Siranui said:

This I agree with, In fights with edged weapons a lot of what you would call "parrying" occurs without any blade on blade contact, and is just that opponent A cannot attack opponent B because opponent B's sword is positioned such that if opponent A moves in to attack he will leave himself horribly open

I've been fencing for quite some time now, and Parrying involves redirecting your opponent's blade via careful application of force as much as it does strength.

There are plenty of girls who can parry me, and I'm sure I'm significantly stronger than them. All you have to do is use the strongest (closest to the hilt) part of your blade near the weakest (the last 1/3 or so) part of their's and you're golden. A Carnifex's talon is whole meters long, you would have a phenomenal amount of leverage on the creature and only need to redirect the strike a little bit in order to not be hit.

In regards to a Titan? No, definitely not. Then again, that is classed as a Vehicle and not a normal enemy; you could introduce a house rule to disallow parrying vehicle attacks if you really want. Makes sense that you couldn't redirect the blow of a Defiler or something equivalently large.

But a Daemon Prince or a Carnifex I would let a player parry.

At Last Forgot said:

I've got to say, I never really imagined that strength really plays much part in fencing at all. I be interesting know if you've ever had the opportuntiy to deflect a swing (rather than a thrust) from a heavier sword? A carnifex's talon is meters long because they are many tons in weight, the closest anaology I can thing of is parying a gore from an elephants tusks. I think there's more pysics envolved that the theory of fencing.

Well there is a possibility, which is mostly a mix between dodging and parrying. That is, you step aside AND drive the attack off.

If you do it well, you won't need too much force. If you don't...Well...You're dead, probably

Strength does play a role, but only when you're not doing things "right." A perfect parry could be executed by a child and deflect a grown adult's attack. Most parries aren't "perfect" though and as such rely a varying degree on strength of the user.

For example, there's an ex-Olympian who fences in the Chicago circuit like I do, and he's easily 6'6'' and 300lbs. He's a bear that walks like a man, and you can bet he uses that strength when it comes to his parries and his takes. It is not, however, significantly harder to parry HIM, because unless you have their blade on the attack you're actually fairly weak regardless of your relative strength.

It's worth noting that I fence epee, which is the only weapon in which your parry actually HAS to deflect their blade, since there is no Right of Way rule. In foil or sabre, a light tap on their weapon counts as a parry and you may riposte immediately, knowing that if they still hit you it is your point due to the vagaries of the rules.

I've had occasion to parry a heavier weapon a handful of times when fooling around with people. Especially with my friends who do kendo, either using a boken or their own mock weapon. The important thing to remember is that you never, ever, are supposed to block momentum. You only ever redirect it. Parries are sliding actions and not slamming actions, so as long as you anticipate properly, you can parry something heavier and larger even with the comparative toothpick that is a fencing weapon.

I'm sure I wouldn't be able to parry, say, a battle axe but then again I don't have a real sword. If I had a rapier, and I HAD to parry as opposed to dodging, I would step into their guard and block at the hilt. I'm probably not fast enough to make it work, but someone better than me might be able to. Course it would make more sense to just back away and counterattack into their exposed body.

I'm just saying, for a game mechanical perspective, the system was designed around being able to both Parry and Dodge melee attacks. The players should be allowed to do that otherwise it may fool with the balance.

At Last Forgot said:

Agreed. While some might consider avoidance of an attack by judging the foe's reach and then working to get inside or outside of that to be a 'dodge', the point that it's far more related to 'weapon skill' than 'agility' is really secondary to the game requiring that there be a mechanism in place for parrying all but the most extreme [ie Titan's foot!] forms of melee attack for the sake of system balance.

I think starting with discussing parrying a Warlord titan might have been a bit too far, but you have to imagine that there's a point where things just get too big to parry (at least in the fiendish GM's eye). Rather than just dissallowing parries from your beloved Trygon, you should try to deal it in a less mechanically (especially if the poor player is in terminator armour and was relying on parrying with his shield). Having the character land on his ass 5 meters away or having a sword go flying as he's spun around, is more cinamatic.

I think if an attack can be parried depends as much on the weapon one wants to parry with as on the kind of attack.

If a large rock is dropping out of the sky it is unlikely that it can be parried with a knife. But a towershield could do the trick.
Same with the bite of a really big monster. If the shield doesn't fit into the mouth you can parry the bite with it.

And I would allow to parry some attacks with iron arm, because it's indestructable, that I would normally not allow to parry.