You can attack from hiding, hit with the first flurry and then immediately switch to Parry mode. This is possible now, but currently it's probably not worth investing in because you only parry some attacks.
You also shouldn't forget that this isn't happening in isolation - there could be a 4th or even 5th class available, new PrCs, etc. which could open further possibilities for exploitation.
As to AB, a Cleric24/Bard16 can self-buff, with mundane equipment, to AB +68/+63/+58/+68/+63. It took me a couple of minutes to find this at the ecb. Admittedly most characters won't have 60+ AB, but then most won't have 80AC either.
On AC, it's hard to get to 80 with only +5 gear. You need a lot of Dodge AC, because it stacks (to 20). And Dodge AC is negated by being flat-footed; hence my question. Perhaps it would be a better debate if the assumptions behind this paragon of defence had been made clear.
On sacrifice. Given that we agree that 60AB is a good AB with +5 gear, I only need a Parry skill of 78 to parry the attacker 95% of the time (i.e. against everything except a natural 20). I get 43 from the skill alone and I get +17 from the Feats; to that I can add my Dex modifier, which on a Dexer could make up the remaining 18 needed on its own (and why would I not push Dex to the max anyway?). No gear needed. Or I could miss a feat or two and get some gear. I cannot see that as a sacrifice when I avoid 95% of all melee attacks.
Finally, Parry was deliberately reduced to its current state pre-release of the OC; so clearly it must have been seen as overpowered.
I wonder, suppose with a fully functioning parry skill you took a maxed dex character and faced him off with a max strength character. Would the dex character be overwhelming in parry mode, or would the hits that landed from the strength character do enough, or more than enough damage to equal them out.
I suppose you would have to run the fight a bunch of times both with and without stacked weapon enchantments.
That might be the best thing to do before figuring out how to tone it down.
I made a parry test character last night and have been running it in low to mid levels, three attacks or less. It seems kind of a mixed bag, useful sometimes, useless others. Which is how I think it should be.
The issue is how broken the ruleset gets in epic levels. Maybe it would be overwhelming, maybe not. I don’t think we’ll really know until we can properly test it.
At low to mid levels AB (for high BAB classes) & Skills are in step and you don't have the +10 from ESF available, so it's much closer. Plus, even in these low levels, once the opponent gets 4 attacks (e.g. BAB11 with Haste or Flurry or BAB9 with ITWF, or BAB16), you are still not parrying everything.
A straight dexer should never go 1 on 1 with a Str build though - he really needs HiPS to land sneak damage, as flanking just won't happen. As I intimated earlier, parry is more for surviving between the sneak attacks or when you can't hide for these characters. You could probably come up with a Bard build though, with decent Str from RDD and some additional damage from a few Fighter levels (say), but still high enough Dex along with his skill boosts to parry and still do damage. I'm sure experts will be able to think of other combinations that work.
I really don't see the point in going through all the trouble of making a skill-based combat mode on top of existing 3e combat rules, and then trying desperately to balance it. There are so many things that can modify skill ranks to take into account.
The biggest balance problems seem to be in the epic levels. But there's nothing less epic than a character who is only parrying.
As to AB, a Cleric24/Bard16 can self-buff, with mundane equipment, to AB +68/+63/+58/+68/+63. It took me a couple of minutes to find this at the ecb. Admittedly most characters won't have 60+ AB, but then most won't have 80AC either.
I don't check this forum nearly enough it seems, but life comes first particularly this time of year.
Your suggested build would at most be able to obtain an AB of 15 pre epic BAB, 10 Epic BAB 4 AB from feats, +20 from magic cap. + your related ability modifier which would require a 19 mod in the stat of choice. The requirements of wisdom for spells and charisma for spells would make it very questionable if it was possible min-maxing with Zen Archery, it's outright impossible if using a melee weapon. It would also be very heavily reliant on very short term, easily dispellable buffs.
If such is using Zen Archery, it's using a range weapon and Parry would be ignored anyway, so the point is kinda moot. I suppose if module builders really hate parry they could either rescript it (if it is opened up) to their liking or just give their boss monsters ranged weapons, or ranged minions.
