I am deeply thinking about Shugenjas and i have mixed feelings about them.

Channeling is a good mechanic for spell casters, if the spell is really hard, they can reserves dices for complete the spell later. This is awesome to me, because is the typical powerful spell, hard to cast, that need the dramatic scene protecting the caster, and the later explosive result.

But other spells feels easy as striking with a Katana, and a little more powerful. As if the Shugenja was an archer with unlimited magic arrows, throwing strong and fast casting spells, and if one of them fails, he can channel it.

Is my analysis wrong? There is a mechanic i miss? I am missing another thing here?

thanks!

AFAIK magic damage scales poorly. Look at the spell you quoted - it's peak damage is 5 at Earth 5. A peasant hitting you with a staff will do at least that, and maybe more.

Also hitting someone with a katana doesn't come with the risk that if you generate too much strife on the roll, your katana stops working for the rest of the scene. (And when it comes to the effects of too much Strife on invocations, the Earth effect of 'this technique won't work again for the scene' is pretty mild.)

Admittedly, for the low level invocations, you're not going to trigger the backlash unless you really want to also grab an opportunity on top of the successes, but for higher level invocations you may find yourself choosing between spending a long time channeling to collect successes without strife, or accepting the backlash in exchange for getting the spell now .

Thanks both of you!