The World of Avlis

Oftentimes, when I'm fighting with a shield, I noticed I get something along the lines of:
"(NPC) attacks Szakhar'Khotir: *parried* (attack roll)"

I notice this the most when enemies are shooting at me and miss. What does this *parried* line mean? Is there a automatic "block" of some sort worked into the shield? Or is this just showing you that your shield is actually being used?

IIRC, that attack would have hit you except the shield bonus make it a miss. so tech, it it your shield... could be wrong though...

Are you fighting in parry mode? Selected from the radial menu. It uses the "parry" skill.

The way parry works is that when the enemy attacks, you make a parry check opposed to thier attack roll. If you beat the attack roll, the attack is stopped. If you beat it by 10 or more, you get to make a counter-attack. You can parry an amount of attacks equal to your number of attacks per round.

It should not be happening unless you went into parry mode, though....
No idea here.

Hmm, from past experiences, when a ranged attacker rolls a miss, that is below your AC, the log shows *parried* rather than *miss* sometimes. I think it just makes it look cooler (the arrows are stuck to your shield) rather than anything else...

Also, I noted that you will never get a parry when the attacker rolls a hit. (Although it could be just dumb luck, but I'm pretty sure about it)

And all this happens when you're not in parry mode either. (I don't think you can parry ranged attacks in parry mode, right? I never used parry before, so I wouldn't know). Though it would be neat if having shields auto-parry ranged attacks

My two cents, or whatever currency you like

i've noticed that with the shield too. Only happens with ranged attacks.

I always thought it was just another way of saying miss. Looks pretty cool when you got arrows sticking out of you.

I think tower shields have some sort of hidden bonus against arrows...

j5hale3 wrote:IIRC, that attack would have hit you except the shield bonus make it a miss. so tech, it it your shield... could be wrong though...

It's something like this. If you take a look at those "parried" attacks, all of them are always misses.

No, I'm not parrying, and I know how it works. For one think, you can't run around much while parrying. Secondly, parry only works on melee attacks.
These messages show up, as stated above, when I'm being attacked at range and when those attacks miss.

Hmm, from past experiences, when a ranged attacker rolls a miss, that is below your AC, the log shows *parried* rather than *miss* sometimes. I think it just makes it look cooler (the arrows are stuck to your shield) rather than anything else...

Yeah, I was thinking about the same thing - perhaps it's just more of a detail than anything. I might go and ask this on the Bio boards and see what the answer is.

I think tower shields have some sort of hidden bonus against arrows...

I remember that back in 2ed some shields give different AC bonuses for ranged and melee attacks. I'm not so sure about 3rd edition, but I'm pretty sure bucklers don't apply an AC bonus to ranged attacks - it could be that tower shields also apply an additional bonus, as that was how they were back in 2ed... (granted, there are no bucklers at all in NWN, just small shields...)

Tower shields don't provide the user with aditional AC vs. missile attacks in NWN. In D&D they are supposed to give +2 AC, +3 vs. missiles but in NWN they just give +3 vs. anything.