As far as I'm aware the only change folks really wanted was so that it wasn't limited by one attack per flurry and instead matched the number of attacks per round the user possessed, matching up with it's description more and being less of a trap. I've said before and I'll say it again, Parry will be potentially strong in very select cases but not an amazing must have, there's ways of countering it, be that spell fire, ranged weapons or additional foes making it so there are more attacks per round then the character can parry.
Is monk SR considered too powerful because it can outright make you immune to almost all spells cast with enough investment (not to mention that insane speed that comes with it)? is high AC too powerful because it can protect against both melee and ranged? are exceptional saves mixed with evasion too powerful as most offensive spells because something to giggle at?
Someone that is investing heavily into Parry is perhaps going to do at best chip (minor) damage when they hit as they'll want a high Dex score, sneak attack isn't going to assist them with bringing a foe down like they'd normally do, I can only imagine this skill being really useful in party play where the parrying person tanks one extremely overpowered boss while the others deal damage, but in that case I generally consider the immortal Black Blade of Disaster to be the ultimate tank for such. Then again if a build team or DM has forced upon me and my party the need to use Black Blade of Disaster as a tank to defeat an encounter or easily wipe out, I tend to face palm and not return to that module or server because they lack any idea regarding balance.
@1varangian it isn't about going through the trouble of making a skill, the skill already exists, it's there. People just want it to do what it was suppose to have done, because in it's current form it's worse then useless, it's a trap. They don't want much they want it to at least be usable for it's intended purpose and preferably rescriptable.
Your suggested build would at most be able to obtain an AB of 15 pre epic BAB, 10 Epic BAB 4 AB from feats, +20 from magic cap. + your related ability modifier which would require a 19 mod in the stat of choice.
I'll ignore the bit about Zen Archery, which is simply a straw man. I don't claim to be an expert (which is why I went to the ecb guild to find a high AB build). Anyway the 68AB appears to contain the benefit of reducing the opponent's AC via Taunt and Curse Song. This is tantamount to the same thing, but I wouldn't include it in AB. However, the build as presented doesn't maximise Str, so it would be possible to exceed 60.
I looked for a more standard build instead. F28/Bd2/RDD10, which has BAB30, Str of 40 for +15 and +4 from Feats = 49. With +12 Str and maximum enhancement this could be at 75AB, without Taunt. I trust that's enough to show that 80AC isn't unhittable.
btw, 60ab for a lvl 40 character is easily doable with +5 weapon. All you need is to add into your build: 15+ cleric or weapon master or arcane archer or red dragon disciple and put most (or almost all) points into ability used for attacking (str/dex/wisdom). Basically only builds that cannot get 60+ are: high leveled monks, pure rangers, druids, pure barbarians, high-leveled dwarven defenders. Everything else can exceed 60ab rather easily if built for that.
I’m really of two minds on this. On one hand I don’t think it’s unreasonable to, at the very least, implement a way for parry to scale with BAB at epic levels. On the other, even if it is fixed without scaling or any other changes, I don’t see it being all that overpoweringly useful anyway. Sure, it would have its moments to shine, but I think those moments (1 on 1 exclusively melee combat) especially at epic levels, are extremely few and far between, and already have better solutions than hanging out in parry mode.
Outside of 1 on 1 melee, I think it would add survivability to non tank-like characters during a group encounter if they have party support. That seems to bear out at lower levels when I try to test it... the biggest caveat being testing with a party of henchmen, they may help they may sort of stand there and not do much of anything which is a whole other issue altogether.
1 on 1 is not where it shines - we've just been using that as an example of how it works. If it works as the manual states you would be able to parry as many attacks as you can make, so we could see a TWF with Monk parrying 10 attacks a round. Quite how this would work with multiple attackers under the current combat mechanics (attacks coming in 3 flurries) I'm not sure, but apart from anything else I can see a potential for bugs. If the combat flurries are removed, as has been intimated, then we have even more problems.
The fact is that parry is an abortion that should never have seen the light of day.
I thought we were focused on 1-on-1 because that was where parry did shine. Once you’re faced off against two or more opponents who have roughly the same BAB as you I think you end up fighting a war of attrition which- more often than not- you’re bound to slowly lose...
Which paradoxically is- I think- what parry is actually meant for. It adds survivabilty, especially for characters like rogues, rangers and bards, who might not otherwise have the AC to last very long in group on group encounters.
