I always thought the mastery abilities were an excellent idea imperfectly implemented. Providing bonuses you can only gain by investing in the skills is a good way to counterbalance them against Traits; it's just that the design team had some very lackluster efforts, and several skills got only one or even none. We've house-ruled all of that in my campaign.

We purged most of the +1k0 and +0k1 abilities, advantages and techniques, but in exchange, we made Emphases give flat modifier of +skill to the roll (it's probably the only +flat in our current version of the game, so there is no problem of stacking +x like in 3rd edition) and turned most of the abilities that previously played with dice into roll twice, keep better. Or, in some cases, Roll twice, keep better, + you can keep the best dice from the roll you didn't choose.

We also collapsed all of the macro skills, so now you have Budo instead of individual weapon skills, Lore instead of individual Lore Skills, and so on. Specialization is reflected by having a proper Emphasis, with the note that sometimes this unlocks you an alternate Mastery Ability.

Another way to give skills more umpf is to change penalties. Instead of flat penalties to the TN, reduce dice rolled by 1 for every -5. That way, having a high skills also helps you when things go bad.

We changed penalties slightly. There are following types of penalties:

- Flat TN modifiers. In case of Wounds, this goes only up to +10 (or something, I would need to check it to make sure)

- Negative reroll. Roll twice, pick worse.

- Hyper Negative Reroll. Roll twice, pick worse, keep lowest dice between two sets.

Flat TN Modifiers ended up rather rare, with Negative Reroll covering majority of stuff. This means that being skilled (having good dicepool) is rewarded.

Oh, and we extirpated the "-xk0" or "-0kx" penalties.

Another thing we have for Skills is "assigned character creation": instead of spending lots of free xp, you choose one 'advancement group' that has one or two Ring/Trait advancements and several Skill advancements, then assign all those advancements for your starting characters. You also get some free xp, but not much, since your character should be pretty okay from the get-go with his assigned advancements. Example:

Quote

Standard Starting Characters:

The character starts with all Rings at 2.

The character receives all Family and School Trait bonuses, Basic, Clan, and School Skills (these last three net 15 Skills at Rank 1), Basic Advantages, and Basic Disadvantage.

The player must choose one of the following advancement groups and assign all advancements. A Skill taken at Rank 1 as part of the advancement group options can be further improved within the limitations of the advancement group.

Type 1: One Trait from 2 to 3, Two Skills from 1 to 5, Three Skills from 1 to 4, Four Skills from 1 to 3, Five Skills from 1 to 2, Three Skills at Rank 1

Type 2: Two Traits from 2 to 3 or one Trait from 3 to 4 (note that going with Trait 3 to 4 puts you at a considerable loss), One Skill from 1 to 5, Two Skills from 1 to 4. Five Skills from 1 to 3. Five Skills from 1 to 2, Four Skills at Rank 1

Type 3: One Ring from 2 to 3 (note that Ring advancements are the only way to increase your Void Ring), One Trait from 2 to 3, Two Skills from 1 to 5, One Skill from 1 to 4, Two Skills from 1 to 3, One Skill from 1 to 2, One Skill at Rank 1

Type 4: Two Traits from 2 to 3, Two Skills from 1 to 5, Two Skills from 1 to 4, Three Skills from 1 to 3, Two Skills from 1 to 2, Three Skills at Rank 1

Type 5: One Ring from 2 to 3, One Skill from 1 to 5, Two Skills from 1 to 4, Five Skills from 1 to 3, Four Skills from 1 to 2, Five Skills at Rank 1

In all five cases, and only after assigning all advancements, the player can spend 20 experience points freely to customize his character and can take up to ten points worth of Disadvantages (a minimum of two).

This way, a player can't "miss out" Skills and his starting character will have realistic Skill Ranks. The only thing that might be shaky here for you guys is that the Standard Character package will jump-start the character up to Insight Rank 2-3 - that's actually a deliberate design choice from us, but I dunno how well it would fit with others.

On 5/4/2017 at 0:15 AM, BlindSamurai13 said:

Playing in the setting of Rokugan but using the D20 system instead of the R&K system.

There both d20

1 hour ago, tenchi2a said:

There both d20

Yes. What I'm curious about is how was L5R D20 received by the community (playing in the setting of Rokugan but using the D20 system instead of the R&K system)?

By community, I mean the Legend of the Five Rings RPG community and not the Dungeons & Dragons community.

I guess we do something like these packages? We haven't used XP system for 3 or 4 or maybe 5 years now, instead opting for mile stones - you start with a "package", and then when time is right, you upgrade to it's bigger and better form. Never looked back.

1 hour ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

Yes. What I'm curious about is how was L5R D20 received by the community (playing in the setting of Rokugan but using the D20 system instead of the R&K system)?

By community, I mean the Legend of the Five Rings RPG community and not the Dungeons & Dragons community.

