nameless ronin
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Posts posted by nameless ronin
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31 minutes ago, tamdrik said:I mean that it seems like you have to get pretty legalistic to interpret it, even as written, not to apply to a kiho that "adds X damage to an attack using a punch or kick", but does apply to something worded as "adds X damage to your punch or kick unarmed attack profile." Again, maybe it's because I "grew up" with RPGs that didn't place as heavy an emphasis on strict mechanics and carefully-consistent rules wording in anticipation of rules-lawyering.
The point @UnitOmega makes is that Sharpened Ki is worded in a pretty legalistic way. Which is totally fine, because being carefully-consistent with rules wordings doesn't just serve to prevent ruleslawyering - it also makes it easier to write concise and, dare I say it, elegant rulesets (I don't think FFG really accomplished this with L5R).
Using the "unarmed profiles" phrasing lets the designers create an ability that applies to a subset of kiho without having to list them (which would be bad, lists are inelegant design) and express a design intent for the ability not to apply willy-nilly to any and all kiho involving unarmed attacks.
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3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:Possible.
Lots of possibilities.
That water fist is in the school's starting kiho strongly hints that kiho that "affects your unarmed profiles" means, "affect" your attacks with unarmed profiles (punch, kick, bite etc) too.
But honestly, we just have no answer, because "affects your unarmed profiles" is, vague.
To be continued...
I don't think "affects your unarmed profiles" is all that vague. Because of that, I think this particular wording is a deliberate design choice and the Taoist ability is not meant to be useable with anything and everything involving unarmed attacks.
That said, that leaves us with FFG likely having shot themselves in the foot with the Water Fist wording. Which, if true (meaning Taoists should be able to use it with a weapon in a one-handed grip), is something they should have picked up on before the Shadowlands book was even finalized: if you're creating a new ability that you want to reference a set of pre-existing techniques, I'd expect you to doublecheck those after all. Whether they missed it or not, I doubt it will get addressed now. I suspect FFG is fine with letting GMs interpret/houserule as they see fit, rather than bother with ruleset maintenance for something that isn't so broken it makes the game or even just the school unplayable. It's not like a lot of effort has been poured into the faq/errata doc so far.
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1 hour ago, UnitOmega said:A pearl of wisdom
You can always take a skill
From your mentor pick
Which pretty much everybody seems to do, since the right kind of disadvantage is more of a boon than a downside and hey, free skill point. Ads and disads are the part of character creation I have the most misgivings about by far.
Regardless, that's exactly what @Avatar111 pointed out: there is precisely one way to get 3 ranks in a martial art through character creation and that's school + mentor + heritage.
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48 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:As for "lack of flavor" (re @Longes)- I'm happy the super-specific mechanics are way down the line. It was a nightmare for me to keep track under 2E/3E of who had what without keeping a copy of the schools to hand.
That's literally what character sheets are for.
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56 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:Currently Breaking Blow, Freezing the Lifeblood, Water Fist and Death Touch are the only Kiho that a Taoist can't use effectively while wielding their one-handed weapon of choice. The only real losses I see from these 4 Kiho are Breaking Blow (can't use this to cut boulders or strip people naked ☹️) and Water Fist.
Way of the Falling Star should be on that list as well.
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30 minutes ago, Franwax said:I let one of my player chose, and he took the "Discovery"... for +1 Theology.
I thought this was very flavorful and reasonable, then I realized he played a Shugenja who already had two ranks in the skill up to that point 😛 Theology 3 on a starting character who relies on Invocations is quite the power move. Basically worth 2 techniques in terms of XP (admittedly, 2 techniques you are authorized to buy, but as someone mentioned, you can always circle back around that point with Titles).
Yup, Theology is a big one. Wondrous Work and Elevated For Service are a bit iffy, but the other [+1 skill from X group] options all have at least one skill that will potentially see a whole lot of use from certain character concepts. Not up there with the two hotshot ancestries, but definitely not lacking on average either.
