Not being affected by opportunities in the court is also pretty strong. You are blocking possibly a lot of actions from other courtiers against you.

It just happens that we end up focusing more on combat and people dying than the more important part of the game (In my case, since i mostly played Bushi, there is a obvious reason.)

I think most of these observations are correct, but are leaving out the opportunity cost of not, well, doing anything fun or interesting while turtled d down in earth stance.

No fishing for critical strikes, no evasive movement, no counter attacking.... Just hiding behind hit points and enduring. No making subtle jabs at your rival, no turning two foes against each other.... just passively weathering the stormy seas of a court.

My play test is coming up tomorrow so I don't know if its too good in practice yet. I'll see

4 hours ago, mortthepirate said:

I think most of these observations are correct, but are leaving out the opportunity cost of not, well, doing anything fun or interesting while turtled d down in earth stance.

No fishing for critical strikes, no evasive movement, no counter attacking.... Just hiding behind hit points and enduring. No making subtle jabs at your rival, no turning two foes against each other.... just passively weathering the stormy seas of a court.

My play test is coming up tomorrow so I don't know if its too good in practice yet. I'll see

Why would the player have to miss out on all of those things? The way I understand it, they're immune to them. Doesn't mean they can't use their own.

1 hour ago, WildKnight said:

Why would the player have to miss out on all of those things? The way I understand it, they're immune to them. Doesn't mean they can't use their own.

You have to use an action that uses the ring of your stance, and the ring you use decides how you are doing what you are doing. So if you are in earth stance, you have to do stuff in an earthy way, which means hunkering down and being defensive. If you want to give subtle jabs in court, you need to be air stance. If you want to dance around the battlefield, water stance.

Earth applies to the (Reason Approach) which includes "appealing to others with logic", "Calming and soothing words", and "Verbally B****-smacking someone into submission".

Its not all defense.

7 hours ago, mortthepirate said:

I think most of these observations are correct, but are leaving out the opportunity cost of not, well, doing anything fun or interesting while turtled d down in earth stance.

No fishing for critical strikes, no evasive movement, no counter attacking.... Just hiding behind hit points and enduring. No making subtle jabs at your rival, no turning two foes against each other.... just passively weathering the stormy seas of a court.

My play test is coming up tomorrow so I don't know if its too good in practice yet. I'll see

While in Earth stance you can still do Iaijutsu, Soaring Slice, Crescent Moon Style, Iron Forest Style, Open Hand Style, Pelting Hail Style, Rushing Avalanche Style, Spinning blades Style, Veiled Menace Style, Crimson Leave Style (earth only) and Iron in the Mountains Style (earth only). You can still spend opportunity on Strikes to Auto-crit.

Earth Shuji let you learn about targets ancestral secrets (ancestry unearthed), cause targets to lose honor and gain strife if they attack or scheme against someone you chose (Civility Foremost), negate ally disadvantages (honest Assessment), deescalate conflicts (Pillar of calm) increase a targets TNs against others (Stonewall Tactics), Increase others composure (Touchstone of Courage), turn a skirmish, duel or mass battle temporarily into an intrigue (Immovable Hand of Peace), and learn a targets giri and ways they fear failing as samurai (The Weight of Duty).

Earth Stance lets you still do the fun stuff, but prevents others from doing fun stuff to you.

I feel like people might be under-selling the other stances a little. Fire can cause very dramatic success results by accepting Strife. Water is very versatile, letting you remove Strife every time you make a check (a check is basically every time you roll dice, so even defensive checks cause you to remove Strife) or have unmatchable mobility in combat. Air makes everything that targets you more difficult to achieve. Void lets you ignore Strife entirely on your dice, getting the optimal amount of successes/opportunities on your dice while not gaining any Strife.

I think a lot of people are judging it too powerful just by reading and not by actually trying it out in play. The best argument I've seen against it is that it makes play too boring since it cuts off the options of others, but so do a lot of the other stances, in their own way. Water can deny options by simply not being there due to superior mobility, Air can counter high-damage attacks (or Fire stance) by not getting hit in the first place...

I've only done a minimal amount of playtesting and while Earth stance does seem strong, so do Fire and Air. If it does get toned down I do think that making Opportunities cost more rather than limiting it to 1/turn or something would be the correct choice.

4 hours ago, fyrm said:

You have to use an action that uses the ring of your stance, and the ring you use decides how you are doing what you are doing. So if you are in earth stance, you have to do stuff in an earthy way, which means hunkering down and being defensive. If you want to give subtle jabs in court, you need to be air stance. If you want to dance around the battlefield, water stance.

