Evade vs Parry ¿what is the mechanical difference?

What's the mechanical difference between a question mark and an upside-down question mark? Serious question.

...

>serious question
The upside-down question mark is used to indicate the beginning of a question when the question only forms a fragment of a larger sentence. It never caught on in English, as the meaning of words are not changed greatly by context. However, in some of the romance languages - notably, Spanish - the context of a statement can change its meaning quite dramatically, and it's important to know that context before reading the words. As a result, the upside-down question mark arose in the seventeenth century in order to aid in clarity of expression amongst increasingly literate societies. That being said, it has become common for the this punctuation rule to be ignored due largely to the keyboard.

In most games there's very little difference, as both are more or less the same thing: the enemy's attack fails to overcome your AC.

If I were a game designer and had designed a downright autismal system, I'd express the difference between parrying/blocking and dodging as follows: parrying is an interception of the enemy attack, while dodging is avoiding the enemy attack. Sounds obvious enough, but I'd add to that the idea that stopping or "trapping" an enemy attack means an interruption of the enemy's initiative (as a general term, not a gameplay term per se) and would be more advantageous than merely avoiding, which is in a way "accepting" the enemy's attack and just making sure you're not in range.

For the attacker, recovering from a missed strike and following up with another is much easier than recovering from a sudden loss of initiative.

This is the same idea, but much less autistically worded.

...

This actually looks like neat system that will become very intuitive once you get used to basic principles.

>the enemy's attack fails to overcome your AC.
>AC
opinion discarded

In reality? To evade you simply move yourself out of the path of the weapon. To parry you use a weapon or shield to either block the path of the enemy's weapon, or redirect it in a safe direction. Some like to keep hard blocking and the more gradual redirections separate as block and parry respectively, I'm not convinced of it.

In game mechanics, well... Well, there are some unarmed defences against armed attack, I think. I wouldn't call those parrying though. Even with gauntlets on trying to stop or deflect the blade of a sword can leave you with broken fingers, and you should also keep in mind that gauntlets are often open on the inside, to allow you a better grip of the weapon you ought to have.

Grappling will also tend to be what you do after a parry (both as attacker and defender), as you may then be at such range that you can't do much swinging, but you're close enough to grab and arm and make it bend the wrong way.

To the best of my knowledge there's no old manual telling you to just taking an attack on your armour. If nothing else, that'd be a very bad habit to work in.

Perhaps we could call it a block or parry when you grab your opponents wrist to stop a dagger attack, but that's the closest I can think of. (And to help illustrate the injury risk above, doing it wrong means a broken thumb.)

it is and you basically only need the hit location tables at the bottom, when your attack is successful, everything else is intuitive after a few sessions.

Wow I didn't expect to find another Harnmaster player here.

I've grown to like it a lot since I got recruited to a HM group about a year ago. I like the variety of outcomes it produces without the huge amount of tables games like RM have.

This suppose that you evade backwards, though basic strategy would dictate that you evade to the sides, where you are just as "far" as before and thus in position to hit at the next tempo, if not in the same tempo it took you to evade.
Sword and feet goes together.

I was thinking more about just blocking the blow with the top of your left gauntlet and immediately grappling the blade with your right gauntlet, switch it around if you're left.

That sort of counts as an unarmed "parry" that is possible right? I mean, if they hit the top of your gauntlet, it can't really break your hand. Might hurt though, I dunno. Never got whacked on the fingers while wearing metal gauntlets.

>50915777
No matter what you do, a parry will almost always get your weapon closer to your opponent than an evasion.

Parrying automatically means you bring your weapon to the enemy, with evasion your weapon can be pretty much anywhere.

Evade is a dodge, parry is a counter so parry could include strength but with a higher chance of failure

>>Never got whacked on the fingers while wearing metal gauntlets.

Hurts like a bitch

A combatant who evades did not have an opportunity to strike that round, but took much less of a risk in being hit themselves.

A combatant who parries was exposed for some small window but managed to avoid taking any hits while still being able to strike their opponent.

The blade moves fast, which means it hits hard.

The arms that hold it move slower, and are softer, so they don't hit so hard.

So if you don't have anything to block with apart form yourself, try blocking the arms instead.

Trying to block a weapon with your gauntlet would be a very desperate move. You probably can't judge quite that perfectly where the blow will land, and seeing your attempt at defence, the enemy may change the trajectory to make it harder still. So even if you could take a blow on part of the gauntlet without serious injury, you have some rather fragile things nearby (fingers, elbow) that'd be best not to risk, even when in armour. The HEMA crowd have a lot of smashed fingers to show, and that's without actively trying to block with their hands.

Though if it's that or your face...

As for evades, sometimes you want to evade primarily forward. Especially if you're unarmed, as you need to get close to fight back, and many weapons aren't at their best at downright intimate ranges.

In Deathwatch, Terminators can't dodge but can parry. That's why you ALWAYS pack a melee weapon/attachment as a Terminator.

>As for evades, sometimes you want to evade primarily forward. Especially if you're unarmed, as you need to get close to fight back, and many weapons aren't at their best at downright intimate ranges.
As a not-so-intuitive addendum to your post for the onlookers, this is the best way to counter someone trying to bash your damn skull in with a baseball bat.

