The answer is: you don't with the 1H flail: the flail is designed to make
it more difficult for the opponent to parry, not help you parry: You've got
a shield for that. I have swinged around a medieval flail (infantery), just
to see how it feels, and I have drawn two conclusions from my novice
experience:
The longer the chain, the harder to parry but also the more hazardous for
the surrounding environment (including you).
The military 1H flail I have used was not really spiked ball and chain, but
rather a cylinder with dented edges and a short chain, and they were rather
easy to use, but more like an articulated mace.
Note: in their case, the handle was long enough that when the "ball" came
snapping against it, the hand was out of reach... a usefull feature in my
personal opinion (since I was not using armored gauntlets). But the handle
was rather sturdy, with long metal reinforcement, and I doubt it would
snapp that easy. I don't see either how you could disarm an opponent with
such a short chain, but I know that the cavalery flail had a much longer
chain.
My house rules with flails in RQ is that they give a malus to the parry of
the opponent (usually 10% per "ball"), but that malus becomes a bonus on
the fumble table in case of fumble.
For example, the three-balls and chain flail is parried at -30%, but if you
fumble your attack, you will have to add 30 to your D100 on the fumble
table, making the "hit nearest friend" result a lot more likely.
I would not do that for a parry, since presumably the user would not swing
the weights around but only parry with handle.
I happens to like when my players are as afraid of their friends than their
opponents ;-)
Frederic
And yes, we NEED the RQ-rules list back
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