16 hours ago, WHW said:

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.

If that's the case in your games, maybe how to carry on those details beyond one character is something you can consider.

6 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

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.

I'm fairly sure that the point is to have a meaningful death, not to avoid death whatsoever. There is a massive in-setting thematic difference between being killed by a fellow samurai in a wild back-and-forth duel and being chopped down by a lowly bandit like a dog. You are supposedly a fantasy samurai, not a glorified ashigaru. You should be able to face a hundred bandits without even a sliver of thought that you may die in the fight.

18 hours ago, WHW said:

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.

[snip]

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.

I still don't see any difference between both ways. Normally, upgrading a trait or a skill takes time, it's not done in the between two fights in a battlefield. I don't have the books right now, but I know in one of them, they stated the "time" needed to upgrade a trait/skills. However, most group I've played don't use this way of spending, it's either between games or in a small downtime between games (while sleeping or a few days of freedoms or while traveling).

About the fact that "Player B can be smarter abouyt her XP purchase?" No matter the way, it's the same with both system. To be honest, I feel like it's even worst. Here's why. Player A gets his "level" and places his points. After playing a few hours later, he realized he forget to raised a skill he really needed, so he'll have to wait until the next level to get it. In the current way, he'll just have to wait for the next XP gain. So, at the end, a bad attribution in the "level system" is basically worst then in the current system.

I've managed a game where I didn't wanted some XP spending slowdown, the way I did it was to inform my player that they'll get XP between huge events and it is also when they'll be able to spend their XP. They've got XP chunks of 15-20 XP between those events, which is also a way of reducing the "mini-game" since I gave XP when a part of the story was completed. Which made a lot of sense because it was in a huge warfare.

Now, from your real-life example, I don't see that the main problem is from the XP spending/"level gain" system, it is what most people said (myself included) that the Skills aren't important enough in the way they did the system. Some people are thinking about: "Skill + Trait Keep Skill" instead of "Skill + Trait Keep Trait". My thoughts on this topic is divided. While I agree that giving more power to Skills is needed, I also don't want to see Trait being weak due to the cost of it. However, it's hard to disagree when a character is stronger in a Skill with a Trait of 5 and a Skill of 1(6k5, average of 34.7 per roll), then someone with a Skill of 7 and a Trait of 3 (10k3, average of 32 per roll).

Sometime, I wonder if the 2nd edition wasn't a way to solve this, with: "Skill Keep Trait". I know it wasn't the most loved decision, but at some point, people knew they needed to spend some XP in the skills to be effective. Other time, I feel harsh with the idea of using: "Skill + Trait Keep the lowest value of Skill or Trait". This way, a character with 6 in his Skill and 3 in is Trait will roll: 9k3 and another with 3 in is Skill and 5 in his Trait will roll: 8k3. Which way I prefer... Honestly, I don't know, but one thing I do know is that Skills need to be stronger. Maybe something with Skill Mastery may be a good thing, for example, at some point (at least 5), the Skill gives +0k1 on the roll. Just adding this to my previous example, the first one will keep his average of 34.7 per roll, but the second one will now have: 10k4 with an average roll of 38.9. So yeah, I don't think there's a lot of people denying about the Skills being weaker than Traits, but it has nothing to do with "Level" VS XP spent.

For the other part of the example, sorry about the Shosuro Infiltrator, but that's the same for most character besides a few exception. Every character wants to be good in their speciallity and doesn't want to be bad everything else. I'll pick another character with the same problem, the Kakita Bushi. He wants more Reflex and Void to be good in his school and duels, which means he'll have low Earth, low Agility. But as I always though, since the bushi has good reflex, he should use his katana in duels and should use a Yumi bow in skirmishes. However, the Shosuro Infiltrator shouldn't have low Agility, since he'll need his Agility for his Stealth, so he should be kinda decent in combat because of this. This being said, changing from XP Spent to "Level gain" won't change that neither, that's how the character is built.

In fact, it could get worst, let's say that at a certain point, the Shosuro Infiltrator gains +1 Trait and 5 Skill points, he'll probably won't think about spending his Trait in the Earth Ring anyway, so he'll probably go in Reflex or Agility. His Skill points will probably go at least 1 in Ninjutsu and 1 in Stealth, leaving him with 3 points in other skills... So the problem you've stated still applies. I don't see how changing XP Spent to "Level gain" solved the problem.

