Here are the relevant quotes from 2.0 packet:
<quote>
"An explicit keyword has been added, Strike, which allows a Physical delivery to use the packet targeting rules for that attack only. This will be familiar for players who used “Spellstrikes” before and works exactly the same way. The Strike keyword can be added to any qualifier attack now, not just Spell qualifier, and is announced directly after the qualifier in an attack verbal. For example, a character may swing “Spell Strike Prison” and affect the target with a Spell Prison even if they hit the target’s shield; the target may of course call any applicable defenses. For clarity, if a Strike attack uses the Weapon qualifier, it must explicitly announce the Weapon qualifier with the attack."
"Some defenses – like Parry and Riposte or other weapon-specific defenses – have changed to specify that they work against any attack with either the “Weapon” qualifier or the “Poison” qualifier (only if the attack is made with the physical delivery). This helps eliminate some exceptions."
"Evade has changed significantly since there are no longer Prepare to Die calls. Evade is a Smart Defense which can be used to evade any Weapon qualifier attack that has scored a valid hit, including arrows, bolts and thrown weapons. Evade cannot be used against any other qualifier, including Poison or Spell, nor can it be used to prevent attacks on any other character nearby."
"Counteract – 2 XP (Rogue), 10 XP Stealth Skills per purchase, Daily - Stealthy characters are notoriously difficult to pin down in combat. Characters with this Smart Guard defense may call "Counteract" to negate a single Weapon Strike attack that they otherwise validly block. Note that this may not be used against Strike attacks with other qualifiers like Spell or Poison, nor may it be used against a Weapon Strike that validly connects with the character. It may be used once per Logistics period per purchase."
</quote>
(Riposte being listed there is almost certainly legacy from before Riposte was changed to its current description.)
Its worth noting that Evade and Counteract explicitly say they can't be used against poison. So this is really just about Parry and Weapon Shield. I think the poison thing is a weird special case, that is only existing because we are coming from the previous rules set, and people are used to being able to parry poison when physically delivered.
Strike means "treat as if packet delivered", and if you allowed parry to block physically delivered poisons it should not work against a "5 poison strike" even if delivered by a weapon.
I'd argue from a mechanics purist point, we should do away with defenses knowing about physical delivery. Weapon shield should block weapon qualifier attacks and nothing else; poison shield should block poisoner qualifier attacks and nothing else; spell shield should block spell delivered attacks and nothing else; elemental shield should block elemental deliver attacks and nothing else. I think we should embrace the 2.0-ism and parry & evade & counteract should work for weapon qualifier attacks and nothing else, and we should just get used to poison attacks requiring a poison defense and not a weapon defense. And that vague exception should either be removed. Or if we have to keep it, instead of having it be a vague sentence not tied to specific skills, we bake the exception in to the specific skill descriptions it applies to so that you can look at the skill and know what it does.
