This was discussed a bit in some threads, implied in others and has become slightly attached to other things in places, so I thought it was possibly an idea to spin it off into its own thread.

There are a number of questions regarding skills: what skills should there be, how should they be organised, what should they do etc. I'm not going to try doing a whole set here now, just throw out some ideas.

What Skills?

The 4th ed list is actually quite good, and I don't think requires much done to it, although I have a couple of points:

• Split up Lore into acceptable and unacceptable areas. It's really tempting to call the extra skill "Forbidden Lore" as a Macro skill. That way it's easy to identify for Honour reasons.
• Similarly for Games. Fortunes and Winds is something fishermen play, Go is something Samurai play. Not sure what I'd call each of them. Maybe Games and Gambling.
• Weapons: Ninjutsu is a silly skill. Just call it Weapons: Thrown.
• Has anyone actually used Sleight of Hand?
• Calligraphy might belong as part of the Artisan Macro skill.
• I'm unsure whether Forgery / Mimicry should be their own skill or an emphasis or Artisan / Perform. Would there be mileage in saying that you require the Forgery skill and the relevant artistic skill to do a forgery? Use the higher or lower of the two?

How should Skills be Organised?

As a result of comments by some people, I think skills should be given Tags rather than groups. That makes it easier to think a bit outside the box and give one skill two tags. I think that the best way to do this is by profession, similar to the existing groups. My first attempt at a group of Tags:

• Bugei : The skills used by warriors, be they Bushi or Ashigaru.
• Scholarly/Spiritual : The skills used by the educated people, Shugenja and Monks.
• High/Courtly : The skills used in court, mainly by Courtiers.
  • Samurai : A catch-all term for the above 3 Tags.
• Heimin : The skills of those who produce things.
• Merchant : The skills of those who trade. May be better off combined with the above?
• Low : Skills used only by the dishonourable. Necessary?

What about Emphases and Mastery Abilities?

I quite like emphases as a mechanic, it allows people to show the subtle differences between their characters.

Mastery Abilities do a very good job of encouraging buying skills above 1. It's probably reasonable to include a low emphasis in an otherwise non-Low skill. I also think that for a group of skills to be considered a Macro Skill, all of their Mastery Abilities should be the same.

I think that's enough for the time being.

I'm a fan of sleight of hand, particularly for lower honor characters (concealing small objects/knives, picking pockets, palming documents...). I could see it converted into an emphasis of Stealth, though.

Seen it used to conceal knives. Making it an emphasis of stealth increase the power of this skill and allows people to roll it for concealing stuff. I tend to consider putting spellcasting as an emphases of sleight of hand instead of stealth.

I would not put Sleight of Hand in Stealth -- the two really aren't the same thing in execution.

Split up Lore into acceptable and unacceptable areas. It's really tempting to call the extra skill "Forbidden Lore" as a Macro skill. That way it's easy to identify for Honour reasons.

I think the asterisk-for-Low system identifies them pretty adequately. It would be more obvious what's forbidden if it were a separate macro skill -- but then you'd either have to come up with new mastery abilities for it, or cut-and-paste the ones from regular Lore, at which point it seems a bit silly to separate them like that.

Similarly for Games. Fortunes and Winds is something fishermen play, Go is something Samurai play. Not sure what I'd call each of them. Maybe Games and Gambling.

I was pondering this when you floated the regrouping concept, because whether it's a samurai pastime or not depends on the game. (For that reason I was thinking of putting Games into what I had decided to label Ordinary Skills.) Socially, yes, they're very different -- but I would only make them mechanically separate if they have different mechanical effects attached. (Mastery abilities are the obvious example.) Otherwise they might as well stay in a macro skill together.

