Core book Schools

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

Does anyone else have thoughts on what the other schools are gong to be in the core rulebook?  I assume that the 14 that were in the beta are all still included. Here's my ideas:

Crab:  Hiruma Scout (Bushi) and Yasuki Merchant (Courtier)

Crane: Asahina Artisan (Shugenja) and Daidoji Iron Warrior (Bushi)

Dragon: Agasha Alchemist (Shugenja) and Mirumoto Sword Master (Bushi)

Lion: Kitsu Sodan Senzo (Shugenja) and Matsu Berserker (Bushi)

Phoenix: Asako Scholar (Courtier) and Kaito Temple Guard (Monk)

Scorpion Bayushi Something (Bushi) and Soshi Illusionist (Shugenja)

Unicorn Ide Merchant (Courtier) and Utaku Battle Maiden (Bushi)

[AtoMaki 1,431]

My guess is that they will go Bushi + Courtier + Shugenja + Special (Artisan/Magistrate/Scout/Monk/Ninja) for each Clan. So yeah, something like your list, but they will get the Kakita Artisan for the Crane, the Ikoma Magistrate for the Lion... and, well, I keep my fingers crossed for the Asako Healer for Phoenix. 

[deraforia 169]

Personally I'd rather they didn't have any family pulling double duty, but I'm guessing I'm one of the few who thinks the Scorpion don't need a true Bushi out of the core and would prefer a Yogo Wardmaster instead.

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

1 hour ago, deraforia said:

Personally I'd rather they didn't have any family pulling double duty, but I'm guessing I'm one of the few who thinks the Scorpion don't need a true Bushi out of the core and would prefer a Yogo Wardmaster instead.

I'm not keen on the idea of the Scorpion having more Shugenja schools than all the other clans.  If anyone should have that, it would be the Phoenix.  The other option would be to have 5 schools per clan and add the following:

• Kaiu Engineer (Bushi?)
• Kakita Artisan (Courtier)
• Mirumoti Mountaineer (Bushi?)
• Kitsu Historian (Courtier)
• Isawa Ishiken (Shugenja)
• Yogo Wardmaster (Shugenja)
• Moto Charger (Bushi)

 

[deraforia 169]

1 hour ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

I'm not keen on the idea of the Scorpion having more Shugenja schools than all the other clans.  If anyone should have that, it would be the Phoenix.  The other option would be to have 5 schools per clan and add the following:

• Kaiu Engineer (Bushi?)
• Kakita Artisan (Courtier)
• Mirumoti Mountaineer (Bushi?)
• Kitsu Historian (Courtier)
• Isawa Ishiken (Shugenja)
• Yogo Wardmaster (Shugenja)
• Moto Charger (Bushi)

 

Scorpion have two very different shugenja families already though. Is that weird? Yes, but that's the setting we have. That said I wouldn't be opposed to doing five schools, at least for the Crab and Unicorn. Poor Kaiu and Moto deserve core schools, too.

Also, Kaito are Shugenja lite, to the point where Kosori has the keyword in the LCG anyway.

That said, I expect four schools per clan, and I expect to not see Yogo, Kaiu, and Moto schools until a sourcebook. If we're lucky it will be Emerald Empire. Otherwise we might have to wait for whatever clan books they give us.

[GhedJnnar 4]

Four would be nice but I think we should realistically expect 3.  A fourth in Emerald Empire and then two more in clan books.

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

18 hours ago, GhedJnnar said:

Four would be nice but I think we should realistically expect 3.  A fourth in Emerald Empire and then two more in clan books.

Given that there are typically 4, sometimes 5 families, and each family has a school, and each clan tends to have 1-2 special schools on top of that... Most great clans have at least 5 schools, usually 6-7 (based upon 2E & 3E sources).

I'd expect 4 in core (Courtier, Bushi, and Shugenja, plus one other), maybe 1 in Emerald Empire (possibly adding the minor clans), and the other 1-3 in the book detailing the clan.

