Re: Shugenja

I want to echo what others have said about shugenja mechanics and add a few thoughts of my own. Firstly, there is little about the current incarnation of shugenja that I'm particularly enamored with. I like their school techniques that give them a little flavor (as opposed to 1e when they were all pretty much the same). Likewise, the magic system does need a major overhaul. 4e carried on the problems of 3e where shugenja were simply the best at everything. I understand that at times the system was not designed to be perfectly balance, and that is okay. However, when the gulf between your weakest rules and your strongest rules grows too wide, then you have completely broken your system. A small difference in power-levels between mechanics is fine for any system.

That said, spells remain one of the major offenders of the system. I agree that shugenja should focus more (not exclusively) on the supernatural aspect of the setting. I believe that is where their power should lie. An oni was summoned by a maho-tsukai, this is the shugenja's time to shine. Meanwhile, out on the field of battle, perhaps only the most powerful shugenja are able to truly play battle-wizard.

If anyone is familiar with the Qin RPG, they have a wonderfully balanced magic system that evokes a Taoist flavor with internal alchemy, external alchemy, geomancy, divination, and exoricsm. Now, I know Shugendo (the religion Shugenja are based on) and Taoism are very different, but the point is that even though at slightly higher levels of power the magic user is able to fly, and hurl elemental forces, these are very limited and costly effects, but which, at the highest levels of power can be extremely potent (though draining) abilities. Meanwhile the lower level abilities are very much in line with the supernatural and subtle forms of magic.

Get rid of Mastery Level, and keep all spells at a specific level of power that will, of course, increase naturally, over the course of character progression. Your starting shuggie can have that Tempest of Air, Fury of Osano-Wo, or what have you, but have that be the single spell (much like bushi have weapons), that are then improved upon as shugenja get better at casting them, rather that being obsolete as shugenja gain ludicrously more powerful versions (Slayer's Knives, Beam of the Inferno, etc.).

RE: Shugenja

You are right on the money, SonOfScarlet. As it stands, shugenja can quickly outstrip the power of bushi in combat. The main advantage the Bushi gets is Simple Action Attacks, and shugenja have access to spells that will give them such as well.

There was a recent fiction about the Unicorn vs Phoenix war which depicted shugenja in battle fairly well. They helped win the fight, and then went about fulfilling their promises made to the spirits. One had to build a shrine, if I remember correctly, after casting earthquake. The main take away from this is that shugenja should be more priests than wizards, and presently? They are more wizards than priests.

I think reducing the number of spells a shugenja knows is key, and making them scalable. The Importuning Kami ability from 4th Edition is a good beginning of system for more "freeform" magic, and should be expanded upon. Make it so more powerful "spells" require either the right prayers (scrolls with pre-built costs) or negotiation with the kami to achieve. Make it so casting magic beyond the basic, simple spells requires the expenditure of energy or performing favors for the kami. Tie those favors into the priestly role. Encounter yorei haunting a village? Lay them to peace, and gain some Favor with the spirits, which you can then expend to cast a more powerful spell.

In fighting an oni or supernatural threat, a shugenja should be better equipped than the bushi or the courtier but no so much that they make the other two useless.

The Dresden Files RPG does a good job I think of creating an elemental magic that has both rote spells and free form spells. Something like that could work very well with L5R.

As such, I would argue for a default approach of Timeline Agnostic (a term someone used on the old forum and always stuck with me). It acknowledges that the timeline may, or may not, be there, but focuses instead on the more important parts of making an awesome game of magical samurai drama. You present each Great Clan in its iconic state, and a section on the History of Rokugan, with helpful sidebars for running during the five "most playable" eras (Pre-Scorpion Clan Coup, Age of Exploration, whatever the LCG starting point is, Dawn of the Empire / Shining Prince, and the 8th Century Crises, as just examples). The Unicorn, Mantis, and Spider Clans should each have a sidebar for their history in the setting, and how to adapt their rules / themes for each of the Five Playable Eras. Finally, put a sidebar page in the GMing section about interesting twists of the Timeline, such as the Togashi Dynasty, 1000 Years of Darkness, or a Yodotai occupied Rokugan.

