I tried searching for an answer to this but couldn't find any discussions about it. How does parry interact with breach/peirce qualities? I want to make sure my interpretation is correct. Parry is a flat damage reduction before soak (and their by breach) is applied? If I have enough parry to negate the incoming damage then it wouldn't matter that the weapon had breach 2 because it did no damage?

Thanks

Breach doesn't ignore Parry's damage reduction. And also you apply the damage negation after applying soak. This makes it a whole lot easier, and less confusing, than trying to apply it before you apply soak

It is possible that you could have enough ranks in Parry to completely negate the damage from a weapon that has the Breach 2 quality.

Breach does nothing to increase damage parry reduces damage caused ,

Armor (soak) reduces damage also but breach circumvents that by allowing you to ignore some or all of the armor

Cortosis allows you to ignore breach and pierce , which means your armor reduces armor every time , there is one artefact lightsaber listed that ignores cortosis.

So if the damage is 6 and you parry 8 you get no damage even if you had breach 5, if your soak was 8 and the damage was 6, but had breach(1) then you do the full 6 damage with no reduction, .....unless the armor has the cortosis quality, then the damage would reduce to nothing, since breach is ignored.

Parry is the foil for lightsabers as is cortosis. Soak is the foil for non breach/pierce weapons, Parry has a finite resource to fuel it (strain), soak is there with no additional cost. So ultimately it is rock paper scissors as there are defenses that work better in different circumstances.

After the attack is made you calculate the total damage from the hit:

Weapon Damage + Attackers Talents + Success.

At this point the character can choose to use Parry/Reflect to reduce the final damage dealt.

When that final figure is calculated the defending character applies Soak, modified by Piece and Breach

I can make an example later if it would help.

And here I was thinking you have to combine parry soak and the armor soak together versus the breach quality + damage. Was thinking that the light saber fights would be rather short in this game this way, but whatever.

49 minutes ago, SuperArppis said:

And here I was thinking you have to combine parry soak and the armor soak together versus the breach quality + damage. Was thinking that the light saber fights would be rather short in this game this way, but whatever.

parry and soak do combineo prevent damage ultimately, because what happens is that soak still gets to apply to the damage that exceeds parry.

so it works like this

calculate damage defender gets the chance to parry if the attack is a melee /lightsaber / or brawl attack. If they parry they can reduce the damage by the amount of their parry which is 2+ranks. This leaves you with the damage left over , now if this left over damage is , lets say 2 and the defender's soak is 7 then those 2 damage get to land because of breach. but if the defender's soak was 12, then no damage is caused, as breach allows you to ignore 10 soak , leaving 2 damage still being affected by 2 soak, so in this example between parry, soak and breach you ended with a final damage score of zero.

You just take the damage through each step, but for parry it is important to note thst it is when the damage is calculated that is the point at whcih the defender chooses if they want to parry, reflsct works the same way.

As others have stated, Breach has no effect on Parry (or Reflect for that matter) as the full description of the talent says that it applies before soak, and Breach (as well as Pierce) only impact the target's soak value.

So if a PC with Parry 3 and Soak 4 gets hit by an Inquisitor's lightsaber (base Damage 6, Breach 1) with the combat check having three net successes (9 damage total), the PC can use their Parry talent to reduce the damage by 5 (current damage value is now 4). For a normal weapon, the PC's Soak of 4 would be applied to reduce the wounds taken to nothing, but since the lightsaber is a Breach 1 weapon (which ignores 1 Armor or 10 Soak), the PC takes 4 wounds out of the exchange.

Had the attack been made with a vibrosword (Pierce 2 instead of Breach 1), then the PC would only take 2 wounds out of the above exchange, since the vibrosword only gets to ignore 2 points of the PC's Soak.

And had the PC been wearing armor with the cortosis quality, then the PC would take no damage since the cortosis armor negates the effects of Breach and Pierce.

from FnD cr ... parry is applied "before" soak.

It says in the Corebook that Cortosis weapons are immune to sunder and that armor with cortosis are immune to Pierce and Breach but what if I parry a lightsaber with a cortosis sword? Does my sword provide me the immunity to breach, which allows me to parry a lightsaber and therefore take less damage?

IE: I have a soak value of 4 and I parry 3 damage from a sith's lightsaber attack of 8. Does that mean that my parry reduces the damage to 5 but because my sword is made of cortosis that only 1 point of damage gets through or does it only mean that I'd be able to parry at all considering a lightsaber would normally, movie wise, cut through a regular sword and still deal me 5 damage?

In short, no.

"Parry" does not necessarily entail blocking with your melee weapon. You are simply parrying; ie., you are warding off an attack and therefore mitigating its effects on you. And so using the Parry talent with your regular old vibrosword wouldn't result in a broken sword. The Sunder quality of the lightsaber would do that, though And that could well be an instance where you Parry and then your sword is destroyed with a decent attack roll on your opponent's part.

Anyway, the Cortosis quality simply makes your weapon immune to Sunder. But if you want to be immune to Breach, then you need armor with the cortosis quality. A Talisman of Iron Fists or Cortosis Weave will do this for you. A Cortosis weapon will not.

10 hours ago, Slyder1981 said:

It says in the Corebook that Cortosis weapons are immune to sunder and that armor with cortosis are immune to Pierce and Breach but what if I parry a lightsaber with a cortosis sword? Does my sword provide me the immunity to breach, which allows me to parry a lightsaber and therefore take less damage?

IE: I have a soak value of 4 and I parry 3 damage from a sith's lightsaber attack of 8. Does that mean that my parry reduces the damage to 5 but because my sword is made of cortosis that only 1 point of damage gets through or does it only mean that I'd be able to parry at all considering a lightsaber would normally, movie wise, cut through a regular sword and still deal me 5 damage?

There'd be no additional effect.

The Parry talent sort of handwaves this by allowing the PC to use any Melee or Lightsaber weapon to negate damage of a successful melee attack without worrying about damage to the blocking weapon.

As you said, Cortosis when applied to a weapon has a specific effect (immunity to Sunder), and a cortosis sword is always considered a weapon, whether you're using it to attack or to satisfy the requirements of the Parry talent.

Closest you might get to a "weapon" with the Cortosis quality being able to negate the Breach or Pierce quality would be to homebrew a set of cortosis (or phrik alloy) bracers that cite when used with the Parry quality it also negates the effects of Breach/Pierce, but again that'd be a house ruled item on top of it being a special quality of the bracers themselves and nothing to do with the Cortosis quality.