Parrying a hit from a large troll... or in TRoS case a Giant or something like that....how do you run the rules, i say no one can parry a hit from a large giant, his strength will ignore the feeble attemt to block his weapon.

With shield you always got the Shields AV to like "see how much it can take".

think there are a hole in the rules here, but anyway i roleplay simply by saying that there are no parrying when the enemy is twice as strong as you. does this sounds fair?

I don't think it's a hole in the rules, just a "duh". That is, unless you want to do a D&D thing. If an elephant were charging you, would you hold up your shield? Prepare to set him aside with your weapon? "I'd better be sure to use the stark this time!"
Use lots of terrain rolls for cover, and lots of voiding and evasive attacks.
Sounds like a good rule. Or maybe you could say that for humans in general anything above a human ST to an extent is impossible to fully block. Perhaps you could let them shield block something like that, but be thown to the ground and lose their CP.

Talking terrain rolls...i don't think i have understood them the right way, maybe you can teach me a little about them..

bergh wrote: Parrying a hit from a large troll... or in TRoS case a Giant or something like that....how do you run the rules, i say no one can parry a hit from a large giant, his strength will ignore the feeble attemt to block his weapon.

With shield you always got the Shields AV to like "see how much it can take".

think there are a hole in the rules here, but anyway i roleplay simply by saying that there are no parrying when the enemy is twice as strong as you. does this sounds fair?

A terrain roll is, well, anything really. Just rolling dice out of the CP vs a TN set by the GM to pull off something, usually a foot maneuver, such as in the book, herding your opponents around.
In this case, the cave troll fight in the LOTR movie could be a good example.
Instead of Sam saying "I spend 5 CP on an overhead block to stop that cave troll's anvil club thingy!" He realizes he's not in D&D, and thinks he'd better get outa there. The clearest way looks to be diving at the troll, going between its legs. GM says terrain roll TN 8. Sam allocates as many dice as he feels would be safe and rolls vs 8 to make the dive. (or maybe that's just a tough full evade)
So Frodo's engaged with the troll. There's a big pillar next to him. He decides he wants to hide o fight fom behind the pillar, because it probably can block the trolls club. GM assigns a TN, probably an easy one, and Frodo accomplishes using the pillar for cover by assigning dice from his CP to pull it off.
Hopefully these examples are ok, but hopefully you get the idea. You can use em for anything.

yes i understand the meaning of them, but i don't understand how to use the table in the rulebook

I think when fighting extremely strong humanoid types or against animals or beasts using natural weapons certain manuvers should be not allowed, like a beat against a dragon or troll.

Someone on another post used a houserule when blocking a blow with a shield, the shield may break and transfer damage. This seemed reasonable as well.

Another thought is when using manuvers which strength is involved, reduce your dice by the difference in strength.

I've always thought strength should factor in the CP. The problem is that some manuvers are agility based, whereas others factor both strength and agility, i.e. an evade is agility, a block involves strength.

The Terrain Table is pretty simple actually once you figure out that there are actually two sections to it.

The first section is rows 1 (Solid,flat) to 5 (Tight Spaces) and is used for whenever you are trying to maneuver in a situation with tricky footing.

You cross reference the type of terrain (say Slippery) with your rate of travel (typically Hurried when attacking) and the number given (in this case 8) is the Target Number for the Terrain Roll. If you fail the Terrain Roll you fall due to the Slippery surface. So how many dice do you want to roll in order to have a comfortable chance of rolling at least one 8?


The second section is rows 6 (2 opponents) to 9 (10+opponents). You use this section when you are out numbered and trying to maneuver to face only 1 opponent at a time. Here you cross reference the number of opponents you're faced with (say 4) with the rate of movement (say Hurried again) which gives a TN of 8.

If you're doing both, facing multiple opponents on a Slippery slope than you need to make 2 Seperate Terrain rolls.

The table would be easier to figure out if those were broken out better.


The only thing that the Terrain rules don't cover well, is whether the roll lasts an entire round or just a single exchange. I've always treated the vs. multiple opponents as effecting an entire round; but the notion under the terrain section that when attacking you're hurried and when defending you're normal would seem to indicate by exchange (how else to determine when you're attacking and when defending since you may wind up doing both)

For my purposes, I'd probably just ignore that line, because I don't really see defence as requireing substantially less maneuver room and foot work than attack...especially not for things like evades.

One possible solution is to allow create a new manouver for strong characters call a Smash attack.