So, what 4e did, basically. History of Rokugan, iconic versions of the clans, notes about what to do if you're running in an era when the Mantis aren't a Great Clan or the Unicorn hadn't returned or the Spider were not yet a twinkle in Daigotsu's eye. Not everything you describe was in the core book (e.g. how to run campaigns in certain famous eras or alternate universes -- that was Imperial Histories 1 and 2), but that's because if you try to throw everything into the core book, you confuse people, wind up with a huge brick, and have burned half your potential splatbook material. :-P

If "timeline agnosticism" sounds better, then call it that, sure. But timeline neutrality never meant "pretend the history and development of Rokugan doesn't exist." It just meant not telling the reader "the year is 1168, and if you want to play in a different era than you're just going to have to make it up, because we're only telling you how to run late twelfth-century Rokugan." It means presenting the tools to work in different eras. I came to the L5R RPG entirely unfamiliar with the setting or the story, and that approach was perfect. The most common complaint I see is that the RPG didn't keep completely up-to-date with the fictions -- but the minute you try to do that, you guarantee that your RPG books will start to contradict one another ("wait, who's the Lion Clan Champion again? And I thought the Unicorn and the Dragon were at war, not buddies with each other?), which will be exceedingly confusing for anybody who isn't reading all the fictions.

@Kinzen

I think having a section in the Core Book for the History would be useful, and having at least a sidebar in the GMing section about running it in Historical Eras or Alternate Rokugans would be useful. Don't choke the text with it, but giving it a mention would be helpful.

The biggest thing holding us back from going "The LCG starting point!" as the point of history to enter the RPG at is... we have no idea when in the storyline that will be. Personally, I hope to see the LCG set in 1225 IC, during the first year of the reign of Iweko III, Seiken's 12 year old son after his father and elder siblings were mysteriously slain in an event that has all the Great Clans pointing fingers at each other, with the RPG set in 1220 IC, showing a seemingly stable Rokugan on the verge of a second Clan War. But that's just me.

I hope to see the LCG set in 1225 IC, during the first year of the reign of Iweko III, Seiken's 12 year old son after his father and elder siblings were mysteriously slain in an event that has all the Great Clans pointing fingers at each other, with the RPG set in 1220 IC, showing a seemingly stable Rokugan on the verge of a second Clan War. But that's just me.

I always felt the RPG being a sort of prequel to the card game was a bit strange, and would rather have the timelines coincide (assuming there is a single timeline for either game, rather than some version of timeline neutrality or multiple time periods for each).

I dare say it that FFG rebooting L5R's setting would make as much sense (and likely get a similar reaction) as Disney rebooting Star Wars.

So, a good idea that many people will be excited about?

I would point out that Disney isn't rebooting Star Wars. They are removing the Expanded Universe. Rebooting Star Wars would be going back to A New Hope, and doing those three movies over again, differently. See: the Star Trek reboot. But this is all beside the point of this thread.

Regarding Timeline Neutrality, I feel one of the weaknesses of 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition L5R were the attempts to keep up to date with the radical changes present in 12th Century (which should be just renamed The Troubles for all the Samurai Shodown references we could make). However, not acknowledging this change in the setting would be selling those changes short.

As such, I would argue for a default approach of Timeline Agnostic (a term someone used on the old forum and always stuck with me). It acknowledges that the timeline may, or may not, be there, but focuses instead on the more important parts of making an awesome game of magical samurai drama. You present each Great Clan in its iconic state, and a section on the History of Rokugan, with helpful sidebars for running during the five "most playable" eras (Pre-Scorpion Clan Coup, Age of Exploration, whatever the LCG starting point is, Dawn of the Empire / Shining Prince, and the 8th Century Crises, as just examples). The Unicorn, Mantis, and Spider Clans should each have a sidebar for their history in the setting, and how to adapt their rules / themes for each of the Five Playable Eras. Finally, put a sidebar page in the GMing section about interesting twists of the Timeline, such as the Togashi Dynasty, 1000 Years of Darkness, or a Yodotai occupied Rokugan.

Make the timeline a sandbox for GMs to build THEIR Rokugan in. You want to run a version of the Heresy of the Five Rings focused around Naisho Province? Go for it. You want to run a pre-Clan Coup game involving the machinations of the Scorpion Clan? Go for it. You want to run Rokugan 2000 in a post-Onyx Empire? Have fun.

