Asking prospective players and GMs to dig through 20 years of scattered online material (even harder to find now that posts and links in the old AEG forums are inaccessible) and find books from previouos editions of the game, on top of spending potentially as much as $500 if they want the complete 4th edition library, just to have the full system AND an in-depth understanding of the setting, is a massive barrier to entry.

This is, in part, exactly the sort of thing that motivates some of our fellow posters to advocate for a "total reboot". While a company shouldn't disregard their existing customers, it's also a terrible idea for the company ( or the existing fans ) to treat the game as an exclusive club only open to those who've either been around for two decades, or are willing to do two decades of research. As a product, each edition of the game needs to stand on its own.

Spending a page or so on the interaction of spellcasting with Rokugani etiquette, roleplaying, and the mechanics (including Glory and Honor), and adding some references in the texts of certain spells regarding their potetial social / roleplaying impact, would not suddenly make the book too massive. But as with several other requests for guidelines or a framework to build on , it's being treated as if it would be a 20+ page expansion of the book with excruciating detail about every single possible instance.

You don't have to spend 500$ and own the complete 4th edition to understand the setting... Google it, read the online story, do some research in a library, look some movies which was used as an inspirations. We live in a nice era for these kind of research, just use it...

The l5r wiki is quite good too.

The guy has done a great job keeping it up to date and resourcing all the material. And it's all free.

Yeah, if the solution to the balance issue (which for me isn't really a matter of some kind of "who would win in a fight" metric, it's a question of whether everyone in the game group has enough chances to feel like they're good at something and making a satisfying contribution to the party's goals) is that the GM needs to try to gank the shugenja in round 1 of combat and hit her/him with honor losses and other hassles for using her/his social spells in court, that... doesn't actually sound very fun, for the GM or the players. "Remember that spell list I told you to pick from when you were making your character? Yeah, there are almost no circumstances in which you can legitimately use that one... or that one, unless you want me to have to punish you for it... okay, you can use this one, but I'm gonna have to raise your TN to cancel out its bonus..." This really just brings us right back around to the problem that shugenja don't presently have an independent domain of action where they can shine without overshadowing the other classes. (Edit: and better integration of ritual spellcasting into the system could be part of the solution for that, though not a complete one. If there were some way for non-shugenja to participate in and support the rituals that'd be even better.)

Social buff spells in 3E and 3ER were never particularly implied to reflect on the caster's honor or social approbation either, so that's not a 4E lacuna. Nor does it really make sense to me that this would be seen as a problem, from a theological perspective--only a game balance one.

For the record. Using low skills is NOT the only way to lose honor.

When did I ever claim that it was? I brought up the parts of the chart that are potentially relevant to this discussion; there's no point in referencing "Accepting a bribe" or "Enduring an insult to your ancestors" when talking about whether using magic in court is dishonorable.

They should of course lose honor for using magic in court, they should lose honor for burning down a building (and be arrested by a magistrate too). That kind of stuff is intuition, and cannot be detailed in a core book!

But what is the foundation for that "of course"? Burning down a building is a crime; this is well understood by players without needing to read past editions or do online research, because pretty much every society ever has considered the destruction of property to be a Bad Thing. By contrast, if using a buff designed to help you do social stuff in a major social context is something you're not supposed to do . . . that isn't intuitive. And reading up on the sources for L5R won't help me figure that one out, because in historical Japan there were no air kami you could call on to give you +1k1 +Air to your ability to talk.

I see combat spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in combat." I see social spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in social situations." If I'm not supposed to think that, then yes, I do need the book to explain that to me. Because otherwise, there is no bloody way for me to know.

For the record. Using low skills is NOT the only way to lose honor.

When did I ever claim that it was? I brought up the parts of the chart that are potentially relevant to this discussion; there's no point in referencing "Accepting a bribe" or "Enduring an insult to your ancestors" when talking about whether using magic in court is dishonorable.

They should of course lose honor for using magic in court, they should lose honor for burning down a building (and be arrested by a magistrate too). That kind of stuff is intuition, and cannot be detailed in a core book!

But what is the foundation for that "of course"? Burning down a building is a crime; this is well understood by players without needing to read past editions or do online research, because pretty much every society ever has considered the destruction of property to be a Bad Thing. By contrast, if using a buff designed to help you do social stuff in a major social context is something you're not supposed to do . . . that isn't intuitive. And reading up on the sources for L5R won't help me figure that one out, because in historical Japan there were no air kami you could call on to give you +1k1 +Air to your ability to talk.

