VERSION 8.8 w/ Ref Sheets (post errata 2.0)
Thanks to all the contributors. I am always open to opinions and these rules have already changed a LOT due to comments people made. This is a Work In Progress                

Changes from Previous version:

Tweaked the character sheet to fit the houserules.

Reference Sheets: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-1LBhOoFqXAYkpnqCPMMnUKaOLz42hEn/view?usp=sharing

Character Sheets: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yBz_dVkDgr2JtKzPPGSWq3de_dHH39Wr/view?usp=sharing

Stances:
Makes Earth Stance more fun. Slightly weaker, yes, but a lot more fun. Especially when minions use it, and for duels, and for skirmishes. Binary results are never cool, so changing the Earth stance into something more similar to Air stance really pays off.

Earth Stance:
Change it to: When other characters make Attack action checks or Scheme action checks that target you, they need to spend one extra for each Critical Strike or Condition they want to inflict on you by spending . If your school rank is 4 or higher, they need to spend an extra instead.

Conditions and Critical Strikes:
All the following changes assume you are playing with the sidebar rule on p.270 (repeated injury). It radically improve the flow of the fights and make it more about Wounds. More visceral, more fun, more logical.

CONDITIONS:

Incapacitated condition: Change it to: Effects: An Incapacitated character increases the TN of all action checks by 2. An Incapacitated character cannot defend against damage. After an Incapacitated character suffers a critical strike, they suffer the Unconscious condition in addition to any other effects.

Severely Wounded condition: Alter it to: Effects: A Severely Wounded character increases the TN of their checks with the affected ring by 3.
If the character suffers the Lightly Wounded or Severely Wounded condition for the same ring, they instead suffer the effects of a severity 7 critical strike for that ring as if they had failed the check to resist it. This severity cannot be lowered by any mean.

Dying condition: Add: If you suffer from the Dying Condition, you perish if you take any critical strike of severity above 0 after the resist check.

CRITICAL STRIKES TABLE:
change/modify the following critical severity outcomes (more linear scaling).

7-8 Permanent Injury : add: If the character was not Severely Wounded for the ring used for their resist check, the character suffers the Severely Wounded condition for that ring.

9-11 Maiming Blow : add: If the character was not Severely Wounded for the ring used for their resist check, the character suffers the Severely Wounded condition for that ring.

12-13 Agonising Death: change it to: The same as 9-11 Maiming Blow, plus the Dying (3 rounds) condition

14-15 Swift Death : c hange it to: The same as 9-11 Maiming Blow, plus the Dying (1 rounds) condition

Conflicts:

INTRIGUES:

Sample Social Objective:
Discredit: add: A character can inflict 1 strife on their target with a successful Persuade Action check, plus 1 more strife for every 2 bonus successes. (As per core rule of the Discredit action, this strife happens INSTEAD of gaining momentum points).

DUELS:

The Finishing Blow: change: instead of doubling the deadliness of the weapon used, make it that you increase the severity of the critical strike by 5.

Techniques

Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade: add: : if you succeed, inflict a critical strike on the target.

kiho: The Body is an Anvil: Add: The burst effect last until it triggers for the first time before the end of the scene.

kiho: Cleansing Spirit: Add: In the burst effect, remove the possibility to remove the following condition: Afflicted

Schools

Ikoma Bard:
-Heart of the Lion (school ability): make it unusable in duels.
-For their Shuji starting techniques, add "choose one".

Mantis PDF Schools: (FFG should just do their job here. They already fixed redundant school curriculum in the core book, they need to fix their Mantis PDF. Anyway, here is my take on it)

Storm Sailor School:
-Change their rank 4 choice technique "Crashing Wave Style" to "A Samurai's Fate"

Storm Fleet Tide Seer:
-Change their rank 2 choice technique "Call Upon the Wind" to "Stride the Wave"
-Change their rank 4 choice technique "Rise, Water" to "Rise, Air"
-Change their rank 5 choice technique "Rise, Air" to "The Soul's Blade"

Various
None of the following are very crucial, but they can be regarded as clarification or improvements.

