Ok guys, where I can find the updated (nerfed) Akodo Commander and Shiba Bushi that the email talks about????

Not up yet, from what I can find. We must be patient.

But I want it noooowwwwww

RIP Akodo, gonna be hard to live without that level of awesome. Hopefully Shiba bushi gets replaced with something worth even considering playing one.

Akodo just has a 1 fatigue cost now, while Shiba removes strife in addition to the other stuff it does, according to the email.

I wouldn’t worry too much for now, as they might bring back Rejuvenating Vapors, and that will take care of the fatigue condition.

Fatigue = Damage.

Akodo self-damages to use the ability.

Shouldn’t the fatigue go away after sleeping?

And that’s what I thought what Rejuvenating Vapors did: “Water washes away all that is impure, refreshing and rein-vigorating all it touches. The target of this spell is instantly refreshed as if he had just arisen from a full night’s sleep.”

That’s why I thought IF this invocation is ported might removed the fatigue condition and you could use it again...

Update is up!!!

Razor Edged now has teeth - +1 Deadliness per +1 Opportunity.... and giving Naginata a good reason to have it.

Ah well Shiba, maybe next edition.

4 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

Razor Edged now has teeth - +1 Deadliness per +1 Opportunity....

I feel like this ain't that hot as it looks like. As a naginata user, my character's Opportunity eco is already air-tight and I have no reason to bother with increasing Deadliness.

Just now, AtoMaki said:

I feel like this ain't that hot as it looks like. As a naginata user, my character's Opportunity eco is already air-tight and I have no reason to bother with increasing Deadliness.

My players haven't used their naginata yet. But they would happily have spent the unspent opportunity in a couple of the hits in the duels to increase the damage enough that the expected resistance would take the resulting crit above 4...

2 minutes ago, rcuhljr said:

Ah well Shiba, maybe next edition.

I miss my Void Machine...

2 hours ago, Nheko said:

Shouldn’t the fatigue go away after sleeping?

And that’s what I thought what Rejuvenating Vapors did: “Water washes away all that is impure, refreshing and rein-vigorating all it touches. The target of this spell is instantly refreshed as if he had just arisen from a full night’s sleep.”

That’s why I thought IF this invocation is ported might removed the fatigue condition and you could use it again...

As of the previous update (1.0) Wounds became Fatigue and the Fatigued condition was renamed Exhaustion... it can be confusing

Not sure if its just my phone, but I'm not seeing the update?

12 minutes ago, tenchi2a said:

Not sure if its just my phone, but I'm not seeing the update?

Beta v2.0 update pdf

Example Kakita Blade and Omamori

16 minutes ago, Franwax said:

As of the previous update (1.0) Wounds became Fatigue and the Fatigued condition was renamed Exhaustion... it can be confusing

Upsssss Sorry guys please ignore my ramblings and carry on...

Thanks Franwax.

So after reading thru the changes to the character creation rule or the lack there of.

It seems my Time With this beta is done.

I'm sure this new take on the game will work for some, but this directed creation system, and forced Advantages/Disadvantages is what drove my players way in the first place.

What do you think about the choice of elements for Family? Does this satisfy the difficulty with character's rings not lining up properly? Or does this help curb some of the power-gaming picks?

I like the bonus for Razor Edge, but I'm worried about how much Success + Opportunity we're expected to get here to make any use of it... Or is this mostly for when we've already trounced an opponent to the point that their fatigue is filled and we auto-crit them?

Razor Edged bonus works best when you are using Iaijutsu techniques - it allows them to scale. Horizontal Blade effectively allows you to treat both Successes and Opportunities as +1 damage result (Fire Horizontal Blade is pretty awesome sight to behold - beyond basic 2 successes needed to hit, you can treat any nonblank result as a +1 damage!), and Rising Blade allows you to scale the Aut-Crit with opportunities.

Its less to make "natural" crits scale, and more to make razor-edged only techniques work even better with skilled samurai.