I see combat spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in combat." I see social spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in social situations." If I'm not supposed to think that, then yes, I do need the book to explain that to me. Because otherwise, there is no bloody way for me to know.

I'm confused, do you actually not know this? Or is it just that it isn't in the 4th edition book that you are complaining? Because again, your gripe is not with the lore of l5r, but with the 4th ed content.

The reason why it is a breach of etiquette is because courts in Rokugan are not courts like in real life. They are full of personal challenges between people from other clans as well as critical addresses from the key figures of Rokugan. Like in an Iaijutsu duel, it is dishonorable for a shugenja to interfere with this challenge because it is meant to be a duel of personal strength/ability.

Even with challenges that require social rolls (which I presume to which you are referring), like sadane, they are seen as a personal challenge. So getting "buffs" and entering the challenge is a dishonest act. It is the tenant of honesty that get's broken, and any break of one of bushido's virtues should lead to honor/glory loss.

Just because a spell gives a social buff, does not mean it is perfectly acceptable to use in all situations where the buff could be beneficial. It is like you said about burning the building down, it isn't explicitly stated in the book (I presume) that this should lead to a loss of honor, but instead your intuition tells you that it is. If you understand the tenants of bushido, then for a samurai to accept a "buff" to get one over on another samurai in a fair contest is shameful. That is the intuitive decision that the player/GM should be making.

But as you said, yeah it probably isn't in the 4th ed books explicitly. But all the tenants of Bushido are there, and samurai try to follow these to the letter. They are extremists remember, everything has to be by the book. Accepting outside help to win a challenge, goes against one of the tenants of bushido and is also something I think any self respecting samurai would be embarrassed about doing, because it basically says "I am not good enough to win without it" .

Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean it is the most honorable thing to do. You CAN use the fire spell on a building but your intuition tells you it is a bad idea. It is the same for interfering in the courts to influence the outcome.

They should of course lose honor for using magic in court, they should lose honor for burning down a building (and be arrested by a magistrate too). That kind of stuff is intuition, and cannot be detailed in a core book!

But what is the foundation for that "of course"? Burning down a building is a crime; this is well understood by players without needing to read past editions or do online research, because pretty much every society ever has considered the destruction of property to be a Bad Thing. By contrast, if using a buff designed to help you do social stuff in a major social context is something you're not supposed to do . . . that isn't intuitive. And reading up on the sources for L5R won't help me figure that one out, because in historical Japan there were no air kami you could call on to give you +1k1 +Air to your ability to talk.

I see combat spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in combat." I see social spells, I think "I'm supposed to use these in social situations." If I'm not supposed to think that, then yes, I do need the book to explain that to me. Because otherwise, there is no bloody way for me to know.

I'm confused, do you actually not know this? Or is it just that it isn't in the 4th edition book that you are complaining? Because again, your gripe is not with the lore of l5r, but with the 4th ed content.

That, right there: that's my gripe. The foundation for your "of course" is "the lore of L5R" -- not that lore as stated outright in the most recent edition, but the accumulated body of knowledge from earlier editions and the wiki and reading between the lines of what the most recent edition actually says.

I am not saying you're wrong about the setting. I'm saying that expecting new players and GMs to intuit this from the material sold to them (which is fourth edition) is not reasonable. Which means, from my perspective, you can't say "of course" magic in court is not okay. "Of course" implies that it's obvious to any reasonable observer, when in reality it's only obvious to the initiated, the ones who have been soaking in the game long enough to know. The reasonable observer, lacking that deep background, knows that burning down a building is a crime and probably not considered okay unless you have a really good reason; they don't need a nuanced discussion of the tenets (not tenants; sorry, that error drives me batty) of Bushido to help them understand that fact. But that same reasonable observer looks at a spell that gives a social buff and concludes they're meant to use it in social situations -- which, in most L5R campaigns, means court above all. If you want them to think differently, you have to say so . Not in some past edition. Not in an unofficial wiki. Not on a forum. In the game itself, and probably in the core book where you provide those social-buffing spells and shugenja players get their basic sense of how they're supposed to operate. To them, their spells are the shugenja equivalent of bushi and courtier techniques, and it's illogical to expect them to guess that they can't use them in the same places bushi and courtiers use their abilities.