Opportunities: I play with a trimmed down amount of options to use Opportunities for during checks.
I use Opportunities as a Descriptor and as a Narrative tool (p.28 corebook) in addition to Adventure/Check specific "special" options the GM come up with, and, the few options available in the Reference Sheets (available for download, see top of page). It is simply to streamline the game, making it easier to digest. It does not really matter if you allow other options that can be found elsewhere in the corebook or sourcebooks to be used. This is simply a personal preference.

Competitive Checks: Order for making Competitive Checks: usually, everyone rolls at once. If the order in which characters make these checks is relevant, the character who is the active character makes theirs first. If all characters are considered active, such as in a narrative scene, the character with the highest honor attribute makes theirs first, followed by the other characters in descending order of honor.

Mounted Combat rule (p.326): the first point, it should read "When the rider succeed on a Manoeuvre (and not Movement) action check, add bonus equal to the mount's water ring.

Suffocation: change the wording to:  At the beginning of each of their turns, a character who is suffocating receives 2 fatigue and 2 strife. At the beginning of each of the character's turns while they are suffocating, if they are suffering the Incapacitated or Unconscious condition they must resist with a TN3 Fitness check; if the character fails, they gain the Unconscious condition if they were Incapacitated, or perish if they were already Unconscious. (as per core rule, the fatigue gained doesn't trigger a critical strike as this is not "damage").

Unaware: You are considered unaware if you don't know where the opponent is after an initiative in which you would use Vigilance instead of Focus (before any modifiers) and only before you take your first turn (When you start your first turn you are not considered unaware anymore)

Unaware of your environment : You are considered unaware of your environment (counts as the Unconscious condition) if you are either very heavily distracted or otherwise absolutely not paying attention to potential danger and that you don't know where the opponent is after an initiative in which you would use Vigilance instead of Focus (before any modifiers) and only before you take your first turn (When you start your first turn you are not considered unaware of your environment anymore). You can use a Void point to remove the unaware of your environment status and only become unaware before rolling the initiative.

Void points for Adversaries: Adversaries should have Void Points as per player characters. They should generally have half, round up, their Void ring value in starting Void Points.

TO DO:

Shadowland Sourcebook

Shikigami: (under testing, as written, this technique is way over the top. But, it is really hard to adjust it perfectly while keeping its original intent. It is also greatly dependent on the amount of downtime activities or the game's pacing. It needs a nerf, the question is "how")

Really like the change to resist checks, as it could result in a lot of chain effects and inflicting a status condition could actually help opponents by default which is flavor wise a miss.

Dislike how water is even stronger now, as they already have a monopoly on default recovery in addition to now having really strong base stat distribution (they are the best at handling strife, so making them strong elsewhere bumps their overall power up.

Weapon rebalancing seems like a good idea, but without numbers it's hard to say.

Wait, just remove the free action if your wait isn't triggered, as it punishes overly specific wait actions.

Why nerf earth stance? Sure the effect is strong, but your opponent knows you're in it and can spend opportunity in other ways. The stances are supposed to feel strong.

Any particular reason for the school ranking change? This feels kind of unecessary.

48 minutes ago, Moderately said:

Really like the change to resist checks, as it could result in a lot of chain effects and inflicting a status condition could actually help opponents by default which is flavor wise a miss.

Dislike how water is even stronger now, as they already have a monopoly on default recovery in addition to now having really strong base stat distribution (they are the best at handling strife, so making them strong elsewhere bumps their overall power up.

Weapon rebalancing seems like a good idea, but without numbers it's hard to say.

Wait, just remove the free action if your wait isn't triggered, as it punishes overly specific wait actions.

Why nerf earth stance? Sure the effect is strong, but your opponent knows you're in it and can spend opportunity in other ways. The stances are supposed to feel strong.

Any particular reason for the school ranking change? This feels kind of unecessary.

