Just in case the devs are still reading, I haven't seen a big topic on this: what do you think of the cost of rings, for XP purposes. My players all think they are way too low. They are suggesting at least 5 or 6 xp. Even with reduced XP, which we have been playing with since about week 4, their rings have been going up WAY too fast. Ranks aside, my shugenjas are already joking about taking on the elemental masters based sheerly on their rings and skills.

I agree, they are WAY to low...

unless you can only raise them once each per school rank...

I'd push them to 5 points per (from their current 3 per) rank

You also could try giving out XP that can only be spent on Rings and XP that can only be spent on Skills and Techniques. This way you can control Ring increases and basically forcing skill/technique advancement to happen without being influenced by desire to spam Rings.

The problem with that is splitting your XP progression is a bit of a nightmare logistically. Tracking XP is a chore when it is a single value. Splitting the pool also tells the player how they can and how they cannot advance their character.

I like the idea of removing the Rings from the School Rank Progression charts entirely, however. It slows down progression a bit, but I think it does the job of discouraging PCs from just buying Rings.

12 hours ago, sndwurks said:

The problem with that is splitting your XP progression is a bit of a nightmare logistically. Tracking XP is a chore when it is a single value. Splitting the pool also tells the player how they can and how they cannot advance their character.

I like the idea of removing the Rings from the School Rank Progression charts entirely, however. It slows down progression a bit, but I think it does the job of discouraging PCs from just buying Rings.

Yes, great idea - add to that an increase in cost.

I think a potentially useful solution might be to set the cap at the higher of 3 or SR, with one allowed 1 higher.

I'm glad people are mostly on board with the increased cost. Does 5 sound about right? That's what my group settled on after I made this post.

7 hours ago, defendi said:

I'm glad people are mostly on board with the increased cost. Does 5 sound about right? That's what my group settled on after I made this post.

5 sounds good to me, but have you tried 4 or 6? Just for testing sake.

Okay, as someone who has brainstormed the Ring cost problem quite extensively with his pals, I can give you guys this: the reasonable xp cost of the Rings depends heavily on how far your gaming group pushes the Approach system.

If you allow a lot of leeway with Approaches, then players will be inclined to focus on 1 or 2 Ring(s) and just apply the 5-10 Approaches they thus have to every situation. This makes Rings very valuable because a single Ring 4+ will have a profound effect on success rates in general. A cost of 6 or even 7 is reasonable in this case to avoid an "early endgamer" situation.

If you are stricter with Approaches, then players will have to diversify and take a lot more balanced view on Ring progression. In this case, a cost of 4 or 5 is reasonable as a good middle-ground.

If you are pushing for "totally one possible Approach for a task", then keep the cost at 3 because the players will burn a lot of xp on Rings, and if it will be any more expensive then that will be the only thing they will do.

I think you're way-over-simplifying, Ato.

I'm not picky about Rings so much as I punish inappropriate with extra difficulty. Several times, it's been the choice of "Air 3 vs TN2 or Fire 4 at TN3..."

Which leads my players to balance 3 high and 2 low atts by what they do most.

Yes, one can go deeper, but that's not a point in my post .