Is Rokugan often illogical? Sure. But that means you have to explain the Rokugani mindset more . Otherwise people will think, hey, of course this social spell is meant for social situations. Because that's what makes sense.

Yeah, that's all fair enough. And I can completely understand/agree people being lost in the setting from only reading the 4th ed core book, have even seen it myself when new players joined our rpg group. They were just lucky they had people who knew so much of the previous lore to help them through.

It is why I guess, having 20+ years of lore is both a blessing and a curse. Having a book of limited size means you can't cover everything, it is why I would encourage someone to use the internet resources in conjunction with the book when establishing a setting and plot. Even to learn things about all the various regions, castles, courts, competitions etc that aren't covered in the book.

At the end of the day though, if you only use the 4th ed book, and portray some things "wrong" or not according to canon, then what harm has been done really?

It usually encourages discussion during games anyways, I have lost track of the number of OOC discussions I've had down through the years about the setting with my buddies.

I am steadily losing the fight to not give the Shugenja a systemic work over not unlike Kinzen's Overly Ambitious Social workover. I'm a little worried that doing so might lead to the pitchforks and torches around here.

Yeah, that's all fair enough. And I can completely understand/agree people being lost in the setting from only reading the 4th ed core book, have even seen it myself when new players joined our rpg group. They were just lucky they had people who knew so much of the previous lore to help them through.

It is why I guess, having 20+ years of lore is both a blessing and a curse. Having a book of limited size means you can't cover everything, it is why I would encourage someone to use the internet resources in conjunction with the book when establishing a setting and plot. Even to learn things about all the various regions, castles, courts, competitions etc that aren't covered in the book.

At the end of the day though, if you only use the 4th ed book, and portray some things "wrong" or not according to canon, then what harm has been done really?

It usually encourages discussion during games anyways, I have lost track of the number of OOC discussions I've had down through the years about the setting with my buddies.

Players should be able to pick up the book(s) as published and understand the setting, without digging around online or knowing one of the "established" fans. Relying on old material, online material, and old players to make the setting "complete" is absolutely unreasonable and unfair to the new customers.

A smaller example -- there was a webcomic I used to read. The author/artist had a previous webcomic that I'd read, that shared some of the same characters and setting details, but that he'd adamantly retconned out of existence and that you had to dig to find online (and he deleted any links to it that were posted on the forums of his new comic). Thing is, you couldn't get half the jokes in the NEW webcomic if you handn't read the "that never happened" webcomic... so he had this huge barrier to anyone new coming in and enjoying the new material. His readership slowly dwindled until he just gave up on the whole thing.

[More quotes here]

You don't have to spend 500$ and own the complete 4th edition to understand the setting... Google it, read the online story, do some research in a library, look some movies which was used as an inspirations. We live in a nice era for these kind of research, just use it...

The l5r wiki is quite good too.

The guy has done a great job keeping it up to date and resourcing all the material. And it's all free.

As far as I'm concerned, if it's not in the published material of the current edition of the game, then it doesn't count.

Wait... what? Everything from the 1st to the 4th edition, when it's about the setting was incremental, with very few variations. I would understand if it was a system/mechanics question but the question was based on understanding what is consicered a breach of etiquette. This is understanding the setting and a setting moves through several editions.

For example, if we take the Ravenloft Setting of D&D, it was used through a lot of editions and everyone who wanted to learn more about it was reading more stuffs (Books, online fan website, etc).

Knowing this, mind to explain me how, for example, the L5R wiki doesn't count, why kaze no shiro website doesn't count. You spoke of barrier to understand, now you are setting yourself a barrier. I'm not afraid to use these because they are tied to the L5R story. For example, the first campaign that I've run in the 4th edition, I've only had the corebook and the 3rd edition corebook. I've seek out more specific information on the Second Day of Thunder, from the Crab side, since it was a 100% Crab Campaign and it was a great campaign, but from the 2 books I've had, I had to check elsewhere to dig up informations from a Clan perspective.

**** forum software, I actually typed that comment, and then decided to not post it as too blunt... I even refreshed the page before writing the second post.

