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Oct 6, 2017 16:35
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I mean it's no surprise that RPG players as a rule are awful, poison-minded grogs and weirdos, present posting company excepted until proven guilty as always. This forum hosted tens of thousands of grognards.txt thread posts, remember. I am very bullish at the moment about the new RPG edition but to address my concerns I am keeping my interaction strictly limited to emailing the design team directly, per their invitation. I have sent one email already and sincerely hope they respond and are honestly interested in actually editing the game for the better, unlike with the Star Wars game line betas, which were pointless. I will not post on the FFG forums. There is no point. One only exposes oneself to the worst "we need extended rules for pregnancy" sorts there. By posting here I toe the line on my "do not engage" rule but I think all y'all on SA are a reasonable lot! unseenlibrarian posted:It's exceptionally-weird to be so anti-ronin when the name of your game comes from a book by a dude who was absolutely not a loyal samurai serving a lord but a wandering murderhobo who beat people up with boat oars. For real. Ronin are dynamic and especially appealing if you do not want to break away from Rokugan's 1000 years of peace. If you're going to observe the official highly stable setting, it's awkward sometimes to find cause for samurai to go adventurin'. It never helps that players always want to be from four or five different bloody Clans. It's why we've got that tired "you're all Emerald Magistrates" party concept. Ronin avoid that - like it's not for no reason Usagi Yojimbo, to name one example of so many, was a wandering ronin for all those comic book issues full of stories. One small concern I have in 5E is the punishment placed on low-Honor characters. You shouldn't discourage someone who wants to play against type as, say, a ronin disillusioned with the whole system because he's the bastard son of a lord and a prostitute, and it's especially weird to do it while officially labeling "zero Honor" as "I Make My Own Code" - that sounds like a dynamic and interesting personality that should not get penalized. MadDogMike posted:The Scorpions also need a little care; I kind of like the "so loyal they willingly act as monsters for those they serve so their lords don't have to" portrayal I've seen, but feels like too many times they get played as the evil character in a good party, which rarely ends well. Hear, hear. L5R nerds, like other nerds, have a real problem with autistic latching onto lazy stereotypes. Know how all Wookiees swear life debts and all Rodians are slimy bounty hunters? L5R nerds are so bad with that sort of poo poo and it's particularly rough for the Scorpion. Incredibly lazy content writers never help. It seems there are only ever two things samurai fight in L5R modules: Shadowlands critters and Scorpions. Real deep setting that revolves around human emotional conflict you got there. "My Good Anyway, I'm bullish on this in 5E too; the giri and ninjo focus, as well as the note in each Clan's intro of a virtue of bushido it downplays or outright ignores, suggests that maybe *this time* we'll get official product focused on humans doing things to humans for human reasons, and the Scorpion won't be so easily-and-lazily-labeled when one is reminded that the honorable Lion don't mind smacking peasants around and the wise Dragon disobey orders and cheat on their spouses.
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Oct 7, 2017 17:23
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Geisladisk posted:flanderize flanderized Where does this term come from? Cinnamon Bear posted:I'll probably wind up withholding further commentary until the final product comes out (and the card game has had a cycle to establish itself as any good). Don't! If the beta is remotely honest about its existence, it's here to edit and improve the final product. Get your input in while the getting's purportedly good. Me, I have high hopes for ~developer-kun noticing me~ because I feel I've offered serious game input that I pray stands out from the hordes of flavor-text-nonsense-obsessed grogs.
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Oct 8, 2017 18:44
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alansmithee posted:And I'd almost like to see them avoid any sort of large, "epic" events. Second day of thunder was cool and all, but I think a lot of what I liked played out in the cards, which I don't think they'll quite have the freedom to do under their current LCG model. I mean if they wanted to stay closer to real history, it's not like Sengoku era didn't have tons of stuff going on to crib from, without needing to have gods and whatnot show up.  x10I love these pre-Coup settings like the official timeline for RPG 1e and now 5e and the LCG. We're always told a lot about how Rokugan is such an interesting and different culture and conflict comes from biting words as often as biting steel and so forth. I'm there hook, line, and sinker. But then after the Coup kicked off the old official timeline couldn't go 5 drat in-setting years without cataclysmic death, destruction, and war wracking all of Rokugan. "War" isn't a problem, mind you, because "just war" would probably be a fine reflection of Sengoku, and my only beef with the pre-Coup world is that it is too stable. The problem is the cataclysmic stuff, the constant supernatural plagues and risen gods and dying gods and zombie cults and monster invasions and explosions in the spirit realms and blah blah blah. It gets really tired, like modern superhero movies that don't understand conflict and think a villain can only be interesting if he is attempting to unbind the galaxy or whatever. And it takes away what is supposed to make Rokugan so neat, replacing it with "D&D [meaning standard fantasy tropes] in kimono." I am super jazzed that the first LCG cycle appears to just be idling around the Empire showing us business as usual, with topics no more EPIC 3D IMAX than "do we approve of gaijin Unicorn magic." I will continue being super jazzed if the cycles are thematically like Netrunner's, where each one is just showing us life in another part of the setting, only doing something big every third cycle or so. Seriously the "cyberpunk in California / India / Africa" cycle concepts own and "exploration of life in the eerie Crab hills / the sharp-tongued intrigue of Crane Winter Courts / the festivals of the common folk" would also be concepts that own. Way better than wondering just where the hell more Matsu are even coming from given they died in the thousands in the last cataclysm and in the cataclysm five years before that and the one five years before that... Naturally the RPG beta module prominently features...sigh...going to the Wall and fighting a goblin zombie army. Welp, we can still hope for the future.
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Oct 10, 2017 21:12
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alansmithee posted:It's fine if they're basically just a bunch of raiders who poke into rokugan or w/e that get repelled. I think the issue (at least from a story perspective) was that every time there was an incursion, it was basically THE END TIMES ARE NIGH. It seems you and I think alike on this issue. I'm with Payback Jack that we can't have the world of intrigue and culture-driven conflict we are promised in the same world that LITERALLY HELL is trying to kill everyone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Oh, Kakita Akita spread a rumor that your ancestor was a coward. Great, the ARMIES OF LITERAL HELL are trying to kill everyone. While you were called to war your sweetheart married your dojo rival. He is an honorable man but you never got along and you cannot help your feelings and by the way LITERAL HELL is trying to kill everyone. It's just goofy! Warning: I am going into ~*my canon*~ here so you may want to scroll on. It is far better for serious Shadowlands armies to be tremendous but very rare events, like there was the war at the dawn of time, there was the war when The Wall was built, and there was like one other one, or two, in history before the one that comes at the Day of Thunder. It suits the setting better if the Crab's purpose is as much the repelling of gaijin as the odd walking corpse or ogre. In ~*my canon*~ the Shadowlands are generally quiet. The Wall did not exist until the Unicorn returned, because their return, particularly the arrogance of the Moto going off-route despite their cousins warning them of The Pit, is what stirred up the Maw. We achieve several things by painting events this way. One, the Crab are now a bit overblown when they talk about the Shadowlands to the other Clans. This is good for previously mentioned reasons of letting normal human events have any relative importance, and not making the other Clans out to be just unbearably stupid. Two, you avoid "the Matsu problem" where it is utterly implausible that the Crab endure ultra-violent forever war with LITERALLY HELL. Three, by seriously down-playing the concentration of force and threat in the Shadowlands, you actually open up supernatural threats in the rest of the setting. An ogre eating Lion peasants is no longer an infiltrator that somehow passed the Wall. An oni desiccating the Crane's seaweed beds is no longer necessarily a lieutenant in an evil army. Ghosts and ghouls of all sorts are no longer things only the Crab know anything about! Their presence anywhere else is just the way the world works. This will make your Rokugan much closer to actual Japanese / Chinese folklore and a much richer, more interesting place than the Rokugan where the monsters are 95% penned up in Official Monster Country. I maintain that the Shadowlands are spooky, wicked, and dangerous, and the Crab lands are a haunted place with higher incidences of weird poo poo than anywhere else (Rokugani Transylvania), but there is no sharp "monsters here, wall there, carefree society past that" divide. Four, a Crab tasked with keeping out gaijin reinforces the culture of xenophobia that is a hallmark of the setting. It bluntly aligns "foreign devils" with "literal devils." Five, we create a reason for tension with the Unicorn. Now that the devastation of the Maw war is directly linked to their coming, and the Crab's mission statement is anti-gaijin, the Clans have reason to snipe at each other. More tension makes more stories, and makes the Crab more fun and flawed than the old-canon Crab who totally fuckin' ignored the Unicorn's coming clowning on the Wall and were buddy-buddy with them despite the Dark Moto because, well, they always needed help with the unending war with LITERAL HELL. Six, Crab that are not in a 24/7 forever war are now at greater liberty to engage in the conflicts of normal human society. They can, say, send an army to seize the entire shore of Earthquake Fish Bay - maybe gaijin will make noise on the border like ancient Germans when the Romans took legions off the Rhine, but it's not a permanent nuclear threat to the land and the citizenry's immortal souls, you know? ~*my canon*~ ended. I don't read the short stories because they're bad, but I did notice the quotation from the one with Shoju saying "you aren't suggesting I could be Emperor, are you?" to some clown. Are they totally loving with us or is the Coup gonna happen again? I think it's gonna happen again.
