And now here's something fresh!

KOMORI SHUGENJA

Rank One -- Legacy of Kaze-no-Kami, sans the bird, which also removes the tracking ability.

Rank Two -- extend hearing a la the kiho Eye of the Eagle; roll to pick out words of a conversation

Rank Three -- summon the spirit of someone recently dead. {This is intended to interlock with a new idea that spirits don't enter Meido until X amount of time has passed, and most shugenja can only summon spirits that are in Meido, not those in transit.)

Rank Four -- Garbled Tongue

Rank Five -- Echoes on the Breeze

As you can see, I wound up deciding to make the long-distance communication magic a more specialized thing than it is in canon. I know that players always want some magical replacement for cell phones, but in the end, I feel like that doesn't really fit with the general theme of what I'm trying to design here (making shugenja magic look more like East Asian folklore and religion). As for taking the bird out of the first rank, I think that's one of the single most overpowered spells in the game, not because of its intended function, but because you can use birds to triangulate and figure out where just about anybody is -- so long as you don't mind giving away the fact that you're coming. My players made entertaining use of that when pursuing an enemy of theirs, because the shugenja kept sending him death poems with the birds . . . but it's still a broken ability that can really gut a lot of plots if used creatively.

And here's one more -- I had both of these almost done before I went AWOL. This is, of course, for the original (unTainted) school.

CHUDA SHUGENJA

Rank One -- roll Lore: Maho / Perception to sense use of maho within the last day; TN drops for higher-ML spells

Rank Two -- increase TNs of maho on single target

Rank Three -- AOE damage for Tainted targets, minor damage to non-Tainted in area

Rank Four -- ward area with ofuda to increase maho TNs cast in or against targets in AOE (takes much longer to do than the R2)

Rank Five -- curse maho-tsukai so he suffers 2x the Wounds of the spell regardless of whose blood he sheds for it; stacks with the Wounds if he sheds his own

(I do have more detailed mechanics, but they're all guesswork right now, so I'm just posting the general sense of what the techniques do.)

One of the nice things about approaching these schools as five-rank setups rather than one technique with an Affinity and a Deficiency is, it means I can design Moshi who aren't uber-good at annihilating things with Fire, while still keeping their focus on the sun.

This one even has a goodly portion of its mechanics!

MOSHI SHUGENJA

Rank One: Gift of Amaterasu
The devotion of the Moshi to Lady Sun teaches them to summon her blessing at will. This technique bathes a sphere 50’ in radius in full daylight for ten minutes per School Rank. [[frequency]] The light created by this technique counts as ordinary sunlight for all purposes, including later ranks of this school.

Rank Two: Ward of Cleansing Light
Originally developed to ensure proper behavior at Amaterasu Seido, this technique operates only in sunlight. It affects an area 50’ in radius, centered on the shugenja (who begins to glow with Amaterasu’s holy radiance), and imposes a penalty in unkept dice equal to [[x]] on all dishonorable and disruptive actions committed in that perimeter. Later Moshi, however, discovered an additional benefit: any creature or person with one or more ranks of Shadowlands Taint or Nothing Corruption must make a Willpower Trait Roll at TN 20 to enter the area of effect. If they are present when the technique is activated and fail that roll, they must flee the area of effect, and roll again to re-enter. The ward persists for as long as the shugenja concentrates upon it, and requires no ofuda. [[frequency]]

Rank Three: Amaterasu’s Beneficence
This technique blesses a single target with the favor of Amaterasu, causing them to heal their Stamina x2 plus Insight Rank in Wounds every Rokugani hour that they remain in direct sunlight, instead of every day. If the target is suffering from poison or disease, they may reroll each hour to attempt to shake off its effects. This technique lasts until sunset, and may only be used [[frequency]].

