If they change from the r&k, the progression system will probably change too. How will rank, experience and gaining new techniques be handled?

if they go Genesys, how is leveling handled in Star Wars?

how will that transfer to school ranks?

Nah, the progression system is easy to adapt. There is already a similar "tiering" mechanic in Genesys, just with Talent Trees rather than actual ranks. But hey, if the Talent Trees go away, I won't shed a single drop of tear .

Talents trees could be good. Have generic ones for bushi, scout, heavy, archers and all to let each character access cool weapon abilities and be efficient.

then add clan specific trees that embodies the clan specification, giving an extra edge.

everyone should be able to follow a path of archery and gains techniques for it. Just the Tsuruchi will be even stronger or precise.

1 hour ago, Nitenman said:

Talents trees could be good. Have generic ones for bushi, scout, heavy, archers and all to let each character access cool weapon abilities and be efficient.

1

They could be, but FFG's history with balancing Talent Trees is horrible, so I wouldn't trust them with it.

I hope there is a mix of neutral and clan options so that players can customize their character a bit further. The school system made every Scorpion Bushi the same, so if you have 2 Scorpion Bushi in a party together they don't always get to feel unique from each other. I'd like to see some type of tree.

idk how SW did it - we all kinda assume the new system is going to be - at least - similar in concept to the sw system, so if someone can provide some insight as to how that works I'd appreciate it.

In Star Wars you had talent trees. You could later get access to new one. If you google "Star Wars talent tree" you should see an example somewhere on the net. I would post it, but dunno if its legal. I think it is, because some of it was promotional material.

44 minutes ago, WHW said:

In Star Wars you had talent trees. You could later get access to new one. If you google "Star Wars talent tree" you should see an example somewhere on the net. I would post it, but dunno if its legal. I think it is, because some of it was promotional material.

thx, its been hit and miss googling these things - I couldn't find a good chart of the dice at all. I did find the talent trees and those look like a great idea. I imagine a character can pursue multiple talent trees at a time, so we could have multiple neutral talent trees, and clan specific trees allowing players to develop their character how they wanted.

I like the look of this

The way schools worked in L5R was never that great to me. Each character from the same school was a bit too similar. It would be nice to have a clan / school determine which talent trees you can invest in, but have multiple options in each tree a character can pursue.

11 minutes ago, shosuko said:

thx, its been hit and miss googling these things - I couldn't find a good chart of the dice at all. I did find the talent trees and those look like a great idea. I imagine a character can pursue multiple talent trees at a time, so we could have multiple neutral talent trees, and clan specific trees allowing players to develop their character how they wanted.

1

This is the idea, but making Talent Trees work is legit hard. You can end up with cookie-cutter builds and nonsensical branches faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

10 hours ago, shosuko said:

idk how SW did it - we all kinda assume the new system is going to be - at least - similar in concept to the sw system, so if someone can provide some insight as to how that works I'd appreciate it.

This is a general generic mile high overview for how SW does it: You pick a species that gives you your stating attributes, your bases for derived stats, some xp to spend, and some bonuses (like a free skill rank and better senses). Then you pick a career, that gives you some career skills and some free ranks in some of them. Career skills are less expensive to raise with xp later on. Then within that career you pick a Specialty. That gives you a few more career skills and free ranks in a couple of those skills. Each specialty has a talent tree. You get one free talent from it. Then you spend XP on attributes, skills, or talents. Some books let you take on bad stuff or trade on your reputation to get more XP or money. Then you buy gear and calculate derived stats.

Rolls are made and because of the way the dice work essentially (and I'm being very generic here) you either succeed at your task with some negative consequence or you fail at the task with positive consequences. There are charts for how to apply those or it can be handled narratively. Those are not the only outcomes, but the most common.

Talent trees tend to be about 4 talents wide and 5 deep. They vary quite a bit by each specialty. Top row are 5xp each, 2nd row 10xp each, 3rd row 15xp each, 4th row 20xp each, and last row 25xp each. They are kind of a mess. Expect to spend 100-150xp to reach something on the bottom row as the paths get kinda funky. Some specialties can be useful for very little xp and some will take a lot to pay off.