Acutally I fear if the shugenja become to priestly they will discroage being played. Yes there will be some people who are willing to play a priest but as far as I can think I can´t come up with a reason to play a Shugenja over a monk when it comes to the priest emphasis.

I actually allways liked how Isawa himself saw his powers as helping things to achieve his goals and protect his people and I think isawa was more Wizzard than pirest while Asahina was more a priest than a Wizzard.

I Think we should make both possible. A more wizzard like approach and a more priest like approach.

Restructuing spells is a good Idea but crippling the shugenja in combat is not. Therefore I think we should let them have powerful spells but with a prequisite to it. Like if you want to have the fire beam of death you have to travel to the volcano in the dragon lands and there you need to comune with the Fire Spirit residing in the Crater and fullfill his trial.

So that getting spells actually can be achived to an actual action and not onyl though going up an insight rank. This also would open up possibilities for adventures and plot hooks.

(Speaking of how bad this forum software is... somehow I was able to accidentally post and preview the same reply at the same time...)

Ooof, talk about a thread I wish I'd caught when it started, so there wasn't so much to respond to . . . especially since I haaaaaaaaate this forum software and how difficult it makes it to arrange quotations in the way I want. ::sigh::

Hitting a couple of things in brief:

MaxKilljoy, you said "I will say that it was odd, reading about how the Taint had been made non-contagious, and then finding the rules in the base RPG seemingly written for contagious Taint." Flip side is, if I get a book that says "here's the Crab Clan! They've been fighting the Shadowlands for a thousand years because the Taint this awful, corrupting, insidious force!" and then right next to them is a clan that's Team Shadowlands and the Taint isn't contagious . . . I'm going to be hella confused. So put my vote in for timeline neutrality, all the way. It isn't so much about "I need official permission to run my game this way" as it is about making sure you present information to the reader in a way that is explicit about when XYZ applies and when it doesn't. Yes, the RPG lagged behind the CCG/fictions in presenting the current state of the Spider. But at least some of that was because the Spider situation was still so muddy, with so many contradictory elements and their future in the air, that giving a fully neutral version of them was difficult.

Is the contagious part of the Taint really why the Crab fought the Shadowlands for over 1000 years? I think it can be corrupting, and insidious, and unholy, without being as much disease as it is spiritual.

If I were going to have the Taint be "contagious", it still wouldn't be this odd combination of spiritual corruption and physical disease. I would treat it as a "supernatural disease", with resistance and vulnerability base purely on the mental and spiritual health of the individual in question. If someone were to "catch" the Taint, it would be because they had a way for the "disease" to get into their soul, not because they were simply physically exposed. Moral strength, strength of character, raw strength of willpower, would all serve as bastions against "catching" it. It would be an affliction of the willing, the wicked, and the weak -- not random victims.

I actively and strongly dislike the idea that someone can catch a disease of the spirit in the same way they can catch a **** head cold. I don't think it lends itself to traggedy or drama -- rather, it just leads to a certain sort of "body horror" that's reather cheap in a setting like Rokugan, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, it's my personal opinion that an actual Spider Clan should definately not be "Team Shadowlands"... and certainly not while also being openly part of Rokugani society. I just can't get past the contradiction. If the Spider is retained as part of the setting (and there's so much we don't know about where FFG is going with this), they need to be either a self-declared "clan" of the Shadowlands, made up of the wicked and the fallen, and their descendants; or an actual Rokugani Clan , filling a different role entirely. If the latter, I really like your "very last chance" clan idea.

( This forum software is... brutal. I've given up on trying to quote multiple people in one post, it keeps trying to credit the quotes to the wrong person. )

Re: Shugenja

I want to echo what others have said about shugenja mechanics and add a few thoughts of my own. Firstly, there is little about the current incarnation of shugenja that I'm particularly enamored with. I like their school techniques that give them a little flavor (as opposed to 1e when they were all pretty much the same). Likewise, the magic system does need a major overhaul. 4e carried on the problems of 3e where shugenja were simply the best at everything. I understand that at times the system was not designed to be perfectly balance, and that is okay. However, when the gulf between your weakest rules and your strongest rules grows too wide, then you have completely broken your system. A small difference in power-levels between mechanics is fine for any system.