21 minutes ago, WHW said:

Razor Edged bonus works best when you are using Iaijutsu techniques - it allows them to scale. Horizontal Blade effectively allows you to treat both Successes and Opportunities as +1 damage result (Fire Horizontal Blade is pretty awesome sight to behold - beyond basic 2 successes needed to hit, you can treat any nonblank result as a +1 damage!), and Rising Blade allows you to scale the Aut-Crit with opportunities.

Its less to make "natural" crits scale, and more to make razor-edged only techniques work even better with skilled samurai.

thx I'll keep that in mind.

• I like the general "search the environment" skill guide. That helps a lot.
• Table 0-1 giving you a choice of ring increases makes a difference - the families setting your starting wealth is good. A firstborn kakita scion will generally be loaded wherever they've studied.
  • Does this overwrite the starting koku from your school or add to it?
  • As a minor observation - if it does overwrite the starting koku from your school, Families of the Fleet now start with no wealth as well as no glory..
• Akodo commander taking fatigue to trigger their ability. Fair enough - that's a nice way to do it, because it still allows them to use their ability in a skirmish, but it's a lot safer to do it in a massed battle (because they generally won't suffer fatigue from any other source) - it makes them better commanders than hammer-wielders without taking away their option to use it in a skirmish in extremis .
• The new water opportunity allowing you to use a weapon below its minimum range is cool (either a legolas-esque point-blank headshot or a stave-bash with a naginata or spear, I guess).
  • Given that changing weapons is now rather slow, giving you the (risky) option to keep using your longer range weapon and hoping for an opportunity is a nice one - especially if you've suffered something like an immobilized condition.
• Striking As Air - that's....wierd but cool. Combined with an opportunity spent assisting yourself (as the next person to perform the same action), a Strike will [opportunity],[opportunity], [success] can be a very effective feint - giving you an assistance and a guaranteed success result in the next round.
• Spiritual Backlash - ouch. 'Miscasts' now cause three fatigue plus the nasty elemental effects! If you mess up Breath Of The Fire Dragon you can quite easily incapactitate yourself and cripple the entire party...
• Razor-Edged - well, I don't think people will mind Razor-edged having a beneficial property. Of course, getting 2 opportunities for the critical and 1 to increase the deadliness and hitting is going to be hard, so it's unlikely to get used much for pre-incapacitation strikes, but it is nevertheless a big deal. For starters, it gives a razor-edged weapon a fighting chance of bringing down an angry boar!
• Air Stance - a fair enough compromise. It still has its previous effect for NPCs and it prevents anyone getting a 'free' +3 TN defence....
• Parrying - Parrying a serious enough strike destroys your sword. Fair enough, but setting the 'destroyed' bar at 8 makes it a bit...harsh? I can see Severity 10 being a fair swap (because a severity 10 critical causes unconciousness, and anything higher causes death).
  • Severity 8 destroying a sword kind of makes the awesomeness of Omeka look a lot less impressive.
  • Does the severity modification from Parrying and Way of the Crab stack?

Destroyed happens if you reduce the crit by 8, not if you reduce a Crit of 8. You need to parry a Severity 12 blow to destroy the weapon. I don't think I like it, to be honest, as 8+ crits are what you want to parry - to avoid being permanently crippled.

Also, current wording makes the 12+ parries get instantly destroyed even if weapon is Durable, which sounds unintended.

I guess the primary motivation here is to make Parrying the Finishing Blows unattractive.

1 hour ago, WHW said:

I guess the primary motivation here is to make Parrying the Finishing Blows unattractive.

Less attractive than taking a severity 12+ hit? That seems like a fool's errand to me. Ultimately, if the weapon is less important than the character (i.e. most of the time) you're going to do the parry no matter the degree of damage. Swords and other weapons are replaceable in a way that your multi-hour character development is not.

Honestly, I think the parry rule is bizzare as written. Automatic reduction effectively nullifies the fight-ending hit once per big clash and the once/session thing is strange given that you already have to have and pay void AND suffer damage to a weapon, both of which are limited resources.

Personally, I'd rewrite it from scratch or ditch it completely. Either assume parries are part of the combat abstraction (which we have to to some degree), or make dead-parries a last ditch effort not an automatic save.