Parry Trick and unarmed combat feats

[Loremaster]

Should't the parry trick also or either count the number of your "Unarmed Combat Feats" instead of only the "Melee Combat Feats"? The description states its usefulness for "Unarmed" attacks, but the unarmed fighters usually won't get more then 1 use of parry because they spent most of their feats in the unarmed category.

[Antilles]

There's a feat chain in the Call to Arms supplement Martial Artist, Blocking Basics/Supremacy/Mastery, where the Mastery benefit links Parry to either Melee or Unarmed Combat feats.

[Rhishisikk]

Yes, but go ahead and try to tell any martial artist that blocking is a foreign technique.  Look at any boxing match; Block/Counterpunch is STANDARD to Unarmed combat.

I house rule it where people have that flexibility.  It's one thing to have Tinkerbell flying around with a Siege Weapon, but some rules were designed to be bent.

For me, SpyCraft/Fantasy Craft isn't about the bling, it's about the flexibility of the system.  However, when you look hard enough, ANY system has breaking points.  For me, one of the proofs that Crafty knows their stuff is how deep into the system you have to explore to find these points.

[Bill Whitmore]

Yes, but go ahead and try to tell any martial artist that blocking is a foreign technique.  Look at any boxing match; Block/Counterpunch is STANDARD to Unarmed combat.

Right, but it most definitely is not a foreign technique in FC even without having the Parry trick.  Martial Arts lets you use a non-standard attribute for defense which, depending on your Dex and substitute score, could add as much as +5 or more to your defense.  Any attack roll that is lower than the target's defense may well be a block.  In the course of a normal combat, if your opponent attacks, misses, then on your turn you attack and hit you very well may have blocked and counter-punched.

Martial Arts already gives some pretty hefty bonuses.  That a Martial Artists has a feat to help them Parry does not seem like an out of balance cost.

[Sletchman]

The Parry Trick is not just blocking punches, its for blocking swords.  Try tell any martial artist that he's expected to block swords, with his hands, without any special training.  Even modern martial arts not alot of disciplines train for that, and even then its a huge risk.

[Loremaster]

...the problem with the Trick is that its descriptions talks about unarmed combat but the feats aren't counted. I would either suggest to count the "unarmed combat" feats or to remove the "unarmed description". Currently it is something between fish and flesh but neither one. Either remove the unarmed stuff or let the the higher of unarmed or melee count.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

One could just rule that Parry has to be taken seperately for weapons and unarmed.

[spinningdice]

I prefer it as it is, you can block weapons with your fists with it, but not as often, or you can then build on it to do it moreso.

[Crafty_Alex]

There used to be an unarmed Block action in Spycraft 2.0, which we combined for simplicity's sake into the FC Parry (actually making that trick MORE useful, as you could Parry even if you didn't have a weapon in hand and didn't have to spend 2 proficiencies to do what was effectively the same thing). The Blocking feat chain addresses the feat counting issue, because as Bill notes, trying to knock away an axe with bare hands *a lot* (which is really where the concern about how feats are tallied) takes some stones. Even if you are an unarmed fighter with no Melee Combat feats, you can still Parry once per combat.