Disappointed in the system after reading Genesys core rule book

[Harzerkatze 262]

12 minutes ago, Derk_g said:

I definitely did not miss the finishing blow rule. But to my surprise the 'finishing blows' turned out to be not very finishing. Wounding - yes. Finishing? Not at all. And that was with a katana.

Strange. The Deadliness should have been 14 +2x Opportunities +Bonus Successes. I admit that you need a severity 12 to be deadly, but either that was not a very good attack or a very lucky Resist roll.

 

[Derk_g 13]

How so? I don't have the rules in front of me, but unless a lot of opportunity is rolled we are starting at deadliness 7 -> let's say 9 with 2 additional opportunities. With a few successes this is reduced to 5 or 6. And in case of a 1-handed katana it is 2 points less still. Off the top of my head we needed to be at 9 or 10+ to get to a 'game over' result. I mean, I saw one finishing blow from a single handed katana reduced to a mere flesh wound...

Yes, luck was a factor here. But building up to the climax of the 'finishing blow' to only see a fizzle... Meh.

[Avatar111 553]

25 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

My gaming group ran into the same issue, but only at higher levels when critical soaking gets big. Finishing Blows are pretty "finishing" at Rank 1 tho. 

A katana is 14 deadliness when wielded with 2 hands.

Simply soaking that is no small feat, at any level. Especially considering the fact that if you took a finishing blow you are Compromised...meaning you cannot keep dice with strife. In my experience, that is almost too deadly as getting into a duel is almost an assured death or a chopped arm if you do not win.

But yeah, a duel with other kinds of weapon is only a matter of incapacitating the opponent. A bit boring.

It would need a middle ground, the way critical strikes and wounds and incapacitated condtion work together right now is a bit weird. Sometimes crits are useless, sometimes they are too over the top, they would benefit in being expended upon. Especially in a game that is all about that when it comes to combat.

[Avatar111 553]

34 minutes ago, Derk_g said:

How so? I don't have the rules in front of me, but unless a lot of opportunity is rolled we are starting at deadliness 7 -> let's say 9 with 2 additional opportunities. With a few successes this is reduced to 5 or 6. And in case of a 1-handed katana it is 2 points less still. Off the top of my head we needed to be at 9 or 10+ to get to a 'game over' result. I mean, I saw one finishing blow from a single handed katana reduced to a mere flesh wound...

Yes, luck was a factor here. But building up to the climax of the 'finishing blow' to only see a fizzle... Meh.

Euh, you double the deadliness for finishing blows. Plus your bonus successes also add to it. Plus the opponent is compromised and cannot keep dice with strife.

Sorry to tell you, but a finishing blow with a 2h katana is auto-death in almost all cases. Which is insane if you ask me. We are talking a minimum of 14 deadliness without any bonus success or opportunity. And considering almost half the dice contain strife, good luck soaking that.

Getting into a duel with katana is a death sentence. Which clashes a lot with regular skirmishes in which you will simply not be threatened at all unless an opponent wail on you while you are down (which is on par with how d&d handle combat and death).

A middle ground between skirmishes and duels would be best for me. Also, smoothing the deadliness curve so that not only a few weapons can do better than damaging an armor.
Basically; make critical strikes a slight bit more dangerous for skirmishes, but probably remove the "double" deadliness for finsihing blows (considering bonus successes add to the deadliness for such blows). And make the crticial strike table more granular with an option at each increment rather than big categories.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Avatar111

[Derk_g 13]

42 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Euh, you double the deadliness for finishing blows. Plus your bonus successes also add to it. Plus the opponent is compromised and cannot keep dice with strife.

Sorry to tell you, but a finishing blow with a 2h katana is auto-death in almost all cases. Which is insane if you ask me. We are talking a minimum of 14 deadliness without any bonus success or opportunity. And considering almost half the dice contain strife, good luck soaking that.

Getting into a duel with katana is a death sentence. Which clashes a lot with regular skirmishes in which you will simply not be threatened at all unless an opponent wail on you while you are down (which is on par with how d&d handle combat and death).

A middle ground between skirmishes and duels would be best for me. Also, smoothing the deadliness curve so that not only a few weapons can do better than damaging an armor.
Basically; make critical strikes a slight bit more dangerous for skirmishes, but probably remove the "double" deadliness for finsihing blows (considering bonus successes add to the deadliness for such blows). And make the crticial strike table more granular with an option at each increment rather than big categories.

AH. We certainly missed the doubling and the bonus successes.

