51 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:Actually, I guess I will, lol. The Raikuto vassal family of the Hiruma performed that role before the Yasuki joined the clan.
Ohhh I stand corrected. ? Thanks!
Core book Schools
11 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:I don't know if you're referring to the school abilities, or to Shuji in general here. I thought the Bayushi school technique was alright, but the Kakita and Doji ones were definitely lame and underpowered in comparison to the Bushi school techniques.
I was referring to the School Abilities. Pretty much all the real Courtier techs are limited (1 per scene for the Doji, Void Point spending for the Bayushi) and the one that is not (the Ikoma) is the most useful at... wait for it... dueling (the Ikoma Bard is terrifying in duel with its Strife bombing ability).
1 minute ago, Hida Jitenno said:Agreed. My current Ikoma Courtier player is hoping for something a lot better than "Give an opponent a smidge of strife once per scene."
The Ikoma Bard has no one-per-scene limit on their School Technique. With a good Fire build you can saturation bomb an opponent with Strife like it is nobody's business. Too bad it will ever come handy in duels, but it is absolutely terrifying there as mentioned above.
13 minutes ago, WHW said:Courtier stuff gets a lot of mileage out of getting balanced Rings - using an Approach that is good against targets demeanor and a proper social skill (Cortesy for people of Status higher than you, Command against those lower than you) can represent a TN swing of -3. Thats a plenty of space to use Shuji.
For combat you want generally at least one ring of 3 and eventually a ring of 4, for social situations, getting all to 2 is preferable. Generally, all characters unless built specifically to be bad at something will be at least competent at both social and combat stuff.
Currently, balanced Rings are pretty bad unless the character is at higher levels where they can afford multiple 3+ Rings. I found Ring 1-2 quite useless and worse than Ring 4-5 with even +1-2 TN (tho I'm uncertain with +3 TN). Not to mention since the Bushi caps combat skills sooner, they can spend XP to balance Rings much easier.
And this was a problem that surfaced all too frequently in my Beta games, but characters equaling out at social and combat encounters kinda left the Courtiers in the dust because they had no real 'niche' to fill and thus other characters stole the spotlight from them all too often.
Regarding Bushi and shuji @Hida Jitenno
According to my spreadsheet, which was built from the beta, all of the Bushi schools and most of the Courtier schools, have both Kata and Shuji in their advancement sets. The difference is in the ratio of them. Courtiers tend to have about 15 of the 17 techniques that are mentioned being shuji; Bushi are split more or less equally, but the Hida have more kata and less shuji than any other bushi.
The Shuji that the curriculum suggests give advantages using: blunt honesty, use of terrain in large battles, inspiring courage and intimidation. These all seem very appropriate for the Hida.
2 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:
The Ikoma Bard has no one-per-scene limit on their School Technique. With a good Fire build you can saturation bomb an opponent with Strife like it is nobody's business. Too bad it will ever come handy in duels, but it is absolutely terrifying there as mentioned above.
Well that's something we've been doing wrong then.
Succeeding on a TN2 with Ring 2 Skill X is easier than succeeding on a TN4 with Ring 4 Skill X. Its easier to succeed on a TN1 task with Ring 2 than on TN3 with Ring 4. Balanced Rings + even single point in appropriate Social Skill will often give you +80% if not +90% success chances on tasks that otherwise would be up to TN4 or TN5.
16 minutes ago, WHW said:Succeeding on a TN2 with Ring 2 Skill X is easier than succeeding on a TN4 with Ring 4 Skill X.
When it comes to 5R5, I'm getting kinda uncomfortable with binary results. I don't necessary want to succeed - I want results . I rather take a +100% increase in resolvable effects than a +90% increase in success chance.
Sure, but again, you still can keep Opportunity stuff on a TN1 with Ring 2, just as you can keep Opportunity on a TN3 with Ring 4. But the second is more likely to punish you with harsh strife. BalancedRings arent weak by any means, as long as you interact with the framework and use the tools it provides you with.
There is a difference between rolling dice to potentially resolve two effects and rolling dice to potentially resolve four effects. I mean, yeah, I can take my two effects, but I would rather take the four.
8 hours ago, Hida Jitenno said:Which was why I asked if the Shuji counted towards advancement. I probably won't be getting my copy until next week, so I was waiting for an answer on that.
Anything outside of your school curriculum counts as half towards advancement. Anything on your list counts full. So, a Hida Defender who learns some Shuji that is not in his list (and there are some that are), would get to record half the XP (rounded up) towards advancement.
11 hours ago, AtoMaki said:The Ikoma Bard has no one-per-scene limit on their School Technique. With a good Fire build you can saturation bomb an opponent with Strife like it is nobody's business. Too bad it will ever come handy in duels, but it is absolutely terrifying there as mentioned above.
Which Social skill are you rolling during duels?
How about courtesy? As used to insulting someone openly?
13 hours ago, AtoMaki said:The Ikoma Bard has no one-per-scene limit on their School Technique.
Unfortunatley, the core rulebook does limit the Ikoma school ability to once per scene (p 70)
10 hours ago, AtoMaki said:There is a difference between rolling dice to potentially resolve two effects and rolling dice to potentially resolve four effects. I mean, yeah, I can take my two effects, but I would rather take the four.
The system resolves 3 effects at once (counting all the opportunity selections as a single result axis): quality/Success/Failure, Excess/enough/insufficient Opportunity, and level of strife. You only WANT 2 of those, normally.
4 hours ago, sidescroller said:Unfortunatley, the core rulebook does limit the Ikoma school ability to once per scene (p 70)
Ah, I was talking about its Beta version. If they limited it down, then that's too bad.
1 hour ago, AK_Aramis said:The system resolves 3 effects at once (counting all the opportunity selections as a single result axis): quality/Success/Failure, Excess/enough/insufficient Opportunity, and level of strife. You only WANT 2 of those, normally.
I normally want to resolve 2+ Opps when I want to "fail to succeed". The basics for me are Assistance Opp + Failing With Style Opp + Elemental Narrative Opp + Elemental Mechanical Opp. This gets more complicated if I want an Opp from a different Element.
I haven't seen it mentioned here, since this is a core book thread. The GM kit has rules for players to make a Tortoise minor clan samurai. You know... for those that want to be a Yasuki, but less respectable.
23 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:I haven't seen it mentioned here, since this is a core book thread. The GM kit has rules for players to make a Tortoise minor clan samurai. You know... for those that want to be a Yasuki, but less respectable.
Yasuki on a boat!
7 hours ago, sidescroller said:Unfortunatley, the core rulebook does limit the Ikoma school ability to once per scene (p 70)
Interesting. I wonder if one of the Beta updates did as well? Like I had mentioned, this is the way that my group had been playing it already, and the guy playing the Bard is one who is fairly good with taking advantage of mechanics where able.
5 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:Interesting. I wonder if one of the Beta updates did as well?
They did not. Only the Akodo Commander was nerfed in the Beta.
Edited by AtoMakiThe Ikoma Bard school is now once per scene. But it also now effects an amount of strife =SchoolRank x 2. Beta was only =SchoolRank. So the ability does begin to gain traction at Rank 2.
3 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:The Ikoma Bard school is now once per scene. But it also now effects an amount of strife =SchoolRank x 2. Beta was only =SchoolRank.
Welp. This compensation is better for duels too. Especially if you bait your opponent into an intense Staredown.
21 hours ago, Tonbo Karasu said:..."According to my spreadsheet"...
I love this forum.