Greetings fellow void-farers! The time has come for me to get a better grip on some of the most puzzeling questions of the Unexplored Void.

We can start with the easier one. One player in my group loves powerswords, with good reason. He is however thinking on getting a secondary weapon to parry with, but it needs to have a very high +% to parry, since the standard powersword in RT has +15. He did find something interesting in Into the Storm, a Forearm Powerblade. Now, if i see this correctly, it will give him a +25 to parry with. However, there are some questions that arose from this find.

1. He will use it in his off-hand ( I don't know why he couldn't just mount it on his "good" arm, but hey, looks cooler perhaps), will that give him a penalty to parry? From the rules, it does give a penalty to Weapon Skill tests, but we are unsure wether or not this applies to Parry tests.

2. An extension of the first, he does not have the Training for the weapon, will that give him a penalty to Parry with it?

3. The weapon has both the Balanced (+10 to parry) and the Defensive (+15 to parry, -10 to attack). Are these to applied together? I belive they should be, otherwise the Balanced will be worthless, since the Defensive is better. Well, to parry with at least.

I am not really sure why we are debating the first 2. For me, it seems clear the penalty to Weapon skill for using a weapon in the of-hand, and without training, should apply to parrying aswell. I think it arose when we played Dark heresy, with a diffrent GM, and it only gave a penalty when attacking. Can't guarrante that the GM for DH read the rules right...

Anyway, any clarification would be appreciated, though I am 99,5% sure I have it correct, but humor me please.

Nightsorrow said:

1. Yes, using the Weapon in his offhand will cause a penalty. A parry is a Weapon Skill Test. If he does not have Two-weapon (melee) then he’ll get a penalty for that as well. If he’s not Ambidextrous then he can’t reduce the penalty.

2. Yes, it will give him a penalty.

3. Yes, they stack together to give a +25 to Parry.

All penalties, save those for none proficiency only count for attacking...

So Jonas, fighting with powersword and a Parrying dagger wouldn't suffer any penalties if only uses the dagger to parry (+20), but with no further talents (Ambidextrous and Two Weapon Wielder) he would suffer a -30 penalty to attack with both weapons....(-10 with both talents).

For the rest I refer to page 246 of the RT Core book it cleary states penalties only apply to attacks .

GrtZ,

S...

Santiago said:

Ambidextrous: The Explorer can use either hand equally well for any task, and does not suffer the –20 penalty for actions using his off hand.

Errant said:

RT page 246, fourth bullet under Two-Weapon Fighting:

If the character is weilding at least one melee weapon he may perform a Parry Reaction once each Round as normal with this weapon, though he may not Parry more than once in a Round. This Weapon Skill Test is not an attack, and therefore does not suffer the standard penalty for attacks made using a secondary hand.

It doesn't get more clear than that.

This why my Missionary carries a Thunder Hammer in his primary hand to make attacks and a Power Sword in his secondary hand to Parry. This requires neither Two-Weapon Wielder (Melee) nor Ambidextrous to do at full effectiveness.

Errant said:

Pary is not an action.

It's a reaction.

So, in this case, attacks and actions are just the same.

DarkLoic said:

Look at that word... re- ACTION ; how is this not an action?

Think of it like this, your PC has Literacy, and has lost his right hand, problem is, he was right handed. So now if he wants to write something before he gets his new right hand he has to take a test to write and it's at a -20 because he's not ambidectrous (not to do it, just to see if it's readable by other people). Literacy is far from an attack, but it is an action, that is why it says action, not attack...at least IMHO.

Yes, but as pointed out before there's an exception to that rule on pg. 246. Parry ... does not suffer the standard penalty for attacks made using a secondary hand.

Besides, shields are treated like normal weapons with the defensive quality. That'd mean that if you apply the off-hand penalty on parrying an offhand shield would be at -15 to parry compared to a normal sword.