The Parry Through question

[M. J. Young]

This is quoted from http://swordforum.com/sfu/swordsmanship/parrying.html from a while back:

...a "parry-through" in which when your opponent tries to cut you, you cut towards him - the flat of your sword glances off the side of his, thereby deflecting his oncoming attack, resulting in your cutting into your opponent's body. In other words, this is both an attack and a deflection in a single stroke.

I've been wondering how to do this in my S dueling combat system (available on my site). Best I've come up with so far is a two actions, the first is a parry, the second is the attack. Yet, this doesn't seem to fit (and it seems to have the potential of being a "winning" move, if not carefully explained. Opinions? Advice?

This was raised http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3455">here and killed as off topic for that thread, although not before several interesting solutions were presented. I thought I'd present one.

I would use a sort of relative success model between the attacker and the responder. Each is rolled as an attack. If the attacker's attack roll is better than the responder's, the initial attack succeeds. If the responder rolls better, he blocks the initial attack and lands his own. You would have to decide which way a tie went, but the choices would be both or neither--that is, either both attacks succeed, or the parry succeeds but the followthrough blow does not.

This gives the maneuver significant efficacy in the hands of a character whose ability is much better, but does not permit it to dominate combat between relative equals. It also allows a novice to use it against an expert, but not to succeed very often.

Hope that helps. Obviously implementation depends greatly on the details of your system.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Looks like folks took this issue here in Indie Game Design.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Yeah, I found it today. It takes a while for me to work through the forums, and when I was on Indie Design yesterday it had not yet been posted so I didn't know where it went and started my own.

The part I haven't figured out:

My thread:  "Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2002 8:37 pm    Post subject: The Parry Through question"

His thread:  "Posted: Sat Sep 14, 2002 8:09 pm    Post subject: Parry-Through"

But somehow his post manages to quote mine. I write on the subject of time travel, and I'm curious as to how that one was managed....

--M. J. Young

[Andrew Martin]

Quick, Marty, hide the Time Machine!