Parry Bonus or Penalty?

[Pel]

This is inspired by the Melee and Parry discussion over in Official Rules.

While responding, it occured to me that I've always treated parries the same, regardless of what either combatant was actually wielding. The specific scenario I envision is a knife trying to parry a vibroaxe or force pike. I'm just not seeing it. Does anyone have house rules that take this sort of thing into account?
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Aha!

[garhkal]

If anything, you might give penalties/bonuses like with bargaining/forgery...

+15 to the attacker if he has an overwhelming advantage like a force pike against a kitchen knife.
+10 to the attacker if he has a moderate advantage, like a vibro sword against that knife.
+5 if the attacker has a slight advantage, like a regular sword or a vibro dagger against the knife..
-5 if the defender has a slight advantage
and so on..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[DoubtBreak]

To some degree, I'd say it comes down to how you define "parry," in the sense of Melee Parry. I've seen this mentioned in at least 1 other thread, so I'll try to keep it short.

If you define "parry" strictly as "blocking" then weapon size is a big issue- a kitchen knife isn't going to be much good at blocking a Gamorrean war axe. If you define "parry" as "not getting hit," then size isn't critical, but may still be important.

As I understand it, when two people fight each other using weapons of different size, it goes something like this: the person with the larger weapon tries to keep the opponent far away, while the person with the shorter weapon tries to get past his opponent's defense and fight from close-quarters where the larger weapon doesn't work so well. However, this doesn't strike me as a good basis for RPG combat rules.

I agree that there should be at least a basic rule for situations like this, but nothing is coming to mind for me.

[Gry Sarth]

Melee Parry can also be understood as deflecting a blow, and in that a smaller weapons is not at such a disadvantage. Changing the angle of attack does not really require a big weapon.

All in all I'd say that such a bonus/penalty is not vital enough to the realism of the scene to tarnish the simplicity of the current rules with an added table.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Pel]

That works for me. I'll just keep it simple unless one of the players really wants to hash out a specific scene. Many thanks!
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Aha!