55 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I definitely agree it's dependent on your particular character, if you only dish out 4+Success damage and it's the crits your going for then fine, it's pointless. But if you have a base damage of 6 or 7 then it's not too shabby in a bar fight. Again, it's about some versatility.

Even 6 or 7 base damage is only 3 or 4 dmg once you factor in 3 soak (2 brawn with heavy clothing) thats only one more than strain damage from threat would give you. If they had less soak then they have 1 brawn, they shouldnt even breach your soak with their attack so could sit there attacking all day for nothing.

Improved parry works best with a lightsaber against better opponents here is why. Firstly your opponent has to hit you, not just roll three threat or despair, unlike overbalance. Secondly they have to beat your soak, so that you can trigger parry. Lastly they have to roll despair or three threat on the roll. Then you counter for base damage.

Im going to use my modest character as an example that has parry 2 and soak 6.

If a minion group of 3 minions with 3 brawn try to hit me they roll, 2 yellow and 1 green. Lets say they have a force pike, I use dodge to upgrade twice.

They roll 3 threat on the negative dice, and 4 success for 8 dmg. So 2 dmg, so I parry. With my 7 dmg weapon I do 3 dmg if I improved parry assuming heavy clothing.

If their brawn is higher then I do less damage against them and improved parry dowsnt damage them , if their brawn is lower they do less damage against me and I cant trigger improved parry as they dont hit me. So you have to be in that sweet spot.

If it is a BBEG 6 or 7 dmg isnt getting through soak, so improved parry is useless here.

Now if im fighting with a saber I'm consistently doing 6-10 dmg with each parry unless soak is greater than 10., regardless of my opponent and his armor, they cannot defend against this as they cannot parry it back, only protect or Cortosis would defend you against improved parry , there is no check.

For improved parry to really work your base damage must be high enough to consistently and significantly get past soak . So either needs breach or have 10 or so base damage and your opponents damage must be high enough to beat your own soak for parry to come into play. The roll I used above was pretty much every dice coming up in an exact manner (4 success from 3 dice and 3 threat from 2 red, despair would lower their success working against the parry)

Of course you could parry hits that cause no damage, but then you are just wasting strain.