Reactive Parry (3.5e Feat)

Author: Zhenra-Khal (talk) Date Created: 11/2/2016 Status: Complete Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Reactive Parry [Fighter, Monk] Sometimes the easiest way to avoid an attack is by attacking the weapon they're swinging at you.Prerequisites:  Combat Expertise, BAB +2Benefit: Once per round, when you are subject to a melee attack of any sort made by a creature within two size categories of you, you can attempt to parry the attack. After the foe has made their attack roll, but before you know whether it hit or not, you may expend one attack of opportunity to make an opposed attack roll. You take a -2 penalty for each size category your foe is larger or smaller than you, and foes more than two size categories of you either strike with too much force (if larger) or speed (if smaller) for you to effectively parry their attacks.

If you win the opposed roll, then the opponent's attack has no effect on you; Instead it deals damage to the weapon or shield you used to parry the attack, though hardness and enchantments still apply. Obviously, this makes Adamantine weapons both very good at parrying non-Adamantine weapons, and very effective against someone parrying with a non-Adamantine weapon, both because of its natural hardness and ability to ignore low hardness.

However, if you lose the opposed attack roll, you are treated as flat-footed against the attack, as you were relying on your parry to go through. If you have the Dodge feat, you are not caught flat-footed against an attack you have failed to successfully parry, if that attack was made by the designated target of your Dodge feat, as you were already focusing your energy into dodging that opponent's attacks.

The size of the opponent's weapon also matters; The opponent with the larger weapon gets a +2 bonus per category his weapon is larger than his opponent's; For example, if a fighter wielding a dagger tries to parry an attack made against him by a greataxe-swinging barbarian, he's going to take a -4 penalty on his Parry roll.

A shield can be used to parry; A buckler or light shield counts as a light weapon for this purpose; A heavy shield counts as a one-handed weapon, and a Greatshield and tower shield both count as two-handed weapons.

If fighting with two weapons (Including a weapon and a shield, or weapon and unarmed strike), you may expend an additional attack of opportunity to roll twice and choose the better result.

You can parry with unarmed strikes, but more often than not, that just means you take the damage anyway; However, if parrying with two unarmed strikes, and both rolls succeed, you take no damage - Usually from catching the blade between your palms, or causing a blunt blow to bounce harmlessly off your forearm or knee. Of course, if you're using gauntlets and/or boots, then you just apply the damage to the gauntlets or boots instead of to yourself, so protection such as these is recommended.

If you have a class feature that causes your unarmed or natural attacks to count as a particular type of material for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction (Such as a Monk's Ki Strike), you treat your unarmed strikes as having the hardness of that material for the purposes of avoiding damage taken by parrying. If your attacks count as more than one material, use the highest hardness value among them.

If you instead fight defensively, use the Combat Expertise feat, or use the total defense action with this feat, you may instead make a number of parry attempts equal to the number of attacks of opportunity you could normally make (but only one parry attempt per attack, unless wielding two weapons, see above). This is despite the fact that you normally cannot make attacks of opportunity when you use the Total Defense action. Special: A Fighter may take Reactive Parry as one of her Fighter bonus feats. A Monk may also take Reactive Parry as one of their Monk bonus feats at 1st, 2nd o 6th level, even if they don't meet the prerequisites.

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