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Oct 11, 2017 20:13
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HidaO-Win posted:Additionally apparently 70% of LCG players never buy the dynasty packs, just the core set and the deluxes, which probably means the model is due for revision. Wow, seriously? What drives this? An overpowering desire to avoid cards that ever rotate? ProfessorCirno posted:Hey for what it's worth I read all this and like it, as I've also always had issues with Actual Satan being at the gates for literal centuries while everyone else somehow just doesn't ever worry about this. It also adds rather interesting conflict to the Yasuki, who are very much not supposed to be dealing with the gaijin who they are charged with literally keeping out, but gosh that would be worth a lot of money, wouldn't it? And then the Tortoise step in. In fact, maybe that's how it plays out - the Yasuki are of course openly mercantile, and probably use this to try and eliminate any kind of public gaijin goods market, and go back and forth between waging bizarre economic shadow wars with the Tortoise (who's main thing is trading with gaijin), and allying with the Tortoise when those foreigners start to get unfriendly and now it's go time. Haha thank you.  We all like knowing our nonsense is noticed. I had actually forgotten about the Yasuki for a moment there but you're absolutely right. Reconfiguring the Wall to be about gaijin more than or at least as well as Fu Leng opens up some really great stories with the Yasuki. Great point.Of course, that will only ever be ~*my canon*~ for my table, because forever war with Hell is already cemented in the new game lines. That won't change officially, but there's something else that can. Fellow RPG players, I ask you to please bring the power imbalance between kata and kiho/invocations to the developers' attention. I assume anyone posting on this forum is a veteran of the Long Grog Wars over fighters and wizards and is already very well versed in the topic. I also assume you're with me in preferring balance between character types like was found in DnD 4e. Well, L5R 5e is shaping up to have a "BMX Bandit / Angel Summoner" issue in a very serious way. Study the kata and kiho and invocation rules and if you disagree with me please let me know how and why. As I see it, Rank 1 kata are, at their flashiest, throwing a sword (now you don't have a sword). Rank 1 kiho are punching people through wormholes in the earth and Rank 1 invocations are shooting fire bolts. And then kiho and invocations are of course also sensing the invisible, making things invisible, curing poison, and so forth, while kata only ever hit man with sword. The problem grows with Ranks - at Rank 3, for example, kata are knocking weapons from hands (saving throw allowed) while kiho are immunizing you to exploding kegs of gaijin pepper (Grasp the Earth Dragon) and invocations are granting telepathy (Know the Mind). I feel the restrictions on invocations are completely toothless (in fact, they just get extra power options from Channeling, Preparation, and Offerings) and kiho have no restrictions. I've written a polite but firm email to the dev team already. I am losing faith that they read or pay attention to emails. Still, anyone else concerned with keeping a promising game from falling into an ancient RPG design trap, please write your own polite and constructive forum posts or emails to the devs. There is still time to avoid grognardy in L5R design. SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 12, 2017 |
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Oct 12, 2017 16:53
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PaybackJack posted:They refined the distribution more with aGoT2e and I consider L5R to be the optimum in that everything for clans is x1 with the neutrals being x2. That means that as you buy x3 cores, you can build decks easier. Oh word? Three cores is precisely enough for 1 playset of all clan cards and 2 playsets of all neutrals, or in other words enough cards to allow any non-mirror match? That is indeed a lot nicer than Netrunner. Also, thanks from me too for explaining "core completion set" downsides. I'd wondered that myself. ProfessorCirno posted:Like, the Scorpion peasants are NOT well treated or happy. They're probably the worst to their peasants second only to the Lion. That's why the Scorpion have so many celebrations - to keep the riots at bay. I always thought Scorpion peasants were genuinely well-treated, because as the keepers of the Black Scrolls* the Scorpion are hyper-interested in keeping maho cults away, and they figured out that happy peasants don't turn to blood rituals so often. Or did I accidentally head-canon that? Maybe I made up the reason why but I swear I read somewhere that Scorpion peasants have it good, all considered. *as always we'll disregard how fuckin' bad they were at this job in old canon Roland Jones posted:And yeah, while I agree that the balance seems off, L5R at least should have more court stuff going on and all that to enforce balance, and a shugenja just going around immolating everything seems like something that would attract negative attention from both other people and irritated kami. The issue, as always with the fighter / wizard thing, is that it goes way beyond combat. It's about ability to impact the narrative. Playing up courtly intrigue - which I am 100% behind - doesn't balance characters because the bushi is still unable to do much but hit thing with sword while the shugenja's skill set includes rendering secret missives invisible and reading friggin' minds. Plus, the new concept of shuji is available to every beta School but the Kuni, which means that everyone is on an equal footing accessing social-context "special moves." It's just that while the bushi demonstrates his skill at pretty talk, the shugenja talks pretty and then reads someone's friggin' mind. I could be cracked though and seeing what amounts to PTSD flashbacks from umpteen D&D arguments on the topic. Pretty sure I'm not but I'll see what y'all think.
