9 minutes ago, JBento said:

If your samurai expresses their true emotions all the time, you have bigger issues, like having 0 Glory and probably having to have been ordered to commit seppuku already.

This isn't necessarily the case. If said samurai is otherwise highly successful, then they will hover around mid-Glory at worst, or actually have a high Glory if they aren't around people who mind their eccentric persona. Not to mention ronin.

Buoyant Arrival does not prevent you from immediately returning to the fight. And the Panicked Flight effect can be resolved at the exact same time the Buoyant Arrival effect resolves. Your interpenetration is the "worst case scenario", and I'm not talking about that.

A similar odd case is what happens when a Compromised character gains Enraged. Do they Rage Unmask too? Or do they, like, rage but not really?

You can only unmask at the end (or start) of your turn. That means if you Unmask, you can no longer leave the conversation via Buoyant Arrival. If you Buoyant Arrival and THEN Unmask, you're out of the conversation (not the scene, that was my bad) but you have pretty much the same problem as if you'd just Unmasked while IN the conversation.

An Enraged character is probly either going to Unmask with an inappropriate comment, or just attack someone they shouldn't have.

4 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This isn't necessarily the case. If said samurai is otherwise highly successful, then they will hover around mid-Glory at worst, or actually have a high Glory if they aren't around people who mind their eccentric persona. Not to mention ronin.

Ronin who pop off all the time are either unemployed or dead. A samurai who can't keep control will start hemorrhaging honor for breaking the tenets of Duty(Chugo) and Honor(Meyo). Honor states that a samurai must holds themselves accountable, and Duty that they own the things they say and do in the name of their lord. People who let their emotions run wild are not holding themselves accountable, and are seen to be serving self interest first and foremost.

It's like how itching yourself is sometimes considered really rude - "your personal discomfort matters more than the respect you give to another person?"

5 minutes ago, JBento said:

You can only unmask at the end (or start) of your turn.

You can postpone the effect until that.

4 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:

Ronin who pop off all the time are either unemployed or dead.

I dunno but I know a guy who is popping off all the time yet he is in the middle of making his Minor Clan Great Again. Not to mention the guy who became prime Lion Clan Champion candidate because he was popping off all the time.

Also, a guy who keeps their emotions inside will bleed Honor too for breaching Courage and Sincerity. Potentially Courtesy and Righteousness too.

By the way can a character Inappropriate Outburst appropriately? Say, interrupt a daimyo to deliver extremely urgent information. Can an Unmasking result in a net Honor/Glory gain because it triggers relevant Honor/Glory earnings?

6 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

You can postpone the effect until that.

I dunno but I know a guy who is popping off all the time yet he is in the middle of making his Minor Clan Great Again. Not to mention the guy who became prime Lion Clan Champion candidate because he was popping off all the time.

Also, a guy who keeps their emotions inside will bleed Honor too for breaching Courage and Sincerity. Potentially Courtesy and Righteousness too.

By the way can a character Inappropriate Outburst appropriately? Say, interrupt a daimyo to deliver extremely urgent information. Can an Unmasking result in a net Honor/Glory gain because it triggers relevant Honor/Glory earnings?

honor gain ? maybe not... but glory sure.

You can't postpone any effects. Unmasking is either the first or last thing you do on your turn. If you Unmask at the end of your turn, in this situation, you've either merely left the conversation (in which case you're not much better off), or you've left the scene, in which case you're either Panicked Flighting home in front of other people or you're Unmasking home (or in private or whatever) and PRAYING you're not taking any encounter to the face before you get there, because you're not passing any checks while compromised. But if you're gong home you're already losing half your strife already, plus any that you can get rid of via downtown activities.

Page 30-31 specifically calls out that you can get something positive out of Unmasking, but it's PROBABLY not going to be enough to make up for the hits you'll get for unmasking.

Just now, JBento said:

You can't postpone any effects. Unmasking is either the first or last thing you do on your turn.

Ah yes, I forgot that action effects are now in different stage than the end of the turn. But still, you can't leave the scene twice , and you are already leaving via Buoyant Arrival when you fire off Panicked Flight. This gets more complicated when you re-enter the conflict in the very next turn, because then you do nothing else but leave the scene until you return as quickly (and nimbly if you double up on Buoyant Arrival) as you left.