That said, spells remain one of the major offenders of the system. I agree that shugenja should focus more (not exclusively) on the supernatural aspect of the setting. I believe that is where their power should lie. An oni was summoned by a maho-tsukai, this is the shugenja's time to shine. Meanwhile, out on the field of battle, perhaps only the most powerful shugenja are able to truly play battle-wizard.

If anyone is familiar with the Qin RPG, they have a wonderfully balanced magic system that evokes a Taoist flavor with internal alchemy, external alchemy, geomancy, divination, and exoricsm. Now, I know Shugendo (the religion Shugenja are based on) and Taoism are very different, but the point is that even though at slightly higher levels of power the magic user is able to fly, and hurl elemental forces, these are very limited and costly effects, but which, at the highest levels of power can be extremely potent (though draining) abilities. Meanwhile the lower level abilities are very much in line with the supernatural and subtle forms of magic.

Get rid of Mastery Level, and keep all spells at a specific level of power that will, of course, increase naturally, over the course of character progression. Your starting shuggie can have that Tempest of Air, Fury of Osano-Wo, or what have you, but have that be the single spell (much like bushi have weapons), that are then improved upon as shugenja get better at casting them, rather that being obsolete as shugenja gain ludicrously more powerful versions (Slayer's Knives, Beam of the Inferno, etc.).

In general, I think the subject of Shugenja in the RPG takes us back to the comment recently made to the effect that there should be synergy between system and setting (surely).

While the "worldbuilding" explanation of how the Shugenja are able to create wonderous and supernatural effects is that they're able to communicate with and call upon the powers of the elemental spirits... the mechanics of the spell system seems to barely touch on this (outside of the basic Commune etc spells). With a few exceptions, the same exact system would just as fitting for and easily used for POWS (plain old wizzard spells).

I dare say it that FFG rebooting L5R's setting would make as much sense (and likely get a similar reaction) as Disney rebooting Star Wars.

So, a good idea that many people will be excited about?

I would point out that Disney isn't rebooting Star Wars. They are removing the Expanded Universe. Rebooting Star Wars would be going back to A New Hope, and doing those three movies over again, differently. See: the Star Trek reboot. But this is all beside the point of this thread.

Regarding Timeline Neutrality, I feel one of the weaknesses of 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition L5R were the attempts to keep up to date with the radical changes present in 12th Century (which should be just renamed The Troubles for all the Samurai Shodown references we could make). However, not acknowledging this change in the setting would be selling those changes short.

As such, I would argue for a default approach of Timeline Agnostic (a term someone used on the old forum and always stuck with me). It acknowledges that the timeline may, or may not, be there, but focuses instead on the more important parts of making an awesome game of magical samurai drama. You present each Great Clan in its iconic state, and a section on the History of Rokugan, with helpful sidebars for running during the five "most playable" eras (Pre-Scorpion Clan Coup, Age of Exploration, whatever the LCG starting point is, Dawn of the Empire / Shining Prince, and the 8th Century Crises, as just examples). The Unicorn, Mantis, and Spider Clans should each have a sidebar for their history in the setting, and how to adapt their rules / themes for each of the Five Playable Eras. Finally, put a sidebar page in the GMing section about interesting twists of the Timeline, such as the Togashi Dynasty, 1000 Years of Darkness, or a Yodotai occupied Rokugan.

Make the timeline a sandbox for GMs to build THEIR Rokugan in. You want to run a version of the Heresy of the Five Rings focused around Naisho Province? Go for it. You want to run a pre-Clan Coup game involving the machinations of the Scorpion Clan? Go for it. You want to run Rokugan 2000 in a post-Onyx Empire? Have fun.

Acutally I fear if the shugenja become to priestly they will discroage being played. Yes there will be some people who are willing to play a priest but as far as I can think I can´t come up with a reason to play a Shugenja over a monk when it comes to the priest emphasis.

I actually allways liked how Isawa himself saw his powers as helping things to achieve his goals and protect his people and I think isawa was more Wizzard than pirest while Asahina was more a priest than a Wizzard.

I Think we should make both possible. A more wizzard like approach and a more priest like approach.