Honestly I think that was desperately needed for it to be a finishing blow. I may actually be more on board with the rules as written (as opposed to 'as read'....) than what you are suggesting.

Regarding the categories, I got kind of lost on what the jey difference between some of the categories above 'serious wound' is supposed to be.

I do agree that the skirmishes seem less of a threat and that a fix may be wanted there.

[Derk_g 13]

48 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

It would need a middle ground, the way critical strikes and wounds and incapacitated condtion work together right now is a bit weird. Sometimes crits are useless, sometimes they are too over the top, they would benefit in being expended upon. Especially in a game that is all about that when it comes to combat.

Agree, some of the categories seemed useless, and in effect have a lower short term impact than the less severe wound.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

A katana is 14 deadliness when wielded with 2 hands.

Simply soaking that is no small feat, at any level.

At Rank 3-4 a combat-oriented character will soak 6-8 severity, mostly from Skill Dice so Strife is not an issue. Shattering Parry + Seize the Moment can get this up to 10+. 

Depending on your rules interpenetration you can break through this easily if you use Heartpiercing Strike for the Finishing Blow and pull a combined Severity 21 + 2x bonus successes with a TN 3 soak. Ain't nobody gonna soak that but it is a little flimsy by RAW. 

[Magnus Grendel 11,672]

I think it's more than a little flimsy.

"If the character executing a finishing blow succeeds, instead of dealing damage, the finishing blow inflicts a critical strike with severity equal to two times the deadliness of the weapon or Attack action used, plus the attacker’s bonus successes. Any other effects of the Attack action are resolved as usual."

"If you succeed, your target suffers a critical strike with severity equal to your weapon’s deadliness plus your bonus successes. The TN of the Fitness check to resist this critical strike is 3 (Air 4, Water 1) instead of the normal TN."

Problems:

• The obvious one - a finishing blow inflicts a critical "...instead of dealing damage..." which Heartpiercing Strike doesn't. There is therefore a good argument that you don't get the normal finishing blow effect, just the basic (if 'free') heartpiercing strike.
• Nothing says the severity of the critical effects are additive; one inflicts a standard-deadliness severity critical, one a double-deadliness severity critical. You suffer the two separately. Nothing in the base rules prohibits one attack action causing two critical strikes (for the sake of example, spending  to trigger  Spinning Blades Style against an opponent unable or unwilling to defend)

You can get pretty silly severity criticals off a finishing blow fairly easily anyway.

Remember it inflicts a critical of double your weapon's deadliness, which means you get double returns for spending  to increase the weapon's deadliness with the Razor-Edged quality. A full-fledged Kakita duellist landing a finishing blow can rack up deadliness 5 (katana) + 2 (double-handed grip) + 1 (Kakita-forged blade) +1 (spending  on Razor-Edged*) for a total of severity 18, which should be pretty terminal to any mundane opponent.

 

* You can trigger this more than once but you can be pretty confident a competent duellist can produce  on demand with little difficulty. More is likely but not guaranteed.

[Avatar111 553]

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Remember it inflicts a critical of double your weapon's deadliness, which means you get double returns for spending  to increase the weapon's deadliness with the Razor-Edged quality. A full-fledged Kakita duellist landing a finishing blow can rack up deadliness 5 (katana) + 2 (double-handed grip) + 1 (Kakita-forged blade) +1 (spending  on Razor-Edged*) for a total of severity 18, which should be pretty terminal to any mundane opponent.

You are 100% right on ALL accounts in your post. Add to that that the compromised character taking the finishing blow cannot keep dice with strife symbols on his fitness check... OOF.

Oh, also, it is more than 18 in your example above, you forgot the Kakita school ability. So 18 + (insert rank of the kakita duelist)

In my own perfect world, I would like Skirmishes to be slightly deadlier, and Finishing Blows slightly less deadly. I find the difference is just too much, Skirmishes are people fighting with foam weapons and nothing can happen, but then duels is like cranked up to one shot kill levels.
 

Edited October 24, 2019 by Avatar111

[AtoMaki 1,431]

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I think it's more than a little flimsy.

[The Grand Falloon 1,718]

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

In my own perfect world, I would like Skirmishes to be slightly deadlier, and Finishing Blows slightly less deadly. I find the difference is just too much, Skirmishes are people fighting with foam weapons and nothing can happen, but then duels is like cranked up to one shot kill levels.
 

