Combat skills, parrying and defensive actions: Most HW combats are resolved using opposing combat skills. These combat skills are basically fighting styles, not necessarily specific weapon skills. Parrying is subsumed in the combat skills. When it is your turn as actor, you decide what to do, usually some form of attack on your opponent, the aggressiveness or risk defined by the number of AP you bid. When it is the other's turn as actor, you will generally just defend against what they try to do. Usually this would be something like "I will defend myself to the best of my ability, looking to take advantage of any opportunities presented". (I would treat this as Standard Operating Procedure for "defenders".) Then if the actor loses 24AP against you, you could say "When he clumsily overextends himself, I bash him upside the head with the edge of my shield, denting his helm, and then as he staggers back I slash his exposed leg with my sword". Or the narrator could tell you that's what happened after you told him that you wanted to trade 7APs for a wound, leaving 17APs which qualifies for the grievous wound because your opponent lost more than 15APs, so your opponent took 2 wounds (hurts) and lost 17AP. Unless you want to do something out of the ordinary, there is no reason for the defender to be any more specific than SOP. Really, that applies to the actor (attacker) as well.
As for the discussions about weapon and armor rank and when to apply them, I am leaning to the camp that says apply them for the actor, but not the non-actor. This means that each character will get benefits (or detriments) of their weapon rank vs. opponents rank once during each pair of exchanges. It also means that they don't get the benefits (or detriments) once during each pair of exchanges. Frex- Xed has a weapon-vs-armor edge of -3. Xed would have to bid high to overcome the -3 edge, but at least has control over it when he is the actor. Xed would not suffer the -3 edge while being the non-actor, but would also not have control over the size of the bid. You would probably describe the action around Xed in terms of quickness, dodging and taking advantage of the opponent's clumsiness. I guess though, it just comes down to "I like the way it feels".
I wonder if it would be better to think in terms of actor & re-actor (instead of non-actor).
Dick
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