1 hour ago, Crawd said:

About the fact that "Player B can be smarter abouyt her XP purchase?" No matter the way, it's the same with both system. To be honest, I feel like it's even worst. Here's why. Player A gets his "level" and places his points. After playing a few hours later, he realized he forget to raised a skill he really needed, so he'll have to wait until the next level to get it. In the current way, he'll just have to wait for the next XP gain. So, at the end, a bad attribution in the "level system" is basically worst then in the current system.

We used to have the same problem but then we stopped chiseling our characters onto stone tablets and switched to pen and paper. J/k

If somebody realizes after a few sessions he's made a mistake during character creation the DM can allow him to change some small stuff? As long as it doesn't happen every session and the rest of the players are ok with it.

People can also unlearn skills. When I was 9 my lore: Dinosaurs was atleast level 5, nowadays it's a measly 1.

3 minutes ago, Mig el Pig said:

We used to have the same problem but then we stopped chissling our characters onto stone tablets and switched to pen and paper. J/k

If somebody realizes after a few sessions he's made a mistake during character creation the DM can allow him changing some stuff? As long as it doesn't happen every session and the rest of the players are ok with it.

People can also unlearn skills. When I was 12 my lore: Dinosaurs was atleast level 5, nowadays it's a measly 1.

Of course, a Storyteller should allow some changes, if that change doesn't impact what has been done until the last point. However, if you read the main point of what I've said, I'm just pointing out that both way of doing it has the same problem. But one allows an quicker way to solve the problems when played "by the book". My games aren't played "by the book" but I know some people who's really "by the book" and requesting changes are out of question and their answers would be: "Tough luck!". So the XP Spent way is better when playing with those kind of people.

As for the "Unlearn skill" thing, I don't want to argue on that because I'm not aware of a RPG that has those kind of mechanism. Also, unlearning doesn't mean to regain those XP for something else and it takes times to learn something. Of you want to apply some stuffs as applied in real-life, then you mostly agree that you cannot do this by the "Level progression" since you do not wake up one morning and feels more agile and more skillful in a couple of fields all at the same time. It's a gradual ways and not all at the same pace.

I just prefer a linear progression to a stair progression. It just feels more alive.

To avoid "mis-Skilling" I think it would be better to simply have a nice and informative blurb about useful Skills (both in a general sense and in a school-type-specific approach). Like, improving Defense/Etiquette/Investigation/Jiujutsu is rarely a bad idea - so if in doubt, then go for these four.

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

To avoid "mis-Skilling" I think it would be better to simply have a nice and informative blurb about useful Skills (both in a general sense and in a school-type-specific approach). Like, improving Defense/Etiquette/Investigation/Jiujutsu is rarely a bad idea - so if in doubt, then go for these four.

Isn't it the idea behind the school skills? I really feel like if a player is not too sure about how to build their character, he should focus on these school skills. But yeah, it wouldn't be bad to add up the informative blurb on useful Skills in general. I do like the idea.

Another thing that I like in my group, people are talking each others on their character and asks for suggestions. Of course, it's easier when the players are playing as a group. Some situations makes it harder to do it, specially in a game where there's some PVP aspect. Since I prefer a group working together, I usually see people helping each others while spending their XP, the Storyteller included.

8 minutes ago, Crawd said:

Isn't it the idea behind the school skills? I really feel like if a player is not too sure about how to build their character, he should focus on these school skills. But yeah, it wouldn't be bad to add up the informative blurb on useful Skills in general. I do like the idea.

School Skills can be a little misleading sometimes, especially with the "custom" skill you pick for them. And there is a Useful Skills blurb in the Core Book (page 134), it is just not very... well... useful (and also hard to spot because it hides in a dark and messy background).

7 hours ago, Crawd said:

Sometime, I wonder if the 2nd edition wasn't a way to solve this, with: "Skill Keep Trait". I know it wasn't the most loved decision, but at some point, people knew they needed to spend some XP in the skills to be effective.

From what I understand the major problem with 2nd edition was a failure to adjust TNs. Target Numbers that were reasonable with roll S+T keep T became unreasonable with roll S keep T.

Skill 3 Trait 3 vs TN 25 is a 50% chance for S+T k T (6k3) but an 18% chance for S k T (3k3).

16 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I'm fairly sure that the point is to have a meaningful death, not to avoid death whatsoever. There is a massive in-setting thematic difference between being killed by a fellow samurai in a wild back-and-forth duel and being chopped down by a lowly bandit like a dog. You are supposedly a fantasy samurai, not a glorified ashigaru. You should be able to face a hundred bandits without even a sliver of thought that you may die in the fight.