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Oct 13, 2017 04:53
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Roland Jones posted:scene limitations and spiritual backlash My issues with these: 1/scene limitation is a sound idea, but I anticipate most interesting situations calling for magic use will be Conflicts, and Conflicts are exempt. Social intrigues are expressly Conflicts, so I don't really foresee any non-Conflict situations outside of investigations and travel. Thus the 1/scene limitation does not often apply. Further, a shugenja with a Rank or two under his belt will probably have a nice inventory of invocations available such that he has enough useful magic from which to choose each turn that he doesn't mind only using a given magic once. See DnD 4e characters, who had enough encounter powers relative to turns in a given encounter that they rather uncommonly resorted to at-wills (sound design in DnD 4e, just illustrative of my point). Lastly, there is no such limitation on kiho. As for spiritual backlash, you've correctly identified that the Earth one basically doesn't matter, and I'd submit that Water (nobody around can cast Water until someone casts not-Water) is also basically meaningless, if more interesting. The Fire and Air backlashes are waaaayyy more interesting and truth be told I'm okay with them and would rather spend my energy fighting for other issues. However. They nonetheless do not really balance the shugenja, as both backlashes are bad because they make spells hit unintended targets, and so the actual harm done by out-of-control Fire and Air magic is likely to fall on the shugenja's friends as much as him. The narrative continues to be focused on the shugenja as his wacky out-of-control kami pals gently caress around with the scene. Lastly, there is no such limitation on kiho. KittyEmpress posted:The rank 4 monk vs. bushi actually ended in three moves, as the bushi used the 'crit at [weapon deadliness severity] kata, and was a Kakita, which meant my monk took an 11 point crit at first move, and then second move they hit me with another kata that increased my TN to hit them back, then third move came out and killed my monk flat out. Appreciated! Please understand the following  are discussion, not attacks on you. I really appreciate help on this topic.I did notice some kata seem to be at least really good at their job. Striking as Air pumping your next defensive TN by 1 per Opportunity is bananas and might eat a nerf. The rest, though. For example, that rank 3 crit kata is a nice improvement other regular crit rules but can still be saving-thrown against as easily as a normal crit if the target is Water stance. I'd also wonder how much of a benefit it is generally - make a TN 4 check to hit, get a strong crit regardless of Ops. Whereas any clown can make a TN 2 check to hit, spend 2 Ops to crit normally. And if you whiff the kata you disorient yourself. AND the kata deals no regular damage, so it's not going to inflict the best status effect - "target removed from situation" - unless the crit is really juicy! The kata are just weighed down with that sort of thing. High TNs, downsides for failure, questionable comparative benefit to regular sword-hittin'. Let's look at a kiho-user at Rank 1 who is solely combat-focused. He absolutely does seem to have a harder time delivering raw damage than a bushi, as his fists are damage 1 to a katana's damage 4 and his damage-dealing [Element] Fist kiho only deal damage equal to Ring, which we can assume will be 3. With no stacking damage for spare successes, either. And low deadliness. This is NOT a trivial thing. Nor is it trivial that these kiho are TN 3 to a normal attack's TN 2. The kiho-user can make up quite a lot of lost ground by choosing the +damage or -armor passive effects, though. And he'll have an Improvised Blunt Weapon available to deal 4 damage if he'd rather do that. And the reward for that TN 3 is that his kiho are inflicting status conditions Rank 1 kata can't match. Is he strictly, always better than a kata-user? No. Iaijutsu hits like a truck. The Improvised Blunt weapon won't get kiho buffs like a bushi's sword gets kata New Op buffs. But I would argue the kiho-user is at least as good, which is too much given he has other shenanigans available if he is not solely combat-focused. This is only to discuss Rank 1. It is very important to note that at higher Ranks, the kiho-user's Rings will inflate and his kiho damage will inflate with them. Kiho dealing less raw damage than a katana is not a certain thing. How about an invocation-user at Rank 1, in combat? For raw killing power he can Tempest of Air - this only deals damage equal to Ring, so it's weaker than a katana like Kiho are (well, at Rank 1 that is true). But wait - Tempest is AoE. And not necessarily party-unfriendly AoE. And it delivers a status effect like kiho. And can push suckers around the field or assist the user's movements. Or he can Grasp of Earth. This does Ring damage to one guy, with status effect. But wait - it is only TN 2, like a sword strike. And it can actually hit several guys. Or tune itself to deal a different damage type or no damage when capture is desirable. Or he can Fires From Within to deal Ring damage to several guys, again with ancillary benefit options. There are more but I'm trying to restrain the That's just raw killing power. Directly combat-relevant Rank 1 invocations include, but are not limited to, weapon- and armor-creation spells that give you gear as good as any bushi's that carry ancillary benefits and can be smuggled into any situation, buffing spells (Biting Steel lets the shugenja immediately whack a dude for huge bonus damage for just 1 Op), and the famous healing spell Path To Inner Peace, which can heal the entire party. The Rank 1 healing kata is self-healing only and takes a Void Point and requires you be KO'd. Is he strictly better than a kata-user? Uh...well...maybe! Iaijutsu hits like a truck but so does Biting Steel! "Strictly better" is not a helpful concept anyway. The total power package is at least as good and it comes with non-combat goodies. In this way I see bushi failing to meaningfully excel when compared to their monk and shugenja comrades even in the arena of cutting up oni. The monks and shugenja will then embarrass the bushi in every other context.
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Oct 13, 2017 17:53
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I want to back off a little on my claims about kiho superiority. A little. I didn't recognize that you can't choose to keep a kiho's passive effect active when you use a different kiho. It is therefore hard to do something like keep +Ring to fist damage going at all times. Nor did I notice that kiho cannot be cast repeatedly in a row. I still feel they are superior to kata in an unacceptable way but the difference is smaller than realized earlier. Invocations, though...imperialparadox posted:I like the outburst system. It actually seems really thematic and suited to the setting. Star Wars RPG barely changed anything, as I recall. The devs here are quite nice folks though and assure us changes will be made. It's our job to convince them of what the right changes are!
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Oct 13, 2017 19:30
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I've never cared*. I RPG pretty much exclusively in pre-Coup days and wouldn't have a moment's hesitation about doing stuff like whacking Kamoko so our party Unicorn can be Thunder. I do not know how the majority of RPG players feel on the issue. I assume many people are deeply invested in metaplots like the old World of Darkness had going on, or metaplots wouldn't be a thing. *that's w/r/t my personal RPG activity. I sure as hell have opinions about the old canon stories in the abstract.
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Oct 13, 2017 21:49
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FFG is intentionally avoiding defined Techniques every Rank, instead using the existing framework of more free-form Technique acquisition, in order to make the clutter and complexity of stacking Techniques something into which players "opt in." They intend for the current style where each School gets one special power that scales with Ranks and one capstone power as the only sure things.
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Oct 14, 2017 05:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:Fun thing I just noticed - some classes literally can't buy the things on their XP lists! I noticed it specifically with Shinjo Outrider; a number of kata and shuji on their XP lists are a level higher then they can actually purchase. I haven't checked other schools yet, but it's probable they've got it too. Zarick beat me to it on the rules here but did you notice anything else about the Shinjo Outrider? Specifically, that it totally rules? "Reduce ANY check TN by your Rank (wow!), so long as you tell me how your horse 'should' help here." This is gonna be goooooood. "I want to convince Kisada to give me the ancestral Crab blades." "Uh alright but that's TN 8, a 'legendary' task." *horse makes big, soft eyes at Kisada* "Nice work, Ed-san, looks like I just cleared that easy TN 3 and got me some sick swords." "I want to jump over the palace." "What? TN like 9, past a legendary feat!" *mounts up, rides to palace, horse jumps, at top of jump rider jumps off (see: Mario and Yoshi)* "Looks like I just jumped over the palace on a totally do-able TN 4"
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Oct 14, 2017 16:25
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alansmithee posted:That actually reminds me of one of the bigger rear end in a top hat GM stories I've seen. Think we were playing 2nd edition, and one of the players had a Shinjo samurai who was really awesome when he was mounted. So second battle we get into is near a bridge. Right after he charges someone, the GM was like "ninjas were hiding under the bridge and jump out" and had them cut down his horse. Like they totally ignored us and went directly for his mount. This didn't sit well at all with the dude playing the Shinjo at all... That GM was an rear end in a top hat but the story does remind me of my distaste for designs like nearly every Unicorn bushi school in L5R RPG history. They're commonly too swingy, with the character displaying awesome power with his horse and tofu-block shapeless uselessness without. This new School Ability is funny but I'd prefer something a little less potent, preferably then paired with a non-horse-dependent power to compensate. At least it's just the one School Ability, whereas past editions might see 3 or 4 of 5 Techniques hinge on horses.
