Re: Akodo

You could take Battle Trauma to generate strife essentially constantly.

Re: Katana

What's this about damaging a weapon to deal a crit?

6 hours ago, WHW said:

Heartpiercing Strike to the arm disables most of the heavy hitting weapons, as arm injuries specifically mention that you can't use the damaged arm for holding weapons. No two hands, no otsuchi.

Am I missing something? You don't get to pick what ring they roll, and since this discussion was all about a big lion in the water stance (and water gets a TN 1 fitness check against heartpiercing strike) it seems likely you'll just be crippling a leg or dazing them which means they're likely going to swap out water stance, but you aren't generating the striking as earth bonuses either. The discussion wasn't about 'there's no way to counter this!' because there's always ways to counter things, I was just commenting that The rank 6 Hida still gets dismantled by a school technique and striking as water.

3 hours ago, SoulGambit said:

Re: Katana

What's this about damaging a weapon to deal a crit?

Combination of rules.

Razor-edged quality will give a weapon the Damaged quality if its damage is reduced to 0.

Laminated Armor has a physical reduction of 4.

The Katana has a base damage of 4 and a deadliness of 5 or 7 when used 2 handed.

The Strike Action in a skirmish is a TN 2 Martial Arts check that inflicts base damage + bonus successes. 2 opportunities can be spent to make the Strike also a critical strike with severity equal to the weapons deadliness.

A character armed with a Katana can make a Strike against a target in Laminated Armor and keep 2 successes and 2 opportunities to deal 4 damage and a 5/7 severity critical strike. The Laminated Armor will reduce the Strike's damage to 0 (which will cause the Razor-edged quality to give the Katana the damaged quality) but not the critical strike's severity.

5 hours ago, rcuhljr said:

Am I missing something? You don't get to pick what ring they roll, and since this discussion was all about a big lion in the water stance (and water gets a TN 1 fitness check against heartpiercing strike) it seems likely you'll just be crippling a leg or dazing them which means they're likely going to swap out water stance, but you aren't generating the striking as earth bonuses either. The discussion wasn't about 'there's no way to counter this!' because there's always ways to counter things, I was just commenting that The rank 6 Hida still gets dismantled by a school technique and striking as water.

It was the comment that there's little point in using something other than striking as water on a high resistance 'tank' - I was just observing that things like heartpiercing strike bypasses resistance entirely, so that may sometimes be a better option.

Agreed there are always counters ('armour-piercing attacks' being a case in point).

So I ended up making a Shugenja because I wanted to see what that felt like: this advancement table felt much more punishing than the Hida defender one (particularly with the rank 1-3 rituals field including three things one of which you've already had an opportunity to buy). Interestingly I spent xp in close to the same proportion for both of them.

Xp Spent: Rings: 66, Skills: 64 Techniques: 21 (I miscounted by 1 somewhere at some point, I'm not going through and re-doing it)

Utaku Ren (Rank 6 Iuchi Meishodo Master):

Rings:

Air: 2

Earth: 4

Fire: 4

Water: 4

Void: 3

Skills:

Artisan:

Aesthetics: 0

Composition: 0

Design: 3

Smithing: 0

Martial:

Fitness: 2

Melee: 1

Ranged: 0

Unarmed: 0

Meditation: 2

Tactics: 2

Scholar:

Culture: 0

Government: 0

Medicine: 0

Sentiment: 0

Theology: 5

Social:

Command: 0

Courtesy: 3

Games: 0

Performance: 0

Trade:

Commerce: 0

Labor: 0

Seafaring: 0

Skulduggery: 0

Survival: 3

Techniques:

Invocations: Grasp of Earth, The Rushing Wave, Dominion of Suitengu, Inari's Blessing, Path to Inner Peace, Earth Becomes Sky, Rise Earth, The Soul's Blade, Ever Changing Waves

Shuji: Well of Desire

Rituals: Commune with the Spirits, Cleansing Rite

Resilience: 16

Focus: 6

Compsure: 16

Vigilance: 3