Block, Dodge, Parry is now in version 1.32! Below, I’ll elaborate on some of the changes and additions made.
Art: Bertdrawsstuff
The 1.32 rules are available for free in the Systems Reference Document. If you’d like to support the continuous development of Block, Dodge, Parry, and gain access to all the additional explanations, commentary, and examples of the illustrated full version, you can find it on Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.
Parrying
Before, parrying worked like this:
Choose one attacking opponent that you can attack in return.
If you roll higher attack damage than they do, their dice roll is invalidated, and you deal your damage
straight to their STR.
If the opponent rolls higher, the damage is dealt to your STR instead.
If the two rolls are equal, both weapons bounce off each other with a satisfying twing! and a rain of
sparks. No damage is done to either party.
In version 1.32, I changed this to:
Choose one attacking opponent that you can attack in return.
If you roll higher attack damage than they do, their dice roll is invalidated, and you deal your damage
straight to their STR. This damage does not trigger a STR Save.
If the opponent rolls higher, the damage is dealt to your STR instead. This damage does not trigger a
STR Save.
If the two rolls are equal, both weapons bounce off each other with a satisfying twing! and a rain of
sparks. No damage is done to either party.
This change circumvents the hypothetical situation where a legendary swordsman NPC (18 STR, 18 HP) can theoretically be defeated by one successful parry. In a way, this makes it a bit more like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, where enemies have a posture bar (HP in Block, Dodge, Parry) and a health bar (STR in Block, Dodge, Parry).
Reach and Push
The Reach weapon property was a bit of an odd-one-out, with the addition of melee clashes. I love the rules for Melee clashes (when two combatants approach each other, the weapon with the highest damage die goes first; when two combatants are in close combat, the lower damage die goes first), as they are clean and simple. Reach muddled that, quite a bit:
Reach X: When charged with a weapon shorter than yours when fighting back, the attacker must roll X or higher on their DAMAGE roll or else you get to attack them first. Weapons with Reach also allow you to attack before weapons that would usually be quicker in a clash.
In 1.32, Reach is now a separate property, making a weapon with a lower damage die act as if they have a higher damage die. A Simple Staff, for instance, now has ‘Reach’, meaning that when two combatants approach each other, it acts before, say, a Longsword (d8), despite it having a d6 damage die.
Furthermore, Push (X) has been added.
Push X: DAMAGE rolls of X or higher push the target back from Close to Nearby, preventing approach and allowing longer weapons to keep their advantage in the next clash.
This allows for phalanx-like strategies; a Spear now has Push (6), meaning you can keep enemies at bay.
Gambits
Gambits are the versatile catch-all for any physical maneuver that isn’t ‘dealing damage’. This can lead to disarming your opponent, pushing them down a cliff, or tackling them to grant an ally an opportunity for an Enhanced attack. The rule used to be:
When making a Gambit, you do not deal damage. Instead, you roll a d6, which is used as the difficulty of the Save made by the target. The type of Save is determined together with the Warden, and the target must roll equal to or under their Attribute but also above the d6 difficulty roll.
I like the Difficulty element, but the d6 feels very arbitrary. It also doesn’t take into account your current equipment. I was looking for a way to make the difficulty variable based on gear, without making the system too complicated. I wanted lighter equipment loads to make gambits easier, to reward not just going for the biggest weapon every time.
I considered linking weapon size (d6, d8, d10) to set difficulties (3, 2, 1), but that felt like yet another property in the Weapons section.
Subtraction was another option, but that made the range of difficulty quite swingy and didn’t really make sense.
So, I settled on this:
Roll your Weapon Damage Dice. If you are dual wielding, roll both, and take the highest value.
If your roll is 1, 2 or 3, use this value as the Difficulty of the enemy’s Save. If your roll is 4 or higher, no Difficulty is applied.
The type of Save is determined together with the Warden, and the target must roll equal to or under their Attribute but also above the Difficulty.
If the target fails their Save, the gambit succeeds.
If they succeed, they may immediately make an attack back.
This has a couple of effects, in what I think is one simple rule:
- Unarmed gambits (d4 damage die) have a 75% chance of adding Difficulty.
- Using a single Fast weapon (d6 damage die) has a 50% chance of adding Difficulty.
- Dual-wielding Fast weapons (2d6) and thus having no free hands, has a 25% chance of adding Difficulty.
- Using a Balanced weapon (d8 damage die) has a 37,5% chance of adding Difficulty.
- Using a Slow weapon (d10 damage die) has a 30% chance of adding Difficulty.
I am currently working on a Player’s Guide, that streamlines Block, Dodge, Parry into a document that explains it all to players, as the current document is more of a Warden’s Toolkit. Beyond that, I got a bunch of ideas brewing and stewing!
What do you think of these updates? Let me know below!