Now, I recognize the thinking in using the Rings as one of the major components in the assembly of the dice pools and subsequent steps of checks, but the survey questions with their focus on approaches and especially the proportion of checks made using Rings other than a character's highest made me wonder whether this incarnation of Legend of the Five Rings might not actually benefit from dropping Rings as numeric traits altogether.

Through Stances, Approaches and Opportunities the Rings are a central part of each and every check made in the game. The choice of Ring is highly meaningfull both narratively and on a more purely mechanics level. Yet, in the current system, this choice is being confounded with the raw impact on number or dice rolled (and kept) and thus the probability of generating results. On the one hand, this could be seen as further enhancing the meaningfulness of the choices involved, by introducing an additional element of risk and a need to weigh the chance of success versus, e.g., the available options to spend Opportunities on. On the other hand, and this is were I am coming from here, this can also be seen as taking away from the inherent meaningfulness of the choice by having the yes or no nature of basic success overlay otherwise equally interesting options.

So, if we restrict Rings to just determining what you can do (e.g., the effect of Stances, the questions asked during Assessment, what you can spend Opportunities on, which checks your Anxieties trigger on, ...), the obvious question is how to determine dice pools and kept dice instead. If we want to continue using both black and white dice and a roll and keep mechanic, we need some other numeric trait to take the place of the (now non-numeric) Rings. School Rank seems like an obvious choice for me, or, if you wish to keep check results closer to what they currently are, School Rank +1 might be a slightly better fit, at least for characters straight out of character generation.

There are some more things this could potentially enable as well, but that is the basic gist of it.

Actually you raise a point that I think has been eating away at me for a while but I haven't been sure as how to voice it.

With the removal of traits, this effectively becomes Legend Of The 5 Stats.

None of them are mental or physical or social per se. They really need to be VERY descriptive is exactly what the rings are and what they do / do not entail, seeing as how every character in the world will only have 5 abstract metaphysical elements as stats, and those elements are very different from the Western versions of those elements.

This becomes a tricky game to wrap your head around.

As a westerner, "Water" isn't particularly evocative of raw strength (like a crashing wave) or adaptability (like water taking the form of the vessel it's in) or even being able to read the ripples across an otherwise still pond.

To compound the issue, this version lets you do all of those things with Water and various skills, but also with Earth, Air, Fire and Void.

Then it becomes the Legend Of The 1 Stat.

@GhostSanta, this is what the Approaches table is for - it gives concrete things you can do with each Ring, to remove players BSing to paint every test as applying to their best stat. You can't trick someone in a social situation without using Air, so the Air 1 / Earth 4 Hida Bushi wouldn't be able to say, "No I'm tricking him in an um... earthy sort of way." He's stuck with rolling Air.

Nah, you need at least 2 Stats. High Water and Earth pretty much create a character immune to Strife and good at combat since Earth is factored into Resilience and Composure as well as providing one of the better Katas for combat, and Water factors into Strife relief.

But really, the problem with the system isn't the reliance on those two stats. It's how weak the characters become if they focus on other stats, especially Air and Void. If your character starts with Void 3 and Air 3, their best possible Composure and Resilience are 6,and only if they choose Earth 2. If they put that 2 stat into Fire or Water, one of those derived stats is going to be a 4. Even at 6, the character is both made of paper, and a complete spaz (unable to neither absorb Strife Points, nor remove them). And they don't really even do anything well. Unless they have Striking as Air (available to one School in the Beta right now), they're basically stuck with Air Stance in Conflicts, hoping their enemy can't hit TN3 or get any Opportunities since it will take barely any effort at all to get them to Outburst nor many hits to kill them. On the flip side, the character with Earth 3 and Water 3 could have Composure as high as 10, and their Strife-reducing stat will be one of their best ones.

This makes choice of Clan, Family and School ridiculously gamey. Akodo, Hida, Kaiu, Matsu, Shinjo, Utaku, Yasuki; these are all really good families when paired with Clan and the currently available Schools. Bayushi, on the other hand, is really subpar because that character's 3 stats are currently fixed (He gets Air 3, Fire 3 and will like it). Bayushi Bob is liable to get Strife Nuked by Matsu Marvin because he can't compose himself and Marvin can eat 5 Fire Opportunities worth of Strife before cracking, and can easily shower off with Water 3, lol. And he's certainly going to get annihilated in combat by Marvin. Everyone else kinda falls into the "Eh" range where they will be sorta Middle-Tier starting characters with distinct weaknesses. At least compared to Shinjo Shawna the Outrider or Hida Harold the Defender or Akodo Aaron the Bard.

That said, I don't really have a problem with the Approaches in the manner you do. I think they're too vague, but it's not because they are conceptually alien. Just that they are tied into very gamey core mechanics and not well-balanced. Tying Skills to two (maybe three) traits and treating other Approaches as Untrained would go a long way towards balancing the system out.

2 minutes ago, TheVeteranSergeant said:

Unless they have Striking as Air (available to one School in the Beta right now)

Small correction: as long as a character has access to kata, they can buy any kata they qualify for. Some kata can be bought early based on school, and different schools start with different kata. Same goes for Shuji. So all Bushi and Courtier can buy striking as Air.

I was speaking solely of Character Creation. Anything bought with accrued XP is just putting off other things you might want to purchase.