12 minutes ago, Teveshszat said:

Now if you are right and it is there to discourage min maxers it fails because min maxing wil still occour. It even is the far more reasonable way to go with escalating costs as getting lower rings to a acceptable lvl is easier than getting mid tier rings to a high level.

Well, I already hypothesized earlier that minmaxing will still occur; I firmly believe that this is not something you can just "get rid off". As long as players can affect anything , you always have potential for abuse. Plenty of evidence for that in videogames. It probably has something to do with humans' competitive nature, which for many people shines through even in a cooperative environment like P&P RPGs.

This is why I said that this mechanic is there to discourage normal players from becoming minmaxers. Yes, this guideline does not exist during character generation, which may lead to the situation that you mentioned, but I would hope that - assuming the aforementioned group of likeminded, non-minmaxing players - everyone would be focused more on building an interesting character personality than building an efficient character sheet .

12 minutes ago, Teveshszat said:

To be fair I don´t really see any need that some skills are expected of a character. Yes some might be but I probably will not expect a courtier skill from a bushi.

In Rokugan, where you're pretty much regarded as a backwater barbarian if you don't know how to properly write a haiku or the lords snicker with derision when they read your crappy calligraphy? L5R is probably the most prominent setting where even combat characters are expected to know some artistry. Well, unless you're playing a ronin, I suppose.

I've just created a bushi and was quite annoyed that I had no options for simply buying an artistic skill, when it is not offered as part of one of the packages. It's why I would like to see a hybrid model for character generation where you pick clan, family and school, but also have a few XP to buy whatever skills you deem appropriate before beginning play.

This is one of the instances where I liked the 4th edition of L5R more. You could create an elaborate character and work with the system to represent everything you came up with. In the 5E beta, on the other hand, the "classes" are way more shoehorned into their respective roles, missing the overlap that you'd expect from this society.

Maybe all ring / skills for the first 3 ranks should have a fixed price, this way there is no advantage in starting with 2 rings at rank 3 over someone who started with only 1 ring at rank 3. No one can start 4-5 and that is where you are allegedly pretty epic, so it can make sense for the scaled cost to return there right?

The problem with the flat and escalating progression is that minmaxing just takes another form.

Let me walk you through the Crab ring increases.

The idea is that most extrem characters have an XP advantage: 3/3/1/1/1 is better 3/2/2/1/1 which is better than 2/2/2/2/1.

Let's say I wanna be a Hida Defender.
I get +1 Earth and +1 Water for the school and +1 Earth from being Crab.
To get to the best ring array I need +1 Water or +1 Earth (because than I have Earth above 4 which allows me to put that increase where I want it, which is Water).

Lets have a look at families: Hida (+1 Earth), Hiruma (+1 Air), Kaiu (+1 Fire), Kuni (+1 Earth), Yasuki (+1 Water).

Meaning Hida, Kuni and Yasuki are the best families for Hida Defender.

Let's take a look at the second school: Kuni Purifier.
I get +1 Fire and +1 Water, which is already meh since it doesn't line up with my +1 Earth from Crab.
I can get the 3/2/2/1/1 array at best and any one increase to Earth, Fire or Water will do the trick, which is everyone but the Hiruma.

One fast minmaxing conclusions: Don't be a Hiruma regardless of school you choose!

Also here is another thing I want to point out. No Crab gains any Void increases. Why is that important?
Because of Table 2-2: Cannot increase a ring to a value greater than lowest ring + Void Ring.

For every crab the lowest ring + void is 2. Crabs when they start out cannot spend XP to raise a ring to rank 3.

You can start with a ring on rank 3 but you can't increase a ring to rank 3.

In fact with a 2/2/2/2/1 array where 1 is void. The only ring you can improve is void. There is literally no other choice. While with a 3/3/1/1/1 array I can choose between 3 rings I want to increase.

There are certain considerations regarding the skills, which elevates one family aboce the other and favors certain skill choices in the school, but this post is just a bit minmaxing 101 for the new L5R RPG.

By the way... there is a way to stop minmaxing: Make every choice equally valuable!

But this is for obvious reasons very hard and hardly any RPGs can truely deliver on this. Haveing a character creation, which is diffrent from the XP progression is something, which doesn't stop minmaxers. It helps them flourish. As I have hopefully demonstrated in this post.

@Yandia I totally agree with you - but what do you think would be a better way? Should they take 1 of the points away from the school, and just give you 2 points to place freely for how you "stand out"? Or should they keep it as is, but allow more flexibility by saying "Crab - pick 1 - earth / water" and then "Hiruma - pick 1 - Earth / Air" and then school "Pick 2 - Earth / Water / Air" or something like that?

I think increased cost is good for the 4th and 5th rings, and beyond that especially if they increase through supplements (I think 1st ed did this, 5 was max but then you could go higher in "super power" campaigns) I just wander if the cost for 1-3 should be the same to negate any penalty for not maximizing on chargen. Maybe just 6 xp per advancement for 1-3, and then 3x rank for 4 and 5.

1 hour ago, Yandia said:

One fast minmaxing conclusions: Don't be a Hiruma regardless of school you choose!