Ninjutsu: don't even make Weapons: Thrown; there's already a Throwing emphasis in Athletics. I am firmly of the opinion that it's silly to use one skill when you're throwing a rock, and a totally separate skill when you're throwing a special ninja rock , i.e. a tsubute. (Especially when the writeup for tsubute says any round stone will suffice.) The writeup for Thrown Weapons says you throw knives and wakizashi with Athletics anyway. :-P That leaves you with just the blowgun, which isn't enough to merit its own skill; I'd lump it in with Kyujutsu and call it a day.

Sleight of Hand: this one is difficult, because it isn't really enough like Stealth for me to think it should be folded in, but it seems kind of unnecessary hanging out there as its own thing. My solution has been to treat it as a Perform skill, with a note that says while such tricks *can* be used for entertainment, that's really a peasant pastime, and employing the skill for deceitful purposes is an Honor loss.

Calligraphy: apropos of what I said above, I think this one should remain separate, because it does have separate mechanical applications. (The only real canonical one is ciphering, plus the occasional technique, but I've added a mastery ability that lets you add your Calligraphy Skill Rank to social rolls made via writing.) But it should, as it currently does, count as an Artisan skill -- and I'll add that if you keep Tea Ceremony as a separate skill, it should count as a Perform skill.

I'm unsure whether Forgery / Mimicry should be their own skill or an emphasis or Artisan / Perform. Would there be mileage in saying that you require the Forgery skill and the relevant artistic skill to do a forgery? Use the higher or lower of the two?

I can't remember who I was debating this with before, but I'm firmly in the camp that says it should just be an emphasis of the skill you're using to create the forgery. Yes, there's more to forgery than simply creating the item in question -- but a) you can cover many of the other aspects with other rolls (e.g. Lore to know what the forgery should look like, Commerce to obtain the materials), b) it makes NO BLOODY SENSE that you can forge a painting or a letter or a seal if you have zero skill at painting or calligraphy or carving, and c) I don't think this is an important enough issue in most campaigns to really merit a special edge-case rule about using the lower of the two skills or whatever.

Re: organization, just lumping all the skills together is what most game systems do, but I happen to like groupings; I think they make it much easier to take in the flavor of the game at a glance. So I won't engage with that aspect of the discussion much, except to note that I don't see a lot of use in a separate Samurai or Merchant tag, and I think the asterisks are a better way to handle Low, since they allow you to mark emphases as well as whole skills.

I quite like emphases as a mechanic, it allows people to show the subtle differences between their characters.

I do, too. Many games have some kind of specialization mechanic for exactly that reason.

Mastery Abilities do a very good job of encouraging buying skills above 1. It's probably reasonable to include a low emphasis in an otherwise non-Low skill. I also think that for a group of skills to be considered a Macro Skill, all of their Mastery Abilities should be the same.

I think all skills, including the macro ones, should have three mastery abilities (plus the Free Raise at 10), because of the incentive effect.

My players (and the NPC I did for L5r) always had a corresponding artisan skill of equal level to their forgery skill.

Calligraphy also serves one special purpose, which people tend to forget : it's the only way a character can be trained in High Rokugani, the noble langage. While not different enough that someone speaking it cannot be understood by someone without this particular emphasis, I remind you that people speaking at the Imperial Court and every official imperial-level writings are written in this langage. As such, high level calligraphy with this emphasis is a requirement in-universe for all the high level courtiers and bureaucrats. Folding it into a normal artisan skill would tend to kill both the cypher and the High Rokugani emphasis, which are both two particular aspects that are really well-spread into high rank characters.

My players (and the NPC I did for L5r) always had a corresponding artisan skill of equal level to their forgery skill.

Calligraphy also serves one special purpose, which people tend to forget : it's the only way a character can be trained in High Rokugani, the noble langage. While not different enough that someone speaking it cannot be understood by someone without this particular emphasis, I remind you that people speaking at the Imperial Court and every official imperial-level writings are written in this langage. As such, high level calligraphy with this emphasis is a requirement in-universe for all the high level courtiers and bureaucrats. Folding it into a normal artisan skill would tend to kill both the cypher and the High Rokugani emphasis, which are both two particular aspects that are really well-spread into high rank characters.