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Oct 16, 2017 17:34
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Dick Burglar posted:That's a great "mythical" power, though, you have to admit. Especially if you're indoors and your horse just comes barreling through a barricaded door or something. Or slams through a solid wall like the Juggernaut. Oh no doubt the Rank 6 is excellent. If anything I'd call it weak compared to other Rank 6s, in terms of power. As a piece of flavor and fun it's standout excellent. LCG players, how are things shaping up? Anything degenerate coming up in the meta? Any of the game's features being sidelined in competitive play? Particular question: what do you think of the honor bid dials? I was afraid the "fun strategy" of picking your bid size would get quickly snuffed out as people determined some bid is typically optimal. Particularly I wondered if people wouldn't instantly shoot to bidding 1 because the risk of giving your opponent honor for an honor win / letting him have honor to avoid a dishonor kill would be too big. That's just one thing, though. Is there anything going on that, in your opinion, is running contrary to how the game was meant to be? Such as how in Conquest for the longest time nobody seriously used big flashy units?
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Oct 17, 2017 17:04
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The Lord of Hats posted:Similarly, your Lion's Pride Brawler is busy dragging their guy outside and slapping their poo poo with a fan. Lion's Pride Brawler: "LISTEN UP, NERD ... IT'S THE RANK 2 RPG ROUNDUP" I'm conducting a review of the beta Techniques and using these forum posts as a way to focus and document. I wrote some words about Rank 1 previously. Now I look at Rank 2. How do the "realism"-bound kata fare against kiho and invocations here? I'm surprised, actually. It's even WORSE than I expected. Rank 2 Kata: Crescent Moon style stapling a bonus Attack onto Guard/Center for the price of only one Op is quite strong, I'll grant you that. Iron Forest Style is a solid stunt too, but I'd point out that keeping a swordsman at Range 2 isn't much of a guarantee of safety with the various kata (like Iaijutsu) that attack at Range 2 out there. Lord Hida's Grip offers some status effect delivery but at the cost of all damage output. Lord Shiba's Selflessness is pretty cool, giving Phoenix bushi and only Phoenix bushi a taste of tactical tanking, but there's that "once per game session" limitation getting in the way. Reminds me of how grogs flipped out over Come And Get It in DnD 4e; "buh buh buh FIGHTERS can't use MIND CONTROL!" So now we gotta heavily limit the "taunt" mechanics to appease grogs. Sigh. The remaining kata are of the same cloth as the Rank 1 Striking as [Element]. Spend Op when attacking with a relevant weapon to mess with someone's stance and Immobilize, or also deal strife damage, or do a crit easier than you could normally do a crit, or deal a bit of damage when you miss badly, or just deal more damage. Special note: the crit one sucks. Remember, any jackass can deal a crit for 2 Ops. This kata lets you crit for 1 Op against particular classes of target, and while you can crank the crit rating with more Ops, you are also compelled to be using a one-hand grip, which for katana at least means forfeiting 2 crit rating right off the bat. Wow. That aside, though, that doesn't all sound so bad, does it? Dealing strife damage with bows is cool. Messing with a stance could be nice and it comes with maybe-no-saving-throw Immobilize, though it also requires you be using your fists. Which otherwise kind of suck. Well, what's the competition doing? Rank 2 Kiho: Earth deals AoE Ring damage and causes Prone. Fire causes AoE Burning. These are actually pretty fair - bushi might be jealous at times of the AoE but it is party-unfriendly AoE. Water is also actually very fair, dealing Ring damage and Immobilize to one guy. However, Air gives the monk super-jumping that's just short of being flight. If you don't know how good and useful almost-flying is in all manner of combat and non-combat situations, I question if you've played RPGs before. Still, this isn't SO out of line. That almost-flight kiho has to deal with the annoying rules about repeat casts of kiho, for one thing. What was I complaining about? Rank 2 Invocation: I was complaining about THIS. Kiho-user who already makes the kata-user jealous by almost flying, you're cute. I, the invocation-user, just straight up loving fly, and can bring my friends. Flight not enough? I can also walk through/on earth, metal, and water, in the former cases gaining some nice physical armor while I do it. Or I can just walk through loving anything and become straight-up immune to physical harm by turning into mist. Invisible mist, to boot. Maybe I'd rather gently caress with everyone else's movement. I'll do that by conjuring fog banks and fire walls or turning the entire battlefield witheringly hot (granted, there are party-friendliness issues here). And when I'm just looking for shits and giggles I can shapeshift to impersonate others, play with some neat anti-oni tricks, shield everyone against magical damage, or spread buffs among my allies and debuffs among my enemies. Hey, well, at least the shugenja's not dealing any direct damage, right? He's doing incredibly flexible and useful stuff applicable to all manner of scenarios, but he isn't dealing direct damage...oh, wait, Earth Becomes Sky deals direct damage, at range, to multiple targets, that increases with spare successes and thus doesn't even suffer the usual downside of Ring-based damage, and has a status effect attached. poo poo. If only RPG kata users had the power of LCG Lion's Pride Brawler. We can still correct this. Please write to the developers during this open beta. I will be continuing to write to them with these findings. Of course, I will be changing the attitude of my presentation, and I beg you all to do the same. More flies with honey than vinegar and all that.
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Oct 18, 2017 06:48
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ProfessorCirno posted:Two things I've noticed. I think you're a little hard on Iaijutsu. The Range bonus could be handy and, with a katana, it basically reads "deal +3 damage." That's alright for Rank 1. Or, rather, it would be, if aforementioned Rank 1 kiho and invocations didn't do all the poo poo they do. Very curious how it sucks for delivering the crits that are necessary to actually kill, though. I strongly suspected findings like yours on Rings/Stances would be true on my first pass and twigged to Fire Stance's bonus successes immediately. And Striking as Air - you noticed it can stack the TN bonus, right? You spoke as if it only ever boosts TN by 1. I wrote to the devs expressing the concern that the overall packages each Ring offers (Ring-aligned Ops, Kata, Stances) would end up unbalanced, likely in Fire's favor, but lacked any studied details like yours to present at the time. Personally, even after reading your analysis, I feel things are not drastically out of control. Needing adjustment, yes, but not drastically out of control. Powerful offense as time goes on could be design intent, knowing that L5R RPG has been somewhat famous through the editions for lethality. My initial suggestion to the devs was new default Ring Ops that offered soft control on enemy Ring choices. Something like "Earth Op: if opponent uses Air next check, +1 TN," matching ones for vice versa and Water/Fire, and "Void: if opponent uses same Ring as his last check, +1 TN." What do you think of something like that as a correction mechanism for over-used Rings? There are a couple kata to that effect but I propose something more universal to coexist with those kata. I'm a total broken record here but I hope you're presenting your quality criticism to the beta team. They are probably not reading this forum! Final note: what the hell is up with the new rule that glorious Hanzo steel gets broken when it cuts armor? L5R is weeaboo and proud of it so what is this "realism" poo poo about our perfect thousand-folded ancestral blades doing here?
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Oct 18, 2017 17:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:I despise iaijutsu for it does close to nothing. OH poo poo how did I not notice it compels a one-handed grip? Sweet mercy, that IS awful. As said, further discussion on that is temporarily mooted, as the dev team is apparently pushing out some changes soon to Iaijutsu and Dueling. I'm very curious where that ends up. I'm also totally behind strife and Outbursts, with some concerns I won't express now to avoid derailment. It doesn't surprise me that they apparently have to really wrestle with complaints about the system that tries to compel suboptimal conduct! I'm also very encouraged they seem to be paying some attention to math-related balance issues with Stances and TNs. However, there is not a word in there about kata/invocation imbalance. After Rank 2 had one side dual-wielding - with the Ops that fuel that dual-wield bonus damage coming at the cost of Successes that also cause damage, as Cirno reminds us - while the other side had ghost form, the power of flight, shapeshifting, and concussive magic blasts, I am hesitant to see what groggery Ranks 3+ have in store. I mean poo poo if there's one place for amazing martial feats, it's here. What did the grogs always say about DnD 4e? "Ugh, what is this, anime?" L5R would reply "pretty much, yes." PaybackJack posted:I like to splash Dragon into my Unicorn: 2 Tattooed Wanderer, 2 Let Go, and 2 Indomitable Will. I was thinking For Greater Glory seemed really cute added to Cavalry Reserves.
