Well, yeah, but they sure made it look like flames.

To clarify further, "Strife" and "Strife symbols on kept dice" are not the same thing. "Removing strife" and "negating (flame)" are two different mechanical effects. The former changes only the number on your character sheet, the latter essentially acts as a "pretend this isn't printed on that die face." If applicable, it can be helpful to simply turn the die over (but not all symbols have strifeless versions on all dice).
Shiba Guardian is one of the few schools that has a way to outright negate (flame), and is incredibly powerful when paired with a Fire mage because of it. And Ishiken too now, I suppose.

So you cant have the stoic stuff if you jettison the Patriarchal stuff that could push out some potential players and isnt needed?  

Yes, it activates even on failure, during step 3. Things that are contingent on success (such as critical strikes) don't actually resolve until the success/failure is determined and resolved, since a check neither succeeds nor fails until step 4. Keep in mind that neither can be applied to characters in earth stance (or not without spending extra ops, as a common houserule).

The "immediately" clause allows for some very fun multi-stance combinations! Such as the Void op to reduce the TN of the next check you make if it's in stance X, and then another op to swap to X. Sometimes that's better than (Op)(Op) to crit. Striking as Void is a great kata. You can swap to fire stance for massive strife-free hits, air or earth for defensive needs, or even water if you want to squeeze out a second action after the first is done strifelessly.

Its also worth noting that it's "immediately" - so you can spend to switch, then spend opportunities for a kata in that stance.

Well, there's the one from the Sadane Student card itself: "How sweet of you to wear a kimono designed by your little brother." (approximately)
in a game recently, someone complimented another person on how they had managed to do better than expected in a competition - they had come second last.

There is the Bayushi Elite Guard mentioned in The World, A Stage - I suspect they would be a title rather than school, since they're not 'trained from gempukku' individuals but rather picked to join it once recognised as awesome (Bayushi Shoju picking their new commander personally in that story)
I think the Elite Royal Guard of the Crane was always specifically the 'Empress' Guard' - whilst they might nominally protect any royal family member, they were legally speaking there to protect the (almost always Doji-born) Empress and/or Empress Dowager, since there was a historical precedent for that with Doji Haranobu right back at the birth of the Empire.  

I could take or leave most of the class tweaks, a lot of them are just personal preference (Skulk on Investigator, for instance) but the Air/Water derived stat swap, Veiled Menace change to give it a weapon niche, and an axe kata of some variety did seem necessary. Shields in Shadowlands were also a little strange. For the most part I've been trimming the changes down, rather than adding to them over time as I get more and more used to the rhythm of the system. It should be noted that the majority of my group would be characterized as "gamist" players in most other contexts and they love fiddly little options and things like Intrigue conflicts over freeform roleplay. We previously played A Song of Ice and Fire RPG extensively, and it's got every aspect (good and bad) of FFGL5R dialed up to 11.
 
Edit: And yes, we do actually play with all these changes. They've been settled in the group for a couple months by now (with the exception of a couple very small tweaks my players requested).

I like some of them (Striking as Air jumps out at me), but you're going to have a lot of broken tetsubo and otsuchi littering your battlefields with that first Crit modification.  Those things don't seem all that brittle to me.

Armor works just fine as-is, the reason being that, in actual play, you'll almost always either A: damage the armor with a critical strike instead of suffering horribly or B: run a weapon that will only really do damage if it circumvents the armor anyway. All that happens narratively on a crit is that you find a weak spot, or fail to find a weak spot and just crack the shell. Makes intuitive sense when you think about it that way. A normal hit that gets reduced to 0? Deflected, just like armor should do.
The exception to this is, of course, finishing blows on duels, but those are supposed to be hilariously lethal.

You'll note my qualifications- in a formal duel, just whipping out your sword and wailing on the other guy isn't an option. You will forfeit the duel if you do that. Battlefield duels, the second most common type, are usually also run with full armor, and go to death or similar, which again forces emphasis onto the Finishing Blow. I also can't say I've played with a group that didn't allow Guard to be used in duels before, which obviously changes the "meta" around them, but it's a perfectly reasonable addition to the format. Your advice on simply hitting them itself has qualifiers- Must be first blood, and must be low armor. I've only personally seen this format come up during sparring matches with bokken.
Running Fire, in this case, comes with a couple qualifiers. Your opponent can't be running something like Striking as Earth. It also gets significantly harder to deal direct damage against somebody in Air stance. That 1 TN buffer may not seem like much, but getting past it without picking up a couple strife (post initiative, staredown, etc) is going to be difficult even with 3 Melee. You run the risk of your opponent swapping to Water stance to Predict you out, in addition to taking some other action with a check (and likely knocking off more strife/fatigue that way, vanilla). Fire is very powerful in duels, yes, but you have to be absolutely sure your opponent can't simply outlast you. If you don't win by turn 3 (6 cumulative strife just from staredown, not including kept strife and initiative bids), you will find yourself on the business end of a Finishing Blow from a more conservative player. You'll have to be able to deal at least Endurance+1 damage without pitching over your Composure, without them reducing their Fatigue at all, and without them having a chance to Calming Breath before you hit them again.
Fire main Mirumoto is a fantastic build, don't get me wrong. It's an absolute blast to play- I've done it myself. But simply wailing on the other guy isn't a guaranteed victory.

