Dark Souls™: The Board Game from SFG implemented the original game’s game mechanics pretty well. One notable thing missing is parrying, which to tell the truth I didn’t use at all, but would still like to have as an option in the board game.

Well, everone else seems to use a ton of house rules and I’m still using the vanilla ruleset. Why not just make my own parry rule?

Parry

Whenever a character is targeted by a physical attack from a strictly humanoid regular enemy or boss on the same node, the player can choose to parry insted of blocking or dodging.

To make a parry roll:

1. Look at the enemy data card (or the boss’s behaviour card) to determine to dodge difficulty of the attack.
2. The character must spend 1 stamina to attempt the parry. (No movement takes place.)
3. Gather green dodge dice equeal to the dodge value of the weapon and upgrade cards held in the left and right hand slots. (Armour is disregarded in case of parrying.)
4. Roll the dice.
5. If the number of Dodge icons rolled equals or exceeds the dodge difficulty, the parry is successfull and the caracter suffers no damage. Otherwise, they are hit by the attack and suffer its full damage.
6. If the parry is successful, no push or any other conditions are inflicted on the character.
7. If the parry is successful, the character has one free attack (riposte) against the parried enemy with any equipped weapon. Even a weapon in the backup slot can be used, but first it has to be moved into a hand slot and will stay there until the character’s next activation.
8. After the riposte, the enemy contiues with the actions on it’s behavior card if it is still alive.

That’s it, my rule for parrying in Dark Souls™: The Board Game. Playtesting and feedback would much be appreciated!