(Please don't take this as snark as there is none intended, I assure you) Deathwatch is a great game for the "sheaves of wheat" style, I don't see L5R as being that.

The way I see it, a named metaplot character or Rank 5 bushi is a fantasy samurai destined for some sort of great destiny. A rank 1 bushi is a glorified ashigaru trying to climb the ranks and their destiny can be to die like a dog, forgotten by the world in a nameless skirmish.

I do think 4th ed made characters much more survivable and that is good for such a deadly system. For a bandit, I would give them 3k2 to attack and since all the characters in my group (rank 1) are at least TN20, that is 21% chance to hit so yeah, each of them should be able to handle 3-5 bandits without much issue, receiving a few flesh wounds and dispatching each bandit fairly easily with a simplified system for wounds against goons. That feels like L5R to me.

"You should be able to face a hundred bandits without even a sliver of thought that you may die in the fight." To me, an L5R character who follows the code of bushido should be able to face a hundred bandits without a sliver of doubt they may die in the fight. Oh, they will get cut down and die fairly quickly but a samurai does not think of death, only what honour demands and that their ancestors accept them when they meet in the afterlife.

But hey, as long as we both are enjoying our games, that is all that really matters.

31 minutes ago, DarkHorse said:

"You should be able to face a hundred bandits without even a sliver of thought that you may die in the fight." To me, an L5R character who follows the code of bushido should be able to face a hundred bandits without a sliver of doubt they may die in the fight. Oh, they will get cut down and die fairly quickly but a samurai does not think of death, only what honour demands and that their ancestors accept them when they meet in the afterlife.

This should be really come up against, say, three ogres. Or a mid-league oni. Or a fellow samurai. But bandits? Those guys should drop like flies from a samurai's angry gaze; then said samurai can have personal drama about being cursed by awesome and not feeling the Samurai Glory while walking knee-deep in bandit guts.

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

This should be really come up against, say, three ogres. Or a mid-league oni. Or a fellow samurai. But bandits? Those guys should drop like flies from a samurai's angry gaze; then said samurai can have personal drama about being cursed by awesome and not feeling the Samurai Glory while walking knee-deep in bandit guts.

Different strokes for different folks. I do not agree with you but that doesn't mean that the L5R RPG can't handle both styles and more.

You could easily get your feel with a "Mook damage rolls do not explode" optional rule and Earthx5 wound ranks. Which would make a bandit with a han-kyu and willowleaf arrows only deal around 13 damage on average (and 20 damage at most) to characters with 70+ wounds.

52 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

You could easily get your feel with a "Mook damage rolls do not explode" optional rule and Earthx5 wound ranks. Which would make a bandit with a han-kyu and willowleaf arrows only deal around 13 damage on average (and 20 damage at most) to characters with 70+ wounds.

The problem with this is that it doesn't really scale upwards: while it might work in the samurai-on-bandit scenario, it would also swamp the samurai-on-samurai scenario that should be, like, absolutely serious business (maybe even more so than the currently present exchange of blows).

33 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The problem with this is that it doesn't really scale upwards: while it might work in the samurai-on-bandit scenario, it would also swamp the samurai-on-samurai scenario that should be, like, absolutely serious business (maybe even more so than the currently present exchange of blows).

Only if npcs also have Earthx5 wounds. Nothing really says that all characters need to have the same wound multipliers or even the basic Earthx5 Healthy rank.

Mooks (be they ashigaru, goblins, or bandits) could have Earthx2 wound ranks (for 16/24/32/40/48 total wounds).

Common Samurai and other decent threats could have Earthx3 with a Earthx5 Healthy rank (for 46/69/92/115/138 total wounds).

Elite Samurai and major threats could have Earthx4 with a Earthx5 Healthy rank (for 58/87/116/145/174 total wounds).

PCs, Heroes, Villains and Boss level Threats could have Earthx5 (for 70/105/140/175/210 total wounds).

Gear can also seriously change damage dealt/taken. A Samurai armed with a Yumi and Flesh Cutters deals 21.5 ave 30 max with no explosions (24.5 uncapped with explosions). 2 of those arrows would Injure (+15 to all TNs) an Earth 2 PC so threat levels can still be maintained.

I mean, Earth x 5 Wounds would seriously undercut the lethality at high levels and blunt the edge of combat. Samurai vs bandits should be a slaughterfest. Samurai vs samurai should be a nerve-wracking game of whoever-makes-the-first-mistake-dies, with the fight most likely ending with the first blow struck. Obviously, having tons of Wounds doesn't mesh well with the latter.