In the case where you are fighting multiple opponents with a much lower BAB than you it seems more efficient to focus those 10 (or however many) attacks on one at a time as opposed to splitting possible ripostes between a group.
Again, I think we both agree it’s a bit of a kludge, I think Beamdog agreed as well, the question is, what is the fix that’s makes it useful without being overpowering?
I thought we were focused on 1-on-1 because that was where parry did shine. Once you’re faced off against two or more opponents who have roughly the same BAB as you I think you end up fighting a war of attrition which- more often than not- you’re bound to slowly lose...
If Parry worked off BAB you would be right (which is why I say it doesn't work as a skill*), but you are forgetting that your Parry would beat their attack 95% of the time; and you would riposte every time too because you will be beating the DC by more than 10, so you would only lose that 5% of attacks that bypassed your parry on a natural 20. I agree that once the attacks mount up it will not save you, but then what would? You will still have better chances (probably to run away) than no parry. It doesn't stop you getting Epic Dodge; it doesn't stop you getting HiPS; it doesn't stop you getting high AC (in fact a good base for our eponymous build would be Monk9/SD5, which gets you HiPS, Epic Dodge and a good base for AC, and we have 26 more levels to spend to get the rest of what we need).
* Unfortunately changing it to a Feat would undoubtedly break anything that removing it would break, and changing it as a skill is also going to be problematical, because all skills run off the same template. I haven't seen anyone comment on how it might actually be fixed so that it did present a reasonable chance for high AB enemies to hit (whatever a reasonable chance is, because it is not obvious). Probably the best solution is to also make it something that could be switched on or off by PWs and module makers, but it seems a lot of work for something that is not needed (the game works perfectly well with parry as it is - maybe just change the description!).
I think we both agree it’s a bit of a kludge, I think Beamdog agreed as well, the question is, what is the fix that’s makes it useful without being overpowering?
The answer already exists in the rules (but bioware did not implement it), it is called "Fighting Defensively", you do not need a skill or a feat and it does no break the game but offers the option of well, fighting defensively (aka parrying):
Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action
You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round.
I think we both agree it’s a bit of a kludge, I think Beamdog agreed as well, the question is, what is the fix that’s makes it useful without being overpowering?
The answer already exists in the rules (but bioware did not implement it), it is called "Fighting Defensively", you do not need a skill or a feat and it does no break the game but offers the option of well, fighting defensively (aka parrying):
Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action
You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round.
Yes but... since we have the parry skill and can’t just erase it without breaking backwards compatibility, the question isn’t “what should have been there in the first place,” but “what should we do to fix it?”
The base game should not have any homebrew rules. It's evident in this thread that there will never be a consensus how to balance them. NWN should be as faithful to official 3e as possible and leave all homebrew stuff for modders.
So.. Kill Parry off slowly by first hiding it. Older mods that use it can unhide it or update the mod to get rid of it.
Add Fighting Defensively and Total Defense modes. They are much more important as free modes in a party based multiplayer combat.
What's important is that any new official content wouldn't have Parry anymore and we could gently put it to rest.
The base game should not have any homebrew rules. It's evident in this thread that there will never be a consensus how to balance them. NWN should be as faithful to official 3e as possible and leave all homebrew stuff for modders.
So.. Kill Parry off slowly by first hiding it. Older mods that use it can unhide it or update the mod to get rid of it.
Add Fighting Defensively and Total Defense modes. They are much more important as free modes in a party based multiplayer combat.
What's important is that any new official content wouldn't have Parry anymore and we could gently put it to rest.
That'd be my solution.
I disagree with your solution, NWN is not 3rd edition D&D regardless of how much some folks want it to be, it is it's own game and Parry has been apart of it for a very long time. NWN:EE should not be removing parts of the game, period, fixing things sure, but not removing them.
I'm not a rules "purist". Parry and Discipline just aren't the best mechanics. Using homebrew house rules should be completely up to modders since modding is what NWN is all about.
I'm not a rules "purist". Parry and Discipline just aren't the best mechanics. Using homebrew house rules should be completely up to modders since modding is what NWN is all about.
