I was basically giving my self a refresher on the Melee combat rules (thanks to my recent acquisition of Arsenal), and something grabbed my attention. It seems the only options for FULL DEFENSE are FULL DODGE and FULL PARRY. There doesn't seem to be a FULL BLOCK. That's sort of bizarre to me. Does Full Block exist in errata somewhere, or is this something that just needs to be house ruled?

And if the exclusion of "full block" was intentional, can anyone provide any insight as to why the developers would have made that decision?

Full Parry would be a Full Block, wouldn't it?

EDIT: Also, here is a related-question - Do you take the -1 penalty when using a shield if you use it to perform a Full Parry?

Well, it seems like you can't use Full Defense if unarmed. Unless the arbitrary term 'melee combat skill' would include unarmed combat.

It boggles the mind how it wouldn't, unless you're suggesting that unarmed combat is a 'ranged combat skill', that's really the only other option.

If you are an adept and have distance strike, you start shooting chi out of your palms, using unarmed combat, making it a ranged weapon skill.
There you go.

What was misleading me is that, on page 147, a parry is defined as distinctly different from a block. I suppose I'm squared away now.

Unarmed Defense = BLOCK
Unarmed Full Defense = FULL PARRY

Yeah, you're right, this is an oversight, I think. They specifically state that parry is used with melee weapons, rather than unarmed in the BBB. Still, the concept of a parry is just an armed block anyway, so to me the terms are interchangeable at my table.

So how about the shield question I posed? Could you even use it to block without the Exotic Weapon Skill shield?

It's just called a Full Parry in this instance, because listing Full Block for unarmed and Full Parry for every other melee weapon is a) silly and b) eats up space you might need for other information/rules/pretty pictures.

To parry something is to deflect it, not block it; and to block something is to stop it. So if you parry something you allow the item's momentum to continue, but you may have altered it direction, but if you block the item you stop its momentum and it no longer continues in any direction.

It appears TheOneRonin found his answer though.

To this day, I've not been able to figure out why they used a different term for armed and unarmed defense.

So why did the devs feel a need to separate block and parry in the first place? I would have been fine with parry being used for both unarmed and armed melee defense.

The best explaination I've been able to come up with, is because that's what White Wolf did in the Storyteller system. There was actually a mechanical difference there, though, since net successes on defense with an armed parry would be applied as a counter-attack, whereas you didn't get that with an unarmed block, as I recall.

FYI, I've trained in 3 different martial arts styles, and just about all "parry" techniques were referred to by the instructors as "blocks". In fact, the only "blocks" I was ever really taught were in Muay Thai...mostly shielding your soft parts with your arms/legs. We also do a few "blocks" in Arnis, but, interestingly enough, those "blocks" are performed exclusively with weapons. You don't "block" with empty hands.

I understand the definition behind the verbiage, but both terms are often used interchangeably in martial arts.