Since I've reached a good pausing point with my Excessively Ambitious Social Redesign , now I give you my Even More Excessively Ambitious Magical Redesign!

As the name suggests, this will be even more far-reaching than that one. With courtiers and social stuff, I felt the game needed a more coherent underpinning of basic skill uses, and then techniques designed to build off of that foundation. In practice, that meant I made relatively substantial changes to some of the mechanics, but kept a number of things more or less the same, and the fluff was almost 100% untouched. With shugenja, however, I think I'm going to do a bit more.

My core principle here is the "three pillars" concept somebody mentioned in the Shugenja Thread of Doom: I'm envisioning a setup where L5R is equally built around combat (bushi, with ninja as a special case), court (courtiers, with artisans as a special case), and spiritual matters (shugenja, with monks as a special case). This means that on a flavor level as well as a mechanical one, the primary purpose of shugenja will be to deal with spiritual matters, rather than to do kami-assisted combat or court.

What do I mean by "spiritual matters"?

* Dealing with entities religiously venerated by Rokugani: Fortunes, ancestors, etc. This includes learning the will of the Heavens, propitiating their anger, beseeching their blessings, etc, and extends to local kami that are the spirits of certain rivers/mountains/trees/stones/whatever.
* Dealing with entities from the various Spirit Realms: this is actually the broad set of which the previous point is a subset, since Tengoku and Yomi are Spirit Realms, but I think in the long run it will help to look at them separately. This includes trapping spirits, warding them off, appeasing them, banishing them, and counteracting their special abilities, e.g. making incorporeal spirits corporeal so your bushi friend can hit them better.
* Divination of both the predictive and geomantic sorts. This includes figuring out what places and times are beneficial or detrimental for certain activities, making alterations to the spiritual energy of a place or time to create a benefit or detriment, etc.
* Caring for the physical and spiritual well-being of the populace (specifically the samurai portion thereof). This includes identifying Spiritual Advantages and Disadvantages, temporarily bestowing/inflicting/suppressing same, strengthening or weakening people's Traits and Rings, etc. Both this and the above will be the fluff explanation for buffs and debuffs, which (instead of direct damage) will be the primary function of shugenja in combat.

In other words, I'm focusing on the kind of thing done by priests in the source material of East Asian/Japanese history and folklore. My reasons for doing this are twofold:

1) I don't feel like the current mechanics support those concepts in a very nuanced manner. Either there's no way to do a thing, or it can be done but only by that one tiny group of people in an alternate path or an advanced school, or it can be done but the implementation looks kind of like using a sledgehammer to take out a fly. I would like to be able to play in a campaign where the above is the sort of thing shugenja are expected to do as a matter of course; redesigning the system will make that easier.

2) I suspect this approach will render moot a lot of the balance concerns people have about shugenja vs. bushi and courtiers. If their mechanics have a primary purpose that *isn't* killing or socialing, then each group has its own space to shine, and you don't have to "nerf" shugenja to keep them from stepping on other schools' toes.

Possible objections:

a) "Does this mean bushi and courtiers can't do anything about spiritual stuff?"

Nope. The way I intend to do this, it will be the equivalent of the current combat and social setups: you can do *some* stuff via buying the appropriate skills and Traits, but the people with specialized abilities will have a leg up.

b) "But this gives shugenja nothing to do if there isn't spiritual stuff in the game!"

This is no different from the existing issue where a bushi has very little to do if the campaign doesn't involve much combat, or a courtier has nothing to do if the campaign spends the whole time in the Shadowlands or fighting an invading army. If you really aren't ever going to make these things part of the story, then gently suggest to your player that maybe a shugenja isn't the most appropriate character for the campaign. Or look at your plot from a more spiritual angle, and see if you can't find ways to incorporate that into the challenges you have in mind.

c) "That kind of thing doesn't happen very often in L5R, though!"

True -- ish. The books often give us lines like this one from Imperial Archives : "Shugenja do not merely know that other Spirit Realms and the Celestial Wheel exist; they interact with them on a daily basis." That isn't what we usually see in the fictions, though, nor the spells and techniques of most shugenja. That's why I said this is a more ambitious redesign than the courtier one: in addition to mechanical changes, I'm making the fluff assumption that these rules will be used to run a version of L5R where spiritual things are indeed the daily routine of shugenja, on par with combat for bushi and court for courtiers. If you don't want to run that kind of game, these rules won't be a good fit.

I want to pause here and note that for the sake of coherence, I'm operating in a particular theological framework that seeks to address a disjunct between Rokugan and its primary inspiration, Japan. In Japanese religion, what Rokugan calls a "Fortune" would be a kami. This applies both to the spiritual personification of a natural feature (one of the other names for Mt. Fuji is Sengen; "the Fortune of Mount Sengen" = the kami of Mt. Fuji) and to the deified spirits of deceased humans (the kami Tenjin is the deified spirit of Sugawara no Michizane, and corresponds to the Fortune Tenjin/Tengen). I feel that the easiest way to explain why "you can talk to the elemental kami" means "you are also in charge of praying to the ancestors and Fortunes and so forth" is to say that "kami" is a concept that stretches all the way from the Empire-founding big-k Kami, through Fortunes and ancestors, through the spirits of important natural features, down to the elemental little-k kami -- and the reason talking to the elemental kami means you get tapped to act as a priest is, the elemental kami serve as a conduit for talking to those bigger and more powerful entities. Non-shugenja can pray and hope that Hachiman blesses them in battle or Hujokuko sends them healthy children; shugenja have a direct hotline.

Actual specifics, I'm still working on. But here are some things I know will be true.

1) The bulk of the spells available to all shugenja will focus on the bullet points from the beginning of this post, in various forms and from various angles. Some of these may wind up having more or less the same mechanical effects as the old spells, but reskinned to different fluff: rather than asking the fire kami to light your bushi friend's sword on fire and do more damage, you pray via the fire kami to Hachiman, who gives the bushi his martial blessing. Others will be entirely new.

2) A number of the effects currently performed by spells that don't fit the above framework will be offloaded into techniques, of which each shugenja school will get five. This will have the effect of giving schools a much stronger differentiation than they have right now, which I consider to be a plus. (For example, the Kuni techniques will be all about dealing with Tainted stuff, while the Asahina will bestow social blessings, the Yoritomo will control weather, etc.) I'm unlikely to make it so that those effects are *only* available to the schools that specialize in them, but it may well be more difficult to learn, say, illusion spells if you aren't a Soshi -- I have a notion for how to implement that, but haven't decided anything for sure yet.

3) There will also be a couple of add-on systems to supplement this pillar. One will be for spiritual purity: shugenja will be expected to observe certain taboos, with consequences if they violate them, while bushi are considered defiled by their duties and must make an effort if they want to counteract this. But you can do stuff to purify yourself, or take a Disadvantage if you want to play a hard-drinking meat-eating shugenja, and some school techniques will mitigate those consequences (e.g. Tamori can wade into melee combat), etc. Another system will be based on Mirumoto Saito's Appeasement homebrew from the old forum: it lets anybody (not just shugenja) pray to ancestors or Fortunes for a mechanical blessing. And these things interlock; the roll to get divine favor is Lore: Theology / Void, which means a Mirumoto bushi would be pretty good at it, but a shugenja is more likely to have the skill for it than most swordsmen, and in the meanwhile the bushi suffers a penalty for being defiled unless they make an effort to purify themselves beforehand. This turns all that "pray to Tengoku and Yomi!" stuff into more than just a background detail; it can be a meaningful force in the characters' lives (and the shape of the campaign).

So that's my starting position. Specifics will take a while longer. :-) But in the meanwhile: thoughts?