Restructuing spells is a good Idea but crippling the shugenja in combat is not. Therefore I think we should let them have powerful spells but with a prequisite to it. Like if you want to have the fire beam of death you have to travel to the volcano in the dragon lands and there you need to comune with the Fire Spirit residing in the Crater and fullfill his trial.

So that getting spells actually can be achived to an actual action and not onyl though going up an insight rank. This also would open up possibilities for adventures and plot hooks.

Perhaps the setting needs more overt tension between the "magic as an extension of our religion" and "magic as a functional science" traditions.

I am currently having the shugenja "discussion" with my rpg group .

My point of contention is, as pointed above, that they can out do every other school at what they are supposed to be able to do. Not at once, mind, but it's dnd wizard versus fighter all over again.

My point, that i'll state here and i think at least some of you agree with, is that if the Bushi are supposed to be the most renowned warriors of the setting, than make them the best at it, the rank 2 shugenja shouldn't be a bigger threat than the rank 4 bushi, and that is currently the case.

I was tooling around with the idea of giving shugenja ONLY access to spells that had the keyword their school had a bonus to. (kitsu only get battle spells, iuchi only get travel spells etc.) everything else you have to importune at a longer cast time.

I thought it was fair.what do you think?

4th Edition Shugenja lose tons of their supremacy if you are using grid, pay attention to distances, and check lines of sight and interrupt spells upon breaking it.

In Theater of Mind, there is not much to stop them, yes.

Is the contagious part of the Taint really why the Crab fought the Shadowlands for over 1000 years? I think it can be corrupting, and insidious, and unholy, without being as much disease as it is spiritual.

If I were going to have the Taint be "contagious", it still wouldn't be this odd combination of spiritual corruption and physical disease. I would treat it as a "supernatural disease", with resistance and vulnerability base purely on the mental and spiritual health of the individual in question. If someone were to "catch" the Taint, it would be because they had a way for the "disease" to get into their soul, not because they were simply physically exposed. Moral strength, strength of character, raw strength of willpower, would all serve as bastions against "catching" it. It would be an affliction of the willing, the wicked, and the weak -- not random victims.

I actively and strongly dislike the idea that someone can catch a disease of the spirit in the same way they can catch a **** head cold. I don't think it lends itself to traggedy or drama -- rather, it just leads to a certain sort of "body horror" that's reather cheap in a setting like Rokugan, as far as I'm concerned.

I get the distinct impression that "body horror" is exactly what it was originally intended to be (what with the deformities and all). I kind of like it being essentially radioactive: raw strength of willpower helps you resist it (since that's part of Earth), and I think you should be able to add your Honor to the total of your resistance roll, but short of supernatural protection (i.e. spells), exposure to it is always dangerous. Rokugan is a setting where mind and body integrate, where your strength comes from both rather than just one; to treat the Taint purely as a thing that attacks the spirit would be to undercut that principle.

( This forum software is... brutal. I've given up on trying to quote multiple people in one post, it keeps trying to credit the quotes to the wrong person. )

If you click on the little block in the upper left corner of the reply window, you get code view. It doesn't have line-wrapping, which makes it annoying to use for typing your reply, but you can at least see where to close and reopen the quote code, which lets you break things up and know where they're being attributed. Then you can click the box again to go back to WYSIWYG view.

I am currently having the shugenja "discussion" with my rpg group .

My point of contention is, as pointed above, that they can out do every other school at what they are supposed to be able to do. Not at once, mind, but it's dnd wizard versus fighter all over again.

My point, that i'll state here and i think at least some of you agree with, is that if the Bushi are supposed to be the most renowned warriors of the setting, than make them the best at it, the rank 2 shugenja shouldn't be a bigger threat than the rank 4 bushi, and that is currently the case.

I was tooling around with the idea of giving shugenja ONLY access to spells that had the keyword their school had a bonus to. (kitsu only get battle spells, iuchi only get travel spells etc.) everything else you have to importune at a longer cast time.

I thought it was fair.what do you think?

To me, it can easily come down to the player in question. Personally, I always preferred the support style of Shugenja and gravitated towards the Asashina, Kitsune, Kitsu, or Shosuro types. However, a player that wants to be the battle mage could typically make it harder to actually game with.