I've put the crit severity at a flat +5, + bonus successes.  This beefs up most weapons and reels in the 2-handed katana, as well as cutting off any arguments about what gets doubled ("But if I spend 2 Opportunity, it's a razor-edged weapon, so the deadliness is 9, doubled to 18!")

I've also considered ignoring Strife symbols on resistance rolls, but there's a whole long train of thought that brought me to that station.

[Avatar111 553]

7 hours ago, The Grand Falloon said:

I've put the crit severity at a flat +5, + bonus successes.  This beefs up most weapons and reels in the 2-handed katana, as well as cutting off any arguments about what gets doubled ("But if I spend 2 Opportunity, it's a razor-edged weapon, so the deadliness is 9, doubled to 18!")

I've also considered ignoring Strife symbols on resistance rolls, but there's a whole long train of thought that brought me to that station.

The flat +5 (for finishing blows) seems decent enough. Better than "double". And still extremely strong with a katana and a skilled warrior for all the reasons we talked above.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this "Whaaaaaaat?! My character can DIE in a duel?!" approach. When the blades are out things ought to get deadly as all heck. You don't like it? Two solutions: avoid blades or git gud. 

There is no bigger disappointment in the game than hitting a Fitness Ronin with a Finishing Blow and get a meager Flesh Wound because Fitness Ronin doesn't care. Geez that duel traumatized me, sorry ...

[Avatar111 553]

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this "Whaaaaaaat?! My character can DIE in a duel?!" approach. When the blades are out things ought to get deadly as all heck. You don't like it? Two solutions: avoid blades or git gud. 

There is no bigger disappointment in the game than hitting a Fitness Ronin with a Finishing Blow and get a meager Flesh Wound because Fitness Ronin doesn't care. Geez that duel traumatized me, sorry ...

I think you got your math wrong somewhere.
I really do not see how that fitness ronin could get like minimum 10 successes on his resist check, without being able to keep dice with strife.
Something he had like 0.1% chance to achieve ?
nah, you got your math wrong.
even with 5 fitness, 5ring... against a finishing blow at minimum 14 severity (and lets be honest, you got no extra success or opportunity ? were you at least in the same ballpark as that 5/5 ronin ??)

to me right now, the difference in deadliness between skirmishes and duels is too much. And honestly... a +5 (12 MINIMUM, with a 2h katana, not counting bonus successes, opportunities..) against a compromised resist check... Is more than enough. You might need a bit of luck while attacking (what? 2 or 3 bonus successes or opps?), but you would need insane, i mean, INSANE luck as the person who resist to not be completely wrecked.

tdlr: your maths are wrong, or you should buy loto tickets.

skirmishes could use a bit of increase though. it is basically a joke how unthreatening skirmishes are. This is the bulk of the problem. the difference in deadliness between duels and skirmishes.
and also... you duel with a low deadlienss weapon ? then finishingblow do nothing. While with the +5.. they still are threatening.

the answer is simple. doubling is not fun. it isn't even a hard task to not explode, it is literally almost impossible. put that in perspective of the players, if they duel, they risk an arm, everytime. to a few rolls.
a maim like that is fine, if the attack got a good roll, and the resist is average, but not just automatically.

to DIE is fine. But it shouldn't be a 50/50 chance in duels, and impossible during skirmishes. It just doesn't make sense.

and be certain, I do agree finishing blows need to be very threatening. they are with +5... they honestly are. It helps EVERY weapon aside weapons that have raw over 5 deadliness.
this is muuuuch softer adjustement that you seem to think it is. It just makes it less "automatic death" unless the attack ONLY got 2 successes and the defender got like 12 successes on his compromised resist check.

Edit: fitness ronin cancel 1 strife. On a 5skill 5ring, while compromised, i'd be curious to see how he can get more than 5-6 successes on a lucky roll. And that is like a top dog opponent. Your 14minimum deadliness (and lets be honest, if you only got two successes on your finishing blow at this level against a 5/5 ronin. You probably deserve not to one shot him.) Would really hurt him bad, and that is like worst case scenario for you.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Avatar111

[AtoMaki 1,431]

5 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

I really do not see how that fitness ronin could get like minimum 10 successes on his resist check, without being able to keep dice with strife.

With a 10k5 Fitness roll (4 Ring, 5 Skill, 1 Seize the Moment) and keeping 1 Strifed Explosion because Fitness Ronin the average comes out at 8 I think, swinging upwards due to a possible Shattering Parry. 10 is not out of question by a far shot. 

22 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

were you at least in the same ballpark as that 5/5 ronin ??