Stuff I'd like to see:

1) a broader range of magical "styles" and some more "out there" schools -- Moto shamans, for example

2) conflicting philosophies -- reverent vs functional, pacifist vs militant, open-minded/experimentalist vs hardline traditionalist, etc -- and actual impact on the setting from those tensions

3) a way to incorporate non-prayer magic into the game, even if most Rokugani would consider it heretical (we have the seeds of this in meishodo, and the magic systems of the non-humans, and so on)

4) --

a) void magic should be a bit more mysterious and sometimes dangerous or creepy

b) the notion that the Void and the Nothing might be two sides of the same coin should be played with a bit more

c) I'd like some way for shadowy powers to not be locked into the sole purview of the Lying Darkness and its mindless minions

5) things like alchemy and talismans and ofuda and so on that are common in Asian mysticism and stories shouldn't be hidden and quick-brushed inside particular schools

1) a broader range of magical "styles" and some more "out there" schools -- Moto shamans, for example

It may not hit exactly what you're looking for, but I feel in some ways that offloading the less priestly magic onto school techniques will make the range of styles more apparent, because the weirder stuff won't be available to everybody. I mean, the current magic in L5R already does a huge range of stuff -- it's just all tossed into the same pot, so there's very little differentiation unless a particular campaign chooses to really pursue that goal.

2) conflicting philosophies -- reverent vs functional, pacifist vs militant, open-minded/experimentalist vs hardline traditionalist, etc -- and actual impact on the setting from those tensions

Do you envision a mechanical aspect to this? Or would it be a matter of how characters and factions relate to one another story-wise? (I ask only because right now my focus is going to be on fluff as it interlocks with mechanics, rather than altering setting history in a purely narrative fashion. But if you had a notion for this being reflected mechanically, I'd love to hear it.)

3) a way to incorporate non-prayer magic into the game, even if most Rokugani would consider it heretical (we have the seeds of this in meishodo, and the magic systems of the non-humans, and so on)

I'm not likely to go too far with that, for two reasons:

1) Saying there are multiple ways of doing magic adds cosmological complications that I don't think L5R ever really delved into very far, beyond the obviously heretical maho. I'm not especially keen on opening that particular can of worms myself, to be honest.

2) A goodly portion of the "non-prayer magic" that exists in the game (meishodo, Naga magic) is just the same old spells with a paint job on top, and that kind of annoys me. But it's a lot easier to design than all-new material like Nezumi Name magic or Soultwister spells . . . .

4) --

a) void magic should be a bit more mysterious and sometimes dangerous or creepy

Amen. I lobbied hard for the "side effects of Void magic" material late in 4e, and will be putting serious thought into how to implement it here in a way that doesn't just make it a fifth flavor of elemental magic.

b) the notion that the Void and the Nothing might be two sides of the same coin should be played with a bit more

Heh. I think the Lying Darkness is waaaaaaay down my priority list for this redesign.

c) I'd like some way for shadowy powers to not be locked into the sole purview of the Lying Darkness and its mindless minions

Can you be more specific? I'm not sure what you are classing as "shadowy powers."

5) things like alchemy and talismans and ofuda and so on that are common in Asian mysticism and stories shouldn't be hidden and quick-brushed inside particular schools

Absolutely. There will probably end up being some kind of interface between the Artisan/Craft rules and shugenja mechanics, where you can imbue an item with a low-level single-use effect. Then people like Yogo Wardmasters and Toritaka Exorcists can have better versions of that, rather than being the only ones who can do it to begin with.

As someone who has always wanted the supernatural to have a greater impact on the setting and gameplay (in the sense of 'prayers to the Fortunes and Ancestors matter', rather than 'gaki attack the party on a daily basis'), I greatly approve of this concept, and given your work on other things, trust you to do a good job of it.

I am less certain about the notion that the elemental kami serve as conduits for the Kami, Ancestors, Fortunes (both the Seven Great Fortunes and the myriad Lesser Fortunes), and so forth. I agree that it helps make sense of the fact that shugenja are also the spiritual guides for their Clans, but there are other ways of making that coherent- for one example, shugenja are already by necessity highly literate, and are obliged to spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the supernatural/spiritual, perfecting the forms of prayers, and so on, so it makes perfect sense for them to spend their time on other religious matters as well, since there's already overlap, in a way that there isn't for most bushi or courtiers. There there are other possible ways of meshing their ability to speak to the kami and their role as spiritual leaders, but I don't want to spend too much time on them, and it's not really the point. I'm not going to say that you're wrong, and I'm sure your system works perfectly well when applied consistently, but I'm not sure that it's necessary, or that it's necessarily better than the status quo. To address some of the examples you gave, I like the idea of creating a Lore: Theology/Void roll for heavenly favour (though I am somewhat concerned about the possibility for abuse by duelists), at which most shugenja would naturally be better than most bushi; I'm not so sure about a shugenja's prayer to the Fire kami being answered, albeit indirectly, by Hachiman. I can't pinpoint any precise reasons why I feel uneasy about this, but will probably post again once I have a more considered opinion on the matter.

Otherwise, I like where this is going. Giving shugenja 'school techniques' seems reasonable, especially with a reworked spell system, and I like the idea of making spiritual purity matter a lot. Putting shugenja in their own corner, rather than having to balance their abilities with those of mundane samurai, also seems like a good idea. I'm just dubious about collapsing, or weakening, the boundaries between different kinds of supernatural entities. Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing what comes out of this!

2) conflicting philosophies -- reverent vs functional, pacifist vs militant, open-minded/experimentalist vs hardline traditionalist, etc -- and actual impact on the setting from those tensions

Do you envision a mechanical aspect to this? Or would it be a matter of how characters and factions relate to one another story-wise? (I ask only because right now my focus is going to be on fluff as it interlocks with mechanics, rather than altering setting history in a purely narrative fashion. But if you had a notion for this being reflected mechanically, I'd love to hear it.)

This relates, obliquely, to something I was discussing with Tacticus not too long ago, in the context of the Honour system- the idea that there should be some reward for doing things 'the right way', but also some kind of temptation not to. My instinct is that people who consistently do the right thing should do it better (whether because the Heavens favour them, their Ancestors guide their hands, or simply because they have the conviction that what they're doing is right, and so they commit to it harder), while those who don't should have a wider range of plausible options.

I'll try not to side-track this thread too much with a discussion of Honour mechanics and so on (though I may open a new thread if there's interest), but, as the seed of a suggestion for shugenja:

Arrange spells/prayers/whatever-shugenja-actions-are-called, and shugenja schools, in tiers from 'low' to 'high', with the most experimental/dishonourable at the bottom, and the most unimpeachably irreproachable at the top (there would have to be some modifications for school- Kitsu and Asahina, for instance, would treat spells that inflict harm as dishonourable, whereas Isawa might not, despite the Isawa being otherwise generally fairly honourable). As long as a shugenja only uses prayers from their school's tier or above, they get some kind of bonus to doing so, scaling with their tier. If a shugenja uses a prayer from below their tier, they incur spiritual impurity penalties (which you're already building in) of severity depending on how far below them the prayer was, and risk dropping tier outright. Thus, honourable/traditionalist/whatever shugenja, like Kitsu/Asahina/Isawa/Moshi, would have an advantage in calling on the spirits, as long as they did what they were supposed to; whereas Kuni or Soshi, while lacking the strength of purity of the traditionalist shugenja, would be able to use a much wider range of prayers without penalty.

I'm not going to suggest what the bonuses/penalties should be, because I'm frankly not very good at rules-lawyering, while Kinzen and others here are much better at actual mechanics, but it's an idea!

As someone who has always wanted the supernatural to have a greater impact on the setting and gameplay (in the sense of 'prayers to the Fortunes and Ancestors matter', rather than 'gaki attack the party on a daily basis'), I greatly approve of this concept, and given your work on other things, trust you to do a good job of it.

Thank you!