One quick correction, you can't start at 2/2/2/2/1. The defaults are 3/2/2/2/1, 3/3/2/1/1, or 2/2/2/2/2 (if you don't like having a trait at 3 because you're hard like that) because you left out the Free Trait from Step 4. Characters get 1 Clan, 1 Family, 2 School and 1 Free, for a total of 5 extra points.

Basically the same thing can be said of a lot of Families, sadly. There's no point to being an Ikoma unless you want to get to Air 3 at chargen. Which, to say, isn't entirely unwanted as an outcome, but it's suboptimal for the Lion Schools as shown (and I'm guessing the inevitable Matsu bushi school won't have +1 Air, lol) because none of them get abilities attuned to Air. Basically the only reason you'd choose Ikoma is if you got 90% of the way through Chargen and then got Stolen Knowledge: Kata from your Heritage roll. Then suddenly Striking As Air looks appealing as a way to turtle up in combat that's better than turtling under Striking As Earth.

Families and Clans should be decoupled from stat increases. I know that's an Old L5R Tradition ™ but maybe it's one we can let go of finally. This was actually problematic in character creation in 1-4E, making some families only "ideal" at certain things. My Akodo Bushi got +1 Agility (swording things) and +1 Perception. Then all it takes is me to spend points on Strength and Intelligence, and now I'm k3 on most of my relevant killin' people skills. On the flip side, my Matsu Berzerker hits hard, but I'm hurting for points because Strength 4 isn't very efficient for a starting character. My Matsu character is probably best at being an Akodo Bushi since at least I get Water 3. Similarly, my Ikoma (Akodo) Bushi is probably pretty good at bows and iaijutsu, but he's stuck at Strength 2/Water 2 unless I'm going to handicap my Fighter character with k2 for swording things. He's also going to be a kinda-sucky Ikoma Lion's Shadow since he's ending up with that Awareness 4 that's overkill for a Rank 1 starting character. The best Ikoma Lion's Shadows are probably Kitsu or Akodo, lol.

Those things were clearly in the "Not Good" camp in 1-4E. 5E makes it "Much Worse" by upping the ante. Now the pigeonhole your character is stuck in is even tighter. I could play around with an Ikoma character in 4E and make a fun archer or duelist out of him, and a decent swordsman. Send him to Berzerker school for the background story amusement and the extra damage die. Now, Ikoma gives me Air +1, and worse, +1 Performance and +1 Composition. My dreams of recreating Ikoma Tsanuri start halfway in the crapper because Akodo Broturi is getting those extra points in Earth and Command, and Matsu Pseu-ko is getting +1 to Fitness and Command, and Fire 2 is a'ight for my beginning Composure stat. Poor Ikoma is sitting at Water 3, Earth 2, Air 1, meaning on top of having two skills of marginal value to a bushi, her derived stats currently kinda suck (Resilience 10, Composure 6 ). And I can go All-In on Air, which has value for Air Stance alone, but I don't have the choice of Striking as Air which is where Air 3 really shines for schools like... Kitsuki Investigator? Well, that's a thing I guess. Either way, my Ikoma bushi is only moderately durable and a near-spaz if I don't pay close attention to my Strife management. But, she's pretty good in a Slam Poetry contest.

Let the players pick their Ring upgrades. Put those skills either in a "Pick Anything" bucket, or make families like Schools and give them a selection. Ikoma becomes Pick Two: (Command, Composition, Performance, Culture, Tactics). Picking a Clan and a Family shouldn't be "Automatically Play This Stereoype!" Maybe keep the two School Trait increases, but definitely not the Clan and Familiy ones.

4 hours ago, Lynata said:

I've just created a bushi and was quite annoyed that I had no options for simply buying an artistic skill, when it is not offered as part of one of the packages.

Yep. My old History Buff Hida Bushi is not a thing. I can have him paint if I want, I guess. Or get a job as a farmhand. But that's just because those skills are available in Steps 7 and 8.

Though, technically you can get a Free Skill Point ™ from Step 13 and put it in anything you want. But the problem is, that Step 13 Skill Point is the most valuable one in the game, both because it is essentially "Anything You Want" and it comes traded for a Disadvantage. Are many players going to be incentivized to use it on a Fluff Skill?

12 minutes ago, shosuko said:

@Yandia I totally agree with you - but what do you think would be a better way? Should they take 1 of the points away from the school, and just give you 2 points to place freely for how you "stand out"? Or should they keep it as is, but allow more flexibility by saying "Crab - pick 1 - earth / water" and then "Hiruma - pick 1 - Earth / Air" and then school "Pick 2 - Earth / Water / Air" or something like that?

I think increased cost is good for the 4th and 5th rings, and beyond that especially if they increase through supplements (I think 1st ed did this, 5 was max but then you could go higher in "super power" campaigns) I just wander if the cost for 1-3 should be the same to negate any penalty for not maximizing on chargen. Maybe just 6 xp per advancement for 1-3, and then 3x rank for 4 and 5.

I see generally 2 ways of fixing that:

• Romove the escalating costs from the XP advancements which would not give more extreme arrays an advantage.
• Have the character creation XP which follows the same rule as the ingame XP. (This would also require that there is at max one step in the character creation which gives you a ring increase. Probably best only from the school. Clan, family, and obviously the Free Trait increase would not exist.)