As I'd said, NWN is not 3rd edition, it's got elements of 3rd, it's got elements of 3.5, it's missing large sections of both (for rules, restrictions, content and so many other things) and has it's own set of custom rules. I don't consider parry and discipline to be homebrew because NWN isn't D&D, it's its own game and that's what it should remain, yes it has very strong resemblances to D&D and many rules cross over to varying degrees, but it is designed to be a computer game and also has many differences then a PnP D&D game because of that.
Module builders should have the ability to customize the skills as they see fit and fixing up parry does not stop module builders from being able to change such if it's also opened up (And I really think everything should be opened up to the server host / module builder / whatever's ability to change as they see best).
It is a part of NWN, it has history, content should not be cut because some dislike it as not being from 3.x as it is a part of the game and has been for so very long, regardless of it's usability in the past. Likewise I disagree it should be cut because some think it might be overly strong in select cases, it's not like it'll be Melee Palemaster levels of defensive stupidity, nor insane in strength like Bigby spells. Removing a section of the game rather then actually fixing it because of a vocal minority of the playerbase doesn't like that it isn't 3.x or seems too powerful for them is overkill to the extreme (we, myself included all here on the boards are a vocal minority).
I'd kinda love to see fighter bonus feats get some love in the form of a +3, +4 and +10 line (the corresponding opposite to skill focus, improved parry and epic skill focus parry) that makes the check easier to pass if you possess the correct feat, it's not like fighters are starving for feats, rather they're starving for choices on what to use with their bonus feats after they have all the basics covered if they're taking more then a tiny dip for weapon spec.
Content being cut, particularly when some modules require it as their builders have already customized it to their own personal needs doesn't really strike me as one of the rare times a removal is the best fix.
I wouldn't waste dev time on tinkering with a broken homebrew skill that's not part of D&D.
They said the reason for adding Parry and Discipline in the first place was because Fighters didn't have enough skills at initial release. Well, that's no longer the case and we can mod more actual D&D skills in too.
As I'd said, NWN is not 3rd edition, it's got elements of 3rd, it's got elements of 3.5, it's missing large sections of both (for rules, restrictions, content and so many other things) and has it's own set of custom rules. I don't consider parry and discipline to be homebrew because NWN isn't D&D, it's its own game and that's what it should remain, yes it has very strong resemblances to D&D and many rules cross over to varying degrees, but it is designed to be a computer game and also has many differences then a PnP D&D game because of that.
It was sold as a D&D game; it had official sanction and it was based on 3rd edition rules. I'm not sure what elements of 3.5 rules it's supposed to have, given that it came out before 3.5 rules were published. D&D was always subject to homebrewed changes, but that doesn't make it any less D&D or any less 3rd edition. Parry therefore has to stand or fall on its own merits (or lack of them). It certainly doesn't need any additional homebrewed stuff to try and justify its existence.
I want to see the Parry skill fixed (so that it can parry/riposte a number of attacks each round equal to your maximum number of attacks). I also wouldn't mind seeing a separate Fighting Defensively / Total Defense toggle (in addition to keeping the Parry skill). I DO NOT want to see the Parry skill removed.
In regards to the Discipline skill, I wouldn't mind seeing it removed as it has caused more heart-ache in Online PW games than prevented. However, I also wouldn't mind in seeing a Game Options toggle which simply makes it so that characters get free ranks in the Discipline skill (max ranks with non-magical classes, half ranks with spellcasting classes).
I actually just signed on because I was triggered by this discussion. Please fix parry if possible, and don't even think about removing it, it'd break my heart. Of course it's broken and "against the rules", but it's one of those lovely little flavors I really liked about NWN. I built a few pure parry characters just because noone else would ever do it, I always had fun doing stuff like that. Also, the animations are lovely. If you can't do anything to fix it, maybe just update the ingame descriptions with a warning and descriptions of it's flaws.
"I want" isn't a very convincing argument. Good parents usually inculcate that lesson into their children.
I agree, though it seems it's people who want Parry removed that most often shout out "I want" in this thread with no regard to other factors.
It appears to me as if some people didn't understand that removing Parry would be HIGHLY detrimental to the game's backward compatibility, which is (and rightly so) Beamdog's top priority for the EE.
Stop asking for game features to be removed, you can simply not use them. If they bother you THIS much, I can edit and send you guys a skills.2da override that will hide Parry from skill selection, but don't go all like "I have no use for Parry, so I don't want anyone to have it, even if it breaks older modules!".