I am less certain about the notion that the elemental kami serve as conduits for the Kami, Ancestors, Fortunes (both the Seven Great Fortunes and the myriad Lesser Fortunes), and so forth. I agree that it helps make sense of the fact that shugenja are also the spiritual guides for their Clans, but there are other ways of making that coherent- for one example, shugenja are already by necessity highly literate, and are obliged to spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the supernatural/spiritual, perfecting the forms of prayers, and so on, so it makes perfect sense for them to spend their time on other religious matters as well, since there's already overlap, in a way that there isn't for most bushi or courtiers. There there are other possible ways of meshing their ability to speak to the kami and their role as spiritual leaders, but I don't want to spend too much time on them, and it's not really the point. I'm not going to say that you're wrong, and I'm sure your system works perfectly well when applied consistently, but I'm not sure that it's necessary, or that it's necessarily better than the status quo. To address some of the examples you gave, I like the idea of creating a Lore: Theology/Void roll for heavenly favour (though I am somewhat concerned about the possibility for abuse by duelists), at which most shugenja would naturally be better than most bushi; I'm not so sure about a shugenja's prayer to the Fire kami being answered, albeit indirectly, by Hachiman. I can't pinpoint any precise reasons why I feel uneasy about this, but will probably post again once I have a more considered opinion on the matter.

Let me see if I can explain my thinking a bit better.

To my eye, the weird thing here is the entire concept of "elemental kami" that shugenja talk to in the first place. That doesn't really have any parallel in Japanese religion, so right off the bat, we have to figure out how that interfaces with the ancestors, Fortunism, and the Tao (the three main elements of Rokugani religion).

My experience is that it doesn't interface very smoothly (and this disjunct is a thing the setting materials I've read tend to sweep under the rug). Why? Because Rokugani people don't worship the teeny-tiny not-really-sentient atomic kami that make up the world around them; they don't even really worship the Elemental Dragons very much. So while the Elements themselves are obviously an important thing in a sort of "scientific" sense (you're sick because your Elements are out of balance; strengthening this Element within myself lets me do cool things), they don't really come across as a religious component, ergo the kind of thing that ought to be at the core of what Rokugani priests do.

From the other direction: since they *are* priests, shouldn't the core of what they do be, y'know, kind of religious somehow? I want "we venerate our ancestors and the Fortunes" to be more than fluff; I want it to be as concrete and relevant as a bushi saying "I swing weapons to kill people." Which means that their mechanics need to be about religion, about praying and supplicating and appeasing the entities that Rokugani actually worship.

Now, I'll be frank. If this game weren't called "Legend of the Five Rings," I'd be tempted to chuck that whole "elemental kami" concept in the first place, and make all shugenja magic about calling on Fortunes and ancestors and so forth for aid. But that's more of a revision to the setting than I really want to make . . . which means I have to find a way to fit the two together.

I could make two separate sets of shugenja mechanics, one where they're praying to powerful and sentient spiritual powers in Tengoku and Yomi, the other where they're acting like benders out of Avatar . But I don't like the idea of bifurcating things that way. I could just say that some spells happen by talking to the elemental kami and some happen by praying to Fortunes . . . but then why do they use the same mechanics, and why are the Fortune-oriented spells linked to Elements just like the other kind? The only way I see to reconcile those two things is to say the elemental kami are linked to the bigger powers -- that you aren't actually praying *to* the fire kami, just *through* them to Hachiman. Because otherwise it implies that you really do worship the little atomic kami that make up material existence (but only when you need something from them, at which point you're more ordering them to act as your servants rather than venerating them). That just isn't coherent to me on a worldbuilding level. This workaround is a little convoluted, I'll admit -- that's why I said I was briefly tempted to eliminate that whole aspect -- but it's the best I've been able to think of.

Having said that: if somebody has a better notion for how to reconcile "we hear the elemental kami and order them around" with "this is a key means by which we interact with the entities we worship," I'd be more than happy to entertain it.

This relates, obliquely, to something I was discussing with Tacticus not too long ago, in the context of the Honour system- the idea that there should be some reward for doing things 'the right way', but also some kind of temptation not to. My instinct is that people who consistently do the right thing should do it better (whether because the Heavens favour them, their Ancestors guide their hands, or simply because they have the conviction that what they're doing is right, and so they commit to it harder), while those who don't should have a wider range of plausible options.

If we want to pursue this further, a new thread is probably the way to go. But while we're here: I've always felt that the temptation to do things the wrong way is inherent in the fact that they give you options a more upstanding person won't consider. If you're honorable and I'm not, you've got six tools in your kit and I have twelve (numbers made up for illustrative purposes). The temptation is to lie to avoid consequences, to bribe where you cannot convince, to seduce because you cannot have that person in the light of day. I don't personally see a need to give incentive beyond that --

-- but I should note that I say this from the standpoint of having eliminated Low Skills as a separate category, so that they're generally Low applications of other skills instead. My major reason for doing this was to make that temptation more real, because you're just applying something you already know how to do in a dishonorable fashion. That's way more attractive than rolling a skill I don't have and will therefore suck at. For "this is the easy way out" to appeal to a player, it really has to be an *easy* way out, not a harder one.

Arrange spells/prayers/whatever-shugenja-actions-are-called, and shugenja schools, in tiers from 'low' to 'high', with the most experimental/dishonourable at the bottom, and the most unimpeachably irreproachable at the top (there would have to be some modifications for school- Kitsu and Asahina, for instance, would treat spells that inflict harm as dishonourable, whereas Isawa might not, despite the Isawa being otherwise generally fairly honourable). As long as a shugenja only uses prayers from their school's tier or above, they get some kind of bonus to doing so, scaling with their tier. If a shugenja uses a prayer from below their tier, they incur spiritual impurity penalties (which you're already building in) of severity depending on how far below them the prayer was, and risk dropping tier outright. Thus, honourable/traditionalist/whatever shugenja, like Kitsu/Asahina/Isawa/Moshi, would have an advantage in calling on the spirits, as long as they did what they were supposed to; whereas Kuni or Soshi, while lacking the strength of purity of the traditionalist shugenja, would be able to use a much wider range of prayers without penalty.

Hmmm. I think that operates off a concept of spiritual purity that isn't the one I have in mind -- it feels to me more like a Christian concept of sin, instead of pollution. (Sneak preview of the purity mechanics I'm working on: it gets complicated because setting fluff inclines me to think I've got to hybridize Buddhist and Shinto concepts, which don't actually line up. But it's more concerned with bodily pollution from blood/corpses/drunkenness/sexual impropriety than things like honesty and duty, which is what Honor is all about.) If a shugenja does something morally scuzzy, they lose Honor like anybody else, but I don't know that it makes sense to double-penalize them with impurity, too.

Interesting things about incoherence of Rokugani cosmology and role of shugenja, not reproduced in full for the sake of space.

Thank you for the detailed reply! It's clear that you've thought deeply about this, so take what I say as contrary suggestions, rather than dismissals. With that said:

In the first instance, I disagree with your implication that the small-k kami aren't treated religiously. It is probably true that most Rokugani don't worship them in any meaningful sense, but that doesn't mean the same is true of shugenja. The Kitsu/Lion view that the kami are too sacred to be used for inflicting harm, for instance, is clearly a religious belief. The Soshi are somewhat notorious for thinking that, since the kami have no innate sense of morality, there's no such thing as an 'improper' use for them- which appears to be non-religious, but is in fact of spiritual significance (in the same sense as atheism is a religious viewpoint; by explicitly denying something, you implicitly accept its relevance). For another example, consider the story on pp. 213-214 of the 3e core book (yes, I know, material from previous editions is problematic, but still it's there). The whole story is relevant, but to quote the most significant passage:

"I saw power," Sukejuro whispered. "Power greater than any I could ever possess, power greater than I could hope to master."

"Then you saw the truth." the old priest said. "A shugenja does not possess such power. He does not master such power. Such forces belong only to the kami. Yet if we show them the respect they are due, offer them the tribute they deserve, the spirits will return that devotion. It is the kami, not me, who have done the things you see here. I have merely directed their actions. A shugenja must always remember that the spirits are not his slaves...

If that doesn't indicate a religious reverence for the kami, I don't know what does (for the record, the priest in question is a Tamori).

That also addresses your point about bossing around the kami- in theory, at least, that isn't what shugenja do. They master particular prayers, and offer them in the proper manner, and the kami do as requested, but that doesn't remove agency from the kami. The issue in this case, as in so many others, is one of mechanics (in which shugenja need to be able to do things with some degree of reliability) clashing with fluff (in which shugenja can only pray to the kami and hope they do as requested), but that doesn't mean the fluff itself needs to be changed.

