And that is where I was thinking originally until I went back and looked at the rules again. In the act on your initiative mode, if you lose initiative and you are attacked - its not your turn so how do you parry or perform a sudden dodge? If you win initiative, you have no clue(unless you are alone) if someone is going to attack you in the round so why waste your time with a parry or sudden dodge? The only way around that is if you declare everthing up front or allow a defensive move even though it is not your initiative turn.
As Nick points out Parrying is not a "defensive
move", but more of a way of
fighting more defensively overall by sacrificing some OB and placing it towards DB.
For example, if you have an OB of 100 and a DB 30. You could declare that you are Parrying for the round, putting half your OB into DB (or whatever portion you want), thus making your OB
for the round be 50 and your DB
for the round be 80. Notice the bolded words...
As for Sudden Dodge, I seriously doubt that anybody would declare that as an action. As a GM, I wouldn't allow it (I would allow "Dodge" though). The whole point behind Sudden Dodge is that you don't have to declare it, you call on it when needed. The results of which depends partly on whether or not you have already taken your action for the round (if you have, then you lose your actions for the
NEXT round, but at least retain the DB bonus gained).
Also, the standard for HARP is that
you do declare actions before rolling for initiative. And certain defensive actions (like the Sudden Dodge) may be declared at any time.