If you trigger a Finishing Blow during a Duel to First Blood you perform a Critical Strike against your opponent. However, since a Finishing Blow does no damage the opponent never receives wounds greater than their threshold and thus never become incapacitated. Since the opponent was never incapacitated, the Finishing Blow doesn't end the duel immediately (the duels objective was never met). So, you end up in a weird situation where you can cut off someones arm in a Duel to First Blood and yet the duel must continue....

The same is true for Duels to First Strike since no damage is ever dealt.

Independent of this, It seems weird that a "Duel to First Blood" continues with both duelists hitting each other repeatedly until one is beaten down.

Maybe you should put that into the proofreading section, in the hope that it will not get lost there to be seen by the game designers.

Curiously at Severity 11 you make your enemy unconscious (which is a big deal) and at 12-13, 14-15. he just becomes a time bomb. I think i got what they are trying to do here in.(Fluff wise it does seem cooler to have your enemy dying awake instead of lying in the ground.)

But you are right, rules as written the Dying or the unconscious condition wont finish the duel. (at least, not by itself).

1 hour ago, Kakita Onimaru said:

So, you end up in a weird situation where you can cut off someones arm in a Duel to First Blood and yet the duel must continue....

So, basically L5R 5e duels are like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

shouldn't common sense trumps mechanics?

23 minutes ago, Nitenman said:

shouldn't common sense trumps mechanics?

Yeah, but this is a beta test. We're trying to get this stuff fixed so we dont have to rp around jank rules.

Especially since there is no way this is intentional. There is a part of in Finishing Blow about it stopping combat instantly....if the conditions have been met. The only condition it works on right no is a duel to the death which doesnt even matter since the dead character cant do much at that point anyways

makes sense. Probably an oversight from the design team. Better to have things clearly spelled out to avoid folks losing an arm and dismiss it as "Just a flesh would"

particularly when human body is so full of big arteries that when severed would cause you to bleed to death in mere minutes.

Right now a problem allowed by this mechanics, is that with dying condition you can still perform actions, so right now its totally possible that your enemy gives you a finishing strike, put you in the Dying condition then with no penalties he actually manages to kill you before the time ticking off. You know, since the duel didnt finished.

Though I think it's good that Dying in itself doesn't bring any penalties. It should be hard to not also have other conditions that actually incapacitate you, but it can be very nicely dramatic to have the dying guy still fight and perhaps also mortally wound his enemy.

That used to be a crab feature, fighting beyond the point of death.

It works, almost. All it needs is target suffering 1 Strife after receiving the Finishing Blow. Observe:
- Most Finishing Blows will either straight out kill you, or at least remove a limb, make target uncoscious and make them Bleed.

- In order to trigger Finishing Blow in the first place, target has to exceed its Composure in Strife.

- Bleeding deals physical damage equal to Strife each time target receives Strife, and if their Strife is past their Composure limit, they receive a Critical Injury with severity equal to their current strife

- Strife can be received from narrative reasons. Insulting someones mother will probably give them Strife. Losing an Arm also might cause you Strife. This is GMs priveliege, though, so it's not hard rule.

Finishing Blowed person will probably die the moment they Suffer at least 1 Strife. Additionally, Finishing Blow interrupts the process of check making, exactly in the moment when character goes past their Composure. Afterwards, the check resumes; so if character had any unresolved Strife on the roll that wasn't yet resolved , it will be resolved after Finishing Blow ends and target will explode in a fountain of blood.

2 hours ago, Myrion said:

Though I think it's good that Dying in itself doesn't bring any penalties. It should be hard to not also have other conditions that actually incapacitate you, but it can be very nicely dramatic to have the dying guy still fight and perhaps also mortally wound his enemy.

problem with that, is that, if it was me playing, i would prefer a critical strike that makes you unconscious (This way you cant explode dice and kill me) than a critical strike that puts dying and bleeding in you (which is a few points higher and should be better.)

59 minutes ago, WHW said:

It works, almost. All it needs is target suffering 1 Strife after receiving the Finishing Blow. Observe:
- Most Finishing Blows will either straight out kill you, or at least remove a limb, make target uncoscious and make them Bleed.