18 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I mean, Earth x 5 Wounds would seriously undercut the lethality at high levels and blunt the edge of combat. Samurai vs bandits should be a slaughterfest. Samurai vs samurai should be a nerve-wracking game of whoever-makes-the-first-mistake-dies, with the fight most likely ending with the first blow struck. Obviously, having tons of Wounds doesn't mesh well with the latter.

Why bandits should be a slaughterfest? I don't see why it should be done that way. L5R is not Dynasty Warrior RPG Edition. Samurai aren't immortals. Also, some bandits are ronins, which are also samurai, so why should they be weaker just because they are bandits? I'm not saying that every bandits should be as strong as the players, but I don't think they should be very weak neither. Otherwise, here's the lethality?

I know that you don't want "Joe the Nameless Bandit" to kill someone important, but anyone can kill anyone in life. There's stories where babies kills adults (just as an example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3560674/Woman-driving-Milwaukee-highway-shot-killed-child-sitting-backseat-gun-floor-car.html ), so I don't think it should be removed from the game just because: "It should not happened!" So what if a goblin kills a player or important NPC? Underestimating the enemy is a huge flaw in the human mind. I'll take another example using the real life. Why is there a lot of stories where great people are killed by peasant revolts? Hey, they are only peasant, they shouldn't be able to kill important people?

It may affect your story, but for me, it's part of the game. To me, if I don't want any surprises in meaningless skirmishes, I don't use dice to solve it, I only storytell the fight, letting my players to say a couple of actions they want to perform and auto-succeeding. I only use dice in fights where everything can happened. This is a way to solve your problem without altering the game in some strange ways.

By strange ways, I want to say about: "Bandit A cannot kill NPCs or players but Bandit B can!" Why? The first one is normal...

3 hours ago, Crawd said:

Why bandits should be a slaughterfest? I don't see why it should be done that way. L5R is not Dynasty Warrior RPG Edition.

Well, it shouldn't go that far, but Rokugani samurai are supposedly not average samurai but fantasy samurai. Like, they have this whole Mushin/Zanshin/Shoshin/Gaman thing, and the gods who uplifted them into samurai-hood were the real deal. In the end, yes, it might sound a little ridiculous, but samurai should be special because they are legit special.

Also, it is hard to draw realistic parallels IMO because we have gods (and I mean real gods) waltzing around and other supernatural stuff happening all over the place with all kinds of people who are up to that.

10 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I mean, Earth x 5 Wounds would seriously undercut the lethality at high levels and blunt the edge of combat. Samurai vs bandits should be a slaughterfest. Samurai vs samurai should be a nerve-wracking game of whoever-makes-the-first-mistake-dies, with the fight most likely ending with the first blow struck. Obviously, having tons of Wounds doesn't mesh well with the latter.

Depends on how you define the "first blow struck." Remember the second and third wound ranks are Nicked and Grazed which really do not imply a solid blow did the damage. The wound rank death spiral is very effective at making once you reach hurt you are likely to lose.

A 7 round Earthx5 back and forth represents what you want far better than a single lucky roll explosion death.

22 hours ago, Crawd said:

Why bandits should be a slaughterfest? I don't see why it should be done that way. L5R is not Dynasty Warrior RPG Edition. Samurai aren't immortals. Also, some bandits are ronins, which are also samurai, so why should they be weaker just because they are bandits? I'm not saying that every bandits should be as strong as the players, but I don't think they should be very weak neither. Otherwise, here's the lethality?

it's because, not considering the whole "Shugenja&Monks" mystic stuff, L5R takes a lot of inspiration from old chanbara\jidaeki Movies like those made by Kurosawa, Hideo Gosha and Kobayashi.

The lone bushi slaugthering huge mobs of soldiers\thugs\bandits\low-level ronin just with His katana is typical of the genre.

Off Course there's also the bad Bandit Boss, too skillfull and dangerous to be quickly killed, but if you have seen the final fight of Yojimbo, you cannot avoid appreciating some thug slaughtering.

But mass thug slaughtering, even if possible, is not without risks.

See also the end of Kobayashi's "Harakiri" where the main character is NOT killed by a big boss but he dies For his honor, overcome by too many wounds which a mob of minor bushi inflicted on him....but not before having killed at least 30 of them!

1 hour ago, LucaCherstich said:

it's because, not considering the whole "Shugenja&Monks" mystic stuff, L5R takes a lot of inspiration from old chanbara\jidaeki Movies like those made by Kurosawa, Hideo Gosha and Kobayashi.

