I can't seem to find it mentioning anywhere that some opponents are harder to hit than others. Am I missing something or do pretty much all attacks succeed with two successes?

Made a defence thread.

Defence should be a common ability for warriors and NOT just that flat +1TN you Can get from a stance. It will be horrible at High level play.

What I said isn't about stances though? In previous editions characters with higher reflexes were harder to hit, is that sort of mechanic in this edition? If so, can you give me a page number? If not, could we get it back?

Couldn't find anything on defence. L5R 4th is lethal, but you can defend yourself although at High level it also requires some tweaking

In 4th Edition (and previous editions) increasing your Reflexes Trait made you harder to hit by increasing your Armour TN. What Bramble is asking is if there is a way to increase the TN to hit your character other than Air Stance.

So far it looks like armor is the best way to negate damage against a heavy hitter. A TN 2 doesn't seem particularly hard to accomplish when striking.

The armor and weapon rules are pretty interesting...

This is assuming that TN 2 is easy when half the Ring dice and 5 out of 12(almost half) the skill dice do not add to successes.

Exactly. TN 2 can be easy to hit, but often will be with stress. TN 3 is substantially more difficult.

11 hours ago, SideshowLucifer said:

Exactly. TN 2 can be easy to hit, but often will be with stress. TN 3 is substantially more difficult.

I've been playing around with sample rolls. At a TN 2, you are right, easy to get with strife frequently (not always). The TN 3 is also very easy to get, but basically ALWAYS has strife . This is a level 1 character with 3 die in a ring and 2 die in a skill. Certain circumstances may not always make that the case.

Hitting the target isn't too difficult from what I can see (but yes, strife). It's damaging the target that seems to be difficult. Armour does an amazing job of deflecting the brunt of most attacks. I don't mind people being easy(ish) to hit - it isn't like most people are actively trying to jump out of the way of blows - the goal is simply to be faster than your opponent and hit first. Optimally, you hit the person, they can't hit you because they're too busy bleeding out.

That's the optimal goal, I would hope.

6 minutes ago, Tashiro said:

Hitting the target isn't too difficult from what I can see (but yes, strife). It's damaging the target that seems to be difficult. Armour does an amazing job of deflecting the brunt of most attacks. I don't mind people being easy(ish) to hit - it isn't like most people are actively trying to jump out of the way of blows - the goal is simply to be faster than your opponent and hit first. Optimally, you hit the person, they can't hit you because they're too busy bleeding out.

That's the optimal goal, I would hope.

Unless you are incapacitated, wounds do not give you any penalty. Conditions are mostly inflicted by critical strikes. So... i Think being able to withstand attacks is going to be much stronger than going first and attacking.

Check out page 162. It covers defending yourself through the "Centre" action

edit:

Duels are awesome! The Staredown mechanics are so cool

I think the center point of your thread is getting lost a little bit.

I think your main question is: aside from changing your stance is there a way to increase the TN of hitting your character?

As far as I understand the answer is no.

So a school level 5 character is pretty much just as easy to hit as a school level 1 character. Although, the level 5 will be able to take much more damage.