... right... but there are tons of options that aren't precluded by Earth Stance. Your post made it seem as if the ONLY thing you could do while in Earth Stance was withstand incoming attacks, which is inaccurate.

Whilst we've only run one combat so far, the PC did sit in earth stance for most of it. To be fair, he's an earth-heavy Hida Defender, so it's pretty much expected; earth stance plus striking-as-earth helped a lot in keeping his defence up.

The main thing he missed in earth stance was an easy way to mitigate strife - you can bin off two strife a turn if you spend opportunity on it, but it's surprising how fast you accumulate it, compared to Water (which burns off two per turn for free plus 2 per opportunity as many times as you like) or Void (where you just ignore it completely).

Fire, by comparison, is very good for doing nasty things to heavier armoured foes (because it doubles up almost your bonus successes) - the shadowlands goblins he was fighting could hit him easily enough, but they only way they could actually hurt him was with the extra bonus successes with strife in fire stance (which pushed them to fleeing very quickly!)

The thing about not doing nothing for strife, and the Fire related Strife. Is... does it really matters? Outside of duel or clash i mean.

I would care more about having outburst in Court than in the battlefield. Some here might even say that the Enraged condition is a straight buff to combat!

And in court, if you set the earth stance up, you can still choose to get no strife. Thus avoiding Outbursts completely.

23 hours ago, Mobiusllls said:

The thing about not doing nothing for strife, and the Fire related Strife. Is... does it really matters? Outside of duel or clash i mean.

I would care more about having outburst in Court than in the battlefield. Some here might even say that the Enraged condition is a straight buff to combat!

And in court, if you set the earth stance up, you can still choose to get no strife. Thus avoiding Outbursts completely.

Remember that an opponent in Fire Stance can go "here, have 2 strife" with an opportunity - and if they're not spending it on criticals, they might as well.

Also; Enraged is good, right up until you start taking criticals yourself. Earth Stance means I can't spend 2 opportunity to cause a critical; you still take criticals from anything else - taking wounds in excess of your resilience, or heartpiercing strike, strike with no thought, finishing blows, etc.

13 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Remember that an opponent in Fire Stance can go "here, have 2 strife" with an opportunity - and if they're not spending it on criticals, they might as well.

Funny thing is, one in Earth Stance can negate this with an Opportunity of their own.

Actually no. Earth Stance means people cant use opportunities against you. It doesnt means that you have actions blocked. You cant take criticals but you will dish criticals. You cant take strife by the guy in fire stance, because that is a "Persistent effect". You cant suffer other opportunities. The fire guy literally cant give you strife, and cant crit you unless he use a auto crit technique (like heartpiercing or hitting you after incapacitated.)

And Enraged dont really nerf you, specially in the Earth Stance, its not like you want to be incapacitated anyway. having an outburst in a skirmish is not a big deal, its more worrying if you want your character to fight cool and collected instead of going for blood like a savage.

Quoting Earth Stance, since people are thinking its only useful for combat or for critical strikes.

"When other characters make Attack action checks and Scheme action checks that target you, they cannot spend opportunity to inflict critical strikes, conditions, or persistent effects on you."

6 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

Quoting Earth Stance, since people are thinking its only useful for combat or for critical strikes.

"When other characters make Attack action checks and Scheme action checks that target you, they cannot spend opportunity to inflict critical strikes, conditions, or persistent effects on you."

The Fire Opportunity that gives you 2 Strife is a general option and is not linked to the Attack action. You can use Charge or Guard to dish out that Strife and call it a day.

Take that earth stance! if i actually do nothing to you i can do something to you!

13 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

Actually no. Earth Stance means people cant use opportunities against you. It doesnt means that you have actions blocked. You cant take criticals but you will dish criticals. You cant take strife by the guy in fire stance, because that is a "Persistent effect". You cant suffer other opportunities. The fire guy literally cant give you strife, and cant crit you unless he use a auto crit technique (like heartpiercing or hitting you after incapacitated.)

Snipping for focus

13 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

Quoting Earth Stance, since people are thinking its only useful for combat or for critical strikes.

"When other characters make Attack action checks and Scheme action checks that target you, they cannot spend opportunity to inflict critical strikes, conditions, or persistent effects on you."

2 things. Firstly, you take crits after you've filled up your resilience with wounds, and you go incap at resilience+10, so there are a few wounds worth of crits earth can't stop. Secondly, I don't think strife is a "critical strike, condition, or persistent effect". It is a stat tracked, like wounds, so I don't see how earth stops it.