I always saw High Rokugani as the equivalent of the Japanese Kanji writing system. Courtiers and elites communicated with a Kanji like logographic system while non-elites used Kana like syllabic systems. Non-elites spell out words while elites use a single Kanji to represent the word.

Perhaps this is a case where splitting a skill could be the best solution: Art:Calligraphy would cover making art with writing and High Rokugani would cover communication.

I'd be against splitting it that way, since I think doing so runs counter to the Rokugani mindset: your communication should be art.

I'd be against splitting it that way, since I think doing so runs counter to the Rokugani mindset: your communication should be art.

I'd argue that that is the Crane mindset more than the mindset of Rokugan as a whole.

I'd say that in different ways it's fitting for the Scorpion and Phoenix as well, along with various other families and schools.

Honestly, if High Rokugani needs to be handled mechanically rather than just as a matter of fluff (the way clan dialects are handled as fluff), I would treat it as an Advantage -- akin to Languages, but cheaper.

The Crane defined the standards for Rokugan's court. As such, your writing should be art, for everyone wanting to go to an important court. Doji's gift to Empire, remember ? And High Rokugani is a cheap emphasis, so mechanically it's really cheap to get it, why create an advantage that would do the same ?

And High Rokugani is a cheap emphasis, so mechanically it's really cheap to get it, why create an advantage that would do the same ?

I'd only suggest that if it's being treated as a meaningful language difference -- something you've got to learn if you want to be able to function in it -- instead of just a fancy style of calligraphy that can be read and replicated by anybody with a rank in the skill. Otherwise I think the skill is fine as it is, except I would add a Decorative emphasis to cover calligraphy being done for purely aesthetic purposes (e.g. a wall scroll).

I see lots of great ideas here, which I shall try to address in a logical order: the one I started with.

What Skills?

• Lore/Forbidden Lore: I don't have a problem with making up a new set of Mastery Abilities for the Forbidden stuff. Given that there aren't any Mastery abilities for Lore anyway, it seems like a manageable hurdle.
• Games: Would it be reasonable to say that all samurai games are actually uses of a samurai skill, whereas the Games skill is for things like Fortunes and Winds? Go used to be played using Battle in older editions, Kemari could use Athletics, Sadane one or other social skills. It may also make a point: even when a samurai is playing, they are honing the skills of their calling.
• Ninjutsu: You now what, Kinzen's right. Even Weapons:Thrown is unneeded.
• Sleight of Hand: I'm convinced it's a useful skill, and I like the idea of moving Spellcasting to it.
• Calligraphy: Lots of debate here. I think my preference is that the skill of Calligraphy covers the ability to write artistically, and it is a subskill of Artisan. The ability to use High Rokugani is just something that all members of the Samurai caste can do, although maybe have it as an emphasis of Etiquette and Calligraphy to represent people particularly good at the high-falutin talk in court. I also believe that the Cipher emphases are just another tax on Shugenja and would personally do away with it. I think the ability to send secret messages in plain sight might be a good Mastery Ability for Artisan skills, kind of like stealing Cadence from the Crane (sorry).
• Forgery: I'm convinced by the Emphasis argument.
• Tea Ceremony: As a part of the Perform Macro skill, it would possibly lose its unique ability to help others regain Void. Unless the mastery abilities of Perform brought that ability to all Perform skills? Watching exceptional Noh might be as restful as participating in an exceptional Tea Ceremony.