6 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

One quick correction, you can't start at 2/2/2/2/1. The defaults are 3/2/2/2/1, 3/3/2/1/1, or 2/2/2/2/2 (if you don't like having a trait at 3 because you're hard like that) because you left out the Free Trait from Step 4. Characters get 1 Clan, 1 Family, 2 School and 1 Free, for a total of 5 extra points.

right forgot the free one... but I hope the general idea is clear. Helps you to get the ideal 3/3/2/1/1 easier.

1 hour ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Families and Clans should be decoupled from stat increases.

Whew. Matter of preferences, but personally I think clan and family, like school, are things that should somehow be represented by the character mechanically, as they are expected to have had an impact in their upbringing and training focus. That being said, I also think there is room for a compromise, and I like the idea of these packages allowing the player to pick from a selection of suitable stats/skills/abilities. The end result should be characters that can be more different from one another whilst still qualifying for what you'd expect from their upbringing.

1 hour ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Though, technically you can get a Free Skill Point ™ from Step 13 and put it in anything you want. But the problem is, that Step 13 Skill Point is the most valuable one in the game, both because it is essentially "Anything You Want" and it comes traded for a Disadvantage. Are many players going to be incentivized to use it on a Fluff Skill?

Yeah -- I actually like this step's concept, but it's a fairly important part of the character's life that has to be tied to and detailed in their background. With the bushi I made , I actually made use of this option, but ended up getting a +1 martial arts as the relationship was with another warrior as mentor that resulted in the Blackmail Disadvantage. Technically speaking, I suppose I could have also gained the calligraphy skill here, as I imagine the training to have involved more than just swordplay, but it would have felt odd to prioritize a fluff skill with the narrative I had in mind.

In the end, I guess it'd be a viable workaround, but it would be so much nicer if you could just pick something for free with no strings attached. Like how Shadowrun's chargen allows you to pick a bunch of free "hobby" skills with limited use but a degree of importance for making the characters feel more unique. And in Rokugan in particular, the arts are one of the few ways samurai are permitted and even expected to express individuality, when elsewhere they all have to strive for some uniform, clan-dependent ideal.

1 hour ago, Yandia said:

Romove the escalating costs from the XP advancements which would not give more extreme arrays an advantage

I still don't see what a lack of escalating costs should achieve in terms of balancing the playing field. Yes, lower cost would allow the other characters to more easily invest XP into an attempt at catching up to the minmaxer, but ... aren't we forgetting that the minmaxer themselves will also have it easier to buy advancements and maintain or even increase the gap?

With escalating costs, the gap at least gets smaller, because it'll always be cheaper for the lower-ranked characters to catch up, than for one at the top to level up even more -- because for the latter, advancement will be more expensive than for the former.

1 hour ago, Lynata said:

Whew. Matter of preferences, but personally I think clan and family, like school, are things that should somehow be represented by the character mechanically, as they are expected to have had an impact in their upbringing and training focus. That being said, I also think there is room for a compromise, and I like the idea of these packages allowing the player to pick from a selection of suitable stats/skills/abilities. The end result should be characters that can be more different from one another whilst still qualifying for what you'd expect from their upbringing.

I'd be plenty fine with differentiation. In my last 4E campaign I made Family Choice a selection of 2 appropriate Traits so choosing the family wasn't "Always Like This." I mean, for Matsu, a choice of Strength or Agility is appropriate. Ikoma would be Intelligence or Awareness (especially since in 3rd Edition, they were +1 Intelligence). And so on. In a world with Kitsu Motso and Kitsu Toju, being a Kitsu isn't some template for a single kind of character, just as clearly there's a difference between Doji Hoturi and Doji Nagori. Saddling characters with hard-coded Family skills grinds my gears since there's really no in-fluff justification for it and it stymies player options and creativity. If you "really want to play a Hida right" you know what skills to take. But maybe you don't "want to play just another Hida" and I think the game needs to do a better job of that. 4E gave you 4-5 set skills and then more than enough XP to flesh the character out. 5E right now gives you 8 skills and the choice is basically an illusion since you get to choose 5 of them, from a set of 7, meaning characters are basically 2 skills short of being carbon copies of every other "regular" version of that character (not hating Bushido, not hating the clan).

26 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

I'd be plenty fine with differentiation. In my last 4E campaign I made Family Choice a selection of 2 appropriate Traits so choosing the family wasn't "Always Like This." I mean, for Matsu, a choice of Strength or Agility is appropriate. Ikoma would be Intelligence or Awareness (especially since in 3rd Edition, they were +1 Intelligence). And so on. In a world with Kitsu Motso and Kitsu Toju, being a Kitsu isn't some template for a single kind of character, just as clearly there's a difference between Doji Hoturi and Doji Nagori. Saddling characters with hard-coded Family skills grinds my gears since there's really no in-fluff justification for it and it stymies player options and creativity. If you "really want to play a Hida right" you know what skills to take. But maybe you don't "want to play just another Hida" and I think the game needs to do a better job of that. 4E gave you 4-5 set skills and then more than enough XP to flesh the character out. 5E right now gives you 8 skills and the choice is basically an illusion since you get to choose 5 of them, from a set of 7, meaning characters are basically 2 skills short of being carbon copies of every other "regular" version of that character (not hating Bushido, not hating the clan).