Parry is for attacks that won't break your guard, also making counterattack easier since you're within striking distance of the enemy

Evade is for attacks that would break your guard, kill you outright, or for any reason aren't parry-able.

Oh hell, now I'm having AL&CL flashbacks.

played quite a bit a while back, I'm a huge fan of d100 roll under in general and harnmaster system in particular. it's elegant in a number of ways.

I think you just killed this guy if that was his reaction to HM tables.

excuse me but what the fuck?

>game has parry mechanic
>can't follow up with a riposte

One is based off of Agility, the other off of Dex.
Also, it's easier to dodge spells and projectiles than it is to block, most of the time. Shields help, though.
If by riposte you mean counterattack, then Anima has that covered.

Parry: Requires a specific instrument (a weapon designed to parry or a shield) and vastly depends on that instrument's effectiveness. Usually a pretty effective way to defend yourself, but far less effective if not entirely useless or even detrimental against blows powerful enough to crush your shield and/or strike you down.

Evade/Dodge: Depends entirely on your agility and reflexes. Cumbersome equipment will make it harder. Not very effective unless you have good agility/reflexes. Since it evades the blow entirely, if successful it will prevent you from any secondary effect the blow would have had - like damaging your equipment, pushing you away, knocking you down etc.

not getting hit vs 'you can't hit me, myeh heh heh'

Evade is a Movement skill. Parry is a Weapon Use skill.

This is pretty broad-strokes but if you want the two to have some sort of mechanical parallel:

Parry puts your opponent at a temporary disadvantage
Evade puts you at a temporary disadvantage

In terms of momentum and position. That's kind of a big stretch for Evade since it's definitely not 100% a disadvantaged position after you dodge. Maybe have a tiered failure system for responding to an enemy attack, from highest success to lowest:

Parry, opening for riposte
Partial Parry
Good dodge onto advantageous terrain
Bad dodge, lose momentum and footwork
Partial dodge, turns attack into a glancing blow
Take the hit, partial reduction in damage by blocking with less-critical flesh
Full hit

>Here's how most games do it: AC

>Here's how *I* would do it

You didn't actually read his post, did you?

okay i've never heard of harnmaster but i just started reading up on it a bit and it sounds awesome

sorry to bother but do you know what books would i need to start?

The most current editions are Harnmaster 3 and Harnmaster Gold. The basic rules are almost the same. Personally I use HM3 and for that you just need the basic rulebook (Harnmaster third edition). If you want to play a mage you need Harnmaster Magic and for a spiritual character Harnmaster Religion. Harnmaster Religion is very setting specific. HarnPlayer will come in handy if you want to learn about the default setting.

You can find the basic pdf without the combat tables online just by searching "harnmaster 3".

I also suggest going to lythia.com, there's tons of free material there, most of which is non-system specific and a lot of it is non-setting specific.

In Rolemaster's Arms Law & Claw Law each weapon has it's own table like that. A character rolls his attack, adds his bonus, subtracts his opponent's shield and parry values, then consults a chart like this.

The x-axis is the defender's armour type, the y-axis is the attacker's final modified value. The number value is how much damage is dealt. This damage is mostly fatigue and bruises what really kills is the critical represented by the letters next to the number.

'A' criticals are stuns, trips and the like, B's and C's are broken bones shattered weapons and armour. D's and E's are severed limbs, caved skulls and the like.

The second letter shows what kind of critical it is [P]iercing, [S]lashing or [K]rushing.

It looks and sounds pretty bad but after a couple games it becomes somewhat intuitive. Fights tend to be short and brutal anyway so the tables aren't used hugely.

In real life an evade is to avoid damage in he most efficient way, but it has a risk of you taking much more damage if you guess wrong. Evade also tends to be tied to footwork stepping out from an engagement.

A parry is a defensive action to deflect damage and possibly avoid it entirely, it uses more effort to do but has less risks. A party is also tied to footwork to step in or to put yourself in position to attack again immediately.

In my favorite combat system, Mythras, Evade is a skill that when used defensively puts you into a position that gives an opponent an advantage (prone, but it means off kilter and not laying on the ground). However, it's a common skill and easy to get high along with giving benefits to avoiding other things. It also turns huge and enormous weapons into zero damage. You do want to use your special effect to get away though to avoid retribution.

Meanwhile a parry with an appropriate sized weapon negated damage and has no disadvantage to continue fighting from. You can also place a weapon to cover a part of your body or a shield over multiple parts to passively protect those parts from weapon attacks.

I dunno, mangling someone's leg or sword arm with a pole-axe or a cudgel seems like a pretty great way to put them out of action.

And only expensive armour has the sort of articulation that can protect against over-rotating a limb.

In combat against another knight an arm-breaking hold would void the protection of armour.

And Viking-Age battle field deposits tend to show a disproportionate number of bodies with leg injuries, albeit this was the age of shield-walls and maille hauberks, a hauberk is most certainly a significant form of protection.

>evade
swing and a miss
>parry
swing and redirect

>Playing Chartmonster

You don't have much hand-to-hand combat experience, do you?

That's why shields exist. They make parrying much more easy.