8 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I dunno but I know a guy who is popping off all the time yet he is in the middle of making his Minor Clan Great Again.

Through means of military conquest, in a clan who's honor has traditionally stuck around Scorpion levels.

11 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Also, a guy who keeps their emotions inside will bleed Honor too for breaching Courage and Sincerity. Potentially Courtesy and Righteousness too.

Courage is generally about feeling less emotions. Akodo wrote that you should be cautious in place of afraid - in control basically. Sincerity is about keeping your word more than anything - don't go saying things you don't plan to do. The only tenet that is conceivable tied to emotion is Compassion - which is largely about how you should value lower people, and protect them. It's the "frowned upon" portion of "its socially acceptable to kill a peasant, but frowned upon".

I'm not making this stuff up, this is Akodo's tenets as written in the prior editions. We're also not talking about someone who unmasks when they've occasionally had enough. I'm responding to the idea of someone who has no mask.

1 minute ago, ExplodingJoe said:

Through means of military conquest, in a clan who's honor has traditionally stuck around Scorpion levels.

don't diss my hero.

No, you're leaving the CONVERSATION, which might very well not be the scene (like a party or a reception or whatever). If you leave the scene, you basically have no actions, so you can't really Unmask anyway, unless you're unmasking right outside the door, at which point your fleeing somewhere else, whihc gives you a bunch of other problems. Your certainly aren't getting back into the intrigue the very next turn, because you've been, you know, fleeing.

26 minutes ago, JBento said:

No, you're leaving the CONVERSATION, which might very well not be the scene (like a party or a reception or whatever).

Considering that you can use Buoyant Arrival in a skirmish too, I highly doubt that its effects are this restricted.

32 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:

Courage is generally about feeling less emotions.

"Rise up above the masses of people who are afraid to act." is literally the first sentence of the Virtue. In the previous editions, this sentence was followed by "Hiding like a turtle in a shell is not living at all." but they omitted this now for some reason. it is obviously not about feeling emotions but the fact that a samurai shouldn't be afraid to show them.

And, well, if you don't say it out loud that your emotions are fake then your face will be still lying. As Bayushi had to learn it the hard way.

9 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Considering that you can use Buoyant Arrival in a skirmish too, I highly doubt that its effects are this restricted.

The effect is LITERALLY "If you succeed, you may enter or leave the conversation gracefully." I don't know WHY you'd use Buoyant Arrival in a skirmish, but i guess now you won't insult the dude trying to stick sharp metal bits in you repeatedly by not talking to them.

42 minutes ago, JBento said:

The effect is LITERALLY "If you succeed, you may enter or leave the conversation gracefully." I don't know WHY you'd use Buoyant Arrival in a skirmish, but i guess now you won't insult the dude trying to stick sharp metal bits in you repeatedly by not talking to them.

*Gets stabbed*

"Oh, so it's gonna be like that, is it?"

*Gets stabbed again*

"Good day to you, sir. I say GOOD DAY!"

6 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

A big question came up in my group: how does Unmasking works with non-stoic samurai? If a samurai expresses their true emotions all the time with little to no limitations imposed, then how can they top it out to Unmask? In fact, how can they even gain Strife?

the non-stoic samurai gets glory hits every time they show their emotions outside their or their lover's home... probably GR per scene. Very quickly, they become persona non grata, and either assigned to some scutwork assignment out of sight ("You shall guard the tun-tun tree, by night and by day, and live beneath it"), possibly even a peasant-type job ("You are now my deputy assistant stable hand. Ichiro shall be your new sensei in ante-shida-dō (way of the Stable). Dozo!"), sent to a monastery, or ordered to commit seppuku "to prevent further shame to your family and I".

Not to mention that they should get no RP bonuses.

6 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Similarly, what happens when a character "Unmasks" without actually Unmasking? Say, they fire off something that would be totally an Inappropriate Outburst, but they are not Compromised, so the Unmasking rules cannot take effect. What happens then? Do they clear out their Strife?

