There are indeed a lot of ways to house rule this better, but what I'm really advocating is getting an official patch from the paizo team, but I have no idea how that will happen. Actually, I'm really just venting my frustration over this blatant lack of communication between the makers of crane style and the makers of parry, and I think RAI is a difficult task here, as it seems the intention was to make Parry almost worthless. :)
Parry is quite useless when you consider a Duelist with a High AC has to hit his own AC or better to parry a successful attack and he doesn't know if the attack will be successful.
Parry is quite useless when you consider a Duelist with a High AC has to hit his own AC or better to parry a successful attack and he doesn't know if the attack will be successful.
Yes this is a Necro, but this is something I learned when playing a Swashbuckler : Parry works against enemies who are targeting a lower-AC tan usual, eg. Touch AC.
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What a stupid necro. The thread, itself, is stupid cheese BS... trying to get something for nothing, but in reality, just proving you studied at Derek Zoolander's Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good... the ability says give up one attack, get one parry... not give up multiple attacks to get multiple parries. It is absolutely just the bucket of snails all over again, just stupid-er. This sort of nonsense deserves to die, and stay dead. How hard is it to read the freaking date, anyways?
What a stupid necro. The thread, itself, is stupid cheese BS... trying to get something for nothing, but in reality, just proving you studied at Derek Zoolander's Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good... the ability says give up one attack, get one parry... not give up multiple attacks to get multiple parries. It is absolutely just the bucket of snails all over again, just stupid-er. This sort of nonsense deserves to die, and stay dead. How hard is it to read the freaking date, anyways?
Speaking of trying to get something for nothing, the swashbuckler class compared to the duelist.