Mostly ignored, from my experience, unless I'm thinking of the wrong time it got released. The one I'm thinking about, L5R had both R&K and d20 stats in their splat books. I want to say it was the end of L5R 2nd Edit, but I'm not sure. I'd have to dig through my old books.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

I guess we do something like these packages? We haven't used XP system for 3 or 4 or maybe 5 years now, instead opting for mile stones - you start with a "package", and then when time is right, you upgrade to it's bigger and better form. Never looked back.

So... Levels.

Kind of? Keeps characters nicely balanced, makes designing adventures for them much easier, and nobody enjoyed the minigame of "why should i spend xp this way to be effective" anyway.

Note that we don't track XP at all. Milestones just happens organically, and sometimes they don't happen at all.

38 minutes ago, WHW said:

Kind of? Keeps characters nicely balanced, makes designing adventures for them much easier, and nobody enjoyed the minigame of "why should i spend xp this way to be effective" anyway.

Note that we don't track XP at all. Milestones just happens organically, and sometimes they don't happen at all.

You could make arguments of the whole "D&D" style levels with you awarding XP at certain points, rather than after each encounter. I'm not really criticizing this choice. I can definitely see the appeal, and it allows you as a GM more control over the flow and difficulty. We did this after we heavily retooled 7th Sea before they did the kickstarter.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

Kind of? Keeps characters nicely balanced, makes designing adventures for them much easier, and nobody enjoyed the minigame of "why should i spend xp this way to be effective" anyway.

Note that we [Added: Who is that "we"? Your group?] don't track XP at all. Milestones just happens organically, and sometimes they don't happen at all.

And what's the difference with the "Level" perspective? At some point, you end up having that "minigame" of "Why should I spend [EnterWhateverHere] this way to be effective"?

I mean, if you change "XP Spent" to "Level gained" or "Milestone gained", at some point, you'll gain attribute, traits, skills, whatever, to spend in your character. So that doesn't change at all, it just moves to another time.

To be honest, I really prefer XP Spent systems to level gains systems, but it's a just a question of taste at that point. So, it will be very hard to agree since both has their strengths and weaknesses, so picking one or the other is based purely on opinion. There is no perfect system, otherwise, we would all play it and not have those kind of discussion.

3 hours ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

Yes. What I'm curious about is how was L5R D20 received by the community (playing in the setting of Rokugan but using the D20 system instead of the R&K system)?

By community, I mean the Legend of the Five Rings RPG community and not the Dungeons & Dragons community.

As far as I know, it was absolutely despised. Even though it had some pretty cool stuff: for example, Weaving, Dodging, Rolling sounded like a fun ability.

7 hours ago, BlindSamurai13 said:

Yes. What I'm curious about is how was L5R D20 received by the community (playing in the setting of Rokugan but using the D20 system instead of the R&K system)?

By community, I mean the Legend of the Five Rings RPG community and not the Dungeons & Dragons community.

It ranged from utter apathy to blind rage. It would have been a very rare soul indeed that had anything positive to say about it.

5 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

It would have been a very rare soul indeed that had anything positive to say about it.

You gotta admit, the art was absolutely top-notch.

Just dusted off my 1ed core book and "The Way of the Crab", for nostalgia.

On 2017-5-6 at 11:08 AM, AtoMaki said:

You gotta admit, the art was absolutely top-notch.

Fair call.

On 5/5/2017 at 10:42 PM, SlackerHacker said:

Just dusted off my 1ed core book and "The Way of the Crab", for nostalgia.

I still remember the first time we played first edition and I had to teach my players how dangerous the combat system could be since they were all coming from a D&D back ground and laughed it off. That stopped after they watched a Goblin with a stick roll 62 damage on an NPC they were supposed to be escorting through the Shadowlands to deliver valuable info to a Hiruma scouting party that was working to retake their ancestral home. It was amazing how quick they were to start looking for non-combat options after that.

1 hour ago, Schmoozies said:

I still remember the first time we played first edition and I had to teach my players how dangerous the combat system could be

One of the first times I played, I created a Bayushi bushi - a cocky, spear whirling warrior. A couple sessions in I am starting to get into the character, we get into a small battle, GM rolls on the random events table thing-o, "you are hit in the eye with an arrow...exiting out the back of your head, you're character is dead". I watched him roll the dice the whole time and he felt terrible but on something like 2k1, he took my character from never been scratched to dead. This was one of the times I feel in love with the system. Don't fight unless you are willing to die, how very bushido.

Odd. I never had a problem with the lethality of the combat system, despite my first character (Utaku Battle Maiden) having Earth 2 for a veeeery long time. In fact, I felt relived playing some slow-and-steady tactical combat after coming from the rocket arena that was the Warhammer 40k Only War RPG.

Ah, the good old days .

