Quote Originally Posted by Teiren View Post
It only works for physical attacks to your "front" in a game where target circles have four 90 degree quarters.
... Therefore, Parry as a whole will be next to useless until it's changed so you can parry from flank, as well as block from flank for that matter. It does not matter if it makes no "logical or roleplay" sense.
I think so long as they exclude attacks from the rear, that would cover the logical and roleplay concerns well enough. An agile fighter should be able to swing his weapon or shield around as needed to meet attacks from either side (leaving only the question of how you'd meet multiple attacks at once, but that's kind of a separate issue from direction). They could even do something like Parry is at at full effect for attacks from the front and you have 50% or 70% of it's normal chance for attacks from the flank (and it doesn't work from the rear). It would still be a lot better than the current frontal-attacks-only rule. And I agree with you that they're going to need to fix this to make Parry useful. Maybe that's some of the fiddling that they'll be doing with it for 4.0.