I absolutely agree that the role of shugenja should be more religious, and less wizard-y, and that it's more than a little strange that the primary entities with which shugenja work are entities which are not generally worshiped by the Rokugani at large, but there's no reason why shugenja themselves can't view the kami in religious terms, and extend that religious expertise to other areas.

Stuff about Honour

I will make a new thread, and link it here when it's up, to avoid further distraction.

EDIT: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/195932-rpg-honour/ There.

Response to suggestion

You're right about it being a different kind of spiritual impurity. I agree that 'spiritual purity' within the setting generally refers to cleanliness, taboo-avoidance, and so on, and that's what its mechanics should primarily reflect. The reason I suggested using it in this instance, is that a shugenja who misuses the kami (even if only from their own perspective - say an Asahina who drops a rock on an attacker's head -) would, I think, feel constrained in calling upon them again unless and until atonement was made. It's tricky to tie it to honour, since it isn't necessarily morally reprehensible (there's nothing wrong with self-defence); it's just wrong . Likewise, being covered in blood doesn't necessarily mean you've violated any of the tenets of Bushido; it's just a deeply undesirable condition, and nobody will want anything to do with you until you've satisfactorily resolved it. For the same reason, it's not necessarily a double-penalty - our Asahina friend wouldn't lose any honour in this instance - unless they're both misusing the kami and breaching one or more of the tenets of Bushido. But you're certainly right that it's a different kind of impurity, and not entirely satisfactory for that reason. As I said, coming up with formal mechanics is not my strong point, and if anyone has any improvements (or outright better ideas), fantastic; it would be, however, one way of representing the disagreements that exist between shugenja as to appropriate uses of the kami.

In the first instance, I disagree with your implication that the small-k kami aren't treated religiously. It is probably true that most Rokugani don't worship them in any meaningful sense, but that doesn't mean the same is true of shugenja. The Kitsu/Lion view that the kami are too sacred to be used for inflicting harm, for instance, is clearly a religious belief. The Soshi are somewhat notorious for thinking that, since the kami have no innate sense of morality, there's no such thing as an 'improper' use for them- which appears to be non-religious, but is in fact of spiritual significance (in the same sense as atheism is a religious viewpoint; by explicitly denying something, you implicitly accept its relevance). For another example, consider the story on pp. 213-214 of the 3e core book (yes, I know, material from previous editions is problematic, but still it's there). The whole story is relevant, but to quote the most significant passage:

"I saw power," Sukejuro whispered. "Power greater than any I could ever possess, power greater than I could hope to master."

"Then you saw the truth." the old priest said. "A shugenja does not possess such power. He does not master such power. Such forces belong only to the kami. Yet if we show them the respect they are due, offer them the tribute they deserve, the spirits will return that devotion. It is the kami, not me, who have done the things you see here. I have merely directed their actions. A shugenja must always remember that the spirits are not his slaves...

If that doesn't indicate a religious reverence for the kami, I don't know what does (for the record, the priest in question is a Tamori).

I guess my issue is that, while the fiction may say that, the general tenor of the game (at least in 4e) has been to pay minimal lip service to the "prayer" and "respect" and "tribute" side of things, with no actual force behind the idea. The idea that the kami are too sacred to be used in war is at odds with the sheer number of spells that are designed for exactly that purpose; the idea that a priest needs to show devotion is undercut by, as you say, the need for reliability, which means it doesn't matter how you've been behaving, because your roll is unchanged whether you act with total piety or talk about the kami like your slaves. Other editions may have presented it differently, and I do think that's relevant for my purposes here; it shows me there was an idea that got lost along the way, which I can look to for enlightenment in designing my own version.

But let's grant for a moment that yes, shugenja really do worship the atomic kami -- not the spirits of rivers and mountains and rocks but the fire kami in every bit of steel and the earth kami in your body and the air kami in that breeze -- even though there are no temples or (so far as I know) formalized rituals for honoring them in a way I would recognize as "religious." With that taken as given: how is that part of the same system as the Fortunes? Why do I pray to the air kami to cast a spell called Tenjin's Ear, instead of praying to Tenjin himself? The only way it makes sense to me is if I view the atomic kami as messengers of a sort, like praying to a Catholic saint so the saint will intercede on my behalf with God. Otherwise I have the kami over here and the Fortunes over there, and everything's being done by the kami even when the effect has the name of a Fortune on it, and how exactly do I interact with the Fortunes, again? How are they a meaningful presence in my religious life, when the atomic kami do anything I ask them to and never need anything in return?

I will make a new thread, and link it here when it's up, to avoid further distraction.

I look forward to it!

You're right about it being a different kind of spiritual impurity. I agree that 'spiritual purity' within the setting generally refers to cleanliness, taboo-avoidance, and so on, and that's what its mechanics should primarily reflect. The reason I suggested using it in this instance, is that a shugenja who misuses the kami (even if only from their own perspective - say an Asahina who drops a rock on an attacker's head -) would, I think, feel constrained in calling upon them again unless and until atonement was made.

In that particular case, I would say that dropping a rock on an attacker's head pollutes the shugenja, even if they don't cause the bloodshed with their own hands. The way I'm looking at it, "misusing the kami" falls primarily into two categories: using them to do dishonorable things (which causes you to lose Honor, but may not be impure), and using them to do impure things (which may not cause you to lose Honor, but does cause you purity-based difficulties). I'm willing to leave non-dishonorable, non-impure things to GM discretion, like penalizing a character who routinely calls upon the kami for trivial purposes.

I guess my issue is that, while the fiction may say that, the general tenor of the game (at least in 4e) has been to pay minimal lip service to the "prayer" and "respect" and "tribute" side of things, with no actual force behind the idea. The idea that the kami are too sacred to be used in war is at odds with the sheer number of spells that are designed for exactly that purpose; the idea that a priest needs to show devotion is undercut by, as you say, the need for reliability, which means it doesn't matter how you've been behaving, because your roll is unchanged whether you act with total piety or talk about the kami like your slaves. Other editions may have presented it differently, and I do think that's relevant for my purposes here; it shows me there was an idea that got lost along the way, which I can look to for enlightenment in designing my own version.

That's all entirely fair. I wish there was more emphasis on the prayer, respect, etc. angle, and this seems like a reasonable place to ask- if there was more emphasis on the need for reverence on the shugenja's part, would that go anywhere towards resolving part of your issue with coherency?

With that taken as given: how is that part of the same system as the Fortunes?

Does it have to be? The Honoured Ancestors are distinctly different from both the Elemental kami and the Fortunes (and the big-K Kami), but they're still a vitally important part of Rokugani cosmology and religious life- possibly the most important, if you ask the Kitsu. I don't mind there being multiple, distinct, categories of 'entities to which reverence is due', each of which inhabits a different Spirit Realm, and is to be worshiped separately and in its own way. If that is a problem for you, that's perfectly fine; and that may actually be a critical point of difference between our perspectives, in which case we may just have to agree to respectfully disagree. It is only a fictional setting, after all.

Why do I pray to the air kami to cast a spell called Tenjin's Ear, instead of praying to Tenjin himself?

It's an evocative name? You could pray to Tenjin, if you wanted, but he's reasonably likely to be busy with other things, and even if he isn't, may not bother to help a single shugenja. The Air kami, by contrast, are right there, and always perfectly happy to help, if you ask them nicely.

How are [the Fortunes] a meaningful presence in my religious life, when the atomic kami do anything I ask them to and never need anything in return?

In my ideal world, that wouldn't be the case. I think - and correct me if I'm wrong - that we agree on the need to make the role of the shugenja more religious, and more spiritual, but disagree on the direction of reorientation. For you, the solution is to link the kami and the Fortunes (and other spirits), thereby giving shugenja indirect access to all of them; for me, the solution is to re-spiritualise the kami themselves.