Organisation

• Samurai: I wasn't proposing that skills should be tagged with High and Samurai, just a note somewhere that Samurai skills are those with the Bugei, High and Scholarly tags. Then I would use it in school definitions to say "Any one samurai skill" rather than "Any one Bugei, High or Scholarly" skill.
• I was having a little bit of difficulty trying to identify the difference between a Macro skill, a group of skills and skill emphases, but I think I have a definition now. A group of skills (either by Tag or group) are similar for mostly minor mechanical reasons. A Macro skill is a set of skills that share a set of Mastery Abilities. An emphasis is a way of showing a level of focus in a particular skill. For this reason, I think that Weapon isn't a Macro skill, it's a Tag to apply to the relevant skills, like Social.
• I had thought that Tags were a way of solving the "is Calligraphy High or Scholarly" by making it High and Scholarly. But if it's going to end up as part of Artisan, it may be a bit moot. Looking through things, I appear to have eliminated all the crossovers. Maybe it is possible to go with groups mainly, and a couple of tags (Social, Weapon)?

Mastery Abilities

I agree that all skills should have them at 3, 5 and 7. Is anyone interested in trying to fill in the gaps in the current skill list?

I think what may be my problem with calligraphy is that I see it as a "kludge" skill in 4e. It is currently made up of 3 distinct skill sets, Calligraphy (writing/drawing pretty words), Ciphering (encrypting information) and High Level Literacy, all tangentially linked by the idea of writing. This feels to me like the equivalent of using one skill to cover what Perform:Dance, Acrobatics and Defense cover in 4e.

I do not know how long Calligraphy has been like this. While it may have existed like that since before 4e, and might be considered a sacred cow (though Rokugani might prefer "honored tradition"), I do not believe that a future 5e needs to be beholden to 4e's skill list.

I have no problem with Calligraphy covering writing, ciphering, and literacy. I see Calligraphy as one of the pillars of Rokugani education. Expanding Calligraphing into three skills like that would just penalize players trying to build more well rounded characters, and may even discourage them from doing so.

I would however have a problem with perform:dance, acrobatics, and defense being merged together. Whereas the latter three share some likenesses, they are also different. I may allow you to use one of those to substitute for another at half value, but not entirely as the same skill.

I don't think Ultimatecalibur was suggesting actually creating 3 skills. I think the idea was that Calligraphy only meant writing, literacy was assumed of PCs and ciphering is something else.

Ok my bad, my sincerest apologies.

Lore/Forbidden Lore: I don't have a problem with making up a new set of Mastery Abilities for the Forbidden stuff. Given that there aren't any Mastery abilities for Lore anyway, it seems like a manageable hurdle.

I'll tell you now that coming up with mastery abilities for macro skills is a bit of a pain, and in my experience they tend to wind up quite generic-looking; you may find there isn't much difference between Lore and Forbidden Lore when all is said and done.

Games: Would it be reasonable to say that all samurai games are actually uses of a samurai skill, whereas the Games skill is for things like Fortunes and Winds? Go used to be played using Battle in older editions, Kemari could use Athletics, Sadane one or other social skills. It may also make a point: even when a samurai is playing, they are honing the skills of their calling.

Since I already use Athletics for kemari and Courtier for sadane, it wouldn't be much of a stretch; shogi is about the only thing that winds up out in the cold. But if you go that route, you might consider replacing Games with Gambling, and have be a non-macro skill focused on the whole wagering aspect rather than than knowing the rules of a given game.

Calligraphy: Lots of debate here. I think my preference is that the skill of Calligraphy covers the ability to write artistically, and it is a subskill of Artisan. The ability to use High Rokugani is just something that all members of the Samurai caste can do, although maybe have it as an emphasis of Etiquette and Calligraphy to represent people particularly good at the high-falutin talk in court. I also believe that the Cipher emphases are just another tax on Shugenja and would personally do away with it. I think the ability to send secret messages in plain sight might be a good Mastery Ability for Artisan skills, kind of like stealing Cadence from the Crane (sorry).

I still like it separate, because of the mastery abilities I'm using in my campaign, which don't map at all to the other Artisan skills. But for anybody who isn't using those mastery abilities, it probably doesn't matter.

(Regarding the whole cipher thing: I tried at one point to look up how ciphers work in Chinese, because a lot of the methods used in English only function if you're using an alphabet. Didn't get very far in understanding what I found, though.)

