I really like this. I come at this from a more NSR than OSR perspective, but I feel like I wouldn't go so far as to say that the difficulties of parleying and fighting should be matched - the situation is what it is. And even if not fighting is always the better choice, the players won't know that and won't always make the best choices.

I generally play these types of games with combat being what happens when things go wrong. Unless one side has a very clear advantage, combat is high risk for everyone involved and usually it's better for everyone to avoid it. Combat happens, not because either the player characters or the NPCs would choose it as their first choice, but because you play games about situations in which everything is likely to go wrong.

This is really helpful. I'm always trying to make my combat more interesting, so having formal rules for parley opens up a great outcome.

Thanks for posting it!

Good read. Bookmarked the blog, thanks!

Bookmarked for later! Thanks for sharing!

I... read parley as "parsley" and was very confused.

Helpful read, however!

Very Nice Tables - This is easy to implement. Good Job!

This is a really excellent writeup, and I think I'm going to adopt some of these ideas more strongly in my games.