Talk:Parry

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Contents 1 Deflecting arrows 2 Pros and cons 3 Sneak attacks 4 Knockdown 5 How many ripostes? 6 More parry notes 7 Conflicting observations 8 Parry as autofollow

[edit] Deflecting arrows

Random note about parry, that's not explained as far as I've read.. it's got something to do with deflecting arrow's, quarrels, darts, bullet's and what not. Throw a parry fighter up against an archer sometime. You'll see what I mean. --Mask January 26, 2006

• are you sure you don't have the Deflect arrows feat. it will attempt to deflect a incoming ranged attack when not flatfotted. --CID-78 03:29, 26 January 2006 (PST)

• AFAIK there's a special mechanic in the game that causes the combat log to say "parried" when a ranged attack misses that would have hit if not for your Shield AC. This message is unrelated to the parry skill. --Countess Terra 15:36, 26 January 2006 (PST)

[edit] Pros and cons

Pros: The graphic showing parrying in battle is nice. In solo play, I cant use sneak/death attacks so this is a way to prohibit too many hits. I'm only hit by crits from foes like orcs, I parry all ordinary attacks. I can stall two enemies and slowly kill them. With two weapons, I can parry three attcks each round, even from enemies that are standing behind my back. I can do 10p of damage in a ripost even if its not a crit - strange since I use a +2 rapier (max 8p of damage). Bug?

Cons: I switch between the enemies all the time, giving me a bunch of enemies at "near death" and all are hitting me (much like the circle kick feat for monks). The fight takes 2-4 times longer time to finish, giving the enemies equal amount more crits on me. It's ok to fight beetles and trolls but when I attack "intelligent tribes", like orcs, the archers gets numerous attacks on me and the archers are in fact more deadly than the fighters since the fight takes much longer time. Often, the parry mode is canceled by itself right in a battle (bug?). If I choose "parry mode" and don't choose an enemy, I just stand there being beaten to death doing nothing to defend myself. If no one attacks me (if I'm in a party), I also just stand there and watch the fight. If the enemy is an archer I also just stand and watch him until I cancel parry mode, since I cant parry arrows. If I get swamped and surrounded, the enemies that I dont parry gets a free lunch on me.

--62.127.246.136 January 31, 2006

[edit] Sneak attacks

I had a question refering to parry and defending against sneak attacks, primarily in a pvp situtation. I've heard that it will not parry unless you have rogue uncanny dodge or something? I'd like some help answering this question I've had. Basically whether someone with parry would be a good canidate for defending against broken HIPS on a server that won't give it a cooldown time to allow for spot/listen checks. --24.16.55.10 July 22, 2006

[edit] Knockdown

I have observed that a character can queue a Knockdown while in parry mode; the player has to select a target for knockdown, and on the next riposte, the character will attempt a knockdown on the riposte's victim -- not necessarily the same NPC or PC that was initially selected for KD. I don't know if this applies to any other selectable feats, such as disarm and called shot. I was also wondering, can a character be in parry mode as well as one (or more) of the following: dirty fighting, expertise, power attack? Alaisiagae 08:38, 3 August 2006 (PDT)

• A note has now been added to the article. Parry cannot be used at the same time as dirty fighting, expertise, or power attack. --The Krit 15:08, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How many ripostes?

Something's fuzzy here:

"Further, counterattacks (also called ripostes) are included in the number of attacks that may be deflected (for example, a deflection and riposte use two of the three attacks per round limit).

Riposte attacks are made with the character's normal (descending) attack bonus, not at full bonus each time. Thus if a character has an attack schedule of +16/+11/+6 and successfully reposts two attacks, the riposte attacks will be at +16 then +11, not at +16 each time."

How do you manage to get two ripostes in a round? The second riposte would be the attack number 4 that round for the "parrier" and the limit is 3. You can riposte at most once and it's gonna be at full AB because of the mechanics of the parry mode. --Kail Pendragon 18:11, 23 October 2006 (PDT)

• While you are in parry mode, you do not attack normally. Your normal attack schedule isn't executed until your ripostes occur, so with two attacks per round, you can riposte twice. --68.103.198.90 21:39, 23 October 2006 (PDT)

• The article has been corrected. Ripostes do not count against the number of attacks you can parry. The original intent might have been for "deflection" to mean a successful parry by 9 or less, which would have no overlap with ripostes (resulting from successful parries by 10 or more), hence combining the counts of "deflections" and ripostes would tell you how many attacks were blocked. However, this intent did not get expressed clearly at all, as many (most?) people read "deflection" as a successful parry by any amount, with ripostes resulting from some deflections. Under this reading, successful parries by 10 or more would get applied to the limit twice, which does not actually happen, hence the confusion. I think the current version is much clearer, but I'm biased. --The Krit 15:21, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

[edit] More parry notes

I'll just add in a snippet from Countess Terra's awesome thread on Attacks per Round and Base Attack Bonus thread that was on the Bioware forums: Terra's BAB and Attacks Per Round FAQ

(snipped) Attacks come in 3 flurries. If you have six attacks per round, your round would look like:

Flurry 1: Attack 1 and Attack 2 Flurry 2: Attack 3 and Attack 4 Flurry 3: Attack 5 and Attack 6

Also if you have 6 attacks per round... then you have 6 attacks per round every round that you are fighting.