I understand some don't like contagious taint but it is one of the many things I love about the setting. It is also necessary to make a lot of the things in the setting work. You can play it without the body horror also. It provides good fodder for tragic stories in somewhat the same way that romantic love can. I think accepting the taint is a great feature of the setting, but the contagious taint is as well. Though to be fair, some of my affection for it may come from playing Warhammer Fantasy roleplaying games.

Yeah, when I first encountered L5R RPG, I was like "I get the samurai, I get the magic, I get the ninja, but...why there is Warhammerish Chaos there????????????????????" (which I really, really disliked; never got a look at later editions). It never really seemed that critical for the genre from my perspective (but, remember, I started L5R by wanting to play some "samurai rpg game", not being hooked into it specifically because it's L5R).

And this is honest question - what exactly stops working if you remove either radioactive aspect of Taint, or Taint altogether? Other than specific plot lines

And this is honest question - what exactly stops working if you remove either radioactive aspect of Taint, or Taint altogether? Other than specific plot lines

Not a blessed thing if it isn't your cuppa. I've played entire campaigns (including some pretty heavily magical ones)where not one Tainted thing showed up.

And this is honest question - what exactly stops working if you remove either radioactive aspect of Taint, or Taint altogether? Other than specific plot lines

Well, the Crab lose most of their flavor. If the Taint doesn't exist or can't infect them without permission, they just fight monsters who aren't all that much more threatening than your average bushi or shugenja, and some of their techniques become completely pointless.

What follows of course are just my opinions.

• The Shadowlands makes a lot less sense to me if the taint is not contagious and corruption. If anyone can just go into the shadowlands willey-nilley, it loses a lot of the place it has in the setting. Why haven't the clans just reclaimed it?
• Why don't these arrogant, glory seeking, warriors constantly go into the shadowlands to prove themselves?
• Also, if taint isn't contagious, how does land become tainted?
• The idea of jigoku as a "jealous" realm is also supported by the contagious nature of the taint. Having a contagious taint shows that Jigoku wants to take everything, not just those mortals who accept it. It wants the land, the spirits, everything.
• To me, Fu Leng also makes way more sense as someone who was corrupted by the contagious effects of Jigoku.
• The First War similarly makes more sense with a contagious taint. The samurai weren't just fighting monsters but as Kinzen said, so much more. I could go on, but basically many are riffs on the same concept. The contagious taint presents a threat that a samurai cannot defend against through conventional means.

So I understand that some don't like it, but for me at least, it really adds a lot to the setting, and helps explain some of the things in the setting that are really cool. You could probably find alternate explanations for these things, but the contagious taint works really well.

Regarding courtly stuff -- well, I said my piece on that when I wrote the Imperial Archives chapter. I personally do. not. want. to see an equivalent to the physical combat system, with Fully Suspicious Stance and Stubbornness Wounds and so forth, because that would kill flat dead any sense of flow or emotional realism. I'm in the camp that says this is always going to be a thing negotiated between GM and player, where you say "okay, this guy is very persuasive, but he's also been a complete jerkwad to your PC, so him asking for a favor is going to be harder than usual; on the other hand, he has a really good argument on his side, so." Teveshszat said "There is no mechnic which tells me how social interaction is handled and how do I defend myself/ interact with Npcs/ other PCs." -- but that isn't true; the basics are in there. They just aren't laid out in a coherent block the way combat rules are, and I will readily agree that's a flaw. When I thought 5e was going to be done by AEG, I was arguing heavily for addressing courtly matters in a more detailed fashion earlier in the edition; who knows what will happen now.

Who needs stubborness wounds? And why are people focusing on Courtier as mind control?

This is a setting where everyone is obsessed with propriety and public face, and courtiers are practically made of the stuff. You don't need Stubbornness Wounds. You need Public Standing Wounds.