-about water, sure... maybe it is strong. but i dont think it is stronger than before. having no composure is ROUGH. and fatigue is a bit overrated, it is not as good as composure.

so i feel water remains in the same strength level, while air really improved (and it needed to). before, Water had high composure + you could spend opportunities to heal your strife... it was too good for strife management while Air courtiers were basically always unmasking. + Air is Scorpion and Crane and courtiers a lot. people that should have composure. I think. Water is more "physical" to me, and it is found a lot with Lions, Unicorns.

and yeah, you can be in water stance for skirmish but it have no defensive/offensive bonus. so you have a good fatigue pool but its not like you are dodging stuff or soaking stuff or hitting hard.

the biggest loser of that change is Fire. But I kinda like Fire being deadly, quick, and hard to manipulate... but volatile.

-for the wait action, i need more "data". i have a few ideas, but i need to run some tests.

-earth stance as is is not "fun". it totally makes some techniques useless, and also make duels "all about earth stance". with +1opp... it is still strong. Run some test, and see that +1opp is harsh, as there is only 2 opportunities on d6, and 4opportunities on d12. (so 1/3 face have opportunities, for successes it is about 1/2 faces that have a success). so that +1opp is not bad at all. but i'm open to other suggestion. I just really don't like how all of a sudden you are IMMUNE to plenty of techniques, critical strikes in duels, no shuji can put conditions on you... its just too "binary". it should be like air stance, harder to it but POSSIBLE. strictly making lots of things "impossible" even with the most glorious roll ever, is not fun. and we are talking about a LOT of techniques that put conditions on people, and thats not counting earth being way too pivotal for duels if it stays as is.

-school ranking change, it is simply because many schools have a specific error in their curiculum, for example, Akoko Commander: rank 1, in the curriculm it says you gain full XP if you get a rank 1 Kata, but then it also says you gain full XP if you get "warrior's resolve kata", which is a rank1 kata! so you see the issue ? there is no point a all for them to have warrior's resolve in the list lol. this happens for many schools.

and I added a first batch of techniques and weapon adjustments. for weapons i think it is enough.

for techniques, a handful more need adjustments, but nothing too crazy.

Every ring covers 2 base stats except void (which has its own things) and Water, which covers two base stats AND covers fatigue/strife recovery. Because water has the best opportunity for dealing with strife (-2 per opportunity) its +2 composure isn't as helpful. You traded that +2 composure for +2 endurance, which is far more valuable to water. At least break up their monopoly on recovery while you're at it.

Fair enough on earth stance, it wasn't necessarily op but it was definitely binary. Rather than just a straight nerf, I would make it more versatile while you nerf it (so rather than just affecting crits/status conditions, any enemy action targeting you must forfeit 1/2 opportunity before they may spend it normally)

I see the school ranking hiccup, but worry trying to undo that hiccup like this will introduce more hiccups in character progression. Haven't tested it yet so idk.

Now that the weapon changes are up, overall like them. Still prefer the beta cumbersome rules as atm all war gear feels weaker than the nodachi due to it.

15 minutes ago, Moderately said:

Every ring covers 2 base stats except void (which has its own things) and Water, which covers two base stats AND covers fatigue/strife recovery. Because water has the best opportunity for dealing with strife (-2 per opportunity) its +2 composure isn't as helpful. You traded that +2 composure for +2 endurance, which is far more valuable to water. At least break up their monopoly on recovery while you're at it.

Fair enough on earth stance, it wasn't necessarily op but it was definitely binary. Rather than just a straight nerf, I would make it more versatile while you nerf it (so rather than just affecting crits/status conditions, any enemy action targeting you must forfeit 1/2 opportunity before they may spend it normally)

I see the school ranking hiccup, but worry trying to undo that hiccup like this will introduce more hiccups in character progression. Haven't tested it yet so idk.

Now that the weapon changes are up, overall like them. Still prefer the beta cumbersome rules as atm all war gear feels weaker than the nodachi due to it.

i like your take on earth, it definitely makes it much better than my take on it. but it is clean! and i like clean. will think about it seriously.

for water, i don't feel it is that good with the change. you can only use that opp once (the +2 opportunity) becaus each opp without a "+" can't be taken twice on the same check. Sure, it does have the opp that gives -1 fatigue making it the best "regenerating" stance.

if we change to:

endurance: earth/fire

composure: earth/air

focus: water/air

vigilance: water/fire

?

whats your take on it ? (lets say you cannot put void in there, to keep it as close as original design as possible). the main idea for all that was to make less rings vulnerable to strife. Air was "trash". now it is "ok".

i was clearly not seeing water as strong as you were... to me its like a stance you use to open the fight or when you want to back off and heal i was not seeing it as the stance you stick with in the heat of the conflict, becuase it got no offensive or defensive boost.

but i'm willing to analyse some more.

for the school rank hiccup... maybe. then would need to either live with the fact that many schools have "redundancies" or correct them all ?

