When fighting a horde the rules say no parry or dodge can be used, thats fine and dandy. But when in stalwart defense mode, the rules say they may parry all strikes (assumed melee), does this or does this not include attacks from hordes?

Tunnelhckrat said:

I don't think I've seen an official ruling on it, but my take on it is that Stalwart Defense does allow you to parry melee attacks by Hordes. The biggest reason for this is that the Talent says enemies gain no bonuses for outnumbering the Space Marine in melee, and a Horde's unblockable attacks come from the overwhelming advantage of numbers. The SM still can't dodge if a Horde shoots at him, and it costs a Fate Point to even adopt SD, so it seems fair to me to run the Talent that way.

Pretty certain Stalwart Defense means you may ignore the limitation of being able to normally parry only a single attack in a round. It does not allow you to parry attacks that may not normally be parried.

I find this is a hard choice,

Stalwart Defense - He may make a Parry reaction against all successful strikes even if doing so exceeds his normal number of reactions, but may not attempt more than one Parry per successful strike.

Killing Blow - May spend a fate point to make his melee attacks for that round impossible to parry or dodge.

Hordes Attacking - The Horde's sheer weight of numbers is represented by the fact that its target may not Dodge or Parry. Melee attacks made by Hordes cannot be parried or dodged unless otherwise noted.

Stalwart Defense does not say it can parry attacks that normally cannot be parried. Would you allow Stalwart Defense to parry a killing blow? maybe, since it is one attacker. Would you allow Stalwart Defense to parry a Hordes attack, much harder to say.

For my opinion, I would say Stalwart Defense can NOT parry against Hordes.

I'd say you can't parry a Killing Blow. It represents the ultimate form of gritty violence in the game universe. Plus it requires the user to spend a Fate Point to activate it so it's not exactly free or frequent.

As for Hordes, the effects of Stalwart Defense would clearly work better against them, but I think Stalwart Defense isn't intended to give you the equivalent to 100 Reactions (more or less what you need to parry a whole Horde of crazy cultists), more like 5 or 6 (two Genestealers ganging up on you).

Don't forget, even if he can't parry, he'll still reduce damage by 2 thanks to SD. Granted it's not crazy, but it saves lives, often

But I think that would be worth a question to Customer Service If no one does before tonight (right now, I'm at work, can't really spend the time to write the question ), I'll do.

I'm also in the can't-parry camp although my CF Dev would benefit from it. As a middle ground approach, you could allow a parry and if successful remove one additional damage dice for horde size as the marine parries all that can be parried.

Alex

Yep, sounds reasonable. I've even seen people who wanted to enable that for everybody, but then Hordes can be quite sucky, to me.

Remember that SD says it allows a Parry Reaction against "all successful strikes," not just attacks that could normally be Parried. The word "all" is pretty broad. With Killing Strike, it's one of those Unstoppable Force vs Immovable Object scenarios. The way things are worded, it could go either way so I look forward to hearing an official decision on the matter.

I'd say 'no' to parrying hordes, as nothing else in the game allows it, and it is not specifically stated.

Also: It'd be too frikkin' AWESOME.

Siranui said:

These are Space Marines. "Too frikkin' AWESOME" isn't awesome enough for them.

Space Marines win boxing matches with Titans and can put a bolt round through the eye of a needle from two sectors away.

What was that about Imperial propaganda again?

Siranui said:

Okay but given that I have to spend fate, it better be. That said I have a feeling that it's good enough without parrying hordes. Why should the Dev be able to defend against hordes when even the Assault can't? That cannot be RAI.

Alex

Exactly. If it's of no use against hordes... it's still a really good talent. If it's good against horde then it's a really, really utterly awesome talent that breaks a game rule that cannot be broken in any other way.

If in doubt, assume the most balanced and sensible interpretation.