Tea Ceremony: As a part of the Perform Macro skill, it would possibly lose its unique ability to help others regain Void. Unless the mastery abilities of Perform brought that ability to all Perform skills? Watching exceptional Noh might be as restful as participating in an exceptional Tea Ceremony.

I just don't like Void recovery being the core use of it in the first place, because it's too redundant with Meditation. This is me haring off into the wild blue yonder a bit, but I'm 80% of the way toward working up a set of "Tea Master" Advantages, one for each Great Clan, which represent the different styles developed around Rokugan; anybody with Perform: Tea Ceremony can do a nice job of it, but if you want to get a mechanical effect out of the event, you need to be a Tea Master.

Mastery Abilities

I agree that all skills should have them at 3, 5 and 7. Is anyone interested in trying to fill in the gaps in the current skill list?

I can dig out mine later if you'd like; they're influenced by my redesign in general, but would mostly still apply.

I just don't like Void recovery being the core use of it in the first place, because it's too redundant with Meditation. This is me haring off into the wild blue yonder a bit, but I'm 80% of the way toward working up a set of "Tea Master" Advantages, one for each Great Clan, which represent the different styles developed around Rokugan; anybody with Perform: Tea Ceremony can do a nice job of it, but if you want to get a mechanical effect out of the event, you need to be a Tea Master.

I found something like this on the AEG forums sometime last year. It replaced a singe rank of any courtier school, and allowed you to learn various kinds of Tea Ceremony with different effects. They were all divided by clan, and some were really good. The Phoenix one let you regain spell slots instead of void points, the Lion one gave you free raises on school skills for an hour (turning it into a pre-battle ritual), the Crab one gave bonus dice to resist Shadow lands taint for a while, it was really good stuff. I'll see if I can dig it up again somewhere and post it here if I can.

I have started thinking about the extra Mastery abilities, and would appreciate having a look at yours Kinzen, although possibly after putting my ones out so I'm not unduly influenced.

I decided to start with Artisan, and believe that I want to use the suggestion in the ambitious Social redesign for general mechanics for that skill.

Level 3: When creating a piece of art, you may opt to include a hidden message in its design rather than the normal effects. It can be aimed at your family, your clan or anyone.

Level 5: You receive a Free Raise on any Cumulative rolls with the relevant Artisan skill.

Level 7: You can always see hidden messages in a piece of this artform, no matter who they are aimed at.

This is a combination of Calligraphy ciphers and Crane clan Cadence.

I found something like this on the AEG forums sometime last year. It replaced a singe rank of any courtier school, and allowed you to learn various kinds of Tea Ceremony with different effects. They were all divided by clan, and some were really good. The Phoenix one let you regain spell slots instead of void points, the Lion one gave you free raises on school skills for an hour (turning it into a pre-battle ritual), the Crab one gave bonus dice to resist Shadow lands taint for a while, it was really good stuff. I'll see if I can dig it up again somewhere and post it here if I can.

I remember those! They were more powerful than what I'm aiming for -- I want something smaller in effect than a full-bore alternate path, so they can be bought as Advantages rather than having to replace a rank of your school. I might as well list my current draft here:

Crab: +1k0 vs Fear (Raise twice to increase to +2k0; ditto for others below)

Crane: +1k0 on Etiquette

Dragon: ???

Lion: Wound penalties reduced by 3 (increase to 5 for 2 Raises)

Mantis: . . . I don't really see them as the Tea Ceremony types, honestly.

Phoenix: +1k0 on Lores

Scorpion: +1k0 on Investigation

Unicorn: +1k0 on Sincerity

I'm basically just stuck on Dragon -- I have several possibilities, but none of them are fitting so far. Anyway, if anybody wants to discuss these more, I can start another thread.

I decided to start with Artisan, and believe that I want to use the suggestion in the ambitious Social redesign for general mechanics for that skill.