They will not necessarily do anything you ask them to- maybe you didn't ask nicely enough, maybe you or someone who looks like you once upset them, or maybe they just don't feel like it; and they absolutely do need things in return: burnt offerings for the Fire kami; word-games/poems and dances for the Air kami; harmonious positioning of rocks for the Earth kami; making changes for the Water kami; and things of the sort. Individual kami may well require specific things to be done/provided in exchange for their aid, or refuse point-blank to listen to a shugenja who has offended them, while others might be content to just do as they're asked.

Does my solution create problems on the mechanical side of things? Yes, absolutely. Making shugenja abilities dependent on the mood of the kami involved raises many issues- but so does implying that shugenja prayers go to (and are delivered by) the Fortunes, who are at least as likely to be arbitrary and capricious. The difference is where the complications arise, and what kinds of actions might be required to address them.

In that particular case, I would say that dropping a rock on an attacker's head pollutes the shugenja, even if they don't cause the bloodshed with their own hands. The way I'm looking at it, "misusing the kami" falls primarily into two categories: using them to do dishonorable things (which causes you to lose Honor, but may not be impure), and using them to do impure things (which may not cause you to lose Honor, but does cause you purity-based difficulties). I'm willing to leave non-dishonorable, non-impure things to GM discretion, like penalizing a character who routinely calls upon the kami for trivial purposes.

That seems an adequate solution. It does go some way towards addressing the initial issue, which was differences of opinion regarding appropriate uses of the kami- it doesn't go all the way, but probably far enough. It works for me, I think.

I think that this is an incredibly ambitious project, and I am happy you are doing it, Kinzen. I was actually going to begin working on something similar myself, but I did not have the free time to solidly commit to such an endeavor.

Thank you very much, by the way, for firmly embracing my "Three Pillars of L5R" design philosophy. Here's hoping that it is something that will carry over into whatever new form of L5R we will (hopefully) see in 2018!

Some of the descriptive text for existing spells in 4th ed make a pretty clear assertion that the prayer underlying that spell is devoted to a fortune or other specific entity, and NOT to the local "generic" elemental kami.

Obviously a total rework need not include that bit -- just pointing it out as something that's there right now.

PS: I have to mention that I'm getting a chuckle out of the term "atomic kami". I know what's meant by it, but that's alongside the notion of "atomic" being an element... and what spells one might call on the atomic kami to cast...

Kinzen -- I am trying to reply to your questions, but no matter how I format my response, this silly forum software keeps telling me that I'm exceeding the allowed number of quoted blocks of text.

Its cap seems to be ten quote, including embedded quotes. I'm thinking I'll just start italicizing or something when I need to quote more than that. :-P

(I'll respond to the other comments later -- gotta get ready to run an L5R session in a couple of hours!)

MaxKilljoy - 1) a broader range of magical "styles" and some more "out there" schools -- Moto shamans, for example

It may not hit exactly what you're looking for, but I feel in some ways that offloading the less priestly magic onto school techniques will make the range of styles more apparent, because the weirder stuff won't be available to everybody. I mean, the current magic in L5R already does a huge range of stuff -- it's just all tossed into the same pot, so there's very little differentiation unless a particular campaign chooses to really pursue that goal.

Despite the fluff and the way that the different clans and families and schools are presented as distinct, and highly guarded about their knowledge, most shugenja have felt a bit... generic, and they all seem to play pretty much the same, cast the same spells, etc.

(Digging around, it looks like there was a Moto "death priest" school in the older edition(s), and I guess before meeting the Ki-Rin, in their days as the Ujik-hai, they were purely followers of their death gods, rather than more broadly ancestor-worshipping shamans, so maybe that was a poor example.... I think I was projecting the idea if steppes shamanic religion onto the Mongol-analog Ujik-Hai.)

MaxKilljoy - 2) conflicting philosophies -- reverent vs functional, pacifist vs militant, open-minded/experimentalist vs hardline traditionalist, etc -- and actual impact on the setting from those tensions

Do you envision a mechanical aspect to this? Or would it be a matter of how characters and factions relate to one another story-wise? (I ask only because right now my focus is going to be on fluff as it interlocks with mechanics, rather than altering setting history in a purely narrative fashion. But if you had a notion for this being reflected mechanically, I'd love to hear it.)

I wish I did.

At the very least, a line or two about how each school looks at those issues and how they feel about the other shugenja schools (see, the Great Clans presenation and their comments on the other Clans in the 4th ed base book) would go a long way to giving the feel of conflicting worldviews.

MaxKilljoy - 3) a way to incorporate non-prayer magic into the game, even if most Rokugani would consider it heretical (we have the seeds of this in meishodo, and the magic systems of the non-humans, and so on)

I'm not likely to go too far with that, for two reasons:

1) Saying there are multiple ways of doing magic adds cosmological complications that I don't think L5R ever really delved into very far, beyond the obviously heretical maho. I'm not especially keen on opening that particular can of worms myself, to be honest.

2) A goodly portion of the "non-prayer magic" that exists in the game (meishodo, Naga magic) is just the same old spells with a paint job on top, and that kind of annoys me. But it's a lot easier to design than all-new material like Nezumi Name magic or Soultwister spells . . . .

At least leave the door open for other approaches to magic, then.

In 4th ed, L5R seems to want to have it both ways, when it comes to whether the Rokugani sense of superiority and righteousness about their place in the universe is objectively true, or just subjectively endemic in the culture.

The "whether" and "how" questions regarding the broader world's cosmology, the questions posed by other beliefs and other approaches to magic, is a worldbuilding itch I can't resist scratching.

MaxKilljoy -- 4a) void magic should be a bit more mysterious and sometimes dangerous or creepy

Amen. I lobbied hard for the "side effects of Void magic" material late in 4e, and will be putting serious thought into how to implement it here in a way that doesn't just make it a fifth flavor of elemental magic.

MaxKilljoy -- 4b) the notion that the Void and the Nothing might be two sides of the same coin should be played with a bit more

Heh. I think the Lying Darkness is waaaaaaay down my priority list for this redesign.

MaxKilljoy -- 4c) I'd like some way for shadowy powers to not be locked into the sole purview of the Lying Darkness and its mindless minions

Can you be more specific? I'm not sure what you are classing as "shadowy powers."

I lumped all these under item 4 because, to me, they're all interconnected.

I think reworking the Lying Darkness would actually further the concept that touching the Void is a risk, and that maybe what one finds there depends a lot on what that person brings, rather than anything already waiting for them "in the dark"; would do away with the concept that the universe is a grand mistake on the part of a cosmic un-entity, and

make the Lying Darkness something else, a celestial being who waded too far into the abyss and was consumed by its own monster.

This frees up a lot of the "nothing" effects to be the dangers of touching the Void when your reach exceeds your grasp... and the dangers of "staring too long into the abyss".

Shadowmelding, slipping into the Void to appear somewhere else, clouding minds, etc. The things that are right now all crammed into "if you do that you're a servant of the Lying Darkness and it owns you" box -- even though, unlike taint and maho, there's nothing all that terrible (perhaps dishonorable if used in certain ways, but not terrible) about the acts even from a Rokugani point of view.

The danger in using that sort of magic/power should be from touching the Void, as above, not Yet Another Existential Unholy Enemy.

MaxKilljoy -- 5) things like alchemy and talismans and ofuda and so on that are common in Asian mysticism and stories shouldn't be hidden and quick-brushed inside particular schools.

Absolutely. There will probably end up being some kind of interface between the Artisan/Craft rules and shugenja mechanics, where you can imbue an item with a low-level single-use effect. Then people like Yogo Wardmasters and Toritaka Exorcists can have better versions of that, rather than being the only ones who can do it to begin with.

Just what I wanted to hear. The stylistic feel of magic from Asian myth and fiction should be more pronounced.

First off, sndwurks -- I didn't feel up to digging through the thread o' doom to find out who said the "pillars" thing first; my apologies for not crediting you! I think it's a good way of looking at things. As for this redesign, well . . . I don't claim it will be done in a timely manner. :-)

I'm going to quote with italics from here on out, both because the forum software annoys me, and because the forum is kaput right now -- I'm c&p-ing from my open tab into a word processor and writing my reply there. :-P

Idanthyrsus first:


That's all entirely fair. I wish there was more emphasis on the prayer, respect, etc. angle, and this seems like a reasonable place to ask- if there was more emphasis on the need for reverence on the shugenja's part, would that go anywhere towards resolving part of your issue with coherency?

