"When a character sets their stance (at the start of their turn), they may move up to two range bands. At the end of their turn, if a character hasnot moved already during their turn, the character may move up to one range band."

You are taking for granted that your character actually has an "end of turn movement".

Fugg. That breaks it indeed.

If high water (or an combination of rings) improved your base movement. i think range would be more abuseable and this kind of tactic would work better. (just with movement x reach alone).

But this is a Earth Stance thread, sorry for disrupting.

My biggest worry is actually about combat being suck-y. So far, all I have is "sit in Earth and wither them down" and "go Fire and sacrifice your sister to the Dice Gods" - this is hard to shallow after playing an L5R where I pretty much chose my fighting style at random because I could put up a good fight either way.

At chargen you dont have many options and later i think it gets better and you can try more stuff.

But like i said. "you can suffer auto criticals or get beaten down in Earth Stance." Yeah if you could'nt get beaten down in Earth Stance, I think everyone would agree that this would make it a bit stronger than it should. (to say the minimum.)

But critical strikes are looking so common, to a skilled character(at least) that shutting them down is kind of a big deal (and then i would do just like you said, put everything in the hands of the Dice gods, go big damage or go home).

Note that earth stance only shuts down critical strikes that you get through spending opportunities. Sot things like heartpiercing strike, finishing blow and the like does not get prevented. So it does not shut down every critical strike just the standard one.
Same goes for conditions.