On the topic of the rules - NWN never featured 3rd Edition rules. In fact, it couldn't, given that NWN and the 3rd edition were developed at roughly the same time, independently to some extent. NWN can be said to be BASED on the 3rd edition ruleset, but its ruleset is NOT the 3rd edition ruleset, in the same way a story based on real-life events does not necessarily represent history accurately. I'd say we stop wanting NWN to be something it never was intended to be in the first place. It's got its own rules and Parry/Discipline not existing in the 3rd edition is a very poor excuse to remove them (especially considering the reasons to let them be).
...or perhaps all these malcontents would also see to it that spell and feat uses are regained per in-game day and not per rest? After all, it's a house rule, so it ought to be changed! Then we should focus on making the game turn-based only. Any real-time mechanics are house rules and don't exist in the 3rd edition!
In Thorsson’s defense, I think his concern is more along the lines of a fixed Parry skill without any balancing would be overpowered. And he gave some examples. I think that’s a positive contribution to the conversation.
Personally, having played with parry builds on leveles before the skill breaks down, I’m not entirely convinced it would be overpowering in any situation.
But that’s what testing is for. Right now it’s all speculation until we have something we can mess around with at higher levels, where it seems to go off the rails. But it’s not a bad thing to discuss how it might break down, to facilitate balancing it once there is something worth balancing.
But ultimately I do agree, most of the anti-parry crowd’s concern seem to be centered around its potential abuse in epic level duels on PWs. The easy fix is hiding the skill.
Except there are many more concerns in regards to balance on PWs that Beamdog simply can't and shouldn't care to take into consideration - it's PW admins who should do stuff like disabling Parry, Dev Crit, etc.
I'm all for Beamdog allowing people to modify stuff, though! I think module switches for changing various behavior would be a sufficient alternative to unhardcoding it completely. For example, Expertise by default can be abused by spellcasters to gain free 5 AC (10 for Improved Expertise), but a simple module switch exists to make spellcasting break the Expertise combat mode.
I agree with this. A skill by definition shouldn't even be used in combat. Combat balance is based on BAB and feats. It's a basic design principle in 3e. Skills are essentially non-combat skills.
Coming in late to the discussion -- but, I'd like to be a devil's advocate in reminding that; fundamentally arguing, while this is "true", Skills that are fundamentally inconsequential to Combat are fundamentally inconsequential outside of the OC. Barring, of course, some single-player modules; to-which my hats go off for the depth of design from the authors, naturally.
The reality is that Persistent Worlds at large simply do not "use" skills in any other sense. Many of them actually argue it that a high skill isn't an excuse in and of itself to say you're good at something, or attempt it even; because many of the Online Environments that exist still either supplement their own "skillsets" for crafting and social interaction (often more heavily influenced by the PC's stats - such as Arelith's tradeskill system; or the public domain system, the CNR that's sittiing around on the vault) or ignore these particulars wholly.
Whether you agree or disagree with the concept that this should be considered "status quo" or even a good thing, though; the point is that skills haven't been non-mechanical entities in the Online environment for quite some time, making stating such as a "basic design principle" quite out of time. They've fled from their 3E inspirations to become mechanical prerequisites and fodder long ago.
I'll put any feelings I have about that aside though - In my humblest opinion, I would argue it that parry should serve the purpose that it sounds like it serves; and to me, that means reflecting attacks, and periodically returning them to sender. In my opinion, we should continue to allow a restricted amount of attacks within a given range of APR -- made with the attacker's damage roll, at the PC's AB minus a penalty for the riposte (penalty removed for improved parry) -- to the tune of 1 Attack per 4 APR of the PC; rounded up. Only UBAB would receive more than one riposte that way; and as they're giving up the most APR to perform a parry, that seems fair.
Under this proposition, further attacks can still be parried, but they may not be returned as a riposte attack; even if the roll would allow it. This means that if your parry skill is greater than your AC 50% of the time or more, your Parrying skill can effectively 'be' your AC -- albeit an AC that is dependent on a d20 roll to determine whether or not it works.
Comments
You also shouldn't forget that this isn't happening in isolation - there could be a 4th or even 5th class available, new PrCs, etc. which could open further possibilities for exploitation.