On 5/5/2017 at 5:23 PM, Crawd said:

And what's the difference with the "Level" perspective? At some point, you end up having that "minigame" of "Why should I spend [EnterWhateverHere] this way to be effective"?

I mean, if you change "XP Spent" to "Level gained" or "Milestone gained", at some point, you'll gain attribute, traits, skills, whatever, to spend in your character. So that doesn't change at all, it just moves to another time.

To be honest, I really prefer XP Spent systems to level gains systems, but it's a just a question of taste at that point. So, it will be very hard to agree since both has their strengths and weaknesses, so picking one or the other is based purely on opinion. There is no perfect system, otherwise, we would all play it and not have those kind of discussion.

Yeah, when I say we, I talk about our group. I sincerely didn't think there is any other option for that, so sorry for potential misunderstandings.

As for milestones vs xp spent - the difference is that outside of one person (me), our group doesn't enjoy crunching numbers. They don't like to dive deep into the chargen mini game in order to maximize effectiveness of their characters, and decision points like "do I stop raising this skill at 1, 3 or maybe 5, and how does it change my build and spending options" are simply unfun for them. This had lead to a situation where one player spent her XP more effectively, while other didn't (guess what, one spent XP on traits, other tried raising skills), and the gap between their effectiveness ended up being so big that first character could out do the second at everything, which made the experience unfun for both of them. Could Player B be smarter about her XP purchases? Sure. But she simply couldn't wrap her head around it.

Basically, they didn't want to spend time achieving system mastery needed to not only make viable characters that were fitting their concepts, but also were balanced with each other. They didn't want to declare "I'm going to be good at stealth" and then have to do thesis-worthy research of HOW TO STEALTH IN L5R*. They just want to say "I'm good at stealth", and be good at stealth.

*Real-life example, from "before switching to packages" : Player A is a Shinjo Bushi, with tons of Traits and rings. Her Agility and Water Ring are both very strong. She also grabbed some token Stealth, because she figured out that if she is going to play in a team with a ninja, sooner or later she will have to do some sneaky sneaky. She didn't focus on skills, because she couldn't be arsed to figure out what specific skills she wants to be good at, because she didn't want to define her characterization by specific skills (didn't want to play a "master of XYZ") so she just mindlessly spent her XP on Traits.

Player B is a Shosuro Inflitrator, who wanted to be sneaky and stuff. She ignored Strength, which made her Water Ring lag hard. Instead of bumping her Traits, she tried to get massive Skills in the ninja-related skillsets. This has left her with high skills, low traits, making her inferior to Shinjo at everything - including stealth. Why? Because Shinjo's better Agility more than compensated for difference in stealth skill, and her bigger Water Ring made her Sneak-Speed equivalent to Ninjas, even after including the Mastery Skills difference. Better Strength also made her better at all the climbing-jumping-acrobatics type of stuff, which she didn't sink points into...unlike our Ninja.

Add the fact that the Ninja was rather weak in combat (lower Agility, lower Earth, and no k3 power of Scimitar twice per round), and you have a picture where one player didn't want to excel at particularly anything and ended up being a powerhorse that could do anything, while other wanted to be a master at her specific niche and got not only outclassed in it by a dilettante in her specialty, but basically in everything else too. Neither player achieved their objective, and both were unsatisfied with the results (Player B ended up being very cowardly for the longest time, trying her hardest to avoid any dice-involving challenge, and being afraid of facing anyone or anything, basically constantly feeling that she is some sort of dumb noob scrub).

Which is why after I was asked to do something about it (I wasn't a member of the group at the time, as I moved to a new city), I asked them if it's OK if I rebalance their sheets for them - and then, suddenly, everything started working much, much better.

So now when we make new characters - for one shots or side chronicles - we just create a "package", let people assign their skills and Traits within that package, and they don't have to be afraid that they will XP spent their way into a trap build that will make their character into a joke even after 4 years of playing. It also makes them internally balanced, and allows us to focus on playing characters, not building them (especially remembering that building characters often meant "x people asking me to do builds for them").

XP Systems are fine, but they aren't for everyone, and without proper balancing they can easily lead into having a lot of trap options.

8 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

One of the first times I played, I created a Bayushi bushi - a cocky, spear whirling warrior. A couple sessions in I am starting to get into the character, we get into a small battle, GM rolls on the random events table thing-o, "you are hit in the eye with an arrow...exiting out the back of your head, you're character is dead". I watched him roll the dice the whole time and he felt terrible but on something like 2k1, he took my character from never been scratched to dead. This was one of the times I feel in love with the system. Don't fight unless you are willing to die, how very bushido.