In SW you can spend xp to get take than one specialty and thus access multiple talent trees. It can get kinda convoluted and it is easy to make some useless choices and some crazy powerful choices.

Talents tend to either be minor bonuses or minor removals of penalties or limited use abilities, like re-roll a certain skill once a day. Almost all the talents are very crunchy. Other than the core dice mechanic the system tends to lean heavy on the crunch while paying lip service to story. There are a few places they leave it vague, such as a distance being range bands that don't have a set size and a round of combat can more or less be whatever length of time the GM feels like it should encompass.

As for what they do for L5R, my guess (which could very well be wrong) is that if they use the same system for L5R, then Species will become Family, Career will become your Clan, and Specialties will be your School.

Not sure how they will handle the different number and type of attributes between systems. Also destiny points and force dice will probably have some kind of void connection, but not sure how they will do it. My guess is poorly.

I'm thinking:

Clan sets base characteristics of your character, probably 5 stats with 1 for each ring or traditional 8 with Void separate.

Perhaps Family comes into this, but with some xp to spend during creation the variances should cover that.

School determis the skills and abilities you start with, along with providing a number of paths to follow. Probably 4 schools since that's what was mentioned in the article. Hopefully each has a collection of small trees (techniques?) or chains that are themed to a particular style within the school.

I hope the move away from the larger Specialisation trees of Star Wars. You become locked in to that one tree too easily with incentive to diversify restricted by xp cost.

Eg:

The Warrior School may contain Techniques for: Katana, Polearm (or 2 handed), Mounted, Archery, Duel Wielding, Thrown etc.

If the list is big enough for each school then each Technique may be limited to certain Clans at the start, getting something outside your clan would require you to find a willing Sensei.

If there are talent trees, having some for school techniques, weapon masteries, and such makes sense.

Yep. I think the idea of purchasing unique abilities using xp works well in general. Then grouping those into themed sets is good too. Having them less tied to the character (ie loosing the "your a level 5 warrior") is freeing for people to make more personalised characters.

A duelist can be turned into a pit fighter with some aggressive coercion and street smarts. The same duelist could instead have been made into a Noble with some solid leadership and education skills.

Genesys and Star Wars have a system of very powerful abilities of which you can only get one or two but are upgradable and epic. I hope they keep something similar here.

This is an area I think could improve over the levelling from pervious editions. I have found that due to previous iterations being locked into the 5 rank structure it adopted at its inception, there less of a feeling of advancement and consequently less diversity: one bushi from a school is the same as another in mechanically supported theme. Obviously characterisation plays a part, but when the chips are down and the katanas are out, they basically end up being exactly the same by pulling off the same moves.

I hope a more modular advancement like Star Wars could benefit as it would allow bushi of the same school to focus in different areas while still not straying from the core of their school.

Obvious ways bushi can focus in different areas but stay consistent is have a battlefield route and a duelling route. This would help with the Kakita for instance who were a real issue in so far as they were so good at duelling that their existence made duels pointless, but were so poor in actual combat they looked a bit pathetic as swordsmen. In this example bushi schools could offer both duelling abilities and battlefield abilities (each to degrees comparative with their strengths), and this way they have options within their schools without actually deviating too far from their core principles.

To expand on my brief input, the Five Tier School system could work as-is, or be simplified in such a way that a school has fewer techniques. This definitely applies for "Advanced Schools" as they were on average three tiers. Like schools, we could see talent trees for the different weapon groups or the weapons themselves, which would include dueling. If we have skills and rings (a common assumption), then these talents will allow players to leverage skills in some manner so that they represent a mastery over them. In another vein we can see kata return as talents, and likely kiho and spells treated the same - both of which may stem from an elemental tree so that a Fire Shugenja, for example, needs to invest into a Fire Spell tree. I'm not sure what that would look like I think it makes sense instead of cherry picking the best talents from a tree, you have to climb up it to represent understanding and mastery in a certain of study or what have you.