However, as explained in the longer part, it's absolutely unrealistic to expect a new player to dig through 20 years of accumulated bagage to understand the setting of a game. And more importantly, it's absolutely unfair to say "oh you should have known that" about material that's only available from old editions or some website.

However, as explained in the longer part, it's absolutely unrealistic to expect a new player to dig through 20 years of accumulated bagage to understand the setting of a game. And more importantly, it's absolutely unfair to say "oh you should have known that" about material that's only available from old editions or some website.

It's as realistic as a new science students to learn about maths, physics, chemistry, etc. and expect him to be able to discover new sciences stuffs because he'll have to seek through all these years of researches through tons of books, studies, etc.

It just take some time, there's no secret. In my play group, we still discover stuff, I don't consider myself an expert, far from it, there's people with a lot more knowledge than me, but it's all about: "Hey! Have you read that story? It's just awesome!" and then we all read it and we understand new stuffs.

People study science with the expectation of getting a career out of it. You can't expect people to sink as much time into a game as they would a career, that's just unrealistic. Not to mention completely off-putting to new players.

However, as explained in the longer part, it's absolutely unrealistic to expect a new player to dig through 20 years of accumulated bagage to understand the setting of a game. And more importantly, it's absolutely unfair to say "oh you should have known that" about material that's only available from old editions or some website.

It's as realistic as a new science students to learn about maths, physics, chemistry, etc. and expect him to be able to discover new sciences stuffs because he'll have to seek through all these years of researches through tons of books, studies, etc.

Uh, *what*?

A new science student has a TEACHER. That teacher does not throw a problem set at him, the correct solution to which he can only find if he's familiar with Einstein's special relativity, and expect him to go looking around online to find out that special relativity is a thing since it never got mentioned in class. A textbook whose proper comprehension depends on knowing about special relativity, which fails to actually mention the existence of same, would be a bad textbook .

Or if we're talking about an actual grown-up scientist (as your "discover new stuff" implies) -- the analogy there would be "okay, now that you know L5R inside and out, go forth and design a new game!" Which is a JOB for which both the scientist and (in theory, anyway) the game designer would be paid . Not a hobby they're picking up for fun in their free time.

Wait... what? Everything from the 1st to the 4th edition, when it's about the setting was incremental, with very few variations. I would understand if it was a system/mechanics question but the question was based on understanding what is consicered a breach of etiquette.

I have no problem with the finer nuances of etiquette (like which side of your body you set your katana on when visiting someone else's house) being left for a supplemental book or left behind in a previous edition, because when you get down to it, that doesn't affect gameplay much. But "you may lose Honor and/or Glory for using the abilities on your sheet in the most logically obvious manner"? That isn't a finer nuance; it's pretty bloody fundamental. And note that the core book in fact has a large number of spots where it addresses these kinds of things: school techniques, spells, kiho, etc. But nowhere in there does it mention the concept that using spells in court is verboten and carries meaningful consequences. And yes, I do consider that a system/mechanics question: that kind of thing needs its own entry on the Honor/Glory tables, rather than being implicitly folded into "breach of etiquette." It is the simplest and most player-attention-getting way of making the point clear.

I am steadily losing the fight to not give the Shugenja a systemic work over not unlike Kinzen's Overly Ambitious Social workover. I'm a little worried that doing so might lead to the pitchforks and torches around here.

Heh. I . . . may have already started on something like this? Which I will post when it's to a point that I can start doing so. Nobody has to use those rules unless they want to.

However, as explained in the longer part, it's absolutely unrealistic to expect a new player to dig through 20 years of accumulated bagage to understand the setting of a game. And more importantly, it's absolutely unfair to say "oh you should have known that" about material that's only available from old editions or some website.

It's as realistic as a new science students to learn about maths, physics, chemistry, etc. and expect him to be able to discover new sciences stuffs because he'll have to seek through all these years of researches through tons of books, studies, etc.

It just take some time, there's no secret. In my play group, we still discover stuff, I don't consider myself an expert, far from it, there's people with a lot more knowledge than me, but it's all about: "Hey! Have you read that story? It's just awesome!" and then we all read it and we understand new stuffs.

I think we're just going to have to disagree.

There's no way I'm ever going to accept "but it was in the edition printed 20 years ago" or "you can find it online" as an excuse for not including important setting information in current edition of an RPG.