As to AB, a Cleric24/Bard16 can self-buff, with mundane equipment, to AB +68/+63/+58/+68/+63. It took me a couple of minutes to find this at the ecb. Admittedly most characters won't have 60+ AB, but then most won't have 80AC either.
On AC, it's hard to get to 80 with only +5 gear. You need a lot of Dodge AC, because it stacks (to 20). And Dodge AC is negated by being flat-footed; hence my question. Perhaps it would be a better debate if the assumptions behind this paragon of defence had been made clear.
On sacrifice. Given that we agree that 60AB is a good AB with +5 gear, I only need a Parry skill of 78 to parry the attacker 95% of the time (i.e. against everything except a natural 20). I get 43 from the skill alone and I get +17 from the Feats; to that I can add my Dex modifier, which on a Dexer could make up the remaining 18 needed on its own (and why would I not push Dex to the max anyway?). No gear needed. Or I could miss a feat or two and get some gear. I cannot see that as a sacrifice when I avoid 95% of all melee attacks.
Finally, Parry was deliberately reduced to its current state pre-release of the OC; so clearly it must have been seen as overpowered.
I suppose you would have to run the fight a bunch of times both with and without stacked weapon enchantments.
That might be the best thing to do before figuring out how to tone it down.
I made a parry test character last night and have been running it in low to mid levels, three attacks or less. It seems kind of a mixed bag, useful sometimes, useless others. Which is how I think it should be.
The issue is how broken the ruleset gets in epic levels. Maybe it would be overwhelming, maybe not. I don’t think we’ll really know until we can properly test it.
A straight dexer should never go 1 on 1 with a Str build though - he really needs HiPS to land sneak damage, as flanking just won't happen. As I intimated earlier, parry is more for surviving between the sneak attacks or when you can't hide for these characters. You could probably come up with a Bard build though, with decent Str from RDD and some additional damage from a few Fighter levels (say), but still high enough Dex along with his skill boosts to parry and still do damage. I'm sure experts will be able to think of other combinations that work.
I really don't see the point in going through all the trouble of making a skill-based combat mode on top of existing 3e combat rules, and then trying desperately to balance it. There are so many things that can modify skill ranks to take into account.
The biggest balance problems seem to be in the epic levels. But there's nothing less epic than a character who is only parrying.
Your suggested build would at most be able to obtain an AB of 15 pre epic BAB, 10 Epic BAB 4 AB from feats, +20 from magic cap. + your related ability modifier which would require a 19 mod in the stat of choice. The requirements of wisdom for spells and charisma for spells would make it very questionable if it was possible min-maxing with Zen Archery, it's outright impossible if using a melee weapon. It would also be very heavily reliant on very short term, easily dispellable buffs.
If such is using Zen Archery, it's using a range weapon and Parry would be ignored anyway, so the point is kinda moot. I suppose if module builders really hate parry they could either rescript it (if it is opened up) to their liking or just give their boss monsters ranged weapons, or ranged minions.
As far as I'm aware the only change folks really wanted was so that it wasn't limited by one attack per flurry and instead matched the number of attacks per round the user possessed, matching up with it's description more and being less of a trap. I've said before and I'll say it again, Parry will be potentially strong in very select cases but not an amazing must have, there's ways of countering it, be that spell fire, ranged weapons or additional foes making it so there are more attacks per round then the character can parry.
Is monk SR considered too powerful because it can outright make you immune to almost all spells cast with enough investment (not to mention that insane speed that comes with it)? is high AC too powerful because it can protect against both melee and ranged? are exceptional saves mixed with evasion too powerful as most offensive spells because something to giggle at?
Someone that is investing heavily into Parry is perhaps going to do at best chip (minor) damage when they hit as they'll want a high Dex score, sneak attack isn't going to assist them with bringing a foe down like they'd normally do, I can only imagine this skill being really useful in party play where the parrying person tanks one extremely overpowered boss while the others deal damage, but in that case I generally consider the immortal Black Blade of Disaster to be the ultimate tank for such. Then again if a build team or DM has forced upon me and my party the need to use Black Blade of Disaster as a tank to defeat an encounter or easily wipe out, I tend to face palm and not return to that module or server because they lack any idea regarding balance.