The issue with water by default is that in addition to controlling recovery rates, it offered the same base stats as other rings. To compensate, half of its stat allocation was subpar as water benefits less from composure than anything else. If you are going to give that composure slot to air, just break up waters monopoly on non-passion recovery between scenes (which frankly I'd recommend either way) your original ring tweak was better than this one.

Every stance except void is amazing in live combat, as water's control on positioning allows them to dart in and out of enemy range before we even factor in environmental hazards. Water is even more dangerous in duels due to the called stance option. I don't know how much miniature wargame experience you have, but never underestimate the power of positioning control.

9 minutes ago, Moderately said:

The issue with water by default is that in addition to controlling recovery rates, it offered the same base stats as other rings. To compensate, half of its stat allocation was subpar as water benefits less from composure than anything else. If you are going to give that composure slot to air, just break up waters monopoly on non-passion recovery between scenes (which frankly I'd recommend either way) your original ring tweak was better than this one.

Every stance except void is amazing in live combat, as water's control on positioning allows them to dart in and out of enemy range before we even factor in environmental hazards. Water is even more dangerous in duels due to the called stance option. I don't know how much miniature wargame experience you have, but never underestimate the power of positioning control.

about the earth stance tweak you proposed, its a no-go. there are too many techniques (shujis etc) that target group of people, or crowd etc. if everytime you are in the targets it costs more opp... its too strong.

will keep my suggestion for now. i invite you to do some roll tests and see that the +1opp is most of the time screwing you up! but not always... in the same way (actually harsher) than the +1tn of air doesnt always screw you up.

if we exchange the opp spending in conflict:

water send the "-1 fatigue" to fire

and fire send the "during an attack action, increase the TN of the next check the target makes to resist critical..." to water

?

seems legit. you give fatigue recovery to a ring that doesn't have good fatigue,

and you give a tiny bit of offense to a ring that doesn't have any.

and anyway, the increase TN to resist critical was a bit redundant with "striking as fire"... so i think it even makes more sense now. and thematically, regaining fatigue with fire opp is cool, its like a "second wind" works with fire's energy.

and... water already have the fact that in water stance you can use your second action to use "calming breath".

so yeah, water is already buffed enough for healing...

While the opportunity tweaks aren't a bad idea, I was referring to the default rules where downtime fatigue/strife recovery is based on your water ring.

5 minutes ago, Moderately said:

While the opportunity tweaks aren't a bad idea, I was referring to the default rules where downtime fatigue/strife recovery is based on your water ring.

oh, the downtime recovery. true. that could be based on something else. but i feel it is a minor detail. could be "earth + water / 2" this way you need both earth and water, and makes it more related to endurance than just water...

Sooo. How much have you played the game Rules As Written? Because one thing I have learned is before you can make intelligent changes you need to have a good understanding of the rules as they are written first. Which given the game just came out I question how much you could have played these rules. So I find all your suggestions suspect. Because just reading the rules does not really tell you that much.

11 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Sooo. How much have you played the game Rules As Written? Because one thing I have learned is before you can make intelligent changes you need to have a good understanding of the rules as they are written first. Which given the game just came out I question how much you could have played these rules. So I find all your suggestions suspect. Because just reading the rules does not really tell you that much.

The beta has been out for a while, and although many things have changed, certain hiccups either went through, or were clearly added due to other changes.

Ex: Redundant options in school ranks are clearly a carry over from prior versions of the beta. The fact that using status conditions can actually hinder the user when the target passes and gets opportunity dice is a known issue from the beta. The fact that the void ring is optimal for EVERY character due to it being core to ring progression has been a long lasting issue. Many previously balanced options got nerfed while stronger options were added.