To me it is no different from, say, someone publishing a new ediition of a novel without the maps or glossary that were included in the first edition... and the long time fans then expecting new readers to find an old edition of the novel or dig around online to get that information... especially when the novel is written in such a way that it makes significantly less sense without the glossary and maps.

@Fumi and Kinzen

You both took my analogy at the first sense, yet, I still stand with it. Why? Because it's how people are learning stuffs. It's about learning stuffs a little by little. You can't expect someone new to know everything, but you can learn stuffs a little here and there. We can argue that the student has a teacher, but a new player has several teachers, his playmates.

When I know that I have a new player in my campaign, the very first thing I do, is to explain the basic knowledge. I have made some quicksheet for some knowledge and skirmishes info, to allow them to enjoy the system. So, yes, in a way I am the teacher for that new player. Then comes the time to play a specific era. I will not expect my players to know every era, but since I'm Storytelling the game, I'll take time to build my game, give basic informations to my players about the era and, the longer the game runs, I'll introduced them with more advanced information, through letters, NPCs or simply with the narative way.

Yes, in the corebook, it may be only the skeleton of the gamestory and it's how a corebook should be. Then it's about every other supplements or other stuffs (Websites, books, older editions, etc.).

In the end, I really feel like a student learning science when I want to build a game on an era I barely know. I'll have to learn it, then teach it to my players which usually have less knowledge than I have. Nobody complains because they didn't know the setting, in fact, they enjoy it because they are learning it through the games sessions. Of course, I'm adapting my game based on the player levels of my players. But, I do have to spend at least 10-12 hours when I do my basic campaign setting.

Am I paid to Storytell a game? If you consider having fun with friends in a world that we all share interest, then yes, otherwise, not at all.

@Kinzen

I know that a "breach of etiquette" may be hard to understand and the ruling is far from being clear. It's also hard to be clear since there's a lot of factors to take in consideration. I will not defend the system to have an unclear one because I do agree it's not clear. It's even harder to have a clear ruling when you'll take the Clan in consideration.

@MaxKilljoy

Do not accept it, but don't complain about it neither. When I want to know what's going on in the current year of my campaign, I'm looking up at the Wiki and read about the events that occurs during that years. It's how I build my game and it's very easy to access. Would I pay for a book that contains this information just because it would be printed for the current edition? No, because it's already accessable.

I'll even add that "20 years of story" isn't that big, there's bigger setting that are still running and still has new players. I don't feel like L5R is different from these...

You both took my analogy at the first sense, yet, I still stand with it. Why? Because it's how people are learning stuffs. It's about learning stuffs a little by little. You can't expect someone new to know everything, but you can learn stuffs a little here and there. We can argue that the student has a teacher, but a new player has several teachers, his playmates.

And where did those fellow players learn this "no magic in court" rule? You're assuming that somebody somewhere in the transmission chain has acquired the special hidden knowledge that using spells at court is the kind of thing that will mark you as dishonorable and a social pariah. This is a profoundly bad assumption to make in game design, because it means that the game only works as intended if you find a super-experienced player to teach you the stuff the game doesn't actually include.

And I do mean super-experienced. My GM, who's been playing since third edition, never told me we couldn't use Benten's Touch to help ourselves out in court without consequences. Neither did the book. Result: I learned that it was okay, and when I began GMing my players in turn learned it from me.

And it isn't only that the core book never told us otherwise (though I stand by my assertion that this is a vital enough piece of the skeleton that it *should* be there). It's that I've read every 4e book except the Atlas from cover to cover, and never had this apparent misconception corrected. If that isn't enough to teach me what I need to know, then there is a *problem*.

I know that a "breach of etiquette" may be hard to understand and the ruling is far from being clear. It's also hard to be clear since there's a lot of factors to take in consideration. I will not defend the system to have an unclear one because I do agree it's not clear. It's even harder to have a clear ruling when you'll take the Clan in consideration.

We aren't talking about all breaches of etiquette here; I agree that many of them are situational and complicated. But apparently this one is universal enough that it's supposed to be a major check on the power of shugenja in court. That puts it on par with, oh, Sincerity (Deceit) as a thing which ought to be addressed, even if there are exceptions to the rule.

Do not accept it, but don't complain about it neither. When I want to know what's going on in the current year of my campaign, I'm looking up at the Wiki and read about the events that occurs during that years. It's how I build my game and it's very easy to access. Would I pay for a book that contains this information just because it would be printed for the current edition? No, because it's already accessable.