See, its little changes like that that I can see in a L5R 5th Edition that uses the 4th Edition rules as the base foundation (will definitely be using that in my games, Thank You). That development strategy can work. If folks don't believe me, just look at the amazing success of Shadowrun 5th Edition. By Catalyst Game Labs using the 4th Edition rules of Shadowrun as the foundation, they were able to fix/alter/add to the mechanics for 5th Edition without having the fans learn an entire news system.

6 hours ago, Lynata said:

I still don't see what a lack of escalating costs should achieve in terms of balancing the playing field.

The general idea of L5R minmaxing (works in AEG systems as well, because they made the same design choice) is to think "how much XP would I have spend to archive this array, if I would have bought it from 1/1/1/1/1?"

To get from 1 to 2 costs 6 XP and from 2 to 3 costs 9 XP.

The 3/3/2/1/1 would cost 36 XP, while the 2/2/2/2/2 array would cost 30 XP. This is what I mean when I say 3/3/2/1/1 gives and XP advantage.

Now let's think about flat costs. Let's say increasing a ring costs 6 XP.

Regardless of what you are doing you get 5 ring increases at the start. So every array would cost 30 XP. This would mean that 3/3/2/1/1 is no longer a minmaxed statline and it now becomes a valid choice to go 2/2/2/2/2 instead.

Now you might be asking why 6 XP might be a problem. I mean it is only 6 XP more...

Think about this way. After the first few sessions we manage to get 12 XP. The minmaxer uses this XP to midigate the weaknesses of his/her character. He increases the two rings from 1 to 2, resulting in a 3/3/2/2/2 stat line.

The guy who decided to got 2/2/2/2/2 can increase one of his rings to 3 giveing him/her a 3/2/2/2/2 stat line.

And that is the true point of minmaxing. The minmaxer is equal or better than you in any given situation. Your character is worse and no amount of XP you earn will close that gap.

The XP advantage escalates ( no pun intended) if we would take skill points into account.

Again, the true antidote against minmaxing is to make all choices as equal as possible. Flat XP costs go a long way to archive this.

16 hours ago, Lynata said:

In Rokugan, where you're pretty much regarded as a backwater barbarian if you don't know how to properly write a haiku or the lords snicker with derision when they read your crappy calligraphy? L5R is probably the most prominent setting where even combat characters are expected to know some artistry. Well, unless you're playing a ronin, I suppose.

I've just created a bushi and was quite annoyed that I had no options for simply buying an artistic skill, when it is not offered as part of one of the packages. It's why I would like to see a hybrid model for character generation where you pick clan, family and school, but also have a few XP to buy whatever skills you deem appropriate before beginning play.

This is one of the instances where I liked the 4th edition of L5R more. You could create an elaborate character and work with the system to represent everything you came up with. In the 5E beta, on the other hand, the "classes" are way more shoehorned into their respective roles, missing the overlap that you'd expect from this society.

• The starting adventure does hand you 24 XP to play with, so aesthetics or culture is an option
• You can get one free rank of a skill (plus a disadvantage) from your 'mentor' choices, so you can start even a 0XP character with an aesthetic skill
• L5R doesn't follow the 40k RPG concept of 'advanced skills' - your skill ranks are what you excel at, not all you can do; anyone has rank 0 in design and aesthetics, meaning they can right a non-awful-but-not-court-dazzling bit of poetry.

4 hours ago, Yandia said:

Think about this way. After the first few sessions we manage to get 12 XP. The minmaxer uses this XP to midigate the weaknesses of his/her character. He increases the two rings from 1 to 2, resulting in a 3/3/2/2/2 stat line.

I see what you mean, but if you do away with escalating costs, you're just incentivizing a minmaxer to divert their attention to a different area and use those XP to get a Ring to 4. Would the resulting 4/3/2/1/1 character truly make for a better table experience than a 3/3/2/2/2?

In fact, using that suggested flat cost of 6 XP per ring level you might, after your hypothetical 12 XP adventure, end up with a 4/4/2/1/1 or even a 5/3/2/1/1. I'm not convinced this would go over well.

You can't stop the minmaxing; the rules can only try to guide players who have not already been "corrupted" down a more balanced and narrative-focused path.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

• The starting adventure does hand you 24 XP to play with, so aesthetics or culture is an option
• You can get one free rank of a skill (plus a disadvantage) from your 'mentor' choices, so you can start even a 0XP character with an aesthetic skill
• L5R doesn't follow the 40k RPG concept of 'advanced skills' - your skill ranks are what you excel at, not all you can do; anyone has rank 0 in design and aesthetics, meaning they can right a non-awful-but-not-court-dazzling bit of poetry.

The problem with the mentor choice is that you have to actively work it into your background, including a requirement to pick another Disadvantage. It's demanding a lot just to conform to the samurai stereotype all of us expect from the game, and it prevents the player from being able to use this step for something actually dramatic. The book also notes how Rank 0 at a skill represents a "lack of formal training" and "cursory understanding based on limited direct exposure". Only Rank 1 means you actually started to learn something about it, the "beginner or amateur level". Are we to believe a family would let one of their own go through gempuku without even basic calligraphy skills?

Now, perhaps this is just a matter of wording and the book is biting itself in the foot here. As you say, it's not like in 40k, as whatever you do, you can still "craft" something even with Rank 0. I'm just miffed that there's little way to represent a character's background interest mechanically, and that as a result, this something is very likely going to turn out badly.

