"Stats don't affect defence" and "Void 1 is as good as Void 5" is factually incorrect - by being in a Void Stance, you switch your potential Fitness test to Void Fitness, which means that you use Void as a basis for a Crit-reducing roll, which is your defense against real wounds.

As for Center/Predict being their own actions...I like how these actions work, but I have mixed feeling about aciton economy in duels. But I will test it out first before talking too much.

6 hours ago, tenchi2a said:

the part I was pointing out

4E was 3 rolls.

1 hour ago, Exarkfr said:

Though you have to be careful to balance the advantages you get with the action and those you get with the stance itself.

Air is still +1/+2 TN, and Earth negates opportunity-crits. And Water is useful for the extra action (that you can use to draw your weapon, if you don't have a Iaijustsu technique).
Whereas Void "lost" it's effect, becoming instead an "action enabler"

Center not requiring a roll also means no "build up crit severity" opportunity spends

It requires a roll, but that roll is not a skill check, which is somewhat weird.

My first instincts seem to be correct, but I might suffer from confirmation bias: Center is not worth taking, and Predict only appears when coupled with Water Stance. Doing these in place of your normal actions is not worth under the current economy.

Now that Strife accumulates during staredown, both characters can get Compromised simultaneously.
I think I'm not seeing a "tiebreaker", here (Turns have not begun). Who gets the first Finishing Blow ? Karmic Strike ? Resolve both at the same time ?

Interesting to see a few of my suggestions adopted.

48 minutes ago, Exarkfr said:

I think I'm not seeing a "tiebreaker", here (Turns have not begun). Who gets the first Finishing Blow ? Karmic Strike ? Resolve both at the same time ?

I'd go with higher Initiative makes the first (lower honor winning that tiebreaker) Finishing Blow.

41 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Interesting to see a few of my suggestions adopted.

I'd go with higher Initiative makes the first (lower honor winning that tiebreaker) Finishing Blow.

I'd rather Honor first, then initiative, thematically.

6 hours ago, Exarkfr said:

Though you have to be careful to balance the advantages you get with the action and those you get with the stance itself.

Air is still +1/+2 TN, and Earth negates opportunity-crits. And Water is useful for the extra action (that you can use to draw your weapon, if you don't have a Iaijustsu technique).
Whereas Void "lost" it's effect, becoming instead an "action enabler"

Predict doesn't negate those bonus, and there will likely be an exploitable ring for Predict based on which stance effect you want. If there were 5 actions each locked to a ring without a check then players would be forced into a ring + action type which allows a lot more control over balancing their effects.

I don't think we -need- 3 more actions yet... I'm going to be trying it as is, and I do like the changes with Center and Predict, I'm just putting my thoughts down.

ps - I kinda feel like all of the base stance effects should be removed while dueling. Let the ops stay but the base stance effects can make duels wonky.

6 hours ago, WHW said:

"Stats don't affect defence" and "Void 1 is as good as Void 5" is factually incorrect - by being in a Void Stance, you switch your potential Fitness test to Void Fitness, which means that you use Void as a basis for a Crit-reducing roll, which is your defense against real wounds.

As for Center/Predict being their own actions...I like how these actions work, but I have mixed feeling about aciton economy in duels. But I will test it out first before talking too much.

My point was that you could risk taking a hit while in Center stance because landing a crit with a raw strike isn't so easy, and a hit may be fully absorbed by fatigue meaning Center -> Strike can be a solid plan during the duel to decisively end it especially for characters with 2-3 skill ranks. You only risk that your opponent calls you out by directly striking and they keep 2 success and 2 ops.

Sure your ability to resist the crits isn't going to be great on a 1 void but they have to land the crit first. Do you find many people open with a strike as their first action in a duel? The deciding factor for Center -> Strike is the risk of not being crit that turn compared to your ability to lock in the ops needed with your skill dice. What power level characters are you using?

Also - I am concerned a bit for the scaling factor... a character with 4 ring and 4 skill might just strike immediately in every duel, but then I guess at that level it becomes a tense moment of bidding strife to be the one who can strike first... and maybe then you still might Predict to attempt to trigger a Finishing Blow which is much more likely to obliterate your opponent at the risk of guessing wrong and receiving their blow instead... Maybe earth + predict so they can't crit you with ops?

Anyway - let me know what your experiences are thx.