The beta is NOT the same as what has been just released. very similar. but not the same. So my position still stands. Play the game Rules as written for a little while before you go mucking around with it. You can't know how the game plays till you have played it at least a little while with the rules as written.

3 hours ago, Daeglan said:

The beta is NOT the same as what has been just released. very similar. but not the same.

So far I have found three things that really sets apart the Core from the Beta:

• Being Compromised drops your Vigilance to 1.
• There are three unarmed attack profiles.
• Endurance/Composure calculation.

Otherwise, the game plays the same.

3 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Play the game Rules as written for a little while before you go mucking around with it.

" I would recommend playing the game rules as written for a little while before you go mucking around with it. "

It is up to individual tables to do as they wish with it, after all.

Sorry, but reading your comment it felt quite condescending in nature. Not sure if that's what was intended or not. Simply telling folks how to have fun never really comes off as anything else...

Also, not sure if he specified it in another post, but avatar may very well have played already. He did mention the changes were talked about with the group, and they are changes for his group.

-----------

That said: Avatar I like some of the changes on paper. I can't say I'll be able to test them any time soon, but I like the weapon changes, giving some heft and fluff.

Though I can't speak for mechanical balance, I can understand the reasoning behind the ring changes to secondary stats.

Hopefully the changes work out at your table.

Going to respond to each thing. I'm also making fixes and homebrews for my table, but besides some really glaring problems (like CSS) I'm avoiding fixing anything before my table playtest it and agree that it isn't fun.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-what ring gives what secondary stats.   

endurance: earth/water, composure: earth/air, focus: fire/air, vigilance: fire/water

i like these options as they make Air character with a bit more composure. Water characters do LOSE composure, BUT they can spend 1opp to regain 2 strife when they do a Water check! making them kind of very "emotional" since they swing up and down. This is definitely strong enough for Water characters to manage their strife. and they are getting a buff to their endurance.

this way, only Fire is really bad with strife... as i think it should be. Fire is super strong, but you need to be careful. And it is thematic as I think "fire characters" are less about trying not to unmask than the other elements. I just portray Matsu as the poster child of fire characters.

so, definitely an improvement, making 3 rings "viable" with composure.

This isn't that hot, though I admit I considered a change like yours. I actually didn't like how most starting characters aren't exactly working as intended (Crane and Scorpion courtiers with low Composure and such), but seeing how NPCs work in this game gave me an idea that worked better for making starting characters: a favored derived attribute. NPCs have this, so I extended this to players with choices limited to their first school tag. A favored derived attribute adds 1 to the rings before calculations (effectively granting +2 to Composure or Endurance, +1 to Focus and +0.5 to Vigilance). Bushi may favor Endurance or Focus, Courtiers may favor Composure or Vigilance, Shugenja Endurance or Vigilance, Monks Composure or Endurance, Artisans Focus or Composure, Shinobi Focus or Vigilance. This makes most Doji Diplomats or Scorpion Manipulators start with at least the average 8 Composure without any issues and reach 10 Composure without even focusing on Earth/Water that much (noting that Water/Air is actually the favorite approach for Doji Diplomats considering their lore, while Bayushi definitely stays as Air/Fire).

Also, you are considering Air to be bad, but that isn't the case. Air is AMAZING at one of the most important things in Rokugan: knowing things about others. Samurai are not only masked to be stoic, they also wear masks to not show their cards to possible enemies. Air is the ring to unpack this using its opportunities: learn anxieties and disadvantages from others, read their insecurities, read who is genuinely loyal or friend to whom and many other things that can change the course of conflicts both in Intrigues and Duels/Skirmishes. Not as crunchy as the other rings, I agree, but from a roleplay perspective, the Air characters in the group are being respected exactly because how easily they are able to pick up useful info about NPCs and such.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-adjusting earth stance (making it less binary)

changing it to: "the first time in an attack or scheme action a character spend opportunities to inflict a critical or a condition on you, they must pay 1 extra opportunity. at rank 4, increase the cost to 2 opportunities"

this is as equivalent to Air stance to me. Making it more challenging but not downright impossible! Which is also more FUN. Remember, opportunities are only 1/3 of the dice's results and successes are about 1/2 of the dices results (these are not exact numbers, i am not including explosions, but more or less). So that +1opportunity cost really makes it difficult to gather enough opportunities if you still want to succeed, and, it will most probably cost you an extra strife to activate it a lot of the time since strife results will be on some dices you need to keep. 