It would make me happier in general -- but it wouldn't answer the question of "if the shugenja are praying to the elemental kami for everything they do, then how exactly are the Fortunes relevant?"

Regarding Fortunes being part of the same system:

Does it have to be? The Honoured Ancestors are distinctly different from both the Elemental kami and the Fortunes (and the big-K Kami), but they're still a vitally important part of Rokugani cosmology and religious life- possibly the most important, if you ask the Kitsu. I don't mind there being multiple, distinct, categories of 'entities to which reverence is due', each of which inhabits a different Spirit Realm, and is to be worshiped separately and in its own way.

But they aren't "vitally important" if the priests of Rokugan do everything by talking to the little atomic spirits that make up the physical world -- at least, I have a bloody hard time buying into that concept when actual character behavior tells me otherwise. Why would anybody bother praying to Hachiman when it's just empty words, and asking the fire kami for a favor has a much better result? I guess in theory Emma-O will be grumpyfaced when you show up in Meido because you didn't show the proper reverence to the spirits that are supposedly much more important but never really show their hand in the world . . . but that doesn't do much in game, where what happens after their PCs die is not generally a thing players worry about. (After all, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the PC dying means they stop being a PC.)

As MaxKilljoy said, the description of some of the spells explicitly says you're calling on a Fortune. Ironically, this isn't true of Tenjin's Ear -- I used that as my example because one of the PCs in my game has that spell, so it was the first one that came to mind -- but Soul of Kaze-no-Kami, for example, says "this spell calls on the Fortune of Wind." Howl of Isora says "This spell calls on the power of Isora, the Fortune of the Seashore." Request to Hato-no-Kami says "this spell is a prayer to the Fortunes that is carried by air kami to the ears of of a random bird." Suitengu's Curse: "This prayer invokes Suitengu, the Fortune of the Sea." Etc. You could easily strip that fluff away -- for every spell named after a Fortune that actually mentions them in the description, there's another that doesn't -- but then you wind up with a situation where a shugenja who wants to get anything done will spend their time and worship on elemental kami, and not worry about the Fortunes beyond the bare minimum, because they don't actually do anything.

(In fact, sometimes there's an even bigger problem in the fluff: Jurojin's Curse says "this spell calls on the Earth kami to remove all protection of Jurojin, the Fortune of Health and Longevity, from the target." Now the random atomic kami can OVERRULE A FORTUNE!)

I want a system that says, the Fortunes matter. Far more than a random microscopic kami who isn't even a fleck of dust on the scales of its Elemental Dragon matters. The Fortunes are the true power; the atomic kami are strong insofar as they convey and execute the will of Tengoku, and not the other way around.


In my ideal world, that wouldn't be the case. I think - and correct me if I'm wrong - that we agree on the need to make the role of the shugenja more religious, and more spiritual, but disagree on the direction of reorientation. For you, the solution is to link the kami and the Fortunes (and other spirits), thereby giving shugenja indirect access to all of them; for me, the solution is to re-spiritualise the kami themselves.

I plan to address the latter with the purity system, at least in part: if you don't obey the taboos, the kami won't listen to you as well. It doesn't directly address "are you using them frivolously/talking about them like they're your servants/etc" kinds of issues -- but I feel like if there's a system that says "you suffer a penalty when X happens," it's easier to also get away with a less quantified note that also says "and your GM can also hit you with a penalty if you're being a jerk." I think a stunt-dice system, like I'm using in my campaign (borrowed from Exalted), would also help with the idea that reverence is necessary: I might make casting TNs a bit higher, so that going the extra mile to please the kami is your insurance against failing.

But overall, I want *both* solutions.

And now on to MaxKilljoy's response:


Despite the fluff and the way that the different clans and families and schools are presented as distinct, and highly guarded about their knowledge, most shugenja have felt a bit... generic, and they all seem to play pretty much the same, cast the same spells, etc.

Right, which is why I say I think the techniques will help with that. A Tamori self-buffing with the Elements so she can wade into melee combat will look very different from an Asahina granting social buffs to her friends, even if they both took spells that allow them to sense the presence of spirits. And in this approach, the Asahina won't be able to build a warrior-priest indistinguishable from the Tamori.


Shadowmelding, slipping into the Void to appear somewhere else, clouding minds, etc. The things that are right now all crammed into "if you do that you're a servant of the Lying Darkness and it owns you" box -- even though, unlike taint and maho, there's nothing all that terrible (perhaps dishonorable if used in certain ways, but not terrible) about the acts even from a Rokugani point of view.

Well, some of those things (e.g. clouding minds) are already available in other Elements, especially Air -- The Eye Shall Not See, Your Heart's Enemy, even one actually called Cloud the Mind . . . but I disagree on there being a difference between Shadow powers and Tainted ones. Blood and Darkness, Curse of the Unblinking Eye, Curse of Weakness, Armor of Obsidian, and more don't do anything really all that terrible, any more than some of the things you named. The problem is the source of that power, and the fact that it will inevitably corrupt you. And I think that's actually important to the worldbuilding: it's easier to tempt people into using those powers if their effects aren't Obviously Evil Holy Crap Why Would You Ever Do That.

("People" in the character sense. Tempting a player into doing that is nigh-impossible, unless they've already decided to take their PC down that path.)

Which isn't to say that I don't think playing up a Void/Lying Darkness connection couldn't be interesting. Just that I also see the merits of the other side.

(Not going to bother quoting specific chunks of text here, since it's all basically the same subject material.)

I can't disagree with you on wanting the Fortunes to matter. By the sounds of it, though, we disagree on what it would mean for them to matter.

I'll admit that I had not read through the text of every spell to see how many referenced Fortunes explicitly, and how many didn't. But I honestly wouldn't read too much into that - given AEG's issues with maintaining consistency when it comes to text of mechanical significance, I would be dubious about the importance attached to relatively minor pieces of fluff text. The most important thing about it is that it demonstrates the contradictions within the current presentation of the power and relevance of the kami/Fortunes, which I think we both agree on.

The Fortunes should be awe-inspiring. The kami are capable of creating effects that would (or should) prompt most Rokugani to fall flat on their faces, and they are, as you say, nothing compared to the Fortunes. But I don't think that effect is best created by having shugenja prayers channel the Fortunes, even indirectly- if anything, by implying that the Fortunes answer the prayers of even the lowliest of shugenja with a fair degree of consistency (because, again, mechanics unfortunately require reliability), I feel it diminishes them. It's not that the Fortunes are powerless- it's that they're so far above the average Rokugani that shugenja wouldn't even consider calling on them, at least until the very highest levels, and even then only in desperation.

Moreover, I don't see why 'vitally important' has to mean 'can be relied upon to do something tangible'. There are plenty of people who, despite being able to explain all visible phenomena (or, more accurately, believing that all visible phenomena are explicable) by mechanistic/scientific forces, still believe in a god or supernatural power of some kind. The Ancestors and Fortunes (and Dragons, and so on) can and do intervene in mortal affairs from time to time, but not in any predictable manner. Praying to the Fire kami is much more reliable than praying to Hachiman, because they're right there, and generally disposed to help as long as they're treated right (and the shugenja of the Empire have spent centuries working out precisely how various spirits should be appeased); but Hachiman's favour is worth a great deal more than that of the Fire kami if he chooses to help you (or if you've sufficiently annoyed him that he curses you), and only shugenja have the capacity to speak directly to the kami anyway, whereas the Fortunes can - if they wish - hear, help, or hinder whoever they please. Shugenja may not be able to summon the Ancestors directly (let's ignore the Kitsu for a moment here, though I will take great interest in their specific mechanics when it gets to that stage), but knowledge of their approval (or lack of it) can make or break a samurai in a difficult position. Shugenja, as the experts in praying to and supplicating spirits, are naturally the go-to people for samurai who want to offer their devotions, which should be everyone.