I hadn't taken a look at the starter adventure yet, though, so I'm glad to see that it at least should not be an issue here. However, doesn't this seem kind of backwards? Is every single adventure supposed to start you off with a number of XP? Why not simply put this step into basic character generation?

10 minutes ago, Lynata said:

The book also notes how Rank 0 at a skill represents a "lack of formal training" and "cursory understanding based on limited direct exposure". Only Rank 1 means you actually started to learn something about it, the "beginner or amateur level". Are we to believe a family would let one of their own go through gempuku without even basic calligraphy skills?

Now, perhaps this is just a matter of wording and the book is biting itself in the foot here. As you say, it's not like in 40k, as whatever you do, you can still "craft" something even with Rank 0.

Now that's a fair point. There are a few bits of the book where I don't mind the mechanics but am not a fan of the wording.

By the same logic, a character with Martial Arts (Melee) 0 has 'a lack of formal training' and only 'cursory exposure' to the sword, which even for a wakizashi-armed courtier samurai...feels a bit off

Wounds are another - I'd probably rather Critical Strikes be wounds and wounds be something like 'endurance' or 'stamina' (to quote the equivalent terms from the gamebooks I grew up with); if the 'level 0' and 'level 1' criticals are winded/dazed/armour damage, then the preceding 'hits' being 'not necessarily hits but also you're tired, bruised, exhausted, etc' makes more sense to me; I'd rather the wording be more ambiguous that yes it might be an actual injury but also might not be. The fact that you can recover from being at resiliance-wounds-but-no-criticals in ~ 2 nights of good sleep (assuming your water and earth rings are about the same) and no active medical treatment also implies to me that it shouldn't include any actual injuries much worse than a bad shaving cut.

Compare to Dark Heresy; one of the early Impact Criticals to arms and legs was something like "a painful bruise". All well and good, but if I've already shot you twice with a bolt weapon to get you to this point I feel that a 'painful bruise' is not the result I am expecting.

39 minutes ago, Lynata said:

I see what you mean, but if you do away with escalating costs, you're just incentivizing a minmaxer to divert their attention to a different area and use those XP to get a Ring to 4. Would the resulting 4/3/2/1/1 character truly make for a better table experience than a 3/3/2/2/2?

In fact, using that suggested flat cost of 6 XP per ring level you might, after your hypothetical 12 XP adventure, end up with a 4/4/2/1/1 or even a 5/3/2/1/1. I'm not convinced this would go over well.

Yes it is because it is fair in terms of xp developement. you don´t get an inherent disadvanatge by choosing a different array than 3/3/2/2/2 at the start of the game. It establishes that each array does cost as much as
the other one and you can build what you think is best for your character without having 1 allways superior array at the start. After that the chare development is also equal in terms of cost and only depends on what the
player wants to do with the xp. In addtion there is allready a method in the book that prevent the 5/3/3/2/1 array which is the void ring+ lowest ring restritction. Which works perfectly fine as preventation without
needing escalating costs of xp.

39 minutes ago, Lynata said:

You can't stop the minmaxing; the rules can only try to guide players who have not already been "corrupted" down a more balanced and narrative-focused path.

Min maxing is nothing that is bad by default and defnietly nothing that is preventing you from creating a narrative focused and balanced character. How good a character is in the story and how much he contributes is player dependent.
If it does anything it probably enhances the narrative as the character can reliably do what the player is wanting him to do and therefore create a better story for him.

1 hour ago, Teveshszat said:

Yes it is because it is fair in terms of xp developement. you don´t get an inherent disadvanatge by choosing a different array than 3/3/2/2/2 at the start of the game.

It's not so much about a difference of a single ring, it's that this gap would keep growing if things don't get more expensive the higher you go.

From how I understand the minmaxing philosophy, they aim to maximize the stats and abilities they consider crucial for a powerful portrayal of their character, made possible by minimizing anything that is considered redundant. Escalating costs thus serve as an artificial break on this process, slowing down ring or skill level-ups as other party members are free to invest XP into fluff skills. The smaller gap means it will be easier to catch up, or at the very least that the difference in capability should not be too big. And again, this would also not be intended to block minmaxing entirely, but rather to incentivize a more balanced dispersion of XP, particularly for narrative-minded players. When one can, say, raise one stat from great to perfect, or three others from normal to great, what would be the more likely choice?

Point taken about the Void Ring cap, though!

1 hour ago, Teveshszat said:

If it does anything it probably enhances the narrative as the character can reliably do what the player is wanting him to do and therefore create a better story for him.

On this part I both agree and disagree, but this goes back to my earlier comment about groups ideally having no or all min-maxers, rather than a mix. Problems occur when you have one player constantly outshining others because of their mechanical advantage. Everyone has their own narrative, but if you have one character who prevents others from having their moment, other players are reduced to the role of extras. Over the years I've been in a few games like that, and it is not fun when you effectively get punished just for investing XP into representing your background. Some games are, of course, more susceptible to this than others.

As for the narrative and personal success, I'd argue that 5th Edition L5R with its new die system is already geared towards achieving this better story, whilst at the same time cautioning that I'd deem it a mistake to expect your character to always perform as you want, as in this case we would not require a dice rolling mechanic in the first place and the entire game could be played as a collaborative storytelling experience (which I've also participated in some time ago, it can be quite fun with a good gamemaster).

