It seems that a lot of (minor)problems for people with the system are the following:

- Generic Characters

- Generating strife

- Failure chance

All of these might be solved with the following chance to subskills:

- When generating a character a char can select 1 or 2 subskills from a Clan/School specif list when seleciting his Clan/School.

- Near the end of creating a character you choose a Skill group, gain 2 subskills from that group, gain 1 subskill in 3 of the 4 other skill groups.

Subskills do not work as a variant of the skill but gives a boost when using it's parent skill:

- A skill can be level 1, 2 or 3. (1 is trained, 2 is specialized, 3 is expert)

- For each level in a subskill you can ignore either 1 strife, add 1 succes or 1 oppertunity to your dice roll.

What do I consider the advantage to this system?

- It tackles 3 of what some people see as (minor) problems with the game.

- Makes your character more reliable in the things you find important. It allows your character to shine in a niche.

- It's simple and it builds on the foundation of the game.

- It opens up a lot of finetuning. It's fun to allocate the points and gives you some character/ background.

With the current system most Matsu Bushi or Doji courtier look similair. With subskills however you can finetune your personaly in a lot of ways.

A Doji courtier with 2 ranks in Iajitsu is quite diffrent then one who has 2 ranks in Sadane or one who has 2 points in Dance.

Final notes:

Although it allows a player to become very good at something early on it is in something your player wants to do and it's nice. If your player wants to be a youny prodigy in storytelling he/she can and it might get him/her noticed in Court, perhaps even a chance of becoming the Darling of the Season but it doesnt make him/her better at any other subject in court. As a Matsu Bushi I might never use my 1 rank in Heraldy and Ancestor worship but it will define my character and background and it makes me diffrent from the other Matsu Bushi's out there. A Hida berserker might be a brute but who knew he had a talent for puppeteering. I do think most subskills should be handed out during character creation. Perhaps only gaining one extra at each school rank. (or perhaps on lvl 2 and 4 only)

Any feedback, suggestions, changes or critic is welcome as always.

If you've already made some characters just try it out! For me it was fun to even come up with the diffrent examples.

I agree that the current approach to subskills is thoroughly uninspiring, and redundant, as well as mechanically disastrous in 99% of game cases if implemented. I think your suggestion bears some merit.

One of the tricky details of designing 'specialisations' into any game is pricing them in XP and any 'points-only' freeform chargen method which might at some point be produced. Making them a flat, separate benefit, as you suggest rather than an actual skill dice increase probably makes that task easier.

However, I'd be inclined to:

first of all reduce the number of subskill picks your character gets at game start: keep the one or two picks from your school skills, or the school-plus-Family skills, and at most one 'free bonus' pick from another skill group as a 'hobby' specialism.

second, reduce its potential effects. At most two levels of specialisation, and each allowing a reroll of a single die when using that skill. Having a specialisation be an auto success or an auto-opportunity on every roll is way, way too powerful, IMO, and having a level 3 specialist knock off up to three strife from the roll every time they use their skill means they'll hardly ever accrue any strife of their own on that skill; getting a couple of 'specialisms' in a handful of key skills will drastically impact the strife economy.

An alternate effect might be: each specialism allows you to add a success or an opportunity to a 'strife-only' dice face in a roll. Maybe this would be a 'once per scene' option, or a 'once per outburst'. Maybe even an effect at the level of the rerolls I suggest above should be restricted to 'per scene', and if it's one at a time only, then you could have a flat price per 'level' and no cap, so 'specialisations' just mean you tend to be more consistent in the given skill.

Well, no... I have to disagree. I don't think it solves anything. But maybe the mentions issues are not the problems I perceive with the game so far.

So, let me check if I got that right:

You are looking for something that will allow players to

• customize their characters,
• manage Strife, and
• increase the chance of success (or rather, Successes).

That sounds interesting.

The only thing I wonder about is why you propose a new sub-skill mechanic for this, instead of simply using the Distinctions and Passions which are already featured prominently in the current beta rules and which already address exactly these three bullets (adding cusomization opportunities [all advantages], offering an additional way to remove Strife [Passions], and giving more control over check results [Distinctions]).

Why add this additional mechanic with slightly different execution (ignoring Strife from a check rather than removing Strife already accumulated, adding a Success/Opportunity instead of re-rolling dice with unwanted results) but the same general goals?

Also, if I may disgress slightly from the actual topic of the thread: The thread title is gold! Do you mind if I nick that formula?

Just an Idea. -> Haikus might solve a lot. (And I am being completely sincere here.)