Since the wiki is one of the things that keeps coming up: please point me to the wiki page where it says that using magic in court is a violation of Rokugani social norms. (We've already established that actual history can't be a good guideline for this, since actual history had nothing equivalent to Rokugani magic, and the 4e books fail to make the point clear.) It isn't under "Magic." It isn't under "Etiquette." It isn't under "Shugenja."

Other than not playing the game unless they find a sufficiently experienced GM to teach them everything they need to know, how is a new player supposed to ever learn this supposedly fundamental fact of Rokugani society?

Kinzen said it better than I could have, but I want to emphasize this point: We can't depend on every player being recruited by someone with years of experience in the setting. Everything you need to play a game has to be laid out in the core rulebook(s). A random gamer needs to be able to randomly buy the book, and then be able to run games for her friends. Sure, she could look online or buy a bunch of other supplemental materials to get more info, but that stuff shouldn't be required . Because if you need to spend a minimum of $80 and 100 hours to learn what you need to about the setting, most people are just going to find something more approachable to play.

Kinzen said it better than I could have, but I want to emphasize this point: We can't depend on every player being recruited by someone with years of experience in the setting. Everything you need to play a game has to be laid out in the core rulebook(s). A random gamer needs to be able to randomly buy the book, and then be able to run games for her friends. Sure, she could look online or buy a bunch of other supplemental materials to get more info, but that stuff shouldn't be required . Because if you need to spend a minimum of $80 and 100 hours to learn what you need to about the setting, most people are just going to find something more approachable to play.

That's in part why I brought up the "$500 library" in an earlier post. Even right now buying PDFs, it would cost about $300 for the full 4th Edition library.

Someone can spend $300+ and still evidently be missing KEY parts of the setting -- it's ridiculous to tell them that they then need to go spend many hours researching bits from 10-20 year old material.

Each edition of an RPG needs to be a standalone product line, end of story. If anything, that other material needed to be fully integrated into the published books.

Maybe part of the disconnect I'm having with some here is that I'm not just looking at this as a "what can I do as a player to get around the limitations and enjoy the game". I'm looking at this from a design point of view, and seeing what I view as a serious fault in the design of the product.

Or maybe there are things that long-time players are assuming are part of the current edition, despite not being published... when in fact the design team has left those things out quite deliberately.

Or maybe the long-standing community has made some shared assumptions of their own, that weren't ever justified by anything ever put in print by any publishers of L5R RPG material.

I want to emphasize something Fumi and MaxKilljoy both touched on: there is a distinction between KEY elements of the setting (such as "don't use magic in court") and additional flavor (such as "where you place your katana when you sit down sends a message about how safe you feel"). I don't need all the additional flavor in the core book; that would make it unreasonably huge and nigh-impossible to digest, and would mean there was nothing left for the game company to make money off of. But this specific concept is pretty important, if it's supposed to be a mainstay of determining when a player can and cannot use the abilities on their sheet. Therefore, it belongs in the core book. And it wouldn't take twenty pages to explain it -- as I said, a couple of lines in the Honor and Glory chart would make the point clear, with maybe three explanatory sentences in the section on spells.

RE: "shugenja casting social buff spells in court," surely of the two possible explanations suggested in this thread--a) it's a part of the official setting lore, but buried away so deeply that one can read most of 4E, most of 3E, and lots of the wiki and older RPG editions without ever coming across an official reference, or b) it's a common but not universal house rule to deal with spells that some tables find unbalancing--surely Occam's Razor favors choice B? More to the point, you can't really subscribe to either choice without agreeing that this balance issue would be a good thing for future editions to just deal with directly.

(As I said earlier, as a house rule I also find this kind of unconvincing--as a priest whose special gift is to talk to the elemental spirits whom everybody in your society reveres, why should it be dishonorable to ask for and receive a little help from them in a task that isn't itself dishonorable? Conceptualizing divine aid as equivalent to secret doping in sports feels really off to me. Rather than that, much better to solve the balance problem from the mechanical side.)