@1varangian it isn't about going through the trouble of making a skill, the skill already exists, it's there. People just want it to do what it was suppose to have done, because in it's current form it's worse then useless, it's a trap. They don't want much they want it to at least be usable for it's intended purpose and preferably rescriptable.
I looked for a more standard build instead. F28/Bd2/RDD10, which has BAB30, Str of 40 for +15 and +4 from Feats = 49. With +12 Str and maximum enhancement this could be at 75AB, without Taunt. I trust that's enough to show that 80AC isn't unhittable.
60ab for a lvl 40 character is easily doable with +5 weapon. All you need is to add into your build: 15+ cleric or weapon master or arcane archer or red dragon disciple and put most (or almost all) points into ability used for attacking (str/dex/wisdom). Basically only builds that cannot get 60+ are: high leveled monks, pure rangers, druids, pure barbarians, high-leveled dwarven defenders. Everything else can exceed 60ab rather easily if built for that.
Outside of 1 on 1 melee, I think it would add survivability to non tank-like characters during a group encounter if they have party support. That seems to bear out at lower levels when I try to test it... the biggest caveat being testing with a party of henchmen, they may help they may sort of stand there and not do much of anything which is a whole other issue altogether.
The fact is that parry is an abortion that should never have seen the light of day.
Which paradoxically is- I think- what parry is actually meant for. It adds survivabilty, especially for characters like rogues, rangers and bards, who might not otherwise have the AC to last very long in group on group encounters.
In the case where you are fighting multiple opponents with a much lower BAB than you it seems more efficient to focus those 10 (or however many) attacks on one at a time as opposed to splitting possible ripostes between a group.
Again, I think we both agree it’s a bit of a kludge, I think Beamdog agreed as well, the question is, what is the fix that’s makes it useful without being overpowering?
* Unfortunately changing it to a Feat would undoubtedly break anything that removing it would break, and changing it as a skill is also going to be problematical, because all skills run off the same template. I haven't seen anyone comment on how it might actually be fixed so that it did present a reasonable chance for high AB enemies to hit (whatever a reasonable chance is, because it is not obvious). Probably the best solution is to also make it something that could be switched on or off by PWs and module makers, but it seems a lot of work for something that is not needed (the game works perfectly well with parry as it is - maybe just change the description!).
I completely agree PWs should be allowed to turn it off.
If it actually worked (wasn’t broken by flurries) and scaled with BAB in epic levels I think it would be fine.
I still doubt I’d make a character that invested in it when there are so many other useful skills, but I’m theory it would be a viable option.
Fighting Defensively as a Standard Action
You can choose to fight defensively when attacking. If you do so, you take a -4 penalty on all attacks in a round to gain a +2 dodge bonus to AC for the same round.
So.. Kill Parry off slowly by first hiding it. Older mods that use it can unhide it or update the mod to get rid of it.
Add Fighting Defensively and Total Defense modes. They are much more important as free modes in a party based multiplayer combat.
What's important is that any new official content wouldn't have Parry anymore and we could gently put it to rest.
That'd be my solution.
I'm not a rules "purist". Parry and Discipline just aren't the best mechanics. Using homebrew house rules should be completely up to modders since modding is what NWN is all about.
Module builders should have the ability to customize the skills as they see fit and fixing up parry does not stop module builders from being able to change such if it's also opened up (And I really think everything should be opened up to the server host / module builder / whatever's ability to change as they see best).
It is a part of NWN, it has history, content should not be cut because some dislike it as not being from 3.x as it is a part of the game and has been for so very long, regardless of it's usability in the past. Likewise I disagree it should be cut because some think it might be overly strong in select cases, it's not like it'll be Melee Palemaster levels of defensive stupidity, nor insane in strength like Bigby spells. Removing a section of the game rather then actually fixing it because of a vocal minority of the playerbase doesn't like that it isn't 3.x or seems too powerful for them is overkill to the extreme (we, myself included all here on the boards are a vocal minority).
I'd kinda love to see fighter bonus feats get some love in the form of a +3, +4 and +10 line (the corresponding opposite to skill focus, improved parry and epic skill focus parry) that makes the check easier to pass if you possess the correct feat, it's not like fighters are starving for feats, rather they're starving for choices on what to use with their bonus feats after they have all the basics covered if they're taking more then a tiny dip for weapon spec.