Plot twist: I was the ronin. 

[Avatar111 553]

10 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

With a 10k5 Fitness roll (4 Ring, 5 Skill, 1 Seize the Moment) and keeping 1 Strifed Explosion because Fitness Ronin the average comes out at 8 I think, swinging upwards due to a possible Shattering Parry. 10 is not out of question by a far shot. 

Plot twist: I was the ronin. 

Sorry, the average is not 8. And this is like very high rank stats too.

Lets say 14 deadliness. The guy you dueled couldn't manage more than 2 successes? plus you used two void points or got even more godly lucky. If the opponent was worth the challenge, it could easily have been a deadliness 17-18.

Good on you to not die in one shot, but I think this is an extreme case of luck and not a regular feat. You basically ditched all you could, Have top dog stats, got lucky, and have a small buffer with the school ability against a very poor or unlucky opponent that couldnt manage more than 2 successes and 0 opport while you got like 10 successes while compromised... Really, you deserved to live (without permanent wound) through that one. This is a moment for the ages.

Also, the +5 instead of double basically lowers the finishing blow by only 2.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Avatar111

[AtoMaki 1,431]

9 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Sorry, the average is not 8. And this is like very high rank stats too.

I think it is. Or 8 is the 50% chance and the average is 6? Something like that. And this ronin was Rank 3, an Air/Void build to boot. 

It wasn't really an outlying case. The duel went through the usual "slap spam" phase, entered the usual "desperation predicts" phase when the contestants Strifed up, and I ran afoul on a Predict as usual and ate a lukewarm Finishing Blow because you can't just keep all the good dice at this point (remember kids: if you Strife out during your Finishing Blow then your enemy gets their Finishing Blow before yours land). I Void bombed the check as usual and got some pretty good results, as expected. And that last part bothers me to no end, because it makes character death in duels feel like a noobie thing. 

10 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

This is a moment for the ages.

Ah, make no mistake, it is! But you can rely on it happening, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth . 

[Avatar111 553]

4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I think it is. Or 8 is the 50% chance and the average is 6? Something like that. And this ronin was Rank 3, an Air/Void build to boot. 

It wasn't really an outlying case. The duel went through the usual "slap spam" phase, entered the usual "desperation predicts" phase when the contestants Strifed up, and I ran afoul on a Predict as usual and ate a lukewarm Finishing Blow because you can't just keep all the good dice at this point (remember kids: if you Strife out during your Finishing Blow then your enemy gets their Finishing Blow before yours land). I Void bombed the check as usual and got some pretty good results, as expected. And that last part bothers me to no end, because it makes character death in duels feel like a noobie thing. 

Ah, make no mistake, it is! But you can rely on it happening, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth . 

He still got only 2 successes on his finishing blow (because he didn't want to keep strife at all, not even one), you still got 10 successes on your fitness check while also not able to keep strife.

You cannot "rely" on this... This is insane luck.

Bottom line is, on an equal roll. Lets say 5 successes each. You would have taken a severity 17 critical strike + opportunities for razor edge. Given only one opportunity because I feel generous, that is 18.

With your 5 successes, you end up like a piece of minced meat. Shattering parry? Ok 7 successes, and your arm still fall off.

SO. Moral of this story, the defender needs to be extremely more skilled or lucky than the attacker to not explode on a finishing blow.

If you make it +5 instead of double, you help almost all weapons in the game (which is cool to allow most weapons to do something violent on a finishing blow) while only reducing above example of a crit 18 to a crit 16 (which is still more than enough to make a bloody mess, or straight up kill if the attacker is only slightly more lucky than the defender).

 

Edited October 26, 2019 by Avatar111

[AtoMaki 1,431]

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Bottom line is, on an equal roll. Lets say 5 successes each. You would have taken a severity 17 critical strike + opportunities for razor edge. Given only one opportunity because I feel generous, that is 18.

With your 5 successes, you end up like a piece of minced meat. Shattering parry? Ok 7 successes, and your arm still fall off.

18 - 5 is just 13, Agonizing Death aka The More Generous Countdown. You need Severity 21 here to get your Instant Death aka Piece of Minced Meat. That requires the attacker to score 9 successes on the attack check (2 for hitting, 7 for getting Severity 21) and then if the target only gets his average 5 successes then he suffers Instant Death. I guess by your own definition this would be also insane luck. 

I would be the happiest person if a straight Severity 16 would be enough to make a bloody mess. 