We already discussed Earth in the duel thread. I hate "perfect" effects in RPGs and Earth Stance as written is definitely a "perfect" effect so it has got to go. In a table it makes for pretty boring intrigues and duels with everyone Earthing up and not accomplishing much. Your changes makes Earth still very conservative and "safe" but risky if an opponent just explodes his roll up in the wazoo. Still, I'm kind of iffy on just increasing the opportunity cost, I think there should be an effect to dissuade characters to even try to do nasty things to a turtle. Maybe: the first time in an attack or scheme action a character spend opportunities to inflict a critical or a condition on you, they must pay 1 extra opportunity and receive 2 strife. at rank 4, increase the cost to 2 opportunities and 3 strife

Either way, I will also try to fix Earth Stance on my end for sure.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

 -adjusting the weapon table

The only adjustment I made to the weapon table was exchanging the names of Bisento and Naginata since I think they were printed with their names exchanged (considering how historically in L5R both weapons were treated: Naginata was always a flexible polearm and the Bisento was always a heavy polearm with very high damage for that weapon class.) I understand the 1h on the Bisento though, since it is a Monk weapon, the 1h is there for monks to be able to 1h it and punch things. I would fix this with a Kata that most sohei orders could get with exclusive access instead of how it was handled though.

To the other adjustments (besides the one for the Tetsubo which I liked), I don't know, there a lot of those that are purely cosmetic and roleplayly. Using an Ono is not proper, only Crab can get away with it without being mocked by their peers (and they still are mocked everywhere else) so for a Lion that likes heavy weapons it is use a Zanbato or good bye to your glory. Using a dai-kyu is the same, if you aren't a very martial Lion or an Unicorn, people will scoff at you for not carrying a Yumi. The Crane will gossip about you "trying too hard" and "mocking tradition" all day and all night, so good luck maintaining your reputation.

What I want to get is: there are weapons that are clearly better than others (more damaging with no drawbacks, or cheaper, or with better qualities), but Rokugan is a land of tradition and conformity, and the pragmatic samurai (ie. powergamers) that only look at an unusual weapon stats and go "let's go with that" can be reminded of such state through roleplay. As such, I don't think weapons need to be balanced like a videogame. They weren't in past editions and it always worked very well: you can use a more effective weapon, but you lose glory/face for being a nail that needs hammering (I miss the Peasant tag).

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-reworking the wait action in skirmish

I am still finalising the changes here. I am not 100% certain how it should be yet .

Wait works, unless you are playing with powergamers. If there are any of them on your table, yeah, remove it from the game ASAP. I did a very quick fix that worked wonders: to do any action after your Wait didn't trigger, you need to spend a Void Point, otherwise you just wasted your turn. And Wait has the same type of action as the triggered action, so no Attack/Wait while in Water.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-adjusting a few specific techniques, but not many.

Coiling Serpent Strike: (in progress, but it needs a nerf, it is way too binary and hard to play against)

Rushing Avalanche Strike: when you make a martial melee check using a cumbersome sword, axe or blunt weapon.

this way, it doesn't buff the polearms, but helps the Ono and Zanbato !! which had no techniques for them. (and, you can't use this technique with tiny one handed blunt weapon like the Kiseru anymore, which totally didn't make sense)

Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade: in activation; correct to "one sheated one-handed razor-edged weapon". then, add: 2 opportunites, if you succeed, you inflict a critical strike equal to the weapon's deadliness. remove: 1 opportunity, ready one other sheathed razor-edged weapon.

this makes it useful in duel. while keeping all its narrative use. remember, it is quite difficult to crit with it as it is a TN3. with an opponent in earth stance you would need TN3 and 3OPP. good luck.

