So I'm trying to make sure I understand damage correctly.

My character's Wound levels are: Healthy 10, Nicked 14, Grazed 18, Hurt 22, Injured 26, Crippled 30, Down 34, Out 38.

Do those numbers reflect the total wound level of the character or of each level of wounds? An example will illustrate:

With one swing of an enemy katana, my character takes 20 points of damage. Is she now Nicked because she takes 10 points in the Healthy level and another 10 in the Nicked level? Or is she now Grazed because 20 points is above the Grazed threshold and just short of Hurt?

Neither. Each wound level has a certain number of wounds in it. Once you have taken all the wounds in a level you move on to the next one, with the character suffering the penalty from the most grievous wound they are currently suffering. With those wound totals your character would suffer the effects of the Injured wound level. Combat can get brutal in L5R, and you are sometimes only a single swing of a weapon from death.

Edit: My group marks the number of wounds per level rather than the total wounds the character can take for this exact reason.

You have only one wound pool, it is not actually "separated" into actual, independent wound levels.

So by your example, it goes like this:

- If you have 0-10 Wounds, you are Healthy

- If you have 11-14 Wounds, you are Nicked

- If you have 15-18 Wounds, you are Grazed

- If you have 19-22 Wounds, you are Hurt (taking 20 Wounds from an attack will put you here)

- If you have 23-26 Wounds, you are Injured

- If you have 27-30 Wounds, you are Crippled

- If you have 31-34 Wounds, you are Down

- If you have 35-38 Wounds, you are Out

- If you have 39+ Wounds, you are Ded

Okay, that clears things up. At first I thought each wound level was a separate pool, but I get it now. (I think some of the wordings of the core rulebook could be clearer.)

Wow, so combat really is lethal. I like it! One of my pet peeves over decades of roleplaying is that most games let you get punched, stabbed, or shot and you can still walk around as long as you have a bandage and a few "hit points" left.

Thanks for your help!

1 hour ago, player2391703 said:

Wow, so combat really is lethal.

Don't be mistaken, it is a lot tamer in game than on paper.

grazed!

10 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Don't be mistaken, it is a lot tamer in game than on paper.

Well, not if you have dice like my group does. I've once saw a player roll above 120 damage not once, but twice in a roll. And another occasion when one player rolled about 50 damage against a character they where trying to take alive (so this roll was using his LOWEST DICE) and another character rolled 80 something in the medicine roll to save that NPC.

The first occasion was in a high level game, I give you that, but the second one was at Insight Rank 2... On the course of this campaign, we had a LOT of situations like that.

On 5/28/2017 at 8:12 AM, player2391703 said:

So I'm trying to make sure I understand damage correctly.

My character's Wound levels are: Healthy 10, Nicked 14, Grazed 18, Hurt 22, Injured 26, Crippled 30, Down 34, Out 38.

Do those numbers reflect the total wound level of the character or of each level of wounds? An example will illustrate:

With one swing of an enemy katana, my character takes 20 points of damage. Is she now Nicked because she takes 10 points in the Healthy level and another 10 in the Nicked level? Or is she now Grazed because 20 points is above the Grazed threshold and just short of Hurt?

Not sure which version you are playing but in 4th Healthy is 5x your Earth?

5 x 2 is 10. That's one of reasons why "Earth 3 or bust" is one of unwritten rules for anyone approaching combat closer than "in different scenario".

On 5/29/2017 at 5:25 AM, Mirumoto Saito said:

Well, not if you have dice like my group does. I've once saw a player roll above 120 damage not once, but twice in a roll. And another occasion when one player rolled about 50 damage against a character they where trying to take alive (so this roll was using his LOWEST DICE) and another character rolled 80 something in the medicine roll to save that NPC.

The first occasion was in a high level game, I give you that, but the second one was at Insight Rank 2... On the course of this campaign, we had a LOT of situations like that.

To be fair, Insight Ranks have almost nothing to do with damage per swing, with rare exceptions of damage techniques that tend to be Rank 5. It's perfectly possible for a Insight Rank 1 character outdamage Insight 5 Character simply because first one is using a nodachi while second one is using a katana.

2 hours ago, WHW said:

To be fair, Insight Ranks have almost nothing to do with damage per swing, with rare exceptions of damage techniques that tend to be Rank 5. It's perfectly possible for a Insight Rank 1 character outdamage Insight 5 Character simply because first one is using a nodachi while second one is using a katana.