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Oct 19, 2017 06:01
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SpaceViking posted:let go. I'm curious about this, as a 1-core-owning noob who's only played a little to test the waters. It's clear to me from discussion that everyone is very focused on attachments. Here and on cardgameDB I see lots of people talking about including Let Go. My first instinct looking at Let Go was "that sucks rear end." Coming from a Hearthstone and old-times Magic and L5R background, I don't understand this "attachment meta" that seems to have come up. Please explain to me. MonsieurChoc posted:While Shugenja were always crazy powerful, I always thought their many limitations helped make them balanced somewhat, or at least not making the rest of the PCs obsolete. The drum I've been beating here is that they do not in fact have real limitations. In past editions they had spell slots and had to either take many turns chanting out their higher-Rank spells or jack up the TNs to spit 'em out fast. In this edition, let us examine the rules particular to invocations: 1. There are no more spell slots. Instead, each spell may be cast once per Scene. However, 1a) this rule does not apply to Conflicts, which are like 90% of anything interesting happening where you'd want to cast a spell, and 1b) experienced shugenja will have a sufficient inventory of spells such that they will surely find something productive to do each turn anyway, which I anticipate will be made even easier because narrative non-Conflict Scenes demand fewer actions of the participants. 2. Channeling. This is the opposite of the old casting time limitation. It is pure benefit. A 5e shugenja may either just cast his spell right away, or cast it over as many turns as he wishes so he can gather maximum power. Casting spells right away is not unreasonable, either, so it is not the case that Channeling is secretly needed to get anything done. 3. Offerings. Need a little somethin' somethin' just to make sure you can cast right away? Make an offering and get you some rerolls. 4. Spiritual Backlash. This is the most serious limitation, but it still barely keeps anything in check. The Earth backlash is just kind of annoying, and doesn't do anything at all in non-Conflicts. The Water backlash is just a little hiccup in your plans and could even be a boon because it keeps anyone else from using Water! You could easily suffer the Water "backlash" and feel no ill effect whatsoever as your friendly non-Water-inclined shugenja party member smiles and overrides it, or an enemy shugenja grumbles and overrides it for you! Yeesh! Fire and Air are more like it. Sudden unexpected targets could definitely wreak havoc. I still disapprove because they keep narrative focus on the shugenja. The truest, realest core of the "fighter / wizard" problem is that the wizard hogs the spotlight. Explosive fuckery turning a scene upside-down on a Backlash result mechanically delivers harm to people who are not the shugenja as much as (likely more than) him, and narratively keeps everything focused on that wacky shugenja - what's he gonna do next? How's he gonna cope with this one, or how are we going to clean up his mess? I'll accept life with the Fire and Air Backlashes, but I won't like it. Earth and Water need teeth. 5. Prepared spells. If you don't think your spells are flexible enough, you can create them as magic wards and potions so you can lay traps or let your pals spend their turns being conduits for your power (narrative focus on the shugenja, see?). Or whatever. This also arguably creates a loophole around "once per scene" limitations and the Earth and Water Backlashes. 6. Importuning. What's the big deal that the spell list includes flight, shooting fire, reading minds, and so forth, you ask? A given PC will only know so many spells so he won't have all of that. I say to you horsefeathers, a PC will have a hell of a lot of that, and I say to you Importuning. Whatever insane toolbox stunt the spell list provides is in fact available at any time! There is a fee in the narrative and the TN but the point is every drat thing is available. As a little aside, I feel Importuning should be available to all characters. I did exactly this in my recent 4e L5R RPG game. I believe mechanically it evens out the power gaps just a bit and narratively it reinforces the concept of Rokugani magic. The kami are everywhere in everyone's lives and interacting with them is a matter of respectful prayer, not manipulation of some energy field, learned in an academy for the genetically special like Harry Potter. Shugenja are of course schooled in how to do it right but anyone can give it a shot. So there you have it. Invocations are out of control. I am actually not screaming for them to be cratered with nerfs. It is more accurate to say I want to see them brought down from being set to 11 while kata are simultaneously buffed and diversified. No amount of numerical fuckery will change the conceptual issue that kata only hit men with swords while kiho / invocations do whatever the hell they want. It is that conceptual issue that really must be addressed, and the best way to do that is to create wilder kata that enable super-jumping or earth-shaking stomps or aggro-taunt mechanics. Seriously, use DnD 4e martial classes and go from there. I realize I've written a lot on this point. I think I've posted more times, with longer posts, in this thread in a week than anywhere on SA in years. Good game design matters!* Prior to initializing that 4E L5R game (now transitioned to 5E) a few months ago because FFG's activities gave me the spur of nostalgia, I hadn't really bothered with RPGs in years. I used to play a ton of 'em up through around DnD 4e's life. Then I got into board games and it really became clear that RPGs almost universally suck. They're just always so badly loaded down with idiotic, no-effort, unbalanced, and outright poisonous rules, technical writing, and concepts. I really want the terms "role-playing game" and "well-designed game" to stop being mutually exclusive. L5R 5e has a chance at that: the devs have shown understanding of balance issues and math, and have done admirable things like unifying Conflicts and Techniques in sane, rational frameworks. However, fighter/wizard imbalance absolutely must end. *Also I'm a huge L5R weeb.
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Oct 19, 2017 20:22
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Lord_Hambrose posted:I don't know, having a person blessed with the ability to command the very fabric of creation balanced with guy who does sword good seems wrong. I appreciate your joining the discussion. I mean that sincerely, though I would dispute all of your points. 1) A game should not have Player A command the fabric of creation while Player B does sword good. This is fundamentally unfair to player B, and very boring. Further, Player A only commands creation because we arbitrarily say so in this fictional work of entertainment; Player B can just as easily perform incredible things with his sword, as Chill la Chill has said. If it helps, I would suggest that kata users draw power from their ancestors to do amazing things just as kiho draw on ki and invocations draw on kami. See? We can easily explain away "realism" concerns. 2) Simply disallowing shugenja is no solution. When you have to ignore part of the rules to make a game work, it is a bad game. Why should we ever play a bad game? 3) I do not believe that is quite accurate to the setting, but I don't really mean to argue that point. What I would say is that a dedicated pacifist shugenja nonetheless is overpowered and unbalanced because flying, reading minds, and even shooting fire all have stupendous applications to non-combat situations. L5R role-playing, even more so than other role-playing, is not exclusively about combat performance.