Edit: A note about flurries: The most attacks per round you can get these (non-PRC) days is 10 and each flurry is limited to a maximum of 4 Attacks. This means that 10 Attacks per round would look like:

Flurry 1: Attack 1, 2, 3, 4 Flurry 2: Attack 5, 6, 7 Flurry 3: Attack 8, 9, 10

(end snip) That was accurate as of version 1.66 and as far as I can tell, still stands true as of 1.68.

Parry will interact with that table for determining which of your attacks for the round are used to attempt a riposte against an incoming attack.

And just an anecdotal point... From that table, it almost looks like Parry is a better option for players with fewer total attacks per round. Using the above, a character with 6 attacks per round will attempt to parry incoming attacks 1, 3, and 5, which have a better chance of landing against your AC than the scenario of having 10 attacks per round in Parry mode (you would try ot parry attacks 1, 5, and 8, which have significantly lower chances of hitting your AC). So, a higher number of attacks per round seems to increase your chances of a successful Riposte attack (since the modified incoming attack roll is guaranteed to be less). However, having less attacks per round means you are probably going to deflect more incoming attacks (assuming your Parry score far outshines your AC).

--65.206.34.18 July 3, 2007

[edit] Conflicting observations

Having played through a few campaigns with a Parry character I have not seen any evidence that both parry and riptose count toward the maximum.

Instead I find Parry is better described as this:

1) Parry is activated on a first-come first-serve basis.

2) You are limited to one parry per your own attacks.

3) You can only parry one attack per (your own) flurry, to a maximum of 3 attacks.

4) The timer that resets your parry round takes slightly longer than the combat round. This will often result in you not being able to parry the first attack in your opponent's next round, or will result in you using your worst riposte.

Therefor parry is best executed against one enemy who has one fewer attack than you and who has no more than three attacks. You will never use more than four "Riptose" attacks, so using two weapons is entirely pointless if you have four attacks.

Another interesting note, Riposte attacks trigger Circle Kick. This extra attack does not count toward the maximum number of Riposte attacks, but it does count as one of your sequential attacks. So if your AB is +15/10/5, Your first parry will be +15, the Circle kick will have +10, and your next parry will have +5. What happens if you run out of attacks, but make another Parry? It goes back to the beginning of your sequential AB. So it looks like this: +15 Riposte, +10 Circle Kick, +5 Riposte, +15 Riposte. Your next round of parrying will start at +15, as normal.

This, oddly, makes Monks the best candidates for Parry, because of Circle Kick, Cleave, and the high number of attacks early on, and the slower-decreasing sequential attack bonuses. However, whether or not a monk using parry is better than a monk not using parry is another matter entirely.

Also of note, because you have no control over who Parry selects to Riposte, Circle Kick's random behavior has no effect.

FuzzyOne 00:48, September 3, 2009 (UTC)FuzzyOne

• Right, ripostes do not count against your parry attempts. (I forgot to update the article after I tested parry.) However, I have not seen any evidence of parry being on some schedule that is longer than a combat round in my tests. The observation about the circle kick attack bonus would be due to the circle kick being a bonus attack in the middle of the main attack sequence. That pushes the last riposte into the bonus attack sequence, as described under attacks per round#Additional attacks. --The Krit 16:28, September 4, 2009 (UTC)

• Cleaned up my own comments (again) that were due to my own ignorance. The delayed parry reset does not happen in every round, but I did encounter it consistantly enough throughout the SoU campaign for me to notice it. Just to prove to myself I'm not insane and imagining things I tested this again (using a character with two attacks and an opponent with one attack) and yes, it appears that every 3rd round Parry tries to accomodate one more flurry. Redid the test vs a creature with three attacks per round. Parry regularly ripostes four attacks per Parry round, occationally two of the opponent's attacks will happen in quick succession, too fast for Parry to catch the second one, making it difficult to establish the parry timer's exact duration. FuzzyOne 21:33, September 4, 2009 (UTC)FuzzyOne

• The standard wiki etiquette for cleaning up your comments is to use strikeout instead of deleting. Especially when someone has already replied, as that reply could make less sense after a deletion. So I've restored your earlier comments and struck them out, as well as restoring the original timestamp. --The Krit 11:04, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Parry as autofollow

Applying the parry at neutral/friend(only when not party-pvp settings) can be used as very reliable autofollow.--ShaDoOoW 12:47, September 24, 2009 (UTC)