- In order to trigger Finishing Blow in the first place, target has to exceed its Composure in Strife.

- Bleeding deals physical damage equal to Strife each time target receives Strife, and if their Strife is past their Composure limit, they receive a Critical Injury with severity equal to their current strife

- Strife can be received from narrative reasons. Insulting someones mother will probably give them Strife. Losing an Arm also might cause you Strife. This is GMs priveliege, though, so it's not hard rule.

Finishing Blowed person will probably die the moment they Suffer at least 1 Strife. Additionally, Finishing Blow interrupts the process of check making, exactly in the moment when character goes past their Composure. Afterwards, the check resumes; so if character had any unresolved Strife on the roll that wasn't yet resolved , it will be resolved after Finishing Blow ends and target will explode in a fountain of blood.

You can choose the dice you keep so you can avoid strife (you can still receive strife by the opponet, of course) anyway. But thats true, it does works as a penalty, since you know, Strife is something really common.

Um guys how about 10-11 critical that says your unconscious in addition to the other effects I think that is worse than incapacitated and first blood means your bleeding visibly I think anything over 11 would qualify cause there bleeding
then again a broken sword to save ones life as there taking there crit that could kill them would kinda make them look like they lost the duel cause there sword is broken and the kami have made a judgment to spare his life but destroy his sword

Currently, I'm not a fan of the rules for the three different duels.

To First Strike: the rules for this should be that any hit, whether or not it deals damage, is enough to win the duel. If I hit you upside the head with a stick, but you wear a helmet to absorb said hit, I would have still hit you, right?

To First Blood: the rules for this should be the current First Strike rules: you need to deal 1 or more damage to win.

To the Death: these rules are fine, you keep going until someone dies.

On ‎08‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 7:50 PM, Nitenman said:

That used to be a crab feature, fighting beyond the point of death

It still is. The Mountain Does Not Fall allows you to ignore all negative conditions - specifically including Dying - for the period it is active.

On ‎08‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 9:32 PM, WHW said:

Finishing Blowed person will probably die the moment they Suffer at least 1 Strife. Additionally, Finishing Blow interrupts the process of check making, exactly in the moment when character goes past their Composure. Afterwards, the check resumes; so if character had any unresolved Strife on the roll that wasn't yet resolved , it will be resolved after Finishing Blow ends and target will explode in a fountain of blood.

That's a fair point. I've been wondering how an Unconcious target would receive more strife, but it does say "for each [strife] result", implying that they're resolved one at a time (like explosive successes would be)., so if there's spare success that would trigger - and if the target's strife is more than their composure, you're on probably at least a 6 or 8 severity critical plus the bonus for being unconscious - and they can no longer use their fitness check to reduce it like they could when merely incapacitated.

58 minutes ago, Veruca said:

Currently, I'm not a fan of the rules for the three different duels.

To First Strike: the rules for this should be that any hit, whether or not it deals damage, is enough to win the duel. If I hit you upside the head with a stick, but you wear a helmet to absorb said hit, I would have still hit you, right?

To First Blood: the rules for this should be the current First Strike rules: you need to deal 1 or more damage to win.

To the Death: these rules are fine, you keep going until someone dies.

I agree to a point. The duels are poorly written, especially first blood. First strike I think is fine. In most duals, you aren't wearing armor at all, especially if it's a first strike dual.

First blood has some weird interactions where it takes a crit to win and could very well be a dual to the death. First to damage isn't a good way of resolving this, but neither is first crit. I'd rather it be first to wound threshold or first crit win.

57 minutes ago, SideshowLucifer said:

First to damage isn't a good way of resolving this,

Why wouldn't it be? I mean, isn't the fluff behind such a duel that a single small cut, enough to maybe draw a single drop of blood, is enough to decide the winner? I don't see why they're making it so complicated for something that is, narratively speaking, so straight forward. To hit is just that: you need to be able to hit your opponent. To first blood is just that: you need to be able to draw blood from your opponent (no matter how much). To the death is just that: your opponent must die. I don't understand why things like critical hits become part of the equation here. But that's maybe because I don't always see the logic behind many mechanical aspects, and mostly look at things from a narrative point of view.