I don't like that, mostly because if I make a character for fighting, I probably enjoy the act of fighting and want it to have a regular place at the table (either in a form of Skirmish, or a Duel that goes into skirmish). Making something that's a regular part of the game being basically "each time you try it, you have large % of chance to die and be unable to do anything about it" penalizes me for wanting to live out a "samurai warrior" fantasy in a game about samurai warriors, especially one where you don't just roll Bob The Fighter XVI five minutes of real time after Bob The Fighter XV gets exploded by a trap, and each character is infused by tons of personal motivations, relations, family, personal mythology and other "character-driven" elements that go "poof" the moment you die. Don't punish your samurai-warriors characters from doing samurai-warrior things in a game about samurai-warrioring where all your initial choices for character "types" were different samurai-warriors who all got some kind of mechanic towards samurai-warrioring (in first release of L5R rpg, there was no such thing as "Courtier" school, all schools were Bushi). Good design should invoke the *feeling* of having to be ready for death, not do a death-check each time someone decides to play the game.

Basically, IMHO, turning combat into a punishing failure state (read, the fact that you are in combat is seen as failure in itself and you are going to be punished for it by being threatened by death) in a game where fighting is supposed to be a major part of the fantasy character types you are invited to play are supposed to invoke, is a bad bad bad game design.

But in general, I'm against "death" as a failure state in character driven "story first" games that don't include ways to revert it. If I'm investing this much thought and time into a specific character (and my GM is investing probably similar amounts into preparing GoT seasons worth of plot for my character), I don't want to risk it all going away and being wasted simply because of a poor dice roll; on the other hand, I'm more than fine with narrative "penalties", like losing an objective or facing a setback (as long as it isn't one of these "setbacks that spiral you into uselessness to the point where you would be better retiring this character and getting a new one".

Basically, when I design a combat scenario, I make sure to create a failure state that *isn't* player characters dying. You fail to defeat these bandits? They will successfuly strike at a town you liked, and npcs you cared about will get kidnapped or worse. You fail to take down a serial killer? He will strike again. Unable to defeat honor of your family in a duel? Shame on you! And so on. Either way, failure state should allow for continuation of the story, because otherwise, each time we play I roll dice knowing that one of potential results is "game over, sudden cancellation of our years long campaign, time to go home".

It's not a video game, where after getting ganked in a combat scenario, we just can hit reload button and try again until we can continue playing our characters.

"The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim.
We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling." - Hagakure

To each their own of course but if I want a game all about story where a character cannot die, I will play 7th Sea. I don't think L5R is the world for that.

One of the charms of L5R *for me* is that no violence is without risk, no duel guaranteed (karmic strike especially). When I GM, I am careful when things escalate to violence since any character *can* die and I need to have a plot recovery backup plan. Every character in any game I run has a rich, detailed backstory but that story can end by the sword at any time.

Frankly, I like the arrow story of my character because he may have been a nobody with no destiny in the end but he was killed the same way as King Harold II and what is more epic than that?

That and the Yogo shugenja I played after him was a super fun character that lasted 2 years before he sacrificed himself and died to cover his allies retreat. Like a good Yogo should, he ended up betraying the thing he loved the most - himself. A heroic death was the best story ending for that character.

Everyone wants to be a samurai, until it is time to do what samurai do.

11 hours ago, WHW said:

I don't like that, mostly because if I make a character for fighting, I probably enjoy the act of fighting and want it to have a regular place at the table (either in a form of Skirmish, or a Duel that goes into skirmish). Making something that's a regular part of the game being basically "each time you try it, you have large % of chance to die and be unable to do anything about it" penalizes me for wanting to live out a "samurai warrior" fantasy in a game about samurai warriors, especially one where you don't just roll Bob The Fighter XVI five minutes of real time after Bob The Fighter XV gets exploded by a trap, and each character is infused by tons of personal motivations, relations, family, personal mythology and other "character-driven" elements that go "poof" the moment you die. Don't punish your samurai-warriors characters from doing samurai-warrior things in a game about samurai-warrioring where all your initial choices for character "types" were different samurai-warriors who all got some kind of mechanic towards samurai-warrioring (in first release of L5R rpg, there was no such thing as "Courtier" school, all schools were Bushi). Good design should invoke the *feeling* of having to be ready for death, not do a death-check each time someone decides to play the game.

Basically, IMHO, turning combat into a punishing failure state (read, the fact that you are in combat is seen as failure in itself and you are going to be punished for it by being threatened by death) in a game where fighting is supposed to be a major part of the fantasy character types you are invited to play are supposed to invoke, is a bad bad bad game design.

But in general, I'm against "death" as a failure state in character driven "story first" games that don't include ways to revert it. If I'm investing this much thought and time into a specific character (and my GM is investing probably similar amounts into preparing GoT seasons worth of plot for my character), I don't want to risk it all going away and being wasted simply because of a poor dice roll; on the other hand, I'm more than fine with narrative "penalties", like losing an objective or facing a setback (as long as it isn't one of these "setbacks that spiral you into uselessness to the point where you would be better retiring this character and getting a new one".