11 hours ago, WHW said:

This would literally never happens, as Katana has damage of 4, and highest armor value in the game ATM is 5 for Plate Armor and unholy hide of terryfing oni. It would require the introduction of oppressive Resistance values for the opponents that do not mesh with the math of current system. Eyeballing numbers is a bad habit.

The only scenario where this could work is player character wearing Plate Armor using 3 Opportunities to activate Striking as Earth and then tanking an exactly 2 success hit from an NPC using a katana.

Not quite.

Player may have forgotten the target took a +1 resistance from a technique.

Player may have pushed their luck when they rolled 2 Ex and 4 Op+St... and kept the 2 Ex in hope of rolling the needed third to not ding... a 25/144 chance of failure. But that 17% does sometimes show.

Player may have used a different attack action using the katana, which doesn't use the base damage.

With Razor-Edged, I think the easiest thing is just to make it a passive trait, one that indicates a weapon has a higher Deadliness rating than would be the norm, for a similar weapon (such as the parangu used by Mantis sailors) and said weapon can be used for Iaijutsu, and that's all it does.

There is currently no effect available to the NPcs that increases their Resistance vaules, though

I have my issues with the Razor-Edged mechanics. It just seems like more stuff for my players to managed, that is uninteresting to them. They already have Strife, Approaches, to manage on a roll, then on top of that they have to watch out that the NPC/Oni doesn't reduce their damage to zero or their sword becomes worthless.

I think , and I could be wrong. That the issues here is the one strike and your out feeling of the current rules. If you don't like the negative damage rule I suggested then.

Another idea could be if damage is reduced to 0, once sword takes light damage, twice medium damage, then when it happens a third time it takes heavy damage and suffers the current effects of Razor-Edged, followed by breaking on the fourth occurrence. This will give the player some time to fix the issues, and not feel like one bad roll destroyed his Katana.

16 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

Another idea could be if damage is reduced to 0, once sword takes light damage, twice medium damage, then when it happens a third time it takes heavy damage and suffers the current effects of Razor-Edged, followed by breaking on the fourth occurrence. This will give the player some time to fix the issues, and not feel like one bad roll destroyed his Katana.

Which makes it one more thing for the player to track in a fight, and not sure it'd really be that much of an improvement.

22 hours ago, WHW said:

There is currently no effect available to the NPcs that increases their Resistance vaules, though

Look through the opportunities on a ariety of techniques - those are available to NPC's with them.

Like? Remember that NPCs don't get to use 1:1 abilities as PCs, and NPC techniques are often different than PC-available ones even if they technically share a name.

On 10/23/2017 at 2:10 AM, Mobiusllls said:

Dont know about rules forcing you to keep one die. But i'm obviously not completely aware of everything on the system, in any case, it changes nothing. Tn to hit is 2. its literally impossible to hit with only one kept die (Even if is an explosion, you are not forced to keep the other die, i believe.) You miss with one sword, your sword is not broken.

You can reduce the TN of subsequent checks through Void opportunities or the provoke action. It won't come up frequently, but it is possible to be forced into a hit by only rolling successes. The other scenario, where you choose to keep dice but you don't roll what you need from explosions, is far more likely.

Having to keep at least one die and the fact that you need to choose to keep explosive successes before you see what the explosion nets you are pretty subtle quirks of the rules that could easily be overlooked.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Which makes it one more thing for the player to track in a fight, and not sure it'd really be that much of an improvement.

This is easy done with a couple check boxes on the weapon line.

It in my example has no effect till heavy damage.

Gives the idea that blades take damage with crippling the character after one bad roll.

Allows the character to fight without having to miss just to save his sword.

I'll end by saying, I don't like the damage portion of the rule at all but this is a compromise idea since some seem to like it

On 10/21/2017 at 4:38 PM, tenchi2a said:

The issues here is not any have to do with techniques or bad/good mechanics. The problem is the ideas presented are all Hollywood promoted samurai myths.

1. The katana is not as fragile as they would have you believe. I have a few and have seen demos with classically forged sword, and even they can take a beating.

2. A strike with a katana is not a blunt force attack like most other sword it is a sweep and pulling action to bring the cutting power of the sword to the target.

3. Because of this the sword would not hit the armor with the force to damage or break it. it may need to be sharpened but that's about it.

4. The truth is in Japanese warfare katanas where rarely used on the battle field against heavily armored opponents as most of these would be high in the command structure or generals. So would not be in the heat of battle.

Overall this is a rule based on bad info that has be postulated in movie history.

You left out that parries are edge-to-edge... they aren't, even with most HEMA styles. You parry by diversion, not confrontation.

I just hate it because it's lacored armor, not steel. Hitting someone in European plate might break the sword, but even the heavy Japanese armor was lacored plates over cloth.

Razor-Edged amuses me to no end because it sounds like a perk until you see it's actually an annoying flaw that forces you to, as others pointed out, pretend you never intended to hit in the first place so you don't shatter the very symbol of your honor and status.

It really feels like this game had a Weapon Durability stat at one point, in which your less bulky weapons would be taking damage at some points, getting fixed via Smithing, maybe even attacks that target weapons to break them, but it all got cut and mega-simplified into "swords breaks against armor, use tetsubos when it matters".

14 minutes ago, Sephyr79 said:

sounds like a perk

It could afford to have a mechanical trade-off for sure. Something like being able to spend bonus successes on severity to make it super nasty when it does go through. You could then decide to take damaged or lose the razor-edged quality when striking armour for 0 damage.

Just now, GaGrin said:

It could afford to have a mechanical trade-off for sure. Something like being able to spend bonus successes on severity to make it super nasty when it does go through. You could then decide to take damaged or lose the razor-edged quality when striking armour for 0 damage.