Also, what happens if a character uses Buoyant Arrival when they are about to top out their Composure, become Compromised from the Skill Check, then Panicked Flight it away? Buoyant Arrival negates the negative consequences of Panicked Flight completely, so is this a "free" Unmasking?

No. Bouyant arrival gets them out of the Conversation but not the scene. Panicked flight then costs them glory.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Buoyant Arrival does not prevent you from immediately returning to the fight. And the Panicked Flight effect can be resolved at the exact same time the Buoyant Arrival effect resolves. Your interpenetration is the "worst case scenario", and I'm not talking about that.

No, it can't. Bouyant arrival is your action, and actions are middle of turn. Unmask is at start or end of your turn, not during.

6 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

the non-stoic samurai gets glory hits every time they show their emotions outside their or their lover's home... probably GR per scene.

Geeeeeeeeeezzzzz... Is this, like, losing Glory for quipping at the oni? No, you can't say mean things to Mr. Oni because he is going to petition the Emperor for decreasing your Glory !

2 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

No, it can't. Bouyant arrival is your action, and actions are middle of turn. Unmask is at start or end of your turn, not during.

Yeah, I realized this later!

Also, I'm not sure about the conversation thing because it doesn't align with Buoyant Arrival being a Rank 5 Technique.

Buoyant Arrival is very, very good. It basically means you can extricate yourself from an Intrigue without taking further hits. If your opponent pursues, well, then THEY'RE taking a hit, because hounding someone like that is just... uncouth.

If you're the only one fighting the Oni, then no, because Glory is only affected when people watch, and Oni don't count. If other people are watching, you can certainly take a Glory hit for people thinking you're not giving the fight against the terrors of Jigoku the solemn...cy? solemnity? the seriousness it deserves.

i will focus on reading rank 1 and 2 techniques first. see if anything bugs me. higher ranks techniques, i have them to figure out if they are ok, and will have more experience with the game at this point.

its less overwhelming this way!

I have to believe Buoyant Arrival also allows you to enter, and exit conversations with high status nobility without adhering to restrictive norms. Essentially, you no longer need to be invited or given leave by your betters, as long as you keep your grace and tact.

If you have Buoyant Arrival, and the Immovable Hand of Peace, you're basically Kami Shiba's bff cause you theoretically have a chance to show up and stop any fight before it begins. Of course, it'll sound under-powered because the social pleasantries it avoids can, and will likely, often be overlooked.

like they said, its rank 5... thats like, most major families daimyos ?

4 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:

I have to believe Buoyant Arrival also allows you to enter, and exit conversations with high status nobility without adhering to restrictive norms. Essentially, you no longer need to be invited or given leave by your betters, as long as you keep your grace and tact.

If you have Buoyant Arrival, and the Immovable Hand of Peace, you're basically Kami Shiba's bff cause you theoretically have a chance to show up and stop any fight before it begins. Of course, it'll sound under-powered because the social pleasantries it avoids can, and will likely, often be overlooked.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people forgetting that you can't just go "oooh, look at the time" or "kami, I think I left the kettle on, gotta rush" and leave. If you're talking to people in an Intrigue ending the conversation without every party's consent is probably going to get you a Glory, possibly Honour, hit. If it's someone with higher status, it's DEFINITELY getting you a Glory AND Honour hit.

I'm sure most family Daimyos have already graduated, but that doesn't mean every graduated samurai has a Status score of 50+

14 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

i will focus on reading rank 1 and 2 techniques first. see if anything bugs me. higher ranks techniques, i have them to figure out if they are ok, and will have more experience with the game at this point.

its less overwhelming this way!

Check a rank 3 technique, too. Coiling Serpent Style (r2) + Thunderclap Strike (r3) + trident/Ji.

I'm pretty sure there's a resist check of some kind missing from CSS.

13 minutes ago, ExplodingJoe said:

I have to believe Buoyant Arrival also allows you to enter, and exit conversations with high status nobility without adhering to restrictive norms. Essentially, you no longer need to be invited or given leave by your betters, as long as you keep your grace and tact.

This is something I would rate as a Rank 2 Technique. But a Rank 5?

I would absolutely not allow a Rank 2 samurai to float through court like they own the place.