Topic: Is "Must Parry" Stun?

[Marc R]

Going back into the dusty history of RM2. . .the books manage to state that "Must Parry" is and is not a form of stun in different places. . .leading to confusion.

"Must parry is not stun" became the RAW RMSS. . .but if you look at the mods:

-025  Must Parry
-050  Stunned
-075  Stunned No Parry
-100  Down
-       Out

Does look an awful lot like a clean progression. . .assuming you considered "Must Parry" to be stun. . .which the RAW managed to say it was, then said it was not. Going into RMSS it was not. . .

But. . .if "Must parry" isn't stun, then like any other injury or penalty it would immediately take place, and operate in parallell to stun, as per the "Effects of Stun rounds" in every version of the rules, only "Stunned", "Stunned No Parry", "Down" and "Out" fall under those rules.

Which creates the potential whacky result of being "Must Parry" and "Stunned No Parry" at the same time. . .which seems absurd. Would you then be at -100 and both forced to parry and unable to parry at the same time?

Hence the reason I just decided that made no sense, so at my table "Must Parry" is indeed stun, and the "Effects of Stun Rounds" rule does apply to it, but it's also curable by unstun and undead and similar stun immunes can ignore it. . .that last bit is just a house rule though, ambiguous in RM2, and certainly contrary to the RAW in RMSS.

I know this has been discussed many times. . .likely going back to before there was an internet, much less a forum. . .it seems the decision was made that "Must Parry" must definitely not be stun with the release of RMSS. . .but the RAW in all versions then presents the absurdity of being "Must Parry" and "Stunned No Parry" at the same time. . .I wonder if perhaps that wasn't a mistake, and the places in RM2 where "Must Parry" was indeed a form of stun were actually correct all along?

[Ecthelion]

We had Must Parry, all kind of Stuns, Down and Out be cumulative and the worst type of these getting reduced by one each round. Nevertheless only Stunned and Stun & No Parry were the only results we allowed to be cured by Unstun spells. This works quite well, but as it looks like it is not RAW...

[Marc R]

The unstuns are one thing, the immunes like undead are the other.

It seems so much tidier with the four steps of stun -25/-50/-75/-100 and so far have had no problems with either the fact unstuns work on them, or that the immunes ignore them. .

But I wonder if there's something obvious I'm missing. . .they didn't make "Must Parry" not stun for RMSS for no reason I assume?

[Old Man]

I always treated Must Parry differently. The opponent doesn't get a +20 and you don't have your parry reduced (50% or -50 however you do it).

CIao,
Old Man

[Marc R]

The penalty to "must parry" is -25. . .that was one of the things that caught my eye, was the fact it goes:

-25  must parry
-50  stunned
-75  stunned no parry
-100 Down

Which seemed like a standard, tabled progression of effect, like it was done on purpose. . .I wish we had someone to grill for answers who was around back then.

[markc]

 IMHO the idea was to have one effect that you could not affect with stun removal spells.


 I treat it as not being affected by stun removal spells and stun no parry over rules must parry result, which IMHO do take place at the same time. But only the greater effect happens.


MDC

[kevinmccollum]

Seriously? Must parry was ONLY -25 on manuevers during that period, not to OB. It was never considered a stun in RM2 (and the only reason it may have been considered so in later incarnations of the game was the writers in RMSS didn't know beans about the game) so couldn't be removed by a remove stun result. It was really the result of being knocked into a position where you couldn't get an effective attack in while recovering.

[Marc R]

An amusing answer, in that it's actually RAW not stun in RMSS from day 1. . .but it's actually referred to as being stun, and as not being stun, in the core RM2 books. . .so you have that exactly backwards. Any confusion here is soly on the RM2 side, and as always blame the editors, as the writers are always perfect. . . 

[Ecthelion]

It was really the result of being knocked into a position where you couldn't get an effective attack in while recovering.

This also was our interpretation.

[Skaran]

We have always considered a must parry to be the result of the character being unexpectedly pushed on to the defensive, but not actually stunned so stun relief skill or spells will not remove this.

[Marc R]

Looking at Grapple A 67-70, Krush B 51-55, Puncture B 51-55, Slash B 51-55, Slash B 56-60, Tiny D61-65, Tiny B 71-75, and especially Sweeps C 67-80, 

Must Parry for 6 rounds? Stumbling off balance or out of position for 60 seconds?

That's something you usually don't see outside of cartoons or slapstick comedy, someone doing the "woah, woah" dance for a minute.

I strongly suspect that when that crit was written, either must parry was stun, or the author thought it was. . .which is substantiated by the places in RM2 where it's stated to be stun. Spending 6 rounds in a mildly stunned state makes sense, not quite fully at stunned but at least a bit loopy.

That said, I think that the general trend in writing was towards it being not stun, and certainly by the time RMSS came out it was flatly and officially not stun. . .so I'd say it's not stun, and hasn't been for quite some time. . .

I still find that result an amusing image to think of. . ."Woah. . .woah. . .woah. woah. . " can't wait for it to come up again in play.

[yammahoper]

Think of it a mild concussion.  They can keep ya dizzy and off balance for hours/days.

[Marc R]

It's the splitting the difference issue. . .

I could believe -25 off balance for 10 sec (round)
I could believe -25 a mild concussion for days

But 6 rounds. . .a minute. . .that's stun. . .or keystone cops and bananas.

It no longer is stun, I won't dispute that, but 6 rounds of must parry that doesn't include a dazed/stunned element seems very slapstick to me, so I feel that it must have been stun, when that crit was written.

[rdanhenry]

I think that six rounds in the Sweeps crits comes with a dislocated shoulder. Perhaps that's the time needed to relocate it. Which would make it a rather fast recovery considering a combat situation and the difficulty of performing such an operation on oneself. The text also describes a situation where the attacker remains close to the attacked. Once you are on the defensive, the need to evade further assault may keep you from fully recovering your balance as quickly as you otherwise would. I think that is my preferred interpretation, and if the victim suddenly found himself out of the combat situation (e.g., teleported to safety or all attackers killed by his allies), a single round would suffice to return to normal (although in this case it is likely to be irrelevant).

[Marc R]

It does indeed, but the shoulder doesn't cure after 6 rounds, you're at -40 until the shoulder's fixed. . .and if I recall my T2 you can fire a pump shotgun one handed, much less fight with a dagger. 

7 variations of "Must parry" for 2+ rounds up there.

I'll posit that anyone off balance for 20 seconds mid combat is likely named "Moe", "Larry", "Curly". . .

Considering the RM2 core books managed to specifically state that "Must Parry" was, and was not stun in different sections of the books, I don't know why it's so hard to fathom that there was merely some confusion at first, since resolved, in which initially it was stun, but then later it wasn't.

RMSS was quite clear in stating that it absolutely was not.

[Skaran]

It could also be things like armour etc, being knocked out of position, funny bone injury on your weapon elbow, all sorts of things really.

[MidKnight]

Looking at Grapple A 67-70, Krush B 51-55, Puncture B 51-55, Slash B 51-55, Slash B 56-60, Tiny D61-65, Tiny B 71-75, and especially Sweeps C 67-80, 

Must Parry for 6 rounds? Stumbling off balance or out of position for 60 seconds?

That's something you usually don't see outside of cartoons or slapstick comedy, someone doing the "woah, woah" dance for a minute.

I strongly suspect that when that crit was written, either must parry was stun, or the author thought it was. . .which is substantiated by the places in RM2 where it's stated to be stun. Spending 6 rounds in a mildly stunned state makes sense, not quite fully at stunned but at least a bit loopy.

That said, I think that the general trend in writing was towards it being not stun, and certainly by the time RMSS came out it was flatly and officially not stun. . .so I'd say it's not stun, and hasn't been for quite some time. . .

I still find that result an amusing image to think of. . ."Woah. . .woah. . .woah. woah. . " can't wait for it to come up again in play.

I could be mistaken, but doesn't a successful Grapple require 'concentration' or follow-up action to maintain the 'hold'?  Perhaps the 'Must Parry' result was intended to represent a continued struggle, but the critical should be revised to "discontinue if the Grapple is no longer being applied".?

Just curious.

[Marc R]

Those results are all must parry and at a penalty for X rounds. . .regardless of what the attacker does apparently, and many of them are not grapples.

[smug]

I always felt that "must parry" really meant "must parry if you can" (or something like "can't do more than parry") and was not a sort of stun. If you get both "must parry" and "stunned no parry" then you are stunned and can't parry because the "must parry if you can" interpretation doesn't mean much when you can't parry.

[ironmaul]

Thought this might be of interest to this thread. In "Run out the Guns!" page 23 of the players book under the "Critical Hit Results" section it states:

"The defender must parry- The defender must do one of the following actions during the duration of the result: run away or parry the attacker who inflicted the critical hit which resulted in being forced to parry."

Cheers,
Rick.