Losing razor-edged is more of a punishment then your weapon getting damaged due to some abilities requiring it, and the difficulty of getting it back on the weapon.

3 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

Losing razor-edged is more of a punishment then your weapon getting damaged due to some abilities requiring it, and the difficulty of getting it back on the weapon.

That's why I think it should be a choice. This is very rarely going to occur without you choosing to commit to the attack regardless and it would give you another potential hit on the weapon before it was destroyed. Granted, it would suck, but I think that's sort of the point?

Just now, GaGrin said:

That's why I think it should be a choice. This is very rarely going to occur without you choosing to commit to the attack regardless and it would give you another potential hit on the weapon before it was destroyed. Granted, it would suck, but I think that's sort of the point?

This seems like a bandage for the more pressing issues of razor-edged being a bad rule.

its needed to use some abilities but it makes the weapon fragile. Truth be told I would not be so against it if other weapons had breakage issues. But they targeted only edged weapons to have this issues.

Then how about we give razor edged weapons an extra ability (right now it’s more a liability than anything else)? Say when scoring a crit by way of spending opportunities, you may chose instead to inflict additional damage equal to the deadliness of the weapon.

This would also help bypass those pesky heavy armor reductions and make some fights much quicker... and give those weapons... an edge! (pun intended)

16 hours ago, Franwax said:

Then how about we give razor edged weapons an extra ability (right now it’s more a liability than anything else)? Say when scoring a crit by way of spending opportunities, you may chose instead to inflict additional damage equal to the deadliness of the weapon.

This would also help bypass those pesky heavy armor reductions and make some fights much quicker... and give those weapons... an edge! (pun intended)

I'd rather see the ability to spend those bonus successes to raise the severity....

Could be nice, but it does not help make the razor edged weapon less breakable against armor...

Another avenue would be to only trigger the Damaged status only when Resistance strictly exceeds the physical damage dealt, but it feels underwhelming as a fix.

Something just accured to me while reading through these post. The design of razor-edged on your ceremonial daisho is actually more elegant and thought than I may have realized. Your Soul and Duty wielded almost exclusively for defending your Honor and serving your lord off the battlefields, as thats be discussed to have more prudent weapons for war.

Considering the major concern here is using the weapon against armored foes, as thats the only consistent way to sum up enough resistance to endanger it, what is the greatest concern of a samurai on normal duties. Bandits maybe ashigaru turned aggressive ronin at the worst. And if you come upon something worse your likely to either get aid or adjust your tactics.

The reason i bring this up is because the greastest risk resistance wise are other samurai in armor and Oni maybe some nastier shadowlands creatures. These are all fights that you would go into better prepared for and not rely on your katana off the bat.

Even fighting other samurai is either during a war where all would have their wargear and armor anyway or duels, half of which take place without armor unless terms are decided on which also likely faciliates a change of weapon.

Making your daisho razor-edged, while wouldn't go so far to say is a social deterent, makes more sense when you look at when and whom it would typicalky be used against.

That and likely also so not taint your blade of the soul with bad blood.

3 hours ago, Shiba Rana said:

Something just accured to me while reading through these post. The design of razor-edged on your ceremonial daisho is actually more elegant and thought than I may have realized. Your Soul and Duty wielded almost exclusively for defending your Honor and serving your lord off the battlefields, as thats be discussed to have more prudent weapons for war.

Considering the major concern here is using the weapon against armored foes, as thats the only consistent way to sum up enough resistance to endanger it, what is the greatest concern of a samurai on normal duties. Bandits maybe ashigaru turned aggressive ronin at the worst. And if you come upon something worse your likely to either get aid or adjust your tactics.

The reason i bring this up is because the greastest risk resistance wise are other samurai in armor and Oni maybe some nastier shadowlands creatures. These are all fights that you would go into better prepared for and not rely on your katana off the bat.

Even fighting other samurai is either during a war where all would have their wargear and armor anyway or duels, half of which take place without armor unless terms are decided on which also likely faciliates a change of weapon.

Making your daisho razor-edged, while wouldn't go so far to say is a social deterent, makes more sense when you look at when and whom it would typicalky be used against.

That and likely also so not taint your blade of the soul with bad blood.

Would be true if the Nodachi and Naginata which are both wargear did not have the same issues.

8 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

Would be true if the Nodachi and Naginata which are both wargear did not have the same issues.

Yes but don't both of those weapons have base damage values higher than the strongest armor's resistance?

Sure their are excpetions like get boost from kiho, invocations, other techniques maybe some Oni but overall id think the risk of breaking those two is far less likely and worth the high damage/lethality with cumbersome as a balancing act.

1 minute ago, Shiba Rana said:

Yes but don't both of those weapons have base damage values higher than than the strongest armors resistance?

Sure their are excpetions like get boost from kiho, invocations, other techniques maybe some Oni but overall id think the risk of breaking those two is far less likely and worth the high damage/lethality with cumbersome as a balancing act.

Nodachi Martial Arts [Melee] 1-2 5 6 2-handed: – Ceremonial, Razor-Edged 7 20 koku

Naginata Martial Arts [Melee] 2 6 6 2-handed: – Cumbersome, Razor-Edged, Wargear 7 10 koku

so no on the Nodachi , and only just on the Naginata.

Better than i thought honestly. Sure the damage is 5, but with the right Kata thats a fantastic weapon. I thought it was Wargear and Cumbersome lol.

Though im kinda surprised you could walk into places with a blade that long and it be socially acceptable by rokugani standards, going by the qualities anyway. For the lion and crab matbe but still.