But this beta's mechanics, and I still have to study them more, do seem to take the sting out of failures by turning them into opportunities. The point of the game is not to have your character succeed at everything they try, it's about overcoming challenges you can actually lose (as otherwise they would not be a challenge), and dealing with the results of the things that inevitably do go wrong can turn into an important part of the story all by itself.

18 minutes ago, Lynata said:

It's not so much about a difference of a single ring, it's that this gap would keep growing if things don't get more expensive the higher you go.

From how I understand the minmaxing philosophy, they aim to maximize the stats and abilities they consider crucial for a powerful portrayal of their character, made possible by minimizing anything that is considered redundant. Escalating costs thus serve as an artificial break on this process, slowing down ring or skill level-ups as other party members are free to invest XP into fluff skills. The smaller gap means it will be easier to catch up, or at the very least that the difference in capability should not be too big. And again, this would also not be intended to block minmaxing entirely, but rather to incentivize a more balanced dispersion of XP, particularly for narrative-minded players. When one can, say, raise one stat from great to perfect, or three others from normal to great, what would be the more likely choice?

Point taken about the Void Ring cap, though!

The thigg is at the moment we have an effective way to limited over specialisation on rings which is the void ring and we have the non effecttive way which is the escalating xp for them.

The problem I see with the escalating costs besides the xp gap is also that I need more xp for the skills I need at a certain level which in turn does not let me spend xp on fluff skills
like go and shogi because if in doubt most players probably go and choose to get the skill they need for their core concept (bushi, shugenja or courtier) to work.
So now you could say you could still take the fluff skill but thats actually lost xp there as you probably will not that often have situations where you go hey this shogi skill was helpful.
But often you will have situations where your courtesy skill saves the day. The result is that a point more in courtesy is of higher value than a point in shogi and spending a point for shogi
when you still don´t have courtier at the desired level is a bad choice.
So escalating costs also make it harder to buy fluff skills as the skills you need simply cost more xp and therefore you have less xp for the skills you want jsut because it lets your char look good.

Therefore escalating xp is not only non effective it is also reducing the xp you can spend for skills like games and other more fluff oriented skills as they are of far less value than skills like courtesy or fitness.
So I really don´t see a reason to keep it as it not only fails it jobs but restricts xp spending on so many levels in a suboptimal way that it looks more like a funreducing mechanic than a helpful one to me.

7 hours ago, Yandia said:

Now you might be asking why 6 XP might be a problem. I mean it is only 6 XP more...

Think about this way. After the first few sessions we manage to get 12 XP. The minmaxer uses this XP to midigate the weaknesses of his/her character. He increases the two rings from 1 to 2, resulting in a 3/3/2/2/2 stat line.

The guy who decided to got 2/2/2/2/2 can increase one of his rings to 3 giveing him/her a 3/2/2/2/2 stat line.

And that is the true point of minmaxing. The minmaxer is equal or better than you in any given situation. Your character is worse and no amount of XP you earn will close that gap.

The XP advantage escalates ( no pun intended) if we would take skill points into account.

Again, the true antidote against minmaxing is to make all choices as equal as possible. Flat XP costs go a long way to archive this.

Since you can't start with a Ring or Skill above 3, it wouldn't be problematic to scale costs to advance a ring or skill to rank 4 or 5. I think if all rings had a flat cost for rank 2 & 3 then it alleviates the problem. Rank 4 can still cost 12, and rank 5 can cost 15. These cost increases would be immune to min/maxing at chargen.

2 hours ago, Teveshszat said:

The problem I see with the escalating costs besides the xp gap is also that I need more xp for the skills I need at a certain level which in turn does not let me spend xp on fluff skills
like go and shogi because if in doubt most players probably go and choose to get the skill they need for their core concept (bushi, shugenja or courtier) to work.

To me, this seems like a self-defeating argument -- wouldn't players who assume they have to maximize specific stats to "make their core concept work" do so with static XP costs, too? Besides, a core concept is supposed to work right at the beginning of the game. If this isn't the case, either the rules did a bad job, or the player's expectations were too high.

Rather, I actually see it from the other side: by making already-high stats more expensive to progress further, it becomes more attractive to raise fluff skills, previously neglected due to their comparatively trivial nature, simply because you get a lot more bang for your buck. If fluff skills cost the same as the stats you "need for your core concept" rather than being notably cheaper, what sort of minmaxer would ever buy them? It goes against the very definition of what minmaxing is about.

38 minutes ago, Lynata said:

To me, this seems like a self-defeating argument -- wouldn't players who assume they have to maximize specific stats to "make their core concept work" do so with static XP costs, too? Besides, a core concept is supposed to work right at the beginning of the game. If this isn't the case, either the rules did a bad job, or the player's expectations were too high.

Yes but they would have xp leftover for the other skills they now could buy because they have less xp allocated to the skills they need in the first place.
Therefore you get more well rounded characters out of it because they now can take things like shogi and co.

38 minutes ago, Lynata said:

Rather, I actually see it from the other side: by making already-high stats more expensive to progress further, it becomes more attractive to raise fluff skills, previously neglected due to their comparatively trivial nature, simply because you get a lot more bang for your buck. If fluff skills cost the same as the stats you "need for your core concept" rather than being notably cheaper, what sort of minmaxer would ever buy them? It goes against the very definition of what minmaxing is about.