The lone bushi slaugthering huge mobs of soldiers\thugs\bandits\low-level ronin just with His katana is typical of the genre.

Off Course there's also the bad Bandit Boss, too skillfull and dangerous to be quickly killed, but if you have seen the final fight of Yojimbo, you cannot avoid appreciating some thug slaughtering.

But mass thug slaughtering, even if possible, is not without risks.

See also the end of Kobayashi's "Harakiri" where the main character is NOT killed by a big boss but he dies For his honor, overcome by too many wounds which a mob of minor bushi inflicted on him....but not before having killed at least 30 of them!

I've seen a good amount of movies like that and there's some very nice bushi character being killed by a random and generic soldier out of nowhere. It's not because the bushi is good that mistakes cannot happened, quite the opposite. Also, as I've said and I'll quote myself:

23 hours ago, Crawd said:

To me, if I don't want any surprises in meaningless skirmishes, I don't use dice to solve it, I only storytell the fight, letting my players to say a couple of actions they want to perform and auto-succeeding.

I do want to have some of those moments, but do I really need to roll dice in order to do a Mob-Slaughterfest-O-Mania 2017? Nope, I really feel like those moments are taking way too much time. Simply by storytelling those moments, my players are really enjoying the scene while adding their actions into it. When I do want to roll dice, I do want to have impact in the game, not for a meaningless impact. It falls in the "roll for anything syndrome". At some point, we can adjust the game without the need for rules to do what we want to achieve. Geez!

I don't need a system that tells me everything that I can do and causing the game to have no random death. If the player dies to a meaningless goblin, it should happen. Heck, I've placed the goblin in the skirmish, not just for fun. Otherwise, I wouldn't have place it or I wouldn't roll for that goblin. As far as I know, the Storyteller's job is to maintain the narrative flow of the game.

I'll take example in video games, there's fight were the player doesn't even do anything and kills a couple of stuffs. A Storyteller can do this too. I play a lot of video games RPGs, as far as I know, there's very few fights where the enemy cannot kill my characters. Even if they aren't the huge big boss and they aren't always easy fights.

The main question is do we really want a game where the lethality is high, like it is right now, or a game where most of the fights are swords vs noodles? I really prefer to have my players thinking on their actions before rushing in fights knowing that, if there's no important NPCs, it's meaningless and no chance of dying.

For me, the game had this mentality and atmosphere where fighting is not always the solution. A system where every actions can have deadly consequences. I don't want to see a list of enemies with special rules: "Cannot kill players" or "Damage dealt to players are maxed at 10" just because a few people cannot alter the game as they want. Heck, even a rule layer has trouble with L5R because there's a lot of place in the corebook that encourage to alter the game to fit in your gamestyle. We don't need more than this. I don't want a book that holds my hands on: "Meaningful death vs meaningless death", "How to handle a non-lethal skirmish", "When a skirmish should be lethal", etc. As a supplement, fine, but not the corebook.

Some people are against the death of player's character, I'm not. I've played a couple of games in different setting with deathseeking moments, my goal was to have fun, even if it means that my character dies and those moments are really fun. I learned to stop caring for my characters because it restrained me from doing fun stuffs. Some people around us wasn't agreeing with me because they cared too much on their characters.

So yeah, sure it's fun to see movies with Mob-Slaughterfest-O-Mania, it's fun to narrate scenes like that, but I don't need rules to narrate those scene. I don't need to slow the game pace with dice rolling just to have those moments. Sure, the first time a player tells me: "I take my katana and slice the goblin in two." and I narrate the action without letting him roll the dice, he's stunned and not sure why he didn't roll, but after a while, they enjoy that kind of stuffs because the game flows better and can have a lot of fun. I'll repeat myself, if I roll dice, I want to impact the game, not slowing the flow of the game for meaningless consequences...

what can I say...."Rokugan Your way" was the main approach in 4th edition.

I'm just saying that mass-thug-slaughterfest is part of the genre, but everyone does as he pleases!

I wouldn't go that far to have mook fights inconsequential, only exclude 'health hazard' from the possible consequences. The combat could still delay the PC (happened more than once in my games), waste resources/assets, or result in any other kind of inconvenient situation (for example, getting lost via carefree use of Move actions is quite common around here). Really, there should be an importance in how you slaughter the mooks - yeah, they might be cannon fodder, but someone, somewhere decided to throw them at you, so they are supposedly facing you for a reason.

There is also the question of how far the fight escalates, and whether your happy-go-lucky slaughterfest turns into a full-blown Mook Horror Show. That, in turn, might have (narrative) consequences of its own.