I had said before that I'd love a simplified, unified combat system that maintains the feeling of lethality without the actual lethality; my top-of-the-head example is one where you have "durability" (measured in single digit numbers) that goes away one at a time, or perhaps two at a time in specific conditions, and its erosion represents you getting closer to getting hit. So, let's say you can take four "hits"; each round of combat is a contested roll where you try to get more raises and try to ensure your opponent can't use his most advantageous techniques while you can use yours, and at the end of the round, the loser takes a "hit". Your first three hits are a thrust you actually had to dodge, a blade-on-blade parry that sent you stumbling backwards, and a swipe that came close enough to your face to open one very small horizontal cut on your cheek. The fourth hit you take is "your opponent actually connected with his sword and now you are bleeding to death". You are sent to "dying" in one hit, but you can't be sent to dying in less than 4 rounds without Shenanigans being active. Every attack would be a contested roll, far more abstracted than it currently is, and half the point would be describing the fight and your progress in cinematic style.

And not only do I think a social combat system is a good idea, it fits pretty much perfectly in this model! You don't ever need to convince someone to believe what you want them to believe -- you need to shame them into compliance by showing the superiority of your position or your self. Every social combat round is a contested roll where you and your opponent try to get the upper hand in the conversation. Loser takes a social hit. And in a face-saving-obsessed society of courtliness, you don't wear someone down by attrition, you go "negative implication -- veiled insult -- plausibly deniable barb -- devastating Oscar Wilde-level comeback ." Your face is mostly fine until the last hit, when you're humiliated. As you get closer to your last hit, you'll be more tempted to bow out and surrender, which would mean admitting your opponent is right. It doesn't matter if you actually convince anyone -- what matters is that they agreed you were right rather than lose face.

Acutally I fear if the shugenja become to priestly they will discroage being played. Yes there will be some people who are willing to play a priest but as far as I can think I can´t come up with a reason to play a Shugenja over a monk when it comes to the priest emphasis.

I actually allways liked how Isawa himself saw his powers as helping things to achieve his goals and protect his people and I think isawa was more Wizzard than pirest while Asahina was more a priest than a Wizzard.

I Think we should make both possible. A more wizzard like approach and a more priest like approach.

But they are already more a "priest" than a "wizard". Just take a look at their kit, they all have "Theology" as school skills. Also, if you read even more on the Shugenja and the way that they cast their spells, they actually create powerful spells by offering prayers to the elemental kami, they do not control the kami. Then comes their duty, which are performing rites of birth and death, giving blessings, purifying places from evil spirits, building shrines (small or big) for kami or fortune and so much. They also mostly lives in temple and shrines but once they are establish inside a village, they are in charge of teaching tao and fortunes. Unless someone only look at their technique and spells, I don't see why people think they are wizards...

Pretty much, only "wizard" in-setting and in-lore are the bad guys.

Acutally I fear if the shugenja become to priestly they will discroage being played. Yes there will be some people who are willing to play a priest but as far as I can think I can´t come up with a reason to play a Shugenja over a monk when it comes to the priest emphasis.

I actually allways liked how Isawa himself saw his powers as helping things to achieve his goals and protect his people and I think isawa was more Wizzard than pirest while Asahina was more a priest than a Wizzard.

I Think we should make both possible. A more wizzard like approach and a more priest like approach.

But they are already more a "priest" than a "wizard". Just take a look at their kit, they all have "Theology" as school skills. Also, if you read even more on the Shugenja and the way that they cast their spells, they actually create powerful spells by offering prayers to the elemental kami, they do not control the kami. Then comes their duty, which are performing rites of birth and death, giving blessings, purifying places from evil spirits, building shrines (small or big) for kami or fortune and so much. They also mostly lives in temple and shrines but once they are establish inside a village, they are in charge of teaching tao and fortunes. Unless someone only look at their technique and spells, I don't see why people think they are wizards...

That's very true of the setting.

The system of magic, however, doesn't really have much synergy with the setting material. For the most part, the system of magic in L5R 4e could easily be used for any magic in any setting with just a new paint job and almost no modification under the hood. There's nothing really there to distinguish Rokugani "magic as an extension of a kami-based religion" from POWS (plain olde wizzard spells) magic. Flinging spells as a Shugenja in the L5R RPG doesn't really feel that much different from a spell-caster in any other system/setting combo.

I still blame "Card Game has Spell Cards, so let's make Shugenja cast spells from SPELL SCROLLS, using SAME NAMES AS SPELL CARDS, LOLOLOLO!" for it. It was way too ham fisted, direct translation of CCG Mechanic to RPG Terms.