If the Fortunes are part of the system, I feel it would be more appropriate for them to cause success or failure automatically. If the Fortunes don't want something to happen, it just doesn't; when they do want something to happen, it just does (yes, Fortune Favours the Mortal Man, but only in exceptional cases, and usually when the Heavens are themselves backing said Mortal Man against their supernatural opponent).

However, I'll keep repeating it until everyone's sick of hearing it - I respect your opinions greatly, and if you feel having the kami act as conduits for the Fortunes ultimately makes for a more compelling and coherent system than keeping them separate and giving their roles better definition, I am quite prepared to accept your judgement, and will content myself with appreciating what comes out the other end.

I bring up all this "stuff I want to see" not because I expect it all to be in the final "product", but because I think it's more productive (and fair) to get it out there now, rather than say at the end "well what about ________" after everything's done.

Another thing to consider -- countermagic, defenses against spells, etc. I'd much rather see that baked into the system from the start, rather than tacked on later in a seperate book. Especially with how it affects the balance of magic vs other parts of the game; if a bushi can do something, anything, to protect himself from a spell, that's a very different balance scheme than "Quick, everyone shoot the shugenja before he gets off a spell!"

Spellcasting duels... I wonder if there's a place for the Shugenja equivalent of the Kakita Bushi school...

I am not sure why, but I get this picture of these elemental kami working a switchboard at Kami Hotline. If you are polite and respectful the lil imps patch your call through. If you are beligerant, and demanding they put you on hold while they laugh amongst themselves and watch you fall into calamity.

On a serious note, thank you Kinzen for your time in this endevour. I like what I have read so far. I do not envy your task, especially when it comes time to do Isawa's Blood Magic, Bloodspeaker Dark Arts, and Iuchi's Meishodo, and other such magics that have been introduced to the setting but vary from the standard Rokugani faith practiced by shugenja.

Wow, this is really ambitious. If you manage to pull this off, my hat's off to you, basically forever.

Just out of curiosity, what about ronin shugenja? Will they also get 5 techniques? If so, this might be a big improvement for them, since they tend to have trouble acquiring spells.

Idanthyrsus first:

I'll admit that I had not read through the text of every spell to see how many referenced Fortunes explicitly, and how many didn't. But I honestly wouldn't read too much into that - given AEG's issues with maintaining consistency when it comes to text of mechanical significance, I would be dubious about the importance attached to relatively minor pieces of fluff text. The most important thing about it is that it demonstrates the contradictions within the current presentation of the power and relevance of the kami/Fortunes, which I think we both agree on.

Right, that's what I'm pointing at -- not that I think one of those is obviously "right" and the other is not. It just highlights the problem.

The Fortunes should be awe-inspiring. The kami are capable of creating effects that would (or should) prompt most Rokugani to fall flat on their faces, and they are, as you say, nothing compared to the Fortunes. But I don't think that effect is best created by having shugenja prayers channel the Fortunes, even indirectly- if anything, by implying that the Fortunes answer the prayers of even the lowliest of shugenja with a fair degree of consistency (because, again, mechanics unfortunately require reliability), I feel it diminishes them. It's not that the Fortunes are powerless- it's that they're so far above the average Rokugani that shugenja wouldn't even consider calling on them, at least until the very highest levels, and even then only in desperation.

I think it helps not to see the attention of the Fortunes as an all-or-nothing deal. Spells (which, btw, is a word I may well eliminate from my redesign, since talking about "prayers" can serve as a constant reminder that you're petitioning powerful entities rather than commanding them), may create small, short-term benefits. It isn't the same thing as getting the personal attention of the Fortune to do whatever you want, and the bigger the favor you want, the less likely the Fortune is to grant it (as represented by higher TNs).

Moreover, I don't see why 'vitally important' has to mean 'can be relied upon to do something tangible'. There are plenty of people who, despite being able to explain all visible phenomena (or, more accurately, believing that all visible phenomena are explicable) by mechanistic/scientific forces, still believe in a god or supernatural power of some kind. The Ancestors and Fortunes (and Dragons, and so on) can and do intervene in mortal affairs from time to time, but not in any predictable manner.

But Rokugan is not our world. And part of the narrative appeal of it, for me, is the fact that the supernatural powers are an indisputable fact whose hand is seen in the world on a regular basis. I'd actually like to see the influence of the Fortunes not be restricted to the big, world-shaking effects, but rather to be pervasive at a low level, sometimes rising to more blatant heights.

Praying to the Fire kami is much more reliable than praying to Hachiman, because they're right there, and generally disposed to help as long as they're treated right (and the shugenja of the Empire have spent centuries working out precisely how various spirits should be appeased);

Honestly, this kind of feels like idolatry to me. Shugenja spend a lot of time and effort worshipping the tiniest manifestations of the Elemental Dragons rather than the Dragons themselves; they're more concerned with appeasing the microscopic earth kami in their own bodies than Jurojin, who rules over those bodies. It's one thing if appeasing those kami makes Jurojin happy ; then the devotion given to them is in the service of a greater power. But if the earth kami can be persuaded to make somebody more or less resistant to poison and disease regardless of Jurojin's will, then either the Fortune is powerless in the face of those microscopic entities, or there's actually a constant conflict between them to see who wins out.

And really: if humans are made up of all five Elements, why would that not be true of the Fortunes who used to be humans? If those Fortunes are made up of all five Elements, why would that not be true of the rest of the Fortunes? If all Fortunes are made up of all five Elements (in greater or lesser proportion according to their natures), why doesn't it make sense to say that a shugenja who wants to make someone resistant or vulnerable to poison calls on the principle of sympathy to talk to the earth kami in the target's body who talk to the earth kami in Jurojin who grants the prayer or doesn't?

but Hachiman's favour is worth a great deal more than that of the Fire kami if he chooses to help you (or if you've sufficiently annoyed him that he curses you), and only shugenja have the capacity to speak directly to the kami anyway, whereas the Fortunes can - if they wish - hear, help, or hinder whoever they please.

Whereupon anybody -- shugenja, bushi, random peasant -- has an equal capacity to draw on the favor of the Fortunes; being a priest is irrelevant. (The additional systems I'm planning to use would alter that slightly, insofar as a shugenja is more likely to have Lore: Theology for the divine favor roll, and might get some benefits for adhering to taboos . . . but all their training counts for bupkiss.) As you said before, a duelist with a rank of Lore: Theology would be just as well-equipped to talk to a Fortune as a shugenja is. Maybe more so.

Shugenja may not be able to summon the Ancestors directly (let's ignore the Kitsu for a moment here, though I will take great interest in their specific mechanics when it gets to that stage), but knowledge of their approval (or lack of it) can make or break a samurai in a difficult position.

So saith the fluff -- but there's no force behind it. Heck: there isn't even a way for shugenja to determine the approval or disapproval of the ancestors, other than handwaving or some roll the GM just made up.


MaxKilljoy:

Another thing to consider -- countermagic, defenses against spells, etc. I'd much rather see that baked into the system from the start, rather than tacked on later in a seperate book. Especially with how it affects the balance of magic vs other parts of the game; if a bushi can do something, anything, to protect himself from a spell, that's a very different balance scheme than "Quick, everyone shoot the shugenja before he gets off a spell!"

Shugenja in this redesign will have many fewer damaging options than they do currently, so that will partly address the issue. But yes, I deeply dislike the fact that with most shugenja spells, the only defense is to kill or incapacitate the caster before they can do anything. Once they start chanting, you're toast.

Regarding a Kakita-type shugenja school -- I'm inclined to say no, because without shugenja dueling being elevated to the social and juridical status of iaijutsu, specializing in that would be both a waste of time and probably disrespectful to the Heavens.


Shinjo Yosama:

Isawa's Blood Magic, Bloodspeaker Dark Arts, and Iuchi's Meishodo, and other such magics that have been introduced to the setting but vary from the standard Rokugani faith practiced by shugenja.