I think you guys are forgetting something fairly important that came up today with us while testing the new duel mechanics: busting out your favorite Water Stance allows you to Predict TWICE . I repeat: if you think that cucking your opponent out of one Ring is cool, then you can go Water Stance and cuck them out from two Rings (and punish them with 4+4 Strife if they try).

Wanna Strike? Predict Earth and Air. Probably worth a lot more than some reserved dice you won't roll anyway.

Wanna sit and wait for Finishing Blow? Predict the two highest Rings your enemy has. Bonus points if one his highest Rings is Void.

Then your enemy Predicts Water... and you must Predict Water too or risk being screwed over. Thus the Prediction Wars begin!

On the bright side, the suffering won't last long, because it is going to be Finishing-Blow-o-Clock fairly soon. At which point if your Predictions hit harder than your opponent's then you basically auto-win.

10 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I think you guys are forgetting something fairly important that came up today with us while testing the new duel mechanics: busting out your favorite Water Stance allows you to Predict TWICE . I repeat: if you think that cucking your opponent out of one Ring is cool, then you can go Water Stance and cuck them out from two Rings (and punish them with 4+4 Strife if they try).

Not sure it was intended.

But if it is, both predictions would still have the same trigger (so you'd punish them only once, but would have two guesses at their ring)

20 minutes ago, Exarkfr said:

But if it is, both predictions would still have the same trigger (so you'd punish them only once, but would have two guesses at their ring)

You can time your selections within the trigger as you wish. You don't have to reveal both selections when the first stance is chosen.

24 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I think you guys are forgetting something fairly important that came up today with us while testing the new duel mechanics: busting out your favorite Water Stance allows you to Predict TWICE . I repeat: if you think that cucking your opponent out of one Ring is cool, then you can go Water Stance and cuck them out from two Rings (and punish them with 4+4 Strife if they try).

Only way I can see a successful 8 Strife from a Water Predict is if you predict both their primary and secondary stance choice.

35 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Wanna Strike? Predict Earth and Air. Probably worth a lot more than some reserved dice you won't roll anyway.

Earth is mostly meaningless if you have Rising Blade.

46 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Wanna sit and wait for Finishing Blow? Predict the two highest Rings your enemy has. Bonus points if one his highest Rings is Void.

Be ready to be hit with a Strike/Rising Blade/Provoke from the other 3 rings if they think they can hit the TN 2 or TN 3 you just opened yourself to.

38 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Then your enemy Predicts Water... and you must Predict Water too or risk being screwed over. Thus the Prediction Wars begin!

Not really. The moment you Water Double Predict is the moment you open yourself to Attacks as you are not in Air nor Earth.

Predict is also an Attack action so if Crescent Moon Style is fixed to work with the new keep free Center action you might end up being hit.

1 hour ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Earth is mostly meaningless if you have Rising Blade.

Be ready to be hit with a Strike/Rising Blade/Provoke from the other 3 rings if they think they can hit the TN 2 or TN 3 you just opened yourself to.

Rising Blade might be pretty much the only deal-breaker here, tho if your opponent has mis-matched Rings then shutting down his two highest can undercut Rising Blade too (since he will have no Rings to reliably pull a TN 3 hit).

Also, Predict replaces Provoke as per the update, so no Provoke for you. The only way your opponent can land a good hit on you is if he has three or more good Rings (3+) or if Explosion Success shenanigans happen. Otherwise, he better gets the mother of all attacks (or Predict) because you are gonna wreck his face next turn.

If you happen to have Rising Blade then Water Stance + Center + Predict (Air) -> Rising Blade to completely screw over your opponent.

Oh, and as of now, Crescent Moon doesn't work in duels because you can't spend Opportunities in Center to trigger the kata.

2 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Also, Predict replaces Provoke as per the update, so no Provoke for you.

Woops, missed that line.

3 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

The only way your opponent can land a good hit on you is if he has three or more good Rings (3+) or if Explosion Success shenanigans happen. Otherwise, he better gets the mother of all attacks (or Predict) because you are gonna wreck his face next turn.

How are you going to "wreck his face" next turn? At the most you prevented them from going Air or Earth and you have no guarantee of making your Attack hit seeing as you have done nothing to boost your chance of success against the Fire/Water/Void stances.

Water Double Predict is a strong move but not an auto-win move.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Water Stance + Center + Predict (Air)

I don’t think you can do that one though, as Center now requires the Void stance.

But I do like the double Predict gambit. Nice move.