before this buff, Rising Blade was a poor man's Crossing Cut (theres a lot of debate as to why if you don't believe me). with this buff... both techniques have their use: in duels, and outside of duels.

striking as air: remove the sentence saying that you need to roll less dices on you next check to add the ones you reserved.

i feel it is not that strong even with that buff. sure, it is better. but you need to nerf your current check, to maybe have better chance at your next check using the same skill, and that next check must be done before the end of the next turn... (a lot can happen in a turn). I think that without the buff, it is simply way too weak, especially considering the regular generic air opportunity expenditure allow you to basically use one opportunity to add an opportunity on your next check! with striking as air you had to Drop a Dice + Spend an opportunity + roll one less dice on your next check... i mean, come on..

kiho: Breaking Blow: in activation, include that for the burst effect, you cannot pick a target object that is worn or held by a character.

slight nerf indeed. but i feel it is warranted.

kiho: Cleansing Spirit : in the burst effect section add, "once per scene per character."

slight nerf.

CSS I already suggested something and I think it works really well: the guy with the entangled weapon need to take fatigue to swing it on that turn. Your fix to Rushing Avalanche Style unfortunately makes it not work with the lore: this kata is one of the signature kata of the Badger Clan and their signature weapon is a polearm (not listed in the book). It is for sure wrong as written in the book, since it wouldn't work for the Ichiro either way. I changed for 2h weapons with Cumbersome or "Heavy" qualities (with Heavy being a "better Cumbersome" which can be added by a good smith). Rising Blade seems perfect now and Striking as Air is actually good. Breaking Blow needed a nerf but I'm not sold on your solution and Cleansing Spirit I think is fine as it is, but nerfing it is not an overreaction either.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-making the school curiculums as "punch cards" instead of "all you can eat" for the rank xp gain. meaning you could only take each options once. And, a few adjustments to 2-3 schools (very minor changes)

It automatically corrects a lot of errors they made in the curriculums, while not being totally unbalanced. I still need to figure out if it breaks or limits advancement too much. Worst comes to worst, it might be a "punch card" only for techniques, and not for skill spendings. My final decision is not made on it yet.

I prefer the fixes someone posted on the Big Bad Thread of Homebrews which fixed the few redundant curriculum skills (they are uncommon enough to think that it was a mistake that will eventually be Errata'd out). Your solution will slow down advancement a tad, especially for Shugenja.

13 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

-making "resist" checks their own thing. making it so that you cannot spend opportunities nor you can gain strife from "resist" checks.

First, it speed up the game. When at certain ranks, people start to throw resist checks left and right... It gets a bit tedious to spend opportunities, and gain strife etc for all that. I want to make resist checks fast and efficient.

Imagine this situation: You roll a check to see if you can disarm a trap, you fail, the trap explode and you have to "resist". You spent 2 times opportunites, probably gained 2 times some strife, made 2 checks that you need to make sure to keep the right dices (which is time consuming for everybody at the table)... I feel this can almost imbalance the flow of the game, or that at worst, it is simply boring. Resist check ? just go for successes, don't bother for anything else. Easy and Fast. Thank you. At some point, a lot of people will throw techniques that make people do resist checks almost every turns!! imagine how bugged down and bloated the thing will become...

Kind of an overreaction. Resist checks are not an issue for now (though at Rank 4 they might be). I will probably make this ruling at Rank 4 apply to minion and some adversary NPCs though, but I will never take from the players the ability to use opportunities on their rolls since it is the best thing about 5e and players enjoy it a whole lot.

@omnicrone Air LOOKS bad, because it doesn't bump either Composure or Endurance and it has the worst Kata (it's saving grace is Thunderclap Strike, which is the only Bushi melee AoE and is therefore mandatory if you intend to use Styles to their maximum efficiency; it looks especially bad at the start, because Striking as Air is, well, crap), but it has the best Invocation package, and good-to-great Shuji and Kiho. It also has the utterly fundamental Analyse approach, plus some really good base Opp expenditures (like wall walking for maneuverability).

The REAL issue people have with Air is that you need to play smarter, not harder, because it utterly fails