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Oct 19, 2017 20:48
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Exponential wizards and linear fighters make a ton of sense if that is the setting. When I play L5R it is usually heavy on the politics and social tension tension, and less wandering around murdering people as your muscles swell with all the sweet XP you harvest from the hundreds of monsters you slaughter. Let me be explicit. It is completely irrelevant the degree to which the game is about politics and society instead of physical violence. It is completely irrelevant because invocations/kiho have extensive use in non-combat situations and kata do not. That is the entire core of the problem. It absolutely does not mean that fighter/wizard imbalance is appropriate. Who can tail the prostitute as she visits the hiding location of the lord's illegitimate son? The bushi can make some manner of check. The shugenja can become flying, invisible mist, or imitate the boy's nanny. Or possibly rip the location out of the prostitute's head straight up. Who can save the illegitimate son from a collapsed mine? The bushi can move rocks for weeks on end while the boy dies. The shugenja can walk through the boulders, so even if the GM doesn't let him walk out with the boy he can deliver fresh food and water while any stupid rear end in a top hat clears the rocks. Magically created food, if needed. Hell, maybe the shugenja alone now gets an exciting micro-adventure as he leads the boy out another exit, using magic to let them brave the depths of underground rivers and see in the dark. When the party has the boy and needs to pass a band of the chancellor's men, avoiding swordplay at all costs? The bushi again Stealth checks or whatever. The shugenja blankets the opposition in a fog bank or goes back to that whole flying, invisible mist thing. Etcetera. And what I discuss here is generally only Rank 2 stuff. The shugenja's remarkable combat prowess serves to salt the bushi's wounds. But the core of the problem is narrative superiority at all times. KittyEmpress posted:Maybe you should post on their forums, where they actually read the threads. I have the dev team's ear in some small way, because I write emails to them about these issues and have received non-form-letter response, demonstrating I am being read if not agreed with. I post here to focus my thoughts, catch additional ideas and contrary opinions that focus me further, and encourage all of you to write emails backing me up.  I will not post on FFG's actual forums because that way lies nothing but "rules what do make PC pregnate?" quote:Etc etc. What I'm saying is that all these magical things you claim are impossible to replicate that tip the balance of even social and combat occasions can be matched or even exceeded with shuji and kata. Shuji indeed do many neat things but, unfortunately, are not a balancing mechanism between characters because quote:literally every school in the book has access to Shuji. Which is actually something I like and wouldn't see changed, by the way. Roland Jones posted:Also, how many people here are actually playtesting the game? I don't have an IRL group I can play with, but if people here wanted to organize something, whether on the forums or on Discord or something, I'd love to participate. For the record I do actually have a group of a half-dozen players giving me actual playtest data. I'm not into e-RPGing but I hope you find something. My complaints should not be misread: I think L5R 5e is shaping up to be good. I complain because I want it to be great and little purpose is served back-pat-posting about the things I like (strife, outbursts, the rational framework for Techniques, the Death Of Ability Scores, and more).
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Oct 20, 2017 17:43
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KittyEmpress posted:I'm involved in a 5 person beta test game run over discord in hourish chunks 5 times a week (for 2 weeks so far). Its very fun. I'm not running into the issues Klaus is constantly talking about. And as someone posting feedback on their forums, I definitely have not seen people asking for pregnancy rules, so lol. What's your party composition? We've got three bushi/courtiers, two shugenja of differing elemental preferences, and a tattooed man, so we see a bit of everything. If you have contrasting experience please detail the hows and whys. What Techniques at what Ranks do your PCs possess? How have they applied them to what situations? The "pregnate" thing, woof. There was this truly unbelievable post during the Star Wars RPG beta. I saved it for posterity somewhere but am having a little trouble turning it up. It pretty much sums up why I don't really deal with forums other than SA. ProfessorCirno posted:It's always the level 1 AoE prone, in every game. I think they caught that very particular one, this time. Prone doesn't jack with action economy in L5R 5e. LCG CHAT When does one play Height of Fashion? It can't be played in Dynasty because attachment and can't be played during conflicts because text. I assume there's a special pre-conflict window?
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Oct 21, 2017 04:17
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KittyEmpress posted:information Fascinating, thank you I will digest this.Azran posted:Completely unrelated but "Kakita" means "Little poo poo" in my language so that's going to make teaching the LCG an interesting experience  edit: which language? I've seen you post that you're from...was it Chile? Sorry for not remembering. SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Oct 21, 2017 |
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Oct 21, 2017 16:38
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Say, everyone likes to put Dragon into other decks because of Let Go (still wrapping my head around that), and some other things, but what are folks adding to Dragon? I'm testing Crane because Above Question does look really good and Admit Defeat is just too cute to ignore with Mirumoto Prodigy.
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Oct 22, 2017 02:19
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I'll grant you that readying Yokuni and Doomed Shugenjas is pretty slick but are you sure Against the Waves is worthwhile with Dragon shugenja density? Re: Display of Power, LCG players explain to me again. Like Let Go, my first reaction to that was "it sucks." 3 matches of 1 core decks later, I still think it sucks. Haven't tried it though. Is it good, and why? Costs 2, and secretly costs an honor because you were not opposing, and also thus secretly might cost you a province because you were not opposing - a lot to ask even if you get to steal a ring.
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Oct 23, 2017 18:35
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I'm gonna be sure to test it myself. I suppose the idea is the "secret costs" I claim are things that happen to you sometimes anyway, so it's not really more costs. You don't intentionally throw a fight just to Display.
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Oct 23, 2017 19:28
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The top Athens Unicorn deck also shoots for the Greater Glory + Cav Reserves combo (ft. Sashimono, which I also included). Top Athens Dragon splashes Crane like I was thinking too so that feels good. Of course none of the other five Athens top Clans splashed how I would have done it so that limits my smug. I feel like Phoenix might have a chance at honor wins with Shiba Tsukune and that conflict deck character who taps the Air Ring and other stuff going on. I intend to build that should I ever get more cores. edit: oh dang you see that art piece on the tournament report website? Somebody's opening a Black Scroll!
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Oct 24, 2017 17:21
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Bakeneko posted:The character creation, though, I’m not so impressed with. I’m glad they’re looking at alternatives because the way it currently is feels far too restrictive. Look at question 7, for example; what if the character is neither an enthusiastic clan loyalist nor openly defiant? What if they are a rebel but not in the exact way the book prescribes (e.g. a rebellious Dragon with no interest in seafaring)? What if they aren't part of a clan at all? As a house rule in editions past I permitted every character to select one bushido virtue they personally emphasized and one virtue for which they personally held less regard. When exhibiting their favored virtue, they gained more Honor. When flouting their disfavored virtue, they lost less Honor. As I also had a house rule that every Clan emphasized one virtue and de-emphasized another, giving all characters of that Clan the described benefits, this served as a way for characters to distinguish their opinions rather better than "+5 glory if you're a good boy, +1 Commerce if you're not." For example, all Scorpions favored Duty and disfavored Righteousness because they were Scorpions. Thus any Scorpion who displayed Duty got bonus Honor and any Scorpion who acted against Righteousness lost less Honor than "normal." Further, Bayushi Keikaku the PC could elect to also favor Courage, and also disfavor Compassion. Thus if Keikaku-san was brave in the face of death or put his lord's interests above his own, he reaped bonus Honor. Also, if he kicked a peasant in the gut and then lied about it to a yoriki, he'd suffer only cushioned Honor losses. The real fun part for seeing how your interests aligned with your Clan was that you were free to double down on favoring or disfavoring your Clan's virtues, or even to go the opposite way! Thus Earth-2 Keikaku, who super-favors Duty and super-disfavors Righteousness, is a good little Scorpion boy who is richly rewarded in Honor