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8 minutes ago, Franwax said:- They don't have Shuji... big deal
It kind of is. Picking up a couple of shuji really rounds out bushi so they can contribute in intrigues beyond merely providing assists. As much as being able to combine kiho and kata is great in combat, it is something of a hyperspecialization. Conceptually it's definitely appropriate for warrior monks and it doesn't make them weak per se, but for me personally at least it's a major turnoff.
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My sister did language studies at uni (same as our parents). There were, naturally, students from all over the country in her faculty - all with their own dialect from their home region. The ones from regions with the heaviest, most pronounced dialects were always the ones learning to speak according to the official norms the fastest and best; the ones with less noticeable dialects always took longer shaking those smaller deviations from the norm.
Unicorns know they're still considered near-outsiders, and they're surely not above using their reputation for foreign and exotic customs to their advantage when it suits them. But they also know Rokugan is a highly formal society and that they have to work harder than anyone to conform. Being able to adjust and present themselves the very best way comes naturally to Unicorn diplomats. It's the dice rolls shaking out how they did, I know, but to me it's kind of fitting in its own way as well.
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9 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:The two strongest are, IMO: Glorious Sacrifice, for the heirloom, Which need not actually be a nemurani - tho if it is, it's the GM's call on it, and Stolen Knowledge... but all the options seem to be 2 to 6 XP worth (since the skills don't allow violating the level 3 starting limit).
The corebook ones are intentionally a bit vague, I suspect. This is a standard design pattern for FFG (and the industry as a whole). Still, they are interesting enough to work from. At least, if one bothers to make note of column 2.
Famous Deed is the one where you actually get the heirloom - Glorious Sacrifice is the one where you might recover it later on, or not.
I don't think "vague" is the right word here. They're actually very specific. It's because of that that the roleplaying value gets drowned out a bit. Changeling - the Lost 2nd ed has tons of this type of thing going on during character creation, but the non-mechanical possibilities of each choice get underlined each step of the way. Capharnaüm has tons of tables that essentially consist of [you did this or that; get a +1 to whatever], but at least before each set of such tables there's a paragraph or two outlining this is really your background you're creating. FFG's Star Wars and the Free League's Coriolis go into character concepts, and even a super crunchy system like Shadowrun throws a bone towards fluffiness here and there. The twenty questions, for a narrative RPG seem so very regimented, even if several questions are "come up with something about your character relating to X". Maybe it's just me.
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1 hour ago, UnitOmega said:My point was that people seemed real caught up on the connection that punches and kicks are unarmed profiles, without noting that "unarmed profiles" is a super category which includes other stuff. You cannot Death Touch with a bite, it says when performing a punch or kick they can't defend. Conversely, Way of the Edgeless Sword does - that just says "your unarmed profile" period.
The taoist blade school (I have a picture someone took for me so direct C&P is hard) says basically kiho which "affect your unarmed profiles" are also applied to weapons in a 1h grip. Death Touch does not use the "modify a profile" wording, it just means when you make a punch or a kick they can't defend, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't work. I'm pretty sure all the [Element] Fist count though, even if they say "punch or kick" they mention modifying the unarmed profile of your punches or kicks. The key wording I think is the unarmed profile, not specifically unarmed attacks.
Well, yes and no. Unarmed profiles are basically weapons in all but name. In that sense the school ability is perfectly logical: kiho that affect a special set of "weapons" (unarmed profiles) can now affect a larger set (unarmed profiles and one-handers). The venn diagram concept kind of threw me because it doesn't seem to matter. That said, the Water Fist kiho now seems to suffer from the shoddy editing of the core book by not following the same template as the other elemental fist kiho - as written, arguably the kiho doesn't affect the unarmed profiles but the attacks made with them. I get that the Taoist Blade may not have been in development yet while the core book was being finalized, but that's kind of the point of editing consistency: it helps future proof the ruleset.
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9 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:If you find them boring, it's because you're not working the background into play.
Someone who picks "Ruthless Victor" as an ancestor should be reacting to it - either embracing it, or explicitly rejecting it, or possibly in-play struggling over it. NPCs should, if they know the lineage, make reference to it.
Elevated for service means expectations will either be higher (Following the footsteps) or lower (You always fail to live up to your ancestors).
