I've been procrastinating this post for 42387402 years, and I doubt anything will become of it, but considering the fact that DS already serves this function (parry & shield DS from weapon & shield training, missing an attack says "a clean miss" which is no different than evading, etc), old GM posts explaining RT as (paraphrasing) "simulating a series of ripostes, parries, blocks, etc.") how is EBP not redundant and unnecessary?

It's nice when you EBP a critter attack and all, despite the fact that in most cases your DS would have caused them to miss anyway without EBP being a factor. But that still doesn't make the system itself any less redundant, and isn't nearly worth the annoyance of a critter EPB'ing your attacks, especially when it happens 2-3+ times in a row. Even more ridiculous when they're evading things like lightning bolts, which makes no sense because nobody is going to react to something faster than the speed of light. Even then, it's twice as annoying for weapon users.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this just adds another layer of tedium to combat that shouldn't be there and is a completely unnecessary mechanic that for all intents and purposes already existed via parry/shield DS.

~ Methais

I like EBP. As a shield using warrior, I expect to get hit unless I block or party an attack. But with block and parry mastery that means only about half the attacks hit me, even though my unspelled DS is pathetic.

I agree there's some logical redundancy. I presume that it was implemented to insert some unpredictability into combat, because with AS and DS often the only question is not whether you hit, but for how much damage. The same thing could probably be accomplished with a fumble rule on low D100 rolls. But I like EBP better.

I think the design goal was to move further away from a homogeneous "defensive strength" number and into a hybrid system that rewarded diverse skill training. Was dodging a trainable skill in GS3 that didn't do anything? I might be thinking of something else, but I think EBP appeared when that skill was fleshed out. In GS4, I see a DS miss as more of an offensive failure, where an EBP is more of a defensive success; in GS3 these were all rolled into the AS/DS check, and posts and rules from GS3 would have corroborated this. It could be taken further, actually: armor use could join EBP. I'm not sure if all this came from DragonRealms exposure, or if it was a unique design. All that aside, EBP definitely makes combat longer, and this was a big concern when GS4 was in test. There was discussion about dropping critter health across the board to compensate, but I'm not sure if that happened.

I like being able to evade or parry attacks while in offensive.. while wearing double leather.