for serving his master and also able to lie his rear end off to pretty much anyone else without losing much Honor for it. Earth-3 Keikaku, however, elected to disfavor Duty, and favor Righteousness. He has a "love-hate" relationship with his Clan. Probably a junshin. Should he display Duty, he is rewarded extra. However, should he flout it, he is penalized less. The same goes for Righteousness! The new edition actually also has this bushido virtue tailored reward concept, which made me very giddy to read the first time. However, there are three big problems. One, the rule only has tailored virtues for Clans. There is at present no rule for individual tailoring. Two, and this is the big problem, the rule as written has a negative side where showing your Clan's disfavored virtue rewards you less and flouting the favored virtue hurts you more. This is not cool, not cool at all. It serves no purpose but to bludgeon people into playing their Clan stereotypes and makes an interesting "love-hate" relationship with a virtue mechanically impossible. Under my system, an Akodo who buys cakes for farmer children (favors Compassion, though his Clan disfavors the same) and a Kaiu who is more bookish than brave (disfavors Courage, though his Clan favors the same) are both free to play their characters and enjoy rewards. They do not suffer hard feelings from the rules. The rules as written encourage lazy "u Crane so u pretty boy" crap. What's problem #3? OK I admit this is only fluff-geek opinion but I take strong issue with the 5e assignments of Clan virtues. I would juggle around several of them and I absolutely would not give Scorpion two disfavored virtues. You wanna talk about lazy as hell stereotypes, look at giving the Scorpion more bushido penalties than everyone else. This is all not super-important because it's crazy easy to houserule. Regardless I firmly believe 5e would be a better game if it did things my way with regard to character relationships with bushido. As always, if you agree, I ask you to write to the dev team and back me up. The real crime remains kata/invocation imbalance. Did they actually nerf Iaijutsu? Look at this! Horizontal Cut is the old Iaijutsu technique, revised. It STILL has the exact same poo poo-rear end effect of dealing +1 damage but now it can't sheathe a weapon for 2 Ops and it is a School Rank higher than it used to be! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME No comment as of yet on Rising Cut Iaijutsu. But good God, if someone out there actually thought Iaijutsu was OP and needed to be a Rank higher, and the devs are listening to that nonsense, that bodes very poorly for 5e ending up a balanced, high-quality game. edit: I'll grant you the new action rules mean drawing a weapon and attacking in some way at the same time is more useful now. It's still a seriously bad omen. SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 18:32
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alansmithee posted:I don't think any of those things are really problems (well, arguably the clan assignments of virtues could use work but you're not gonna please everyone). They obviously want your clan/family allegiance and adherence to all the traditional bushido stuff (or at least a westernized version thereof) to actually matter (which this and the strife system would seem to indicate). They want Crane to behave as Crane, Crab as Crab, etc etc. An Akodo who favors compassion should be penalized in terms of honor because his clan looks down on that behavior, and other clans don't expect that from Akodo. It's seen as strange. Nobody really cares about Akodo John's personal beliefs and how he adheres to them. Your system basically invalidates the whole need of virtues since you just cherrypick whatever you want to do and basically eliminate any downside. I could see that being an option for ronin, but it's pretty clear that the designers want each clan to actually have a certain feel. The difference is between carrots and sticks. In their system, Akodo Niceguy feels punished by the rules if he gives a peasant his cloak. He can choose to reap a reward if he behaves as Lions typically do and shoves snow down the peasant's shirt instead ("reward" being "less Honor lost") under either system but under theirs he feels punished, and that will discourage him from being himself. Characters have plenty of distinction here. It's choosing which benefits you want to define you in precisely the same way as you purchase bonus Skill Ranks and Rings. Anyway, while I object to the negative side of the system and what it does to force cookie-cutter personalities, it's more important to me that they insert an official rule for personally tailored virtue adherence. I think there is the issue of "what the is Honor statistic" too. It measures a character's personal faith in bushido and has little to do with what others think of him - that's Glory. The book backs me up: Honor is a character's personal investment in bushido. (p. 22.) Glory is society's consensus about whether they uphold bushido. (p. 23.) Thus Akodo Niceguy's personal interpretation of bushido is important, and it would be nice if character creation gave him another outlet for that with tailored virtue rewards. quote:That said I'm still totally with you on the invocation thing. I appreciate that. It is the much, much more pressing issue. SpaceViking posted:Rising Slash looks really really good for duels to first blood, since it just inflicts a crit if you damage them. Not opportunity dependent, so it can't be hosed by earth stance. Horizontal Slash is a little underwhelming, but it's extra range on katana attacks and a damage boost. Not terrible. Yeah Rising Slash on closer inspection seems fairly potent in a duel, in the finishing blow context. I need to play out some duels to get a feel for it. Horizontal Slash is worse than underwhelming. It's total poo poo. Katana normal damage is 4. Deadliness is 5. Thus your Rank 2 kata is getting you one whole damage point...and as we know by now this is while Rank 2 invocations are bloody flying and shooting concussion blasts.
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Oct 27, 2017 03:08
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KittyEmpress posted:This is a loving terrible idea. Stop trying to rip all flavor out of the game so you can better game your honor gains, hot drat. Yes, the game encourages people from the same clan to act similarly. Clans are basically separate cultures, and in the context of honor gains, reward you for making characters that fit the clan, instead of shoehorning whatever character into whatever school you happen to wanna play in, it encourages you to make characters whose attitudes fit their clan and raising. Your language and response are disproportionate. Do not project baggage from past RPG arguments onto this. At no point did personal codes matter more than clan standards. The personal values actually had equal weight. It is true that I would remove penalties from the virtue assignments and that is because I believe more strongly in encouraging behavior through bonuses than penalties. The plan was not solely about encouraging "Drizzt Dourdens." Observe the original examples: Bayushi Keikaku #1 favored Courage and disfavored Compassion. He is not a Drizzt. He is a Scorpion who believes in Duty but also believes bushido is about bravery. Perhaps he got this from a particularly militaristic sensei at his fencing academy. He also believes Compassion is not such a big deal. If anything, that makes him a better Scorpion, a more typical Scorpion, because as Cirno points out being invested in Duty means being invested in the caste system. His disregard for Compassion might also drive him to be a dick to other samurai, which is also pretty classic Scorpion. He is a more rich and interesting character for being allowed to tailor his beliefs mechanically. Keikaku #2 doubled down on loving him some Duty and dumping all over Righteousness. He is a Scorpion's Scorpion. He is a more rich and interesting character for being allowed to tailor his beliefs mechanically. Keikaku #3 flipped the virtues. He, perhaps, is a "Drizzt." That's fine. For being a "Drizzt" who can "game the honor system" he has paid the opportunity cost of not being Keikaku #1, who gets rewarded for a wider variety of behavior, or Keikaku #2, who is paid handsomely for being exactly what his Clan wants him to be. He remains a more rich and interesting character for being allowed to tailor his beliefs mechanically. In fact, not a single one of my PCs chose to flip on a virtue, leaving my table with anything but a bunch of "Drizzts." I have several "Keikaku #1s" who picked whatever suited them and a Crab who doubled down on disregarding Courtesy, but rather than double up on Courage chose to additionally favor Duty. As far as I am aware, neither L5R 1e, 3e, nor 4e had any tailored bushido virtue rules at all. I'm ignorant about 2e. Thus there was never any penalty for a Lion acting un-Lion-like, as far as Honor was concerned (remember, that and Glory are different). Why is it so important to inflict one now? ANYWAY this is very unimportant the real issue remains kata/kiho/invocation imbalance But I will beat that drum again in another post. Right now I wanna ask everyone about duels. What have duels been like at your L5R 5e tables? I'm looking over the duel rules, having not experienced one in the natural course of play yet, and I don't see how they reflect the classic "scene at the end of Kurosawa's Sanjuro" L5R Iaijutsu duel. You know, where the guys stare and focus and then BAM violent death in one stroke. What's your incentive, having won the right to go first maybe through bidding strife, to Center instead of hacking the other dude with an Attack? KittyEmpress as you play a Kakita I expect you have something interesting to say about duels. I value your input and continued civil discussion.