Each of them has RP potential.
I would have preferred the ancestries to be all about being a roleplaying hook or point of interest and not have too much overt mechanical benefits. In fact, it feels kind of odd they're such an uneven bunch given how much advantages and disadvantages have been streamlined and made to be formulaic. I like they're now a non-optional part of character creation, but it would have been a much stronger step in the process if the flavor aspect was pushed more. Now it's another way for players to wrangle some extra power from the system in many cases.
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On 4/16/2019 at 8:22 PM, UnitOmega said:I think you guys are looking at it from the wrong end. A punch or kick is certainly an unarmed profile, but, a bite is also an unarmed attack profile - however a kiho which only activates when you punch or kick would not apply to a bite, because a bite is outside the venn diagram. It is an unarmed weapon, but it is not a punch or kick, you follow me? The strict wording of Taoist blade says kihos which "modify your unarmed profiles", with the pluralization, are applied to a one-handed weapon.
I don't have the book, can't check the exact wording, but am I correct in understanding that your argument is that if the kiho doesn't explicitly modify all unarmed profiles it isn't eligible? A kiho that modifies the kick and punch unarmed profiles but doesn't mention bites or refers to unarmed profiles in general, without specifying any, can't be used for this purpose?
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5 hours ago, Derk_g said:If from own family, would they have attended schools outside the family (but within the clan)?
As the posters above have outlined, samurai from outside the clan are possible but would be exceptions and inside the clan it's largely a function of what kind of daimyo we're talking about. As for this specific question, training outside the family but within the clan can be somewhat uncommon but certainly not odd, and depending on the family and the kind of training it'll even be common - the majority of samurai from a "shugenja family" don't have the necessary connection to the kami to be able to become a shugenja, so they'll likely get schooling elsewhere in the clan or they have to be content training outside a formal school. Training outside the clan is very uncommon: it takes large favours, a willing sponsor and possibly a relatively wealthy backer to bankroll several years of schooling - typical examples would be shugenja from minor clans without a shugenja school of their own, political hostages, or exceptionally gifted students being admitted to a particularly prestigious dojo.
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4 hours ago, Derk_g said:I have a little bit of beef with the 'fail' in this bit: "The historical Great Wall was a bit like the the Roman Hadrian's Wall in that the assumed function (keeping out hordes of enemies) was something it generally failed at mainly because the old military adage of 'defend everything and you defend nothing' and opponents could overwhelm local forces and get past."
The very layout of Hadrian's Wall and the reinforcing forts some depth behind it suggests that the purpose was never to be a hard stop for an invading army. It was to delay and to channel - allowing troops in depth to mass and contain the invasion. So you are right in that the Great Wall and Hadrian's Wall could not 'keep out hordes of enemies' - but I' put forth that for Hadrian's Wall at least the intent was never that simple.
The Carpenter Wall is a much bigger and stronger fortification than Hadrian's Wall, and manned by a lot more troops as well. Which is a good thing, because Hadrian's Wall certainly wouldn't fare well against armies of Oni, trolls, ogres, goblins, dark Moto and other assorted tainted monstrosities. The Carpenter Wall also didn't "generally fail" at keeping out hordes of enemies. It was only breached a handful of times since the first one was built, which is pretty darn impressive if you take into account what it's up against and how long it's been standing. Small mobs and individual Oni occasionally slip past, yes, but not hordes of enemies.
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1 hour ago, llamaman88 said:Some results are problematic or powerful no matter what you do I found, but oh well so long as my players have fun who cares if it gives me the occasional headache justifying it in the lore/my game setting.
That's kind of my stance on most problematic mechanics. As long as it's for the sake of a fun and good game, we can put up with a little inconvenience. In this particular case, if importuning as a non-shugenja (or pseudo shugenja) becomes problematic and ruins the fun just kick that out.
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23 minutes ago, Franwax said:Punches and Kicks ARE unarmed profiles, whether the words "unarmed profile" appear in the description or not.
I'm not above picking a nit to prove a point and the editing of these books continues to be a disappointment to me, but I really can't bring myself to allow for the possibility that kicks and punches are not (meant to be) unarmed profiles.