The description is the technique, and the "vanish" par is said to be only those very good at it. 
Which leads into your description of the technique is wrong. You move an additional range band for every 2 bonus successes you get, so if you say, kept exploding you could conceivably ninja vanish your way all the way to the horizon - unlikely but possible. In general, I think the point of Like A Ghost is the ignoring terrain, the free vertical movement and over short gaps, without needing to spend additional opportunity. You can silently leap from tree to tree or roof to roof, you can move faster over mud, rocks, even traps defenders of a castle (as discussed earlier in CoS) might have laid out. People without this technique may not be able to follow you physically, and it's a lot harder to stop you. A great general technique for rapid movement which can scale as you get better and better (it being a Rank 2 technique). 

You'll note my qualifications- in a formal duel, just whipping out your sword and wailing on the other guy isn't an option. You will forfeit the duel if you do that. Battlefield duels, the second most common type, are usually also run with full armor, and go to death or similar, which again forces emphasis onto the Finishing Blow. I also can't say I've played with a group that didn't allow Guard to be used in duels before, which obviously changes the "meta" around them, but it's a perfectly reasonable addition to the format. Your advice on simply hitting them itself has qualifiers- Must be first blood, and must be low armor. I've only personally seen this format come up during sparring matches with bokken.
Running Fire, in this case, comes with a couple qualifiers. Your opponent can't be running something like Striking as Earth. It also gets significantly harder to deal direct damage against somebody in Air stance. That 1 TN buffer may not seem like much, but getting past it without picking up a couple strife (post initiative, staredown, etc) is going to be difficult even with 3 Melee. You run the risk of your opponent swapping to Water stance to Predict you out, in addition to taking some other action with a check (and likely knocking off more strife/fatigue that way, vanilla). Fire is very powerful in duels, yes, but you have to be absolutely sure your opponent can't simply outlast you. If you don't win by turn 3 (6 cumulative strife just from staredown, not including kept strife and initiative bids), you will find yourself on the business end of a Finishing Blow from a more conservative player. You'll have to be able to deal at least Endurance+1 damage without pitching over your Composure, without them reducing their Fatigue at all, and without them having a chance to Calming Breath before you hit them again.
Fire main Mirumoto is a fantastic build, don't get me wrong. It's an absolute blast to play- I've done it myself. But simply wailing on the other guy isn't a guaranteed victory.

Rising Blade is your friend, especially with errata. TN 1 on a finishing blow and range doesn't matter in duels.
Ask if your GM will let you use the Guard action from Skirmishes. If so, that's one of your go-to options. If you're a Fire main, do your best when making any check to inflict 2 strife. Swap to Earth if they run Water to avoid anything nasty. Unlike Avatar's advice, I've found that Predict is your best friend if you know the vaguely-strong rings your opponent has (unless they have 3+ Void). It just requires you to actually pay attention as a player (which is a lot to ask some groups, admittedly). Strife is all that matters in duels, and dropping 4 strife on someone is practically an instant victory, especially if it's a formal duel and you won't be able to make multiple attacks without losing several points (or forfeiting the match). Wait for the Finishing Blow. Even if it isn't a formal duel, the Finishing Blow is the deciding factor nine times out of ten until you're in the level 4+ range.

Rising Blade is your friend, especially with errata. TN 1 on a finishing blow and range doesn't matter in duels.
Ask if your GM will let you use the Guard action from Skirmishes. If so, that's one of your go-to options. If you're a Fire main, do your best when making any check to inflict 2 strife. Swap to Earth if they run Water to avoid anything nasty. Unlike Avatar's advice, I've found that Predict is your best friend if you know the vaguely-strong rings your opponent has (unless they have 3+ Void). It just requires you to actually pay attention as a player (which is a lot to ask some groups, admittedly). Strife is all that matters in duels, and dropping 4 strife on someone is practically an instant victory, especially if it's a formal duel and you won't be able to make multiple attacks without losing several points (or forfeiting the match). Wait for the Finishing Blow. Even if it isn't a formal duel, the Finishing Blow is the deciding factor nine times out of ten until you're in the level 4+ range.

Rising Blade is your friend, especially with errata. TN 1 on a finishing blow and range doesn't matter in duels.
Ask if your GM will let you use the Guard action from Skirmishes. If so, that's one of your go-to options. If you're a Fire main, do your best when making any check to inflict 2 strife. Swap to Earth if they run Water to avoid anything nasty. Unlike Avatar's advice, I've found that Predict is your best friend if you know the vaguely-strong rings your opponent has (unless they have 3+ Void). It just requires you to actually pay attention as a player (which is a lot to ask some groups, admittedly). Strife is all that matters in duels, and dropping 4 strife on someone is practically an instant victory, especially if it's a formal duel and you won't be able to make multiple attacks without losing several points (or forfeiting the match). Wait for the Finishing Blow. Even if it isn't a formal duel, the Finishing Blow is the deciding factor nine times out of ten until you're in the level 4+ range.

This will be my last comment on this thread: I will leave the last word to you. You posted a message that had no content or value other than sneering at someone for making a post that you claimed had no value. Then you insulted them personally. If you can't tell that your posting was deliberately offensive then I feel sorry for you and anyone who has to deal with you on a regular basis.

Some of the named special abilities of NPCs that match those available to PCs aren't quite the same.  E.g., the Skillful Ronin's "Striking as Fire" technique adds 2 deadliness per opportunity spent, whereas the PC kata version only adds 1.  So I wouldn't necessarily assume that the Hida Kotoe writeup implies that PCs' equivalent ability is intended to match hers.

I decided to collect all of my house rules and game adjustments into one thread separate from the general Homebrew thread. Feel free to question or discuss any of my changes. A few items have been tested, and a few have not. I will try to point out where I agree and disagree with the official errata and FAQ document.
Clans and Families
 
Schools