 

[Donovan Morningfire 10,200]

I agree with the general sentiment that we'll be seeing the traditional Bushi/Shugenja/Courtier trio of schools, and then a 4th school that fits that clan's particular theme.  Dragon are going to have Tattoo Monks, Scorpions are going to have the Infiltrators/Not!Ninja, Crab the Hiruma Scouts, Lions the Matsu Berserkers, and so forth.

[Swordbreaker 632]

Kaito Shrine-Keepers please.

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

7 hours ago, Swordbreaker said:

Kaito Shrine-Keepers please.

Since they're a great family these days, I really expect it.

[llamaman88 430]

pretty much confirmed to be in the core, unless the gencon event was using stuff from emerald empire. but at least out by EE in that case.

[Hida Jitenno 586]

Likewise expecting 4 schools per clan, and I will also be disappointed if they don't include Imperial Families. I don't know whether they did in 1st or 2nd, but both 3rd and 4th had the Seppun, Miya, and Otomo in the core rulebook as well.

[Wyrmdog 54]

On 8/21/2018 at 11:40 AM, deraforia said:

Personally I'd rather they didn't have any family pulling double duty, but I'm guessing I'm one of the few who thinks the Scorpion don't need a true Bushi out of the core and would prefer a Yogo Wardmaster instead.

While I am a huge fan of the Bayushi Bushi school (I usually pick it no matter its deficiencies when I get to be a player), I have always found it odd that the Scorpion have 2 Shugenja families and schools, though on the other hand it makes perfect sense. And you have a point about schools being focused in too few families. But I will be horribly disappointed if the Scorpion do not have a bushi school in the core.

I have always loved that the Bayushi Bushi is essentially an earthy reflection of the Kakita Bushi, pushing practicality in tactics and form, do-or-die courtly training, and dueling in a single broad package. Making it all work was most of the fun of it because you were never as specialized as anyone else so you always had to work your butt off, but you had enough broad competence to be functional anywhere with very little effort. You could easily see any given Bayushi Bushi as a deadly duelist, a brutal killer, a spy, or a gangster.

Certainly other schools covered broad ground as well (of particular note is the Akodo Bushi, the quintessential military samurai), but few others spoke to me the way the Bayushi Bushi did and does, in spite of its arguable shortcomings.

[deraforia 169]

I actually agree with that sentiment of the Bayushi Bushi of the past. Certainly the school appealed to me in a way that few others did with its ability to do many things well, if not any one thing superbly.

The thing is, I'm not certain that can be their niche in this edition where everyone has an opportunity for breadth. With that in mind, I think our current Bayushi school could do well as a Bushi substitute, with the Shosuro school filling part of that role as well.

I regret that I never got the chance to test out a Bayushi Courtier bushi during the playtest.

[WHW 1,817]

I would rather get some Ronin and Minor Clan goodies before Imperial player-facing materials. 
I want Bayushi Bushi, definitely. I don't think Inflitrator scratches the "bushi" itch exactly.

[Hida Jitenno 586]

4 minutes ago, WHW said:

I would rather get some Ronin and Minor Clan goodies before Imperial player-facing materials. 
I want Bayushi Bushi, definitely. I don't think Inflitrator scratches the "bushi" itch exactly.

I have a "Seppun or Bust" player right now, so I'm being a little self-centered by hoping for Imperials (because it'll make my life easier). For the time being, I'm giving him "Okay, use Lion/Akodo bonuses and Shiba Guardsman school."

[Wyrmdog 54]

15 hours ago, deraforia said:

The thing is, I'm not certain that can be their niche in this edition where everyone has an opportunity for breadth. With that in mind, I think our current Bayushi school could do well as a Bushi substitute, with the Shosuro school filling part of that role as well.

So this is an interesting observation to me. I have also wondered if you could make a courtier who could swing a sword well enough to stand and fight with the bushi. Perhaps this is the ed where you could do that without needing a Bayushi or Kakita bushi school to do it?

1 hour ago, WHW said:

I would rather get some Ronin and Minor Clan goodies before Imperial player-facing materials. 
I want Bayushi Bushi, definitely. I don't think Inflitrator scratches the "bushi" itch exactly.