Content being cut, particularly when some modules require it as their builders have already customized it to their own personal needs doesn't really strike me as one of the rare times a removal is the best fix.
They said the reason for adding Parry and Discipline in the first place was because Fighters didn't have enough skills at initial release. Well, that's no longer the case and we can mod more actual D&D skills in too.
Kill your darlings, BD! No mercy!
In regards to the Discipline skill, I wouldn't mind seeing it removed as it has caused more heart-ache in Online PW games than prevented. However, I also wouldn't mind in seeing a Game Options toggle which simply makes it so that characters get free ranks in the Discipline skill (max ranks with non-magical classes, half ranks with spellcasting classes).
It appears to me as if some people didn't understand that removing Parry would be HIGHLY detrimental to the game's backward compatibility, which is (and rightly so) Beamdog's top priority for the EE.
Stop asking for game features to be removed, you can simply not use them. If they bother you THIS much, I can edit and send you guys a skills.2da override that will hide Parry from skill selection, but don't go all like "I have no use for Parry, so I don't want anyone to have it, even if it breaks older modules!".
On the topic of the rules - NWN never featured 3rd Edition rules. In fact, it couldn't, given that NWN and the 3rd edition were developed at roughly the same time, independently to some extent. NWN can be said to be BASED on the 3rd edition ruleset, but its ruleset is NOT the 3rd edition ruleset, in the same way a story based on real-life events does not necessarily represent history accurately. I'd say we stop wanting NWN to be something it never was intended to be in the first place. It's got its own rules and Parry/Discipline not existing in the 3rd edition is a very poor excuse to remove them (especially considering the reasons to let them be).
...or perhaps all these malcontents would also see to it that spell and feat uses are regained per in-game day and not per rest? After all, it's a house rule, so it ought to be changed! Then we should focus on making the game turn-based only. Any real-time mechanics are house rules and don't exist in the 3rd edition!
Personally, having played with parry builds on leveles before the skill breaks down, I’m not entirely convinced it would be overpowering in any situation.
But that’s what testing is for. Right now it’s all speculation until we have something we can mess around with at higher levels, where it seems to go off the rails. But it’s not a bad thing to discuss how it might break down, to facilitate balancing it once there is something worth balancing.
But ultimately I do agree, most of the anti-parry crowd’s concern seem to be centered around its potential abuse in epic level duels on PWs. The easy fix is hiding the skill.
I'm all for Beamdog allowing people to modify stuff, though!
I think module switches for changing various behavior would be a sufficient alternative to unhardcoding it completely. For example, Expertise by default can be abused by spellcasters to gain free 5 AC (10 for Improved Expertise), but a simple module switch exists to make spellcasting break the Expertise combat mode.
The reality is that Persistent Worlds at large simply do not "use" skills in any other sense. Many of them actually argue it that a high skill isn't an excuse in and of itself to say you're good at something, or attempt it even; because many of the Online Environments that exist still either supplement their own "skillsets" for crafting and social interaction (often more heavily influenced by the PC's stats - such as Arelith's tradeskill system; or the public domain system, the CNR that's sittiing around on the vault) or ignore these particulars wholly.
Whether you agree or disagree with the concept that this should be considered "status quo" or even a good thing, though; the point is that skills haven't been non-mechanical entities in the Online environment for quite some time, making stating such as a "basic design principle" quite out of time. They've fled from their 3E inspirations to become mechanical prerequisites and fodder long ago.
I'll put any feelings I have about that aside though - In my humblest opinion, I would argue it that parry should serve the purpose that it sounds like it serves; and to me, that means reflecting attacks, and periodically returning them to sender. In my opinion, we should continue to allow a restricted amount of attacks within a given range of APR -- made with the attacker's damage roll, at the PC's AB minus a penalty for the riposte (penalty removed for improved parry) -- to the tune of 1 Attack per 4 APR of the PC; rounded up. Only UBAB would receive more than one riposte that way; and as they're giving up the most APR to perform a parry, that seems fair.
Under this proposition, further attacks can still be parried, but they may not be returned as a riposte attack; even if the roll would allow it. This means that if your parry skill is greater than your AC 50% of the time or more, your Parrying skill can effectively 'be' your AC -- albeit an AC that is dependent on a d20 roll to determine whether or not it works.