True, but all those situations in my games happened while using katana. Only the Hida bushi used a different weapon in this campaign, a tetsubo (and the Isawa Shugenja used a kusarigama, but he never attacked with it, so...).

But I disagree that Insight Rank is so irrelevant to damage. With Insight Rank comes greater levels of Skill and Attributes, which means more Raises to damage, more school techniques and more mastery abilities (the +1k0 from Swords rank 3 and exploding 9 on damage dice from Swords rank 7 are particularly amazing together).

You can have a Insight Rank 1 character with weapon skill 7.

Well, sure, you can do that... but that is a immensely bad way to level your character.

Is it? You don't want to raise other skills too much anyway as their first 2 skill ranks are usually the most valuable, you probably already have Agility 3...only thing that's really more important than that for a facesmasher is Earth 3 and possibly Reflexes 3.

11 hours ago, WHW said:

Is it?

It is. Not getting Insight Ranks means you don't get you Rank 3 (or 4!) School Technique that gives you Simple Action Attacks, the single most important thing for a bushi to get, because it doubles your damage output.

True, but buying up kendo 7 or heavy weapons 7 also counts toward getting that rank 3. So it's a question of "could you have possibly spent that 26XP to instantly get to rank 3". if you can't, then you are better delaying Rank 3 a little in exchange of being a murderkill machine for ranks 1 and 2, and being even more dangerous at rank 3.

Though I still think that it's sad that barring the simple attacks and things like matsu 5, the biggest impact on your damage isn't raising strength or getting techniques, but switching from a katana to nodachi or some other good weapon :(.

To be honest, I think the katana shouldn't even be considered before a spear or polearm. The fact that it is the single best weapon of the game (besides the nodachi and the tetsubo, of course) is something that bothers me immensely.

Scimitar is also better than Katana. 2k3 without ability to Void for 3k4 is better than 3k2, void for 4k3. To be fair, I saw arguments that Tonfa (0k3) is better than a Katana...

I would even argue that Scimitar is better than nodachi, because while it has 1 rolled dice less, it's not LARGE and is one handed, which means it:

1. Isn't useless from Prone (you can't attack with Large weapons from Prone)

2. Can be used for dual wielding (so when you have accuracy overflow, you can channel it into ATN)

I actually really dislike the whole weapon system of 4th ED. Jumping from k1 weapon to k2 doubles your damage, jumping from k2 to k3 is at least 50% increase...and it's probably more, because each kept dice means potential for keeping multiple exploded dice. And swords and heavy weapons have affinity towards exploding, due to their Mastery 7 - exploding on 9 instead of exploding on 10 is twice as many explosions!

So, pretty much, Nodachi/Scimitar if a sword user or go home, Tetsubo/Ono if a HWeapons user or go home.

Or fleshcutter kyujutsu if you are smart and play an archer who just pumps Air Ring and is good at both combat, social and exploration.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

Scimitar is also better than Katana. 2k3 without ability to Void for 3k4 is better than 3k2, void for 4k3. To be fair, I saw arguments that Tonfa (0k3) is better than a Katana...

Ah, yes, I totally forgot about the Scimitar! But even then, there is a reason to not consider it: it is a filthy Moto weapon!

And to the Moto themselves, a Nodachi/Tetsubo could even be better, since the Moto bushi can use them one-handed AND they don't carry the social stigma of the scimitar.

2 hours ago, WHW said:

I actually really dislike the whole weapon system of 4th ED. Jumping from k1 weapon to k2 doubles your damage, jumping from k2 to k3 is at least 50% increase...and it's probably more, because each kept dice means potential for keeping multiple exploded dice. And swords and heavy weapons have affinity towards exploding, due to their Mastery 7 - exploding on 9 instead of exploding on 10 is twice as many explosions!

So, pretty much, Nodachi/Scimitar if a sword user or go home, Tetsubo/Ono if a HWeapons user or go home.

Totally agree, the weapon scheme are one of my major bugbears with 4e and is one of the problems I want to address on my homebrew version of L5R. One of my objectives is making all weapons to be either k2 or, for Large weapons, k3 damage.

2 hours ago, WHW said:

Or fleshcutter kyujutsu if you are smart and play an archer who just pumps Air Ring and is good at both combat, social and exploration.

Heh, one character concept I always wanted to play was a Shiba bushi using a naginata with the Iron Forest kata, so you cold invest only in Air, Void and be amazing at both melee, ranged, social AND duels!

If you play unarmed right, it quickly gets up to k3 and k4 with high enoughs kill and advantages.