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On 4/14/2019 at 11:27 AM, Naranjalimones said:I've run an L5R game once before, in the 4th edition of the rules, and I want to run a new game in the new 5th edition. The problem is, I want to do a ronin game, but the way the game is constructed makes me nervous.
In the deadly courts of Rokugan, strife makes perfect sense and can be a very risky thing to accumulate. However, less decorum is expected from a ronin so the dissonance between the stoic ideal and the emotional reality is not nearly as much of a big deal for them as it is for samurai. Strife feels difficult to reconcile with this campaign idea.
Old R&K quite a traditional system in its approaches so it was easy for me to work around certain rules. But in a narrative game that's so comprehensively tied together, I have more difficulty.
How can I reconcile ronin with the concept of strife as it shows in the game rules?
Strife is only indirectly about the expectations of the Rokugani society. It's about being dutiful instead of indulging yourself. Conforming to expectations is not a goal in itself, it's only a goal because it is part of being dutiful.
The whole game assumes the player characters want to be proper samurai. You can deviate from that aspiration (sometimes with mechanical consequences), but the idea is that the PCs try to follow bushido as well as possible (with specific focuses depending on their clan). In that sense there is little difference between ronin and clan samurai - the game expects a similar attitude from both. Reactions towards ronin will likely differ from those towards clan samurai, but that's primarily a function of status and reputation - an honorable ronin who holds bushido in high regard will be treated the same as one who doesn't, at least until he proves his noble character.
So, you can play a ronin who doesn't much care about being a proper samurai, and that will kind of clash with the strife mechanic, but you can play a clan samurai with the same attitude too and that will have similar consequences. Don't worry about it being a ronin game. If the strife mechanic feeling right for your game is important to you, worry about the characters - regardless of their status.
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2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:My issue is mostly with the defender using opportunities on a resist check.
I'll keep my "houserule"; no check can ne nested in another check.
That is mostly where my personal issue is. First because it is not fair since the attacker chose successes before the opponent's resist check, I don't agree the attacker should be punished for his action otherwise it makes a lot of techniques bad , and secondly because it makes the gameplay cumbersome and gamey to roll checks within checks.
It gets kind of iffy moving resist checks to the end of the turn as well though - I mean, the outcome of that check can be beneficial to the attacker as well and should certainly be of interest to the attacker in the first place. I think the bigger issue is what opportunities can allow you to do and especially which opportunities can be created by certain types of checks. I think if resist checks get limited to success/failure outcomes, no opportunities (nor strife) that'd be a significant improvement already. Opportunities are great in general, but a number of specific instances are not good for the game.
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On 4/10/2019 at 3:32 PM, gareth_lazelle said:If that where the case then you could never trigger opportunities like critical strikes because they have success as a requirement in order for you to select them,
The TN was set before the dice where rolled,
Nowhere does it suggest that you reassess that at any point, and it's clear the game designers intended for the TN to be publicly known at the time you selected dice to keep,
You assume that the rules as written work correctly. I don't think that assumption holds water.
As written, @JBento is correct.
On 4/10/2019 at 3:27 PM, JBento said:Success or failure of your roll isn't determined until AFTER you use opportunities, because that's when you trigger successes. If something happens in the meantime to make the technique unusable (such as the target moving out of range) or increases the TN higher than the successes you kept, you fail.
That is the correct timing going by the rules. You compare successes against the TN after resolving opportunities for that roll. That implicitly means the TN can change after you make the roll but before you determine success or failure. We can certainly debate whether that's how it should be or even is intended to be, but I don't see much room to argue whether that's how it is.
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On 4/10/2019 at 3:52 PM, Franwax said:I always found the Shinseist ability a bit underwhelming... very dependent on how often you can trigger those disadvantages, and even at the best of times, you won't have many occasions to use it in a session.
How easily disadvantages are triggered (or advantages turned) is really dependent on the GM and on how the (dis)advantages get interpreted. I can see this working out really well in some groups, particularly ones that don't have a broad mix of characters, but arguably the GM needs to enable it to an extent. Then again, enabling the players is most of what a GM is supposed to do anyway in my opinion.