[Avatar111 553]

36 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

18 - 5 is just 13, Agonizing Death aka The More Generous Countdown. You need Severity 21 here to get your Instant Death aka Piece of Minced Meat. That requires the attacker to score 9 successes on the attack check (2 for hitting, 7 for getting Severity 21) and then if the target only gets his average 5 successes then he suffers Instant Death. I guess by your own definition this would be also insane luck. 

I would be the happiest person if a straight Severity 16 would be enough to make a bloody mess. 

I do not totally disagree, if you want insta death in your game, this system is not for that. It just wont really happen, and duels shouldn't be the only time they can happen (if you want them to happen at all).

At least insta death won't happen to the PC. Because...

Personally, a duel that ends with a chopped arm or a dying condition is enough to "kill" a character, meaning, the duel is over. Yes, by the rule you could just switch stance and keep fighting, but my NPC wont, because, dying = death for them. And if a PC do keep fighting while dying or maimed, then it will really go down in burger meat factory because the NPC will also play the same way. It will end up with everybody missing limbs, one of them unconscious on the ground with his head chopped off. Which is fine too.

death and main for pc =\= death and maim for npc.

 

Edited October 26, 2019 by Avatar111

[AtoMaki 1,431]

12 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

I do not totally disagree, if you want insta death in your game, this system is not for that.

Just ditch soak rolls and there you go, everything gets fine deadly. 

[Avatar111 553]

56 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Just ditch soak rolls and there you go, everything gets fine deadly. 

Thats hardcore. But sure is deadly.

I'd probably look in changing the critical table, change or add some type of wounded conditions, and tweak the dying condition.

At the end of the day, it also depends how you or your group would like it. One thing for sure though, it is that as per raw, when it comes to crits, conditions etc, the system have some nasty kinks. I heavily suspect most groups to just use narrative conflict resolution and death instead of following raw.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Avatar111

[sidescroller 137]

On 10/14/2019 at 11:46 PM, T_Kageyasu said:

Would you mind elaborating a bit more? Or sharing a link with a description? I see range bands as invisible circles around characters, which is usually fine, but I'm not asking for tactical/grid combat from my L5R.

Generally, my problem with the range bands system is that, since all distances are relative, a change of distance between two characters doesn't logically generate new information about the change in distance to a third character... which is what defining combat space should *do*. 

Alice and Bob enter the battlefield, such that Alice and Bob are three range bands apart East-West. Charlie is four range bands north of Alice. How many range bands away are Charlie and Bob? We can't actually *know*, without breaking out trigonometry or minis and string, which both defeat the purpose of narrative combat space. We can hand-wave, sure, but at that point, why bother quantifying distance at all?

For more, here's the link to my step-by-step logic for why range bands don't work: 

And here's my link to range zones. I would word things a little differently now, but you can get the gist. 

 

 

[Chilitoke 41]

13 hours ago, sidescroller said:

Generally, my problem with the range bands system is that, since all distances are relative, a change of distance between two characters doesn't logically generate new information about the change in distance to a third character... which is what defining combat space should *do*. 

Alice and Bob enter the battlefield, such that Alice and Bob are three range bands apart East-West. Charlie is four range bands north of Alice. How many range bands away are Charlie and Bob? We can't actually *know*, without breaking out trigonometry or minis and string, which both defeat the purpose of narrative combat space. We can hand-wave, sure, but at that point, why bother quantifying distance at all?

I think the way to look at this situation is not to place Alice and Bob at range 3 east west.
But at range 3 due to circumstance. It might be physical distance, but it might also be due to cover, terrain or other things, the range bands are thus not purely spacial range but more a measure of ease of 'striking'.
All range should be 'tracked'/calculated between all actors.

If it is decided that Alice and Bob are 3 apart, the distance in regards to Charlie, are actually not depend upon it, it should be handled separately.
The best case i have for this is if Alice and Bob are 1 apart, with Bob standing between Alice and Charlie.

A (1) B - C 
However lets say we have established that Bob and Charlie were 4 apart, what would the distance to Alice be, some would argue 5, due to 4 + 1.
I would however argue also 4, as the range band 4 is in such a scale that two people in melee are treated at the same distance, regardless of one of them being in front of the other.

A benefit of this approach is that people are not 'required' to stand still when it is not their turn as to people can circle each other without change range bands and such.
, a drawback is that all distances kind of need to be evaluated at all times and not necessarily is conferred by previous position and actions.
 

[Avatar111 553]

The whole range system is unnecessarily tactical.

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Avatar111