Level 3: When creating a piece of art, you may opt to include a hidden message in its design rather than the normal effects. It can be aimed at your family, your clan or anyone.

Level 5: You receive a Free Raise on any Cumulative rolls with the relevant Artisan skill.

Level 7: You can always see hidden messages in a piece of this artform, no matter who they are aimed at.

I'd personally be more inclined to go with a combo of the house-ruled mastery abilities we're using in my current campaign, and something aimed at the idea I came up with here :

R3 - gain a free emphasis (because these macro skills are generally not useful enough for players to sink XP into an emphasis; this gives them incentive to buy up)

R5 - +1k0 on rolls to imbue a work of art with a special quality

R7 - reroll 2s as well as 1s if you have a relevant emphasis (what my GM used to call a "superior emphasis" -- not sure if that's from a previous edition or not)

. . . come to think of it, "hidden message" could be added to the list of special qualities, which would incorporate your notion of making that a general Artisan thing rather than just Calligraphy. (Though I admit I have a great deal of difficulty figuring out how a hidden message could be encoded into a bonsai or a piece of origami.)

I'm still inclined to keep Calligraphy separate, because I still like my R3 mastery of adding your Skill Rank to social rolls in writing, and it does lend itself to ciphers much more easily than a painting does. But you've given me great food for thought on the Artisan masteries!

I was considering that the hidden messages were somewhat allegorical, somewhat like Darmok. So, if a Crane courtier were to see a displayed Chrysanthemum origami, they could appreciate its technique, colour etc, whereas a Crab would immediately think "That Chrysanthemum is purple! The Purple Chrysanthemum was a disguised assassin captured at the Castle of the East Face, but it's been placed facing to the south... my colleague is worried that there's a shapeshifting Shadowlands assassin amongst our companions! Also, presumably, that we're being watched."

While the obvious list of Emphases for Artisan would be the subtypes, like Haiku or Waka for Poetry, I think that you might get more interest from players in picking them up if they were to be the special qualities, so Peacefulness, Cadence and all the rest which I can't remember.

I started with the Macro skills, because I think in some ways they are the most important, while being harder. I need to find Secrets and the crafting rules to be absolutely sure about all of Craft, but Rank 5 is obviously +5 when engaged in Cooperative or Cumulative.

Lore

Rank 3: If you fail a Lore check, you know somewhere or someone who knows the information (They aren't necessarily nearby. A failed Lore: Ancestors may have to resort to "Well, they'll know in the Hall of the Ancestors."

Rank 5: +3 Insight (I know it's a bit boring, but it seemed right)

Rank 7: If you fail a Lore check made with raises, but exceed the original TN, it counts as a basic success.

Forbidden Lore

Rank 3: Something that means Forbidden Lore may have answers that normal Lore doesn't.

Rank 5: +1k0 on social rolls with members of the group. (So, Criminals with Forbidden Lore: Underworld, conspirators with Forbidden Lore: Gozoku etc)

Rank 7: Can always identify if an incident is related to the subject of Forbidden Lore

Sadly, the crafting rules in Secrets of the Empire are very obviously an afterthought bolted on to the basic system. The whole thing needs an overhaul.

My Lore masteries:

R3: you may add your ranks a given Lore to the total of a roll with a different mental or social skill if your knowledge is of direct relevance to the situation.

R5: superior emphasis (reroll 2's if you have an emphasis)

R7: you may roll twice and take the better result.

I don't use Raises with Lores, because I don't think they make sense: if I'm trying to remember the name of a Lion general at the Battle of Beiden Pass, I don't become more likely to forget when the Battle of Beiden Pass happened or who was fighting there. Ergo, your R7 wouldn't be applicable in my games. I'll have to ponder the +3 Insight, though . . . I might put that in for my R5 and move my R5 up to R7, because you're correct, it *feels* right.

