Help Me Understand Parry Skill

BelgarathMTH

Hello, I've often had a class fantasy about a staff wielding character with a defensive fighting style, who focuses on healing and supporting other party members, using his staff to block if he gets attacked, and very occasionally delivering devastating blows with the staff.

I've started a test druid in the OC trying to build just this fantasy.

My animal companion and my henchperson do most of the fighting and damaging. I heal and cast buffs. I fight a little bit if I get attacked - but if it becomes just me, mano a mano with a monster or boss, I'd like to be at least somewhat effective fighting with that staff, although still defensively, as my fantasy self hates to kill. All life forms are Children of Nature, and have their own particular beauty and worth to them.

I'm trying to understand better the particulars of the parry skill, which most people consider a "trash skill". I saw a forum member defending it in another thread, but I can't find it again.

I've noticed that I can't move once I activate parry mode, without deactivating it. That presents a few problems for me as a healer, as sometimes I need to move to an injured party member to heal him, her, or it, but I can get parry mode activated again by the next round.

I understand that the higher the skill and my dexterity bonus, the higher the chance of a counterattack. I've noticed that I can be in attack mode and parry mode at the same time, but it looks as though I make no active strikes while in parry mode.

I'm not understanding how parry interacts with AC. The parry chance is based on the attacker's adjusted attack roll versus your skill. But AC works similarly. Does the game just take AC or your adjusted parry roll, whichever is higher, to determine a miss or block? I wish the dice rolls transcript window would show your parry rolls, but it doesn't.

Can anyone clarify details of the skill for me? Also, has anybody done a parry skill based character that they enjoyed, and what was the build?

BelgarathMTH

Yeah, okay, I don't think a parry skill build is going to work for a healer druid. Most of the time, I'm just standing there until someone needs healing. I could get my attacks per round in and still heal them. And it still seems like AC is just as good of a defense as a parry roll. Also, if you try to cast a spell while in parry mode next to an enemy, they still get their attack of opportunity. Does the skill give a caster a chance to parry that AoO while still making the concentration check and casting the spell?

The skill is still not making any sense to me. Why would anyone want to build the skill? What were the original devs thinking?

@TrentOster , since you *were* one of the original devs, could you or another Beamdog representative explain? @JuliusBorisov , as community outreach manager, do you have any insight?

voidofopinion

I don't have much to add but have you tried the wiki?

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Parry

JuliusBorisov

Well, there were lots of comments about this skill:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/68599/what-to-do-with-parry#latest

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/67760/the-fix-parry-card-discussion#latest

BelgarathMTH

Thanks, @JuliusBorisov . I knew I had seen threads about it before, but like I said, I couldn't find them again. You're always a wizard with searching and finding old threads.

I'm still having trouble understanding why a person would want to use parry mode instead of just attacking, but the other threads show other people have also thought about it and have tried to discuss it. Feel free to merge this thread with one of the others or just delete it or close it if you think it's mucking up the forum.