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11 hours ago, gareth_lazelle said:Sure,
But not all rolls benefit from bonus successes...
On a lot of rolls 12 successes is exactly as good as the two successes you needed to meet the TN,
But the 10 or so strife you likely accumulated make it a lot worse than just taking the bare minimum number of successes
There are definitely things I dislike about the strife mechanics and even about some aspects of opportunities, but this is the main advantage they bring to the system. R&K is great, but the risk/reward aspect of previous editions doesn't always come across as very elegant: massive overrolls are just good luck gone to waste and while pushing your luck can be fun, repeated failure through unfortunate rolls even when you're conservative with raises can be offputting. Moving raises (pre-roll decisions) to opportunities (post-roll decisions) removes the gamble, but that's not too bad since it's still a roll of the dice which means there's an inherent risk (even if I'd have liked the system to scale a bit more with regards to success/failure) and it lets the player make the most of a great roll. The addition of strife makes sure the opportunities don't get out of hand.
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Falling.
There are several techniques that (can) inflict conditions, Bleeding being among those.
Also, I'd say that not being able to defend against damage is involuntary, and it results in a crit.
More to the point, I don't really get what you mean by "inherently playing as pacifists". Players can choose not to inflict critical hits, yes, but they can also choose to keep inflicting damage past the point where their opponent can defend against it or use one of several mechanics to trigger a crit without first exhausting their opponent's fatigue reserves. It's a choice, and nothing pushes the players towards the pacifist option over the lethal one.
Honestly, going non-lethal is arguably the harder choice to make. Incapacitating someone without inflicting crits is not an easy thing to do.
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In this edition you never need ranks in something to be able to roll for it. School skill or not doesn't matter either. You just assemble a dice pool and roll, if you only have ring dice in the pool so be it.
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1 hour ago, DGLaderoute said:So a Crane samurai with an interest in gambling in, say, Ryoko Owari may very well end up borrowing money from commoners, who are themselves vassals to Scorpion lords.
Gambling is somewhat different than trade.
A samurai with gambling debts might turn to others for a loan, but he'll do so on his own initiative - not the potential lender's - unless someone with a ulterior motive who found out about these financial struggles intends to get leverage over him (a typical Scorpion ploy). Those he's indebted to due to gambling misfortune might extend credit, but that's not a loan. Regardless, this is not commerce unless the indebted samurai tries to offer some of his belongings to square his debts (and this will likely be construed as a gift or a favour in order not to suffer social stigma).
Trade samurai are involved in tends to be shrouded - it's looked down on, so certainly when it involves transactions between individuals (not treaties or large transactions) it's handled discretely and samurai pretend it was something else entirely. Gambling on the other hand carries no such stigma and can be done openly and publicly. Gambling debts can be acknowledged without shame. Welching on a bet is a major no-no, of course.
As written,
Togashi Monk Discussion
in Legend of the Five Rings: The Roleplaying Game
Posted
As written, I don't think it does. Whether it should is another question (I don't think it'd be gamebreaking if it did, so RAW aside houserule away if you want). If it was intended to, It's another case of FFG needing to tighten up their language.
I don't think "affect" is all that vague either. Does the text of the kiho state it does something to attacks, or does it say it does something to unarmed profiles? That's all there's to it.
They really didn't, or they did a very poor job.
It's not a legalistic sounding term. It's a defined game term (what you attack with if you don't use a weapon). The use of this term is what's legalistic.
I'd like to point out there's no mention of "unarmed attack profiles", only "unarmed profiles"; let's please not muddy the issue. As far as I know there's no other mention of profiles in the rules either, so there's no real point in speculating what "profile" would generically mean. There is no generic use of the term, only a single specific one. Actual weapons don't have a profile.
This is the crux of the matter: if the text refers to unarmed profiles it is not referring to attacks and vice versa. Very specifically, this means Sharpened Ki does not refer to attacks, unarmed or otherwise. Thus, kiho that affect attacks are not eligible for use with a weapon in a one-handed grip through the Taoist ability. Kiho that affect unarmed profiles are.