I have always felt that the schools were reflective of martial traditions that would not exist without rigid provenance and while 'ronin' schools would exist, they should more properly be 'independent' schools. That said, I don't give all clan bushi techniques (the rank and file soldiers and the like almost never have them, regardless of clan), so I am even more reticent to give ronin access to techniques. BUT...for a ronin campaign, you'd need them to keep mechanical interest up so I have no objections to them when I get right down to it.

Now minor clans I can get behind without reservation, oddly. I love the minor clans and feel there should be more of them and that a lot of them should be very small. Some would even be Wasp small (with what, 50 fighting samurai?), tiny in comparison to the Great Clans.  Some are a single extended noble family left over from the dissolution of a previous minor clan holding, or are protecting a rural area overlooked by the Great Clans in the spaces between, shielded from Great Clan predation by some ancient treaty for the time being. They sometimes marry the local peasants and are little better than ronin to the Great Clans. Ji-samurai, so to speak. Perhaps their holdings are indefensible or were historically under-productive or whatever. I do this in my Rokugan and generally have these minors use the aforementioned Ronin schools or no school techniques at all when a previously unknown minor clan makes an appearance in one of my games. Those descended from the younger children of Great Clans sometimes become vassal families or arrange for their children to attend the schools of the clans they hailed from originally, so some of these minor clans are busting out Kakita or Mirumoto techniques, thus surprising their enemies.

So that was a very long way of saying that I have no objection to seeing Ronin schools so long as there are also Imperial schools, Minor Clan schools, and most importantly, a Scorpion bushi. But we all have our priorities and few are the same, right? I am sure I'll be fine with whatever they put out. After all, there is a lot of momentum to the pre-existing canon and its mechanical permutations. FFG cannot possibly make us all happy in one book.

[MirumotoOrashu 51]

New article says there will be over 30 schools. Running some advanced calculations (30/7=4,28 ) implies that if not much more than 30, all Great Clans will get 4 schools + some non-Great Clan school.

[Keyframe18 6]

4 minutes ago, MirumotoOrashu said:

New article says there will be over 30 schools. Running some advanced calculations (30/7=4,28 ) implies that if not much more than 30, all Great Clans will get 4 schools + some non-Great Clan school.

Since there are now 30 major families in the great clans (now that the Kaito are promoted), It'll probably be 1/family plus some minor ones. 

[MirumotoOrashu 51]

Sounds reasonable. 

Most likely they will have some minor clans as we have already seen a preview of the Mantis.

[Talandar 61]

I doubt each major family will get their own school, for the simple reason that the Clans have different numbers of families. While overall it isn't dire, in the corebook I would expect each Clan to have an equal number of schools. I'd wager that it's four per clan, plus a few minor clans (probably including the Mantis) and at least one non-Dragon Monk school.

[BlindSamurai13 275]

I do admit that I enjoy the more flavorful titles of the schools now from the beta 

Doji Diplomat instead of Doji Courtier, for example.  Look forward to the other flavorful names. I wonder if this was a suggestion from Kinzen? I only say that b/c I remember many years back on the AEG forums where she express her thoughts on the plain titles used for Clan schools. She also took part in the Alpha for this game too. 

[AtoMaki 1,431]

I'm not on the boat of liking the new school names. I had this problem with the previous editions too, and I'm not a fan of seeing it again, but figuring out what a school is about by its flavored name is not always as simple as I would like it to be. 

[Tonbo Karasu 2,606]

Someone has posted a couple of pics from GenCon, showing pre-genned PCs for Wedding at Kyotei Castle.  They are a Kaito Shrine Keeper and an Utaku Battle Maiden.  I'm going to assume that these two schools are in the core book.

[sndwurks 1,257]

3 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:

Someone has posted a couple of pics from GenCon, showing pre-genned PCs for Wedding at Kyotei Castle.  They are a Kaito Shrine Keeper and an Utaku Battle Maiden.  I'm going to assume that these two schools are in the core book.

There was also a Yasuki Merchant, a Kitsu Medium, a Bayushi Manipulator, and a Kakita Duelist.