7 hours ago, Veruca said:

Why wouldn't it be? I mean, isn't the fluff behind such a duel that a single small cut, enough to maybe draw a single drop of blood, is enough to decide the winner? I don't see why they're making it so complicated for something that is, narratively speaking, so straight forward. To hit is just that: you need to be able to hit your opponent. To first blood is just that: you need to be able to draw blood from your opponent (no matter how much). To the death is just that: your opponent must die. I don't understand why things like critical hits become part of the equation here. But that's maybe because I don't always see the logic behind many mechanical aspects, and mostly look at things from a narrative point of view.

Because it wouldn't differ enough from first strike to warrant it's existence. First blood could easily be damage equal to wound threshold or crital. Both of those puts it in the middle of the others a bit better.

Crit is just there so you can actually win if you do inflict a crit, not as a requirement.

I'd rather them just rework dualing all together at the moment though. I don't feel a need for all three types to exist, much less how awkward they are within the framework of the rules.

I wholeheartedly agree that dueling needs to be reworked. For the moment I’ll stick with Veruca’s point of view until they fix it.

I feel the same way. Currently, there's no effective difference between First Blood and Death (unless someone has an unrolled healing power or other way to recover from Incapacitated). If you've Incapacitated your opponent, and no outside party breaks etiquette to interfere, you can just wail on him until he dies (or, more likely, just get the GM to let you finish him narratively).

In my opinion, the victory conditions should be:

• First Strike: Any successful Attack with a legal weapon, regardless of whether it deals damage. The whole point of a First Strike duel is that nobody gets hurt, and the rules outright state that they're generally fought with training weapons, so wounds clearly aren't the goal here.
• First Blood: Any critical with severity 5+ (after the Fitness roll). Realistically, a lasting injury like that should leave you bloodied (especially from a katana!). Mechanically, a 5+ critical isn't guaranteed from simply spending two Opportunities, but it's not too difficult to work towards (and is very likely with a Finishing Blow), so it seems like a good sweet spot for a quick duel.
• Death: Exactly what the name implies.

While the opening post of this thread is correct, the 'to the death' conditions state:

"At the end of each round, if a character slew the enemy (or inflicted the Dying condition upon them), this objective is completed."

So while it's true that after a finishing strike that inflicts the dying condition, the recipient may get to strike back, the duel does not get to continue for more rounds as one combatant fights on and on with missing limbs.

17 hours ago, rsdockery said:

I feel the same way. Currently, there's no effective difference between First Blood and Death (unless someone has an unrolled healing power or other way to recover from Incapacitated). If you've Incapacitated your opponent, and no outside party breaks etiquette to interfere, you can just wail on him until he dies (or, more likely, just get the GM to let you finish him narratively).

In my opinion, the victory conditions should be:

• First Strike: Any successful Attack with a legal weapon, regardless of whether it deals damage. The whole point of a First Strike duel is that nobody gets hurt, and the rules outright state that they're generally fought with training weapons, so wounds clearly aren't the goal here.
• First Blood: Any critical with severity 5+ (after the Fitness roll). Realistically, a lasting injury like that should leave you bloodied (especially from a katana!). Mechanically, a 5+ critical isn't guaranteed from simply spending two Opportunities, but it's not too difficult to work towards (and is very likely with a Finishing Blow), so it seems like a good sweet spot for a quick duel.
• Death: Exactly what the name implies.

I think this is pretty great.

The solution to dueling to first strike is to use opportunity to grant your target a reroll on the crit resist... I'd argue that if you can make the same action easier for someone, you can equally as easily pull it so it's easier to resist. And if you don't...

If you kill or maim in a first strike, expect to lose honor. Unless they are a sworn enemy of you, your family, or your clan.

If you maim in first blood, expect to lose honor - you've no self-control

If you cheat in death, expect to lose honor and glory...