You know, it occurs to me that the theological position I've been arguing above fits very well with the shugenja got much more effective once they learned about the elemental kami. Pure blood magic relied on a major show of devotion to try and get the attention of a Fortune, but it wasn't reliable. Once you started talking to the kami, though, you could get the ear of that Fortune much more easily. Otherwise the switch looks to me like "we have found a new god now, and he's much nicer to us than the old god."


Fumi:

Just out of curiosity, what about ronin shugenja? Will they also get 5 techniques? If so, this might be a big improvement for them, since they tend to have trouble acquiring spells.

Oof. I hadn't thought about ronin yet, and have no idea what I'll do with them.

Despite the fluff and the way that the different clans and families and schools are presented as distinct, and highly guarded about their knowledge, most shugenja have felt a bit... generic, and they all seem to play pretty much the same, cast the same spells, etc.

(Digging around, it looks like there was a Moto "death priest" school in the older edition(s), and I guess before meeting the Ki-Rin, in their days as the Ujik-hai, they were purely followers of their death gods, rather than more broadly ancestor-worshipping shamans, so maybe that was a poor example.... I think I was projecting the idea if steppes shamanic religion onto the Mongol-analog Ujik-Hai.)

Incidentally, back in Secrets of the Unicorn, when they were still printing 2nd ed side-by-side with d20 rules, they introduced the Moto Death Priests. And their d20 rules stated,

Rather than having a list of elemental spells as school spells, Shi-Tien Yen-Wang priest may choose one of the following cleric domains from which to draw his or her school spells: Death, Evil, Law, or Travel.

So they actually did have very different spell lists than any other shugenja, but only because the designers could draw on the vast array of d20 spells available.

In the 2nd ed section, instead of a technique, they provided three exclusive spells for Moto Death Priests, that effectively used their own spell slots. Not quite as distinctive as the entire new spell list they got in d20, but still pretty reasonable given the space constraints.

They dialed all of that back in 3rd and 4th editions, only giving them a single technique like other shugenja schools. It was probably done for balance reasons, but it still sucked away most of the uniqueness of the school.

That's part of the reason I'm so excited about this redesign. Even if Kinzen doesn't get to the more obscure and unusual schools like the Moto, Naga pearl magic, etc, it still leaves room for them to have their own space, so we can houserule them later. Much better than in the default system, where we only got one technique to work with.

Fumi:

Just out of curiosity, what about ronin shugenja? Will they also get 5 techniques? If so, this might be a big improvement for them, since they tend to have trouble acquiring spells.

Oof. I hadn't thought about ronin yet, and have no idea what I'll do with them.

Yeah, if it's any consolation, I think the 4th ed designers had trouble figuring out what to do with them too, hence why they were relegated to the Enemies of the Empire book. I'll think about it, maybe I can come up with some suggestions.

Incidentally, back in Secrets of the Unicorn, when they were still printing 2nd ed side-by-side with d20 rules, they introduced the Moto Death Priests. And their d20 rules stated,

Rather than having a list of elemental spells as school spells, Shi-Tien Yen-Wang priest may choose one of the following cleric domains from which to draw his or her school spells: Death, Evil, Law, or Travel.

So they actually did have very different spell lists than any other shugenja, but only because the designers could draw on the vast array of d20 spells available.

In the 2nd ed section, instead of a technique, they provided three exclusive spells for Moto Death Priests, that effectively used their own spell slots. Not quite as distinctive as the entire new spell list they got in d20, but still pretty reasonable given the space constraints.

They dialed all of that back in 3rd and 4th editions, only giving them a single technique like other shugenja schools. It was probably done for balance reasons, but it still sucked away most of the uniqueness of the school.

Interesting! The 2nd ed version sounds like it might not be all that different from what I'm aiming for, as one of the questions I need to answer is whether techniques count as spells (and therefore use spell slots (assuming I even keep the "spell slot" mechanic)) or whether they're a separate thing and if so, whether I'm going to impose some similar restriction on frequency of use. I actually have no idea: right now my plan is to figure out the flavor of what I want the schools to do, then sort out the spells anybody can take, *then* look at what I've got and figure out what kind of mechanics would make that stuff work in a balanced fashion. I've thought of about half a dozen different ways to do it, but until I know what the "it" is that I'm doing, all this is just brainstorming.

That's part of the reason I'm so excited about this redesign. Even if Kinzen doesn't get to the more obscure and unusual schools like the Moto, Naga pearl magic, etc, it still leaves room for them to have their own space, so we can houserule them later. Much better than in the default system, where we only got one technique to work with.

Yeah, you can only get so far with flavor when its reach is limited to a single technique.

Yeah, if it's any consolation, I think the 4th ed designers had trouble figuring out what to do with them too, hence why they were relegated to the Enemies of the Empire book. I'll think about it, maybe I can come up with some suggestions.

Honestly, my impression is partly that the game designers thought ronin shugenja should be only slightly more common than -- well, I guess I can't say unicorns, can I. :-P After all, learning to do anything useful with the kami sans formal training ought to be hard. If you put mechanics for them into the core book, then even if they're in the "non-standard options" chapter, they look like a pretty standard option.

My off-the-cuff inclination is to say that formal training is reflected mostly in the techniques, and ronin shugenja don't get any; the spells, however, will be available to them much more freely. But as I said above, until I start nailing down specifics for what this stuff does, I can't really be sure.

Well, there are apparently enough ronin shugenja to form their own orders, most notably the Kanosei Furudera Order. I've never quite understood that, honestly, since you'd think ronin shugenja would be snapped up by the clans, if shugenja are as rare and treasured as the fluff says. Unless the shugenja prefer to stay ronin, which seems unlikely to me.

More on topic, the difficulty of ronin shugenja is that they have to account for the self-taught types as well as the order ones. The order shugenja will probably be fairly straight-forward, although it may be difficult to come up with techniques that are representative of any possible order.

I'm thinking for "self-taught" shugenja, they're not really self-taught, they're taught by the kami themselves. This might lead them to having some archetypal abilities, ones that ask the kami to do things they want to do anyway, like burn things for fire kami, movement for water ones, etc. Since these techniques haven't been refined by centuries of practice, like the clan techniques have, there might be some random element to them, to reflect their unreliability.

Of course, this begs the question of why the clan shugenja don't have access to these abilities, if the kami can teach them. The easy answer is that they think these abilities are too unrefined and irresponsible to use, but I dunno. That sounds kind of weak to me. I'll keep thinking about it.

Well, there are apparently enough ronin shugenja to form their own orders, most notably the Kanosei Furudera Order. I've never quite understood that, honestly, since you'd think ronin shugenja would be snapped up by the clans, if shugenja are as rare and treasured as the fluff says. Unless the shugenja prefer to stay ronin, which seems unlikely to me.

More on topic, the difficulty of ronin shugenja is that they have to account for the self-taught types as well as the order ones. The order shugenja will probably be fairly straight-forward, although it may be difficult to come up with techniques that are representative of any possible order.

I'm thinking for "self-taught" shugenja, they're not really self-taught, they're taught by the kami themselves. This might lead them to having some archetypal abilities, ones that ask the kami to do things they want to do anyway, like burn things for fire kami, movement for water ones, etc. Since these techniques haven't been refined by centuries of practice, like the clan techniques have, there might be some random element to them, to reflect their unreliability.

Of course, this begs the question of why the clan shugenja don't have access to these abilities, if the kami can teach them. The easy answer is that they think these abilities are too unrefined and irresponsible to use, but I dunno. That sounds kind of weak to me. I'll keep thinking about it.

The "taught by the kami" stuff is what I was thinking of when I said they might have free access to spells, just with no techniques. Order shugenja could have a single technique, which gives them a leg up on the self-taught kind, while still putting them well behind clan schools. And that makes it *way* easier to design ronin orders, since you don't have to come up with five ideas, only one. (On a similar note, I'll admit I'm contemplating giving Minor Clan schools only three techniques, which I believe was the case in an earlier edition? Not sure which one; 3e revised is the only one I've got on hand. Otherwise it's going to be bloody hard to give them each a unique flavor.)

Thought -- perhaps "unschooled" shugenja should have the option of having no affinity and no deficiency.