Unless I missed something.

21 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

You cant take strife by the guy in fire stance, because that is a "Persistent effect"

Not the case: these are defined:

Quote

Some effects persist for a set duration (such as "until the beginning of your next turn," "for one round plus additional rounds equal to your bonus successes," or "until the end of the scene."). These effects end once the stated end point is reached.

A character cannot benefit (or suffer) from more than one instance of the same persistent effect, even if this effect would be applied by multiple different sources. If a character would benefit (or suffer) from more than one instance of the same persistent effect, the character chooses which one applies if it is beneficial; the GM chooses which one applies if it is harmful.

'Persistent effects' is stuff like 'prone', etc, not strife.

2 minutes ago, fyrm said:

Unless I missed something.

No, you didn't. Criticals caused by wounds, or by effects of actions (not opportunities) are suffered to full effect, and persistent effects caused by those criticals still apply. The only thing earth stance ignores is opportunities along the lines of :

Quote

[][]: If you succeed, you inflict a critical strike on your target with severity equal to your weapon’s deadliness.

or

[]: The target suffers the Disoriented condition.

I'm actually thinking about abusing Charge and Water Stance to never get hit in the first place but still be able to dish out some damage.

I charge in, stop at Range 2. Spend 2 Opportunity to deal damage with my naginata. Use Water Stance to get at Range 3. Use end turn movement to get at Range 4. So unless my opponent has a Range 2+ weapon or Charges himself, I'm untouchable.

Charge is a movement action. you cant do that AtoMaki. (at least, by what i understand.)

2 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Not the case: these are defined:

'Persistent effects' is stuff like 'prone', etc, not strife.

Being prone is a condition. its literally listed under "conditions."

1 minute ago, Mobiusllls said:

Charge is a movement action. you cant do that AtoMaki. (at least, by what i understand.)

Charge has an Opportunity Option for dealing damage. For 2 Opportunity, you can deal basic damage to a single target in range, provided that your TN 2 Fitness Check for the Charge is successful. My only worry is about getting 2 Successes + 2 Opportunities with Water 3 and Fitness 1.

7 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

Charge is a movement action. you cant do that AtoMaki. (at least, by what i understand.)

Being prone is a condition. its literally listed under "conditions."

Reading again: my apologies, you are correct. Reading the Techniques section again: Persistent Effects are stuff in the Techniques which say "The effects persist [for XYZ]" (such as the increased Glory loss for The Wind Blows Both Ways)

Just now, Magnus Grendel said:

Reading again: my apologies, you are correct. Reading the Techniques section again: Persistent Effects are stuff in the Techniques which say "The effects persist [for XYZ]"

Guess would be good a clarification. Lots of things we are supposed to determine. Others are set in stone. Would be nice to know how they want it to work.

3 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Charge has an Opportunity Option for dealing damage. For 2 Opportunity, you can deal basic damage to a single target in range, provided that your TN 2 Fitness Check for the Charge is successful. My only worry is about getting 2 Successes + 2 Opportunities with Water 3 and Fitness 1.

What i meant is. a charge action is used to move range bands. (And they mean in one direction, they didnt designed so you could run in circles.) If at the start of your turn you are at range 1. you charge, end of the action you are still at range band 1 (which means you can spend opp to deal base damage without attacking.) You really didnt moved did you? you really didnt charged mechanically. It makes no sense.

The Charge damage happens at the end of the movement. So if I start at Range 1 then I Charge for movement (Range 2, I need this for the naginata either way) then deal damage as part of the Fitness check (at Range 2) then move with Water as it happens after the Fitness check is made (Range 3) then move normally (Range 4).

Activation: As a Movement action, you may make a TN 2 Fitness check
to move extra range bands.

Its a movement and its a action. you cant move one range band after your charge action because you didnt moved. thats just silly.

Edit:Better way to explain. Is not dash from D&D that gives you more movement to use in any way you want. its more movement for your original movement.

2 minutes ago, Mobiusllls said:

Activation: As a Movement action, you may make a TN 2 Fitness check
to move extra range bands.

Its a movement and its a action. you cant move one range band after your charge action because you didnt moved. thats just silly.

Uh... I do move every time I have the choice (when performing the Charge, Water Stance, normal end turn move). As far as I'm aware, I will get all three, as the only restriction of movement is that the normal "free" movement can only happen at the start or the end of my turn.

Starting at Range 2 obviously makes the whole trick meaningless because I can Strike and move twice to end up at Range 4, no need for Charging.