Smash
After an opponent has declared a parry or block to a swing attack the attacker may declare a Smash. This manouver simulates the attempted use of force to smash through the defense. The setup cost of 1 dice must be paid for out of the attackers CP, after which the effective strength of the attack can be reduced by 1 for every additional dice added to the attack. No more than 50% of strength can be added to a smash attack. the smash attack applies to the same location as the original Swing.

Thus your Troll (CP12) has a strength of 9 and declares a downward vertical swing of 8 dice, his opponent, a knight (CP15), declares that he will Block the attack with his shield for 10 dice. The troll then declares it is its intention to smash through the shield giving up 4 points of strength to add 4 dice to its attack, giving it 12 dice in attack and only 2 point of remaining CP. If the attack is successful the troll adds its effective strength of 5 to the margin of success. The shield stopped some of the force of the attack but the troll was able to overwhelm it.

The Thrust version of this manouver could be the Impale.

Just an idea.
Gary

i think its more simple this way, now i have thinked it through.

shields do got an av, normal shields are around 6-8.

1. attack success vs block success, if the defender wins this he adds his success margin to the av of the shield.

2.then the attacker is assumed to have hit the shield, then he takes his strength(+weapon). and see if this overrides the shield av+margin of success on block.

3. if the attacker win this, the shield is shattered and the amount of damage OVER the shield av+margin of success on block. is then transfered to the arm holding the shield.

ofcouse only so this with very big monsters.but its easy.

still this is not a parry but a block.

There are some nice things about your way of doing it, Bergh, as a more competent defender (or luckier!) is less likely to break their shield or have their arm shattered - reflecting a better "deflection" of the attack.

Be interesting how it playtests.

The other thing - I would think a weapon parry should be penalized somehow as well, with different mechanics perhaps. Your parry with an arming sword is most likely to be brushed aside or swung through. Perhaps mechanics similar to the rapier - if parrying a blow by something/one twice as strong or better, the TN goes up by 2-3 points. This could also apply to any manuvers which are strength based. This should not be used against things relatively the same size, i.e. a strong man vs a weak one, but when there is a significant difference in the strength/mass of opponents.

These might seem a bit complicated, but in truth won't be used a heck of a lot unless your party is constantly combatting giants or the like. This would also reflect the differences in combat fighting something much stronger than you.

Maybe the difference in ST over yours could be the activation cost for the parry. Maybe 1/2 the diff.
Could use the same for shield blocks.

What about on the offensive end? Would a beat get a bonus to the strength difference /2? Or would this be to overkill?

I don't think that'd be necessary. There's only so much a beat can do, and half of it is how the reciever reacts to it. Though if said troll laid down a successful beat with his tree club thingy I may throw in a chance of disarmament or a broken sword.
Though thinking about that I don't see a 9 foot tall 7 foot wide troll with a brain the size of a walnut caring about the sword pointed at him enough to use a beat. I think he'd go straight for the victim. A beat just might be a blow that fell short.

Some good points and ideas here, but something worth considering..

A parry, or even a block, is not always a straight stopping maneuver, especially parries. The trick is to redirect the attack, rather than taking it's full force on your weapon or shield and hoping your weapon or shield will hold. This is very often my mistake when I fight, and is something I'm trying to work on.

In this case, you definitely wouldn't want to attempt to stop the attack dead. You would want to direct it one way with your weapon while moving your body away to strike again. In the LotR scene with the cave troll, the heroes were hitting the troll quite often, because it wasn't even bothering to defend. They were simply unable to damage it significantly enough to slow it down. I would see this reflected by the rules as they stand as the troll attacking with it's full CP every round, but simply having natural armor, or an insanely high TO (no real difference by normal rules, but if you're using alternate rules such as 'TO only negates ST' then the difference is important) makes it capable of shrugging off most attacks. The smaller combatants would have to full evade, or use a lot of dice on the defense to avoid getting hit; With massive strength like that, you do NOT want to get hit. Not even wearing mythril.

Ya'll got some interesting ideas, though, and I'm not saying you shouldn't go with them if it feels right to you.. I especially find Gary's idea intriguing. All I'm saying is that, once again, I feel that the rules are sufficient to the task of modeling this.

Wolfen wrote:

A parry, or even a block, is not always a straight stopping maneuver, especially parries. The trick is to redirect the attack, rather than taking it's full force on your weapon or shield and hoping your weapon or shield will hold