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Oct 27, 2017 20:30
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Aramoro posted:Except that's not right at all as they've already said that Way of the Dragon and Watch Commander fall off if they get Blackmailed. You can't have it both ways. Huh? Run this by me. What's the ruling at issue here? I bought in with all three cores so I gotta be up to speed now! Mystic Mongol posted:The crab's job is keeping goblins from entering the empire. Sending them into the lands of other clans is a pretty staggering failure of their duty. Speaking of, Goblin Sneak's flavor text pretty well encapsulates what I find distasteful about official Crab/Shadowlands flavor text and used as the subject of a rant a while back in this thread. "Goblins? Impossible. Goblins have never been spotted this far from the Wall." As a L5R role-playing gamer, that poo poo is awful. "Goblins" that sneak past castles to raid peasant villages are way too Dungeons & Dragons. Mind you, I like those Tolkien-inspired goblins/orcs a lot when I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons. I just don't want them in Rokugan too. Rokugan should be a place where "goblin" does not specifically mean "little green-skinned humanoid with identifiable culture and behaviors" but rather has its "ghosts, goblins, and ghouls" sort of meaning of "creepy monster." They should be "bakemono / yokai" of all manner of funky shapes and styles, including weirdness like the umbrella foot demon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasa-obake), and when they are little monster men in samurai armor, which is a totally cool way for them to be so long as it isn't the only way, they should display variance at least like Warhammer Chaos Beastmen. And not include humdrum nonsense like settled communities and trade networks (you better believe ~*my canon*~ nukes Big Stink from orbit). And above all they must be dependably found wherever the world gets a little spooky, be that the Crab's hills, the Phoenix's forests, or the Lion's copper mines. Anyway I've belabored the point, and it's never going to change officially! On the point of the RPG, you all seen the new update? They put some real teeth into Spiritual Backlashes and thus actually did something meaningful to rein in shugenja!  A summary: now you take 3 health damage when you keep 3 strife on an invocation check. This is a fat slap given that health pools are around 10 for newbies and seem to cap at 20 for champions of the realm. Earth spells also knock you prone, Air disorients you, Water is still pretty light but at least can't be deactivated by a friend or enemy any more.I'm positively delighted at what this signals but would see it tweaked further. It doesn't have the consistency of cost that something like old edition cast times and spell slots had. I don't have a good handle on just how often casters are keeping 3 strife on rolls but it seems kind of avoidable too. Thoughts?
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Nov 9, 2017 18:29
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That's a fairly cool and flavorful synergy. I gotta get another session together now that we really want to pay attention to Backlashes. I know my players were taking strife but I can't figure off the top of my head how often they were taking three at once.
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Nov 9, 2017 23:28
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I am not a programmer by profession but I know some things and I'm writing a program to simulate large numbers of die rolls to give an idea of how likely characters of various Ring+Skill are to pass various TNs, and see what the odds are of hitting a backlash while doing it.
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Nov 10, 2017 06:58
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Ikoma Ujiaki bringing just a little more RNG than I like to see. It's of a different degree than Hearthstone random-dude-from-deck bullshit because this game doesn't have a "minion curve" that means the effect could bring in a late-game unit during early game, and because he can target known quantities in faceup provinces, but I still find it very distasteful that a player might fire off Ujiaki's power without knowing what it's going to do. Bayushi Yojiro so deliciously flavorful. https://imgur.com/a/mdy1R
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Nov 12, 2017 16:34
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Unicorn War Dog Master: 3 cost 2/- with 2 glory. Bushi. When declared as attacking can Reaction: discard your top dynasty card to gain +MIL equal to the card's fate cost. Not...bad? Not really good either because I'd fairly anticipate it to be a 4/- for 3, attacks only, non-Cavalry. Also again a very distasteful randomness to how useful he is. Re: the RPG, I believe I have ironed out my Java program and it is probably correctly reporting success rates and strife generation for rolls. If anyone is curious.
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Nov 13, 2017 23:45
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I got some help from the Science subforum helpful smart people DontMockMySmock, Loezi, FreeKillB, and MrL_JaKiri, and my program appears to conform with Loezi's Python script on the point of figuring out success rates of exploding D6s (in L5R terms I compared Ring X, Skill 0, TN X or X+1 situations), so I'm crossing my fingers and figuring I have it all correct. One takeaway I'm getting here is that spending a Void to gain a Distinction for a roll is not necessarily superior to just using the default of spending a Void for effectively +1 Ring. (I know you don't need Void for your own Distinctions and that the two can stack. I was just curious when your choice is default Void or Void to draw a Distinction from an unusual source, which requires the right in-play circumstances.) Ring 3, Skill 1, a likely newbie character, versus: TN 2: 75.6% success. 92.2% with Distinction. 85.7% with +1 Ring. TN 3: 46.4% success. 76.2% with Distinction. 62.7% with +1 Ring. TN 4: 18% success. 34.5% with Distinction. 36.8% with +1 Ring. Ring 3, Skill 2, also a very plausible newbie pool, versus: TN 3: 65.5% success. 86.7% with Distinction. 77.3% with +1 Ring. TN 4: 28.3% success. 43.6% with +1 Ring. 54.3% with +1 Ring. Ring 4, Skill 3, a veteran, versus: TN 3: 87% success. 95.7% with Distinction. 92% with +1 Ring. TN 4: 69% success. 87% with Distinction. 79% with +1 Ring. TN 5: 36.4% success. 51.5% with Distinction. 60% with +1 Ring. Thinking for a second it's clear what's happened. +1 Ring is better when TN exceeds natural Ring because it increases kept dice and you dearly need that in the circumstance. The two rerolls exceed the one "bonus roll" otherwise. Still kinda funky though that the harder-to-get buff of Distinction isn't a better idea for the really challenging rolls.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:35
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Yeah I got mine. I'm still a low-play-experience noob here but I'm not seeing what you're seeing in some of these cards. Somberbrero posted:Riot in the Streets seems like it'd be killer in Crab, but losing Rally would be a bummer. Still think I want to give it a shot. Does Crab commonly have the bushi count to Riot? Are Eager Scouts the difference? Because in my matches so far, which have not yet included Crab, mustering 3 guys for a fight is somewhat uncommon, much less 3 bushi. I flat do not understand what's useful about Kabuki Hero. "Meishodo Wielder, but instead of maybe being 1 fate less for 2/2, he costs 1 fate more for 2/2." I don't picture letting your Ornate Fans flex into being Fine Katanas, at a cost, or turning Height of Fashion into a big MIL buff, at a cost, as good enough. Miwaku Kabe doesn't do anything but make one province hard to break in a game where the opponent doesn't have to break all provinces. Throw in the obnoxious unreliability factor of a 1/deck card (God those drove me crazy in Warhammer 40K LCG) and you don't end up with something worth doing. I'd rather have the various +1 strength w/ ability holdings that tempt an opponent to come have a go at them. I agree Ujiaki is good but I was studying him and I think he might have little C3PO arms.
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Nov 16, 2017 17:27
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Yeah I posted an imgur link with the cards earlier this page I think. Karada District is a very different story from Miwaku Kabe. The 1/deck limit still sucks but it has a waaaaay better ability because it gives Crab some in-faction attachment countering. I think Karada is good poo poo but Kabe is very "pass." SuperKlaus fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Nov 16, 2017 |
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Nov 16, 2017 23:46
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Hey guys what browser is best for Jigoku Online? I tried it out for the first time yesterday and it seemed a bit of a mess with Chrome. My hand and the action confirmation box were down so low I had to scroll around to use them and still see the field, the rings were all mashed together and really awkward to select (setting to pol/mil was also a pain), and for some reason all characters entering play stacked up on top of my stronghold and role card where they were a bitch and a half to select.
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Nov 17, 2017 21:07
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Call me the re-poster, boys, nickname it to me. Imperial Cycle Pack 3 full contents below. https://imgur.com/a/PElMj#PZkHJ5B Kachiko 
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Nov 18, 2017 18:20
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:00 |
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Phoenix dishonor huh? Have to admit that is not an idea that had occurred to me. Sounds like it doesn't work either huh? I need advice on card sleeves. There are many choices with the Dragon Shields and the Ultra Pros and subtypes of Ultra Pro and other brands. What's good? Are the pricier Ultra Pros good? They have these 80-sleeve packs that are really nice because a L5R deck has 80 Dynasty / Conflict cards but those are like 10 cents per sleeve.
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Nov 21, 2017 06:38
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