Rank Four: The Light of Truth
Legend says that anyone who stands beneath the sun disc on the torii arch of Moshi-jo is incapable of telling lies. This technique explains the origin of that effect. It only works on targets in full daylight, and requires the shugenja to touch the target throughout; if contact is broken, the technique’s effect ends. Activating it requires a Contested Roll of your [[X]] against the target’s [[Y]]. If successful, the target suffers a penalty to rolls of Sincerity (Deceit) equal to your Honor Rank in unkept dice. If unsuccessful, you are aware that the technique has not taken effect. You may only use this technique once per day, and you may not use it against the same target more than once per month.

Rank Five: Inspiration of the Sun
To the Moshi, there is no greater blessing than the light of Amaterasu. While this technique is in effect, all allies within a radius of 30’ regain a Void Point on any roll that includes an exploding 10, so long as they remain in sunlight. This cannot take them above their maximum. [[mechanics]]

I still have not had the time to go through this all, but I am simply amazed at the awesomeness I have seen.

Keep going, Kinzen. And thank you.

Thank *you*! Even if nobody ever plays this (which is likely, because none of the mechanics have really been nailed down and even if they were, I'm pretty sure FFG would frown on me posting a fully-playable version of L5R online -- and they would be entirely justified), it's an interesting thought experiment. It gives me a lot of chances to think about things ranging from Japanese folklore to the core themes of a clan.

At this point, school-wise, here's what I've got left:

Agasha -- not wholly satisfied with what I posted before, so I'm still fiddling with them.

Iuchi -- ditto.

Tonbo -- I've been working on the actual spell lists concurrently with the schools, and need to sort out how I'm approaching divinatory magic, but my inclination is to give the more overtly divinatory stuff (see what's happening in another location, etc) to the Tonbo, and keep the spells focused on stuff that's more folklorically apt. Getting five techs out of it will still be hard, though.

Fuzake -- Replace all the above references to divination with healing, and that all applies to the Fuzake, except even harder.

Corrupted Chuda -- I'm almost certainly going to ignore this one until and unless I figure out how to deal with maho, because designing it in the absence of those ideas would be difficult and pointless.

Fukuro -- aka the Owl shugenja school, which is called the Seppun in IH2, but not in the version I run. Super-difficult to design for, because their schtick is that they focus on . . . well, the stuff I'm designing *all* shugenja to focus on here. I know one of their techs will be about countering the magic of Naga, Nezumi, and the Five Ancient Races; the other four, I have no idea.

Hitokage -- "Who?" I hear you ask. The Salamander, one of the "lost Minor Clans" from IA. Because WHY NOT. Except that the answer to "why not" is, "given that they don't even have a canon school or more than about two pages of description, figuring out what their redesigned school should look like is akin to trying to empty a bucket with a sieve." But hey, why not.

And at some point I'll post the general outlines of the spell lists, which is the other half of this particular coin.

Got the Tonbo! For context, my intent is to majorly shift how normal divination works, both as the skill and as shugenja spells. It will be focused much more on auspices and feng shui-type stuff, much less on psychic-style clairvoyance and seeing the future. Ergo, I've shifted those latter things off to the Tonbo school. As usual, this is not fully fleshed out on a mechanical front.

TONBO SHUGENJA

Rank One -- a very faintly divinatory but mostly social tech, giving them +1k0 bonuses equal to School Rank + Water Ring to spend on social rolls each day, only one bonus per roll.

Rank Two -- a ward that lasts for School Rank in days and provides a premonition if conflict is going to happen in the warded area; it tells whether the conflict will be verbal or physical and who's involved, but no details beyond that.

Rank Three -- ask a vision, gain a symbolic vision of the answer in a body of still water. Can't ask the same question more than once, but can ask about the same topic from different angles.

Rank Four -- detect whether target believes last statement was true or false, a la the Whispering Wind spell.

Rank Five -- clairvoyant projection from body to known location; can see, hear, and smell as normal, but not interact in any fashion. Spirit remains in body, so presence cannot be sensed or attacked. You lose Honor as normal if you use this to observe in a fashion that would lose you Honor if you did it normally.

I've got three of the five Fukuro techniques and some ideas for the Hitokage; the Fuzake are the ones giving me the most trouble right now.