(As I said earlier, as a house rule I also find this kind of unconvincing--as a priest whose special gift is to talk to the elemental spirits whom everybody in your society reveres, why should it be dishonorable to ask for and receive a little help from them in a task that isn't itself dishonorable? Conceptualizing divine aid as equivalent to secret doping in sports feels really off to me. Rather than that, much better to solve the balance problem from the mechanical side.)

Because it is an admission on behalf of the samurai that they are not good enough without that help.

AND

It is the Shugenja buffing the samurai without him knowing, it is the shugenja questioning the samurais ability.

It really isn't a leap at all, and it infact has nothing to do with the shugenja abilities, the divine or anything, it is to do with the fact that samurai have a strong sense of personal pride and honor. It is the same reason it is not permitted in duels. I think not understanding why, is not actually understanding samurai and the tenants of bushido.

(As I said earlier, as a house rule I also find this kind of unconvincing--as a priest whose special gift is to talk to the elemental spirits whom everybody in your society reveres, why should it be dishonorable to ask for and receive a little help from them in a task that isn't itself dishonorable? Conceptualizing divine aid as equivalent to secret doping in sports feels really off to me. Rather than that, much better to solve the balance problem from the mechanical side.)

Because it is an admission on behalf of the samurai that they are not good enough without that help.

AND

It is the Shugenja buffing the samurai without him knowing, it is the shugenja questioning the samurais ability.

Well, it is hard to question an ability that factually can't be possessed by the "offended" side. If they want to do things the harder way, then it is their problem. But "I wanted to struggle more with this!" is hardly a serious accusation.

Because it is an admission on behalf of the samurai that they are not good enough without that help.

But you could say that about almost anything a shugenja does. Why is it then okay for them to help in a skirmish, when that would be an admission that the bushi couldn't win without that help? Or to use commune to aid an investigation, when that would imply the magistrate isn't good enough to solve it on his own?

It really isn't a leap at all, and it infact has nothing to do with the shugenja abilities, the divine or anything, it is to do with the fact that samurai have a strong sense of personal pride and honor. It is the same reason it is not permitted in duels. I think not understanding why, is not actually understanding samurai and the tenants of bushido.

But samurai have an even greater sense of communal pride and honor. That's why insulting someone's family is considered worse than insulting them personally. In that context, it's not clear why accepting magical help from a clan-mate is so shameful. And it's only shameful when that help is magical. After all, they can aid each other at court in all sorts of other ways without any problems.

Regarding duels, it seems to me that it's just a result of the fact that it's supposed to be 1-on-1, with no outside help whatsoever, magical or otherwise. But court isn't 1-on-1, so applying the same restriction isn't intuitive.

By the way, just to be clear, I'm not arguing that using spells in court shouldn't be considered dishonorable. I'm trying to say that it really needs to be spelled out (no pun intended) in future editions, because the fact that it's dishonorable isn't at all obvious.

Because it is an admission on behalf of the samurai that they are not good enough without that help.

But you could say that about almost anything a shugenja does. Why is it then okay for them to help in a skirmish, when that would be an admission that the bushi couldn't win without that help? Or to use commune to aid an investigation, when that would imply the magistrate isn't good enough to solve it on his own?

It really isn't a leap at all, and it infact has nothing to do with the shugenja abilities, the divine or anything, it is to do with the fact that samurai have a strong sense of personal pride and honor. It is the same reason it is not permitted in duels. I think not understanding why, is not actually understanding samurai and the tenants of bushido.

Regarding duels, it seems to me that it's just a result of the fact that it's supposed to be 1-on-1, with no outside help whatsoever, magical or otherwise. But court isn't 1-on-1, so applying the same restriction isn't intuitive.

Court is the exact same. I think there is a misconception of a lot of people as to what "court" is in Rokugan. It is mostly a place of challanges, like I mentioned above in things like sadane, performance, go etc.The discussion and debate between two courtiers is seen as a "1 on 1" also, where two courtiers (sometimes more than) verbally spar with eachother, it is very much a game to them, with a lot of chuckles and guffawing in the background

The reason why it is perfectly acceptable in a skirmish, is the same reason 2 bushi fighting off bandits is acceptable. It is not a direct contest of between samurai.

And I do agree with you! this kind of stuff is not really fleshed out in 4th ed. That just doesn't mean it doesn't exist in Rokugani lore. I haven't read all of the 4th ed expansions, so I am not sure what is said about courts in that, but the core book for sure doesn't have the space to go through it all sadly.