Yeah, you can't use Center in Water stance.

I'm pretty sure that double Predict is but an unintended consequence of the fact it is no more a check (just like Crescent Moon being broken in 4.0).
If it were legit, just imagine : Battle in the Mind during assessment, followed by a Water+Predict+Predict, both predictions being on the ring the opponent is forced to choose => 9 Strife right out of round 1. If they want to avoid it, they have to bid high during first Staredown.

nvm - found it. Looks like something that needs to be fixed.

13 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

How are you going to "wreck his face" next turn? At the most you prevented them from going Air or Earth and you have no guarantee of making your Attack hit seeing as you have done nothing to boost your chance of success against the Fire/Water/Void stances.

1

As of now, the only chance to boost your chance of success is Use Scholar Skill + Scholar Opportunity to decrease the TN by 1 per Opp. Center only allows you to roll your Skill dice a turn earlier - it only boosts your certainty (as: your personal feeling about the check) not your chance of success. Considering all these, banning Air (no +1 TN to hit) and Earth (no preventing Critical Strike) is as good as you can get in a duel.

49 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

As of now, the only chance to boost your chance of success is Use Scholar Skill + Scholar Opportunity to decrease the TN by 1 per Opp. Center only allows you to roll your Skill dice a turn earlier - it only boosts your certainty (as: your personal feeling about the check) not your chance of success. Considering all these, banning Air (no +1 TN to hit) and Earth (no preventing Critical Strike) is as good as you can get in a duel.

No, Center does enhance your chance of success the same way a reroll does.

The key thing to remember is that you do not need to reserve any of the skill dice you rolled, but you can reserve any that you like.

By prerolling your skill dice you are increasing your chances of getting any die face that you want. Rolling a single Skill die you have a 25% chance of getting any one of Success+Opportunity, Explosion or Explosion+Strife. Centering increases the chance each die comes up one of those results when you make the attack to 43.75%.

Similarly Center stance increases the chance of a skill die coming up success from 58.33% to 82.64% and the chance of a die rolling an opportunity from 33.33% to 55.55%.

Please think of it as the dice you do not reserve are the dice you have opted to reroll.

The problem is that you don't roll the Skill die you replace, so its results will never come into play (you don't roll the replaced dice). So you are not increasing your chance of success, only slowly accumulating your chances over multiple turns - the exact same chances you could take by simply Striking.

Can we agree that you don't increase your maximum number of successes, but at least guarantee a certain number of those (or opportunities), thus giving you a better chance to pass the test than if you had made your roll straight?

(actually, it might slightly increase your statistical expectation of max success insofar as you can reserve explosive ones, but that's marginal - the important part is that it cements your baseline)

I guess if we check it in vacuum, then it does. It gives you fix results at the expense of rolls "wasted" on Center and effectively allows you to gather the results of multiple rolls into one. It is a bit like the mechanically sound version of "trying your hand" before a roll and only roll the dice when you "feel lucky" .

How does the double predict thing occur?

Predict doesn't require a check.
So, in Water stance, you can do it with both your regular action and the extra action.

4 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

The problem is that you don't roll the Skill die you replace, so its results will never come into play (you don't roll the replaced dice). So you are not increasing your chance of success, only slowly accumulating your chances over multiple turns - the exact same chances you could take by simply Striking.

3 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

I guess if we check it in vacuum, then it does. It gives you fix results at the expense of rolls "wasted" on Center and effectively allows you to gather the results of multiple rolls into one. It is a bit like the mechanically sound version of "trying your hand" before a roll and only roll the dice when you "feel lucky" .

False. You have a far better chance of getting a success if you center first. You are overfocusing on the reserved dice rather than what is actually happening to the dice you are not reserving.

Lets say you are rolling for a successes on a Strike.

When you roll a Skill die for successes you are rolling for a 7 in 12 chance (58.33% chance of success) with a 5 in 12 chance of not rolling a success (41.66%) and each die gives independent results not influenced by the results of any other die. When you roll for a Strike each die independently has a 7 in 12 chance of coming up success and a 5 in 12 chance of not.

When you Center then Strike reserving successes the following happens: Each Skill die has a 58.33% chance of 100% chance of being success and a 41.66% chance of a 58.33% chance of rolling a success. This ends up an 82.64% chance of that Skill die coming up a success.

When you Center you do not "waste" a roll you are actually spending an action to give a future action a reroll.