As for the Forbidden Lores, my regular Lore R3 would work out to a numerically better result most of the time than your R5 (+1k0 is usually a 2-3 bonus to the roll). Your R3 feels to me like a concept inherently baked in to the Forbidden Lore: you know stuff people can't get at through normal Lore. (Unless you mean something like, you can roll Lore: Underworld when your Lore: History roll has failed you, which is so situationally dependent that I would leave that up to GM call.) As for the R7, that feels like it removes the need to roll in a certain class of situations; rather than rolling to see whether something about the murder shows it might have been an underworld hit or the work of a maho-tsukai, you just auto-succeed. Is that what you were aiming for?

i would be a bit leery of the Rank 3 you listed as it seems better than the existing masteries for other skills. All of the numeric bonuses to skill checks are either +5 or +1k0 (~ +3), with the +5 going to narrower or less useful applications. And most of those are at Rank 5. What you propose seems significantly better. In fact, in an opposed Courtier check with a member of a Clan, you would get a bigger bonus from your Lore: Clan at Rank 5 than from Courtier Rank 5. That doesn't seem quite right.

But, it did give me ideas.

Artisan

With the Cadence style messages as an additional special quality. (It's better that we, the mechanics can be longer than 3 lines).

Rank 3: If you fail an Artisan check, you may roll again without any penalties.

Rank 5: +1k0 when trying to imbue a special quality into an artwork.

Rank 7: With x Raises, you may combine two different special qualities into an artwork

Craft

I realise that there aren't particular details of crafting, but I believe that the mechanics to be used are in the system. It's a case of expanding on the rules for Cooperative and Cumulative tests, and giving some details. The only question would be what the result of failures would be. My guess is that a failure subtracts the margin of failure from the total so far. A couple of examples (not particularly calculated out)

Wooden Pallisade

Skill: Strength/Engineering

TN: Length in yards / 10. 5 1/2 mile perimeter of an average village ~900

Minimum progression: 10

Time per roll: 1 hour

Cooperative: a number of people up to the Engineering skill of the supervisor may contribute.

Katana

Skill: Strength/Craft: Weaponsmith

TN: 300

Minimum progression: 30

Time per roll: 1 day

Cooperative: no

Kaiu Blade

Skill: Strength/Craft: Weaponsmith

TN: 500

Minimum progression: 50 (A margin of failure over 10 on any roll will mean that it can only be completed as a normal katana)

Time per roll: 1 day

Cooperative: no

With that in mind

Rank 3: If you fail a cumulative check with this Craft skill, reduce the margin of failure by 10 before applying results.

Rank 5: +5 on Cooperative or Cumulative rolls with this Craft skill.

Rank 7: Reduce the Minimum result required to progress a Cumulative roll by 5.

Forbidden Lore

It was absolutely my intention that they would know the information without rolling. Of course, if they reveal that knowledge, it would be an honour hit...

Rank 3: If you fail a Forbidden Lore check, you know somewhere or someone who knows the information (although getting it from them might be problematic)

Rank 5: +1k0 on social rolls with members of the group. (So, Criminals with Forbidden Lore: Underworld, conspirators with Forbidden Lore: Gozoku etc)

Rank 7: Can always identify if an incident is related to the subject of Forbidden Lore

Lore

I agree in many ways about Lore and Raises, but I feel we need to work with the system we have currently, unless we want to completely re-write it.

Rank 3: If you fail a Lore check, you know somewhere or someone who knows the information (They aren't necessarily nearby. A failed Lore: Ancestors may have to resort to "Well, they'll know in the Hall of the Ancestors."

Rank 5: +3 Insight (I know it's a bit boring, but it seemed right)

Rank 7: You may declare raises on this Lore after seeing your result.

Perform

Whether to include Tea Ceremony or not in this is optional.

Rank 3: +1k0 on Cooperative rolls.

Rank 5: After a successful performance, you receive +1k0 on social rolls with the audience for the rest of the day.

Rank 7: You may take 5 Raises and spend a Void Point on a Perform roll to permit all of your audience to regain a Void Point if you succeed.