Came across this in a read-through of the intro adventure.

• This seems like a really powerful ability for anyone facing multiple range-1-weapon-wielding opponents.
• Given the way minion squads work, I assume if you trigger it when attacked by a minion squad, the redirected attack would hit one of the 'assisting' minions.
  • Not that that's actually going to happen that often, thinking about it; a lot of minion opponents are armed with Yari which are range 2 (aside from goblin Yari)
• The fact that neither the attacker nor the 'new victim' gets a say in the matter seems a bit harsh.
• This goes double because it is triggered 'if an attack succeeds' - meaning (I assume) at the success or failure (part 4) element of step 6 of a check. As a result, opportunities have to be spent on the attack before you know if the Ronin is going to pull School Of The Wolf and make you smack your mate in his face instead (and now with the benefit of reduced armour protection/improved criticals/whatever).
• It's a really cool ability, but is restricted to Ronin and the intro adventure's named Ronin, Keinosuke - even a PC character who wants to narratively play a ronin has no means to get access to the technique, no matter how much XP they'd be prepared to spend.

Void points are looking harder to come by , but despite that. Yeah avoiding a attack by paying void is strong. (Kakita hit a critical, spend a void, get out of the jail free card.) and then you can target another enemy of your as a bonus.

Maybe the attacker can spend a void to just cancel your ability? its would still be strong, just not a 100% thing. (And then i loved 4th edition design where they really tought that minor clan had to be more specialized and ronin techniques should be worse mechanically than the great clans ones, to represent the fantasy that most player characters came from a trained elite.)

Uhm... Wind's howling.

We saw this on an NPC, though. Not all NPC Techniques and Special Abilities will likely be PC Special Abilities, especially ones like this. School of the Wolf's ability is very much a "Boss Monster" or "Squad Boss" power for an NPC, allowing them to have a subordinate take a hit for them to keep in the fight. You see abilities like this all the time in games like Iron Kingdoms RPG.

5 hours ago, sndwurks said:

We saw this on an NPC, though. Not all NPC Techniques and Special Abilities will likely be PC Special Abilities, especially ones like this. School of the Wolf's ability is very much a "Boss Monster" or "Squad Boss" power for an NPC, allowing them to have a subordinate take a hit for them to keep in the fight. You see abilities like this all the time in games like Iron Kingdoms RPG.

Agreed. But this isn't a "minion, come here!" [Thwok] "thank you minion." ability - it's "please hit your ally in the face with the attack you've just added two resistance penetration and an extra level of critical severity to."

Strictly speaking it could be used on anything up to and including a finishing blow in a clash (there'd be unlikely to be a target at range 1 in a formal duel but on a battlefield it's quite believable).

I don't mind the existence of the ability per se, but it just jumps out as rather harsh; I can't see anything else in the beta which allows you to change the target of another player's action against their will - even suffering an outburst doesn't do that.