See thats not happening. If a player has a limited number of xp they allocate the xp most likely in a way that gives them the most impact on the game. Since that is the case they will spend their xp first on high impact skills that have a high value for each point xp you spend, Courtier and Etiquette were a good example in l5r 4th ed. You bought them because they had the best Isightpoint ratio of the skills at lvl 3 and therefore was bought by everyone. The a skills value is messured in the way that you look how esential it is to your character, in how many situations it is applicabale and what does it do. For example is the smithing skill rank 1 pretty great becasue smithing [earth] negates thge damaged condition on a weapon games 1 is not so good as it does nothing important and melee is essential as each rank lets you hit your opponent better. Therefore the xp will probably go in melee and 1 rank of smithing but not into go as there are very seldon rolls for the game skill that do anything that has a high impact on the game but melee and smithing do have a high mechancial impact.

The result is, since higher skill leels cost more that means you have less free xp for the rest of the skills In addtion to that their progression slows down becasue they have to wait a longer time before they can spend their xp.

So what escalating cost actually does for skills is restrciting the number of different skills you can have and decreaseing the number of fluff skills you can buy as they are often very low on impact and therefore very low in the priority list.
If you combine that with the allready xp lost at start ( not choosing the 3/3/2/2/2 array) the escalating cost will only slow down progression but does nothing helpful at all.

In contrast if the skills cost the same on every level this will fasten the progression and free up xp that you now can spend on fluff and other low value skills. In addtion to that it also does not make
skill point stacking at the start the superior way and therefore avoids the same probelm you avoid with flat ring xp cost.

17 minutes ago, Teveshszat said:

Yes but they would ahve xp leftover for the other skills they now could buy because they have less xp allocated to the skills they need in the first place.
Therefore you get more well rounded characters out of it because they now can take things like shogi and co.

See thats not happening. If a player has a limited number of xp they allocate the xp most likely in a way that gives them the most impact on the game. Since that is the case they will spend their xp first on high impact skills that have a high value for each point xp you spend, Courtier and Etiquette were a good example in l5r 4th ed. You bought them because they had the best Isightpoint ratio of the skills at lvl 3 and therefore was bought by everyone. The a skills value is messured in the way that you look how esential it is to your character, in how many situations it is applicabale and what does it do. For example is the smithing skill rank 1 pretty great becasue smithing [earth] negates thge damaged condition on a weapon games 1 is not so good as it does nothing important and melee is essential as each rank lets you hit your opponent better. Therefore the xp will probably go in melee and 1 rank of smithing but not into go as there are very seldon rolls for the game skill that do anything that has a high impact on the game but melee and smithing do have a high mechancial impact.

The result is, since higher skill leels cost more that means you have less free xp for the rest of the skills In addtion to that their progression slows down becasue they have to wait a longer time before they can spend their xp.

So what escalating cost actually does for skills is restrciting the number of different skills you can have and decreaseing the number of fluff skills you can buy as they are often very low on impact and therefore very low in the priority list.
If you combine that with the allready xp lost at start ( not choosing the 3/3/2/2/2 array) the escalating cost will only slow down progression but does nothing helpful at all.

In contrast if the skills cost the same on every level this will fasten the progression and free up xp that you now can spend on fluff and other low value skills. In addtion to that it also does not make
skill point stacking at the start the superior way and therefore avoids the same probelm you avoid with flat ring xp cost.

I get the skill point stacking part, but I don’t see how fastening the progression helps until you hit a hard cap.

3 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

I get the skill point stacking part, but I don’t see how fastening the progression helps until you hit a hard cap.

It gives you a feeling of progression more often since you can get something that has a big impact more often for your xp as you would with escalating xp.
And having the feeling you character no can do more awesomethings then last time is something I think is positive.

51 minutes ago, Teveshszat said:

Yes but they would have xp leftover for the other skills they now could buy because they have less xp allocated to the skills they need in the first place.

You kinda dodged my question there. Why would a minmaxer who wants to acquire stats and abilities that, by your own words, "give them the most impact in the game" bother with fluff skills in the first place? All they do is slow down progression in the areas that would allow them to "do more awesome things". When you talk about wishing to get something that has a big impact you are kind of dismantling your own argument.

My position is that players who are on the fence and interested in well-rounded characters will feel incentivized to put XP into these "auxiliary advances" because it's cheaper than the alternative, thus preserving the feeling of progress as opposed to grudgingly holding out with all your XP just because one is saving for that one big rank-up. I agree that dedicated minmaxers who are focused on said big rank-up will still do the latter -- but as I said, this behavior is impossible to stop, so I don't think there is any way the rules can or even should bother to take this into account.

There's nothing wrong with a group of minmaxers just wanting to have fun and kicking ***, but such a game should be prepared exclusively for them, in which case the issue with reservations about stalled progression is easy to resolve by simply handing out more XP. There is no reason to interfere with a more balance-focused progression that has things take longer the higher you go -- an aspect of progression that is both realistic as well as fairly standard for this type of game.

1 hour ago, Teveshszat said:

It gives you a feeling of progression more often since you can get something that has a big impact more often for your xp as you would with escalating xp.
And having the feeling you character no can do more awesomethings then last time is something I think is positive.

I just don’t think the feeling that you’re progressing fast in your core qualities already is going to make minmaxers choose to not progress even more in them as quickly as possibly. If you spend XP on non power skills, you’re delaying your power skill progression. That’s all there’s to it.

31 minutes ago, Lynata said:

You kinda dodged my question there. Why would a minmaxer who wants to acquire stats and abilities that, by your own words, "give them the most impact in the game" bother with fluff skills in the first place? All they do is slow down progression in the areas that would allow them to "do more awesome things". When you talk about wishing to get something that has a big impact you are kind of dismantling your own argument.

If you think so I was not clear enough. Also I did not talk about min maxers but about players in general. And the answer is they buy it because they allready maxed out the skills with high impact for their focus of the game.
Thats why I also said theyy have more xp left to buy low impact skills because they needed to pay less for the high impact ones.

33 minutes ago, Lynata said:

My position is that players who are on the fence and interested in well-rounded characters will feel incentivized to put XP into these "auxiliary advances" because it's cheaper than the alternative, thus preserving the feeling of progress as opposed to grudgingly holding out with all your XP just because one is saving for that one big rank-up. I agree that dedicated minmaxers who are focused on said big rank-up will still do the latter -- but as I said, this behavior is impossible to stop, so I don't think there is any way the rules can or even should bother to take this into account.

Yeah but that not what happens in the game. What happens is that even people who want well rounded character buy the high impact skills first becasue they do something in the game in contrast to most auxillery skills like games.
Than they will find themself with nearly no xp because of the escalating cost and therefore probably will not buy as many of the lower impact skills as they would if you had non escalating xp.
People go for what will make their character stronger and more powerful in story they want to tell and thats no low impact skills.
And that has nothing to do with min maxing but rather with how rpgs and all the aspects players could want fromit work.
In the end escalating xp will not help any player it in the best case just leads to gm giving out more xp and making it obsolete so why not just
not just remove when you have the chance.

38 minutes ago, Lynata said:

There's nothing wrong with a group of minmaxers just wanting to have fun and kicking ***, but such a game should be prepared exclusively for them, in which case the issue with reservations about stalled progression is easy to resolve by simply handing out more XP. There is no reason to interfere with a more balance-focused progression that has things take longer the higher you go -- an aspect of progression that is both realistic as well as fairly standard for this type of game.

Because it does not help to balance but just punsihes people for not playing allround characters. See the best way to get school leevel increase with escalating xp is starting with 3/3/2/2/2 and than go for all rings 3. After that go for equal level in the skills you need to get. Keep skill levels low and new skills when you need to. That leads to all characters doing everything but nnothing really good and looking basically the same. That has nothing to do with well rounded and more with the fact that escalating xp punsihes characters that want specialise in 1 or more fields.
Also realism has nothing to do with RPGS and should stay out of it as it onyl makes things worse.

8 hours ago, Lynata said:

I see what you mean, but if you do away with escalating costs, you're just incentivizing a minmaxer to divert their attention to a different area and use those XP to get a Ring to 4. Would the resulting 4/3/2/1/1 character truly make for a better table experience than a 3/3/2/2/2?

In fact, using that suggested flat cost of 6 XP per ring level you might, after your hypothetical 12 XP adventure, end up with a 4/4/2/1/1 or even a 5/3/2/1/1. I'm not convinced this would go over well.

You can't stop the minmaxing; the rules can only try to guide players who have not already been "corrupted" down a more balanced and narrative-focused path.

I think we need to distinguish to kind of players: Minmaxers and One Trick Ponies.

• Minmaxing in itself is simply the idea how do I get the most "bang for the buck" in terms of XP investment.
• One Trick Ponies are thos character who can only do one thing and one thing only. (Which are usually quite useless characters 80% of the time).

I am not yet convinced that 4/4/2/1/1 or 5/3/2/1/1are helpful statlines for minmaxers and the reason is that a GM will probably not allow every appoach in every situation.

We also already discussed the void cap on ring increases. So I don't have to go into detail that these statlines are more of theoretical nature.

But I do think that you main concern is to minimize the number of extreme skill and ring values. This has nothing to minmaxing, because the optimal value for something is most often NOT the extreme value. But somewhere in the middle.

I also want to highlight the absolute beautiful suggestion from shosuko:

4 hours ago, shosuko said:

Since you can't start with a Ring or Skill above 3, it wouldn't be problematic to scale costs to advance a ring or skill to rank 4 or 5. I think if all rings had a flat cost for rank 2 & 3 then it alleviates the problem. Rank 4 can still cost 12, and rank 5 can cost 15. These cost increases would be immune to min/maxing at chargen.

But I would probably smooth out the progression a bit.

Rings

• Rank 2-3: 7XP
• Rank 4: 12XP
• Rank 5: 17XP

Skills

• Rank 1-3: 4XP
• Rank 4: 7 XP
• Rank 5: 10 XP

Perhaps like this.

And before you ask it is as expensive to get from rank 1 to rank 5 in rings as before and one point cheaper in to go from rank 0 to rank 5 in skills.

Also because it was brought up before... I don't really think that we have any fluff skills (aka useless skills) in the system. I find them all quite useful.