Topic: Declaring parries during action declaration phase

[Marc R]

You declare your melee parry, you declare who you use your shield on, but I don't recall any rule stating those must be used on the same opponent.

[RandalThor]

I have a question.<SNIP>
 I was wondering what others think on this.

To me, that is a great time to call for Situational Awareness: Combat skill checks, to determine exactly what they notice in the heat of battle. If they get an Amazing result, perhaps they do see which one is firing at them.

Otherwise, I also like to go against RAW in this; it just seems as though the rule is for a 2-second or less combat round, not a much (MUCH) more abstract 10-second combat round. So, once I started running RM, I allowed the players to use OB to defend against any attack they were aware* of, with mods for positions and such.

*It would be down to the Sit Aware: Combat check.

For the Hasted TWC monster situation, I would treat it like they were being attacked by more than a single opponent. I mean, really, if someone is going to go through all of that trouble.... But more seriously, the speed at which they are attacking has to affect their targets defenses somehow. (Unless, the defender also got Hasted, then it would be back to normal, as both combatants are on the same "playing field.")

[jdale]

You declare your melee parry, you declare who you use your shield on, but I don't recall any rule stating those must be used on the same opponent.

That's correct - in fact RMSR pg 96 specifies that you may apply the shield DB against a different opponent than your parry.

For low level characters, the shield bonus is going to be on par or better than their parry. But for more skilled characters I could imagine wanting to augment it with some parry, especially if they are primarily defending.