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After having run one campaign and several one shots, me and my players began to debate if parrying is possibly a bit too weak in its current state.

Now, i think i can understand the intended design idea. Sense parrying uses the same weapon skill as the weapon you are using (+ shields using whatever weapon skill you want), You don't have to invest in a different skill in order to defend yourself. Plus, if you're lucky, you can perform a counter attack, letting you both attack and defend yourself in the same round.

But despite this, no one really wants to parry attacks, instead of opting to Dodge attacks instead. After a bit of discussion, we came to the following points.

1, You can not parry monster attacks.
Specifically, you can't parry most monster attacks. There are some you can, but they are very few, and some specifically states you can only parry it if you have a shield. This makes players feel it is effectively pointless to even focus on parrying monster attacks sense your so severely limited. Even with the Shield Block HA, it feels that you must invest a lot more into being able to parry monster attacks, when Evading Monster attacks feels like it is much less of a hassel. But also because of-

2, Parrying feels too risky sense weapons could break.
Players feels reluctant to parry sense there is a chance that your weapon could break, and you now have a less effective weapon. Now i understand and agree with the risk of the weapon damage, a lot of players don't like the idea of trying to parry an attack, sense they do not know in advance if the damage is going to be enough to break it (even if some weapons are designed to make this fairly unlikely to happen).

3, Odds to low to Counter attack.
Sense you can only counter attack if you roll a Dragon (a 5% chance of happening), players feel it is not worth it to try and gamble on getting that counter attack. While sure, you can use Enchant Weapon to increase the odds, this either requires a mage learning that spell, or a GM willing to let the player get their hands on such a weapon.

What could be done?

This is of course tricky, but a few things i been testing out is the following:

Shields get part of Shield Block baked in.
Shields can be used to block Monster Attacks (Not aoes). This makes them feel more useful to pick up, and can allow players to avoid taking damage from monster attacks without needing to invest in a HA to do so, but still gives Monster Attacks that can only be dodged. Shield Block still keeps the bonus of giving you an BOON when parrying with a shield.

Defensive costs 2wp instead of 3.
Sense you are taking a risk of your weapon breaking, this gives it an edge over Fancy Footwork, as it could allow you to parry more attacks than what Fancy Footwork can do, and still have WP over to do other things.

Make a HA that let's you counter attack easier.
This one is the trickery one to answer, as this shouldn't be too easily done, but giving players a chance to trigger a counter attack without the need to roll a dragon when parrying could be a useful option. Some examples are:

A: You can for 3wp attempt to counter attack if you successfully parry the attack, but you make the attack with a Bane.
B: You can after you have rolled your parry spend up to 3wp to increase what number you must roll to roll a dragon (could add that you don't get an advancement mark when you use this ability).

What do you think? Is parrying fine as is, or could it do with some adjustments?

My players and I have been having this same discussion. But I think a point you missed is that you can Parry while wearing heavy armor without a bane. Any dodge made while wearing Chainmail or Plate would be done with a bane - that makes the calculus significantly less favorable unless you happen to be wearing heavy armor and have an unusually high evade skill.

I do still feel like the cost on Shield Bash might be to high. It feels like it should be split into two HAs, one that just gives you the ability to parry monster attacks with your shield for no wp cost and another that gives you the ability to spend 2 wp for a boon on a parry. Getting a boon is definitely worth it since a dragon will give you an auto hit free attack.

My players and I have been having this same discussion. But I think a point you missed is that you can Parry while wearing heavy armor without a bane. Any dodge made while wearing Chainmail or Plate would be done with a bane - that makes the calculus significantly less favorable unless you happen to be wearing heavy armor and have an unusually high evade skill.

I do still feel like the cost on Shield Bash might be to high. It feels like it should be split into two HAs, one that just gives you the ability to parry monster attacks with your shield for no wp cost and another that gives you the ability to spend 2 wp for a boon on a parry. Getting a boon is definitely worth it since a dragon will give you an auto hit free attack.

We discussed that too, and came to the conclusion that sense it gave evade a bane, heavy armor became undesirable (that armor won't help you against a dragon's fire breath for instance), unless you have grinded your evade to the really high levels. We had a knight in our campaign who ended up being the only one that died, after which he switched to leather on his next character so he could dodge like everyone else. At which it falls back to my previous points that you'll just evade attacks than parry them, sense your unlikely to parry attacks due the percived risk and lack of reward.

I'd say instead of splitting shield bash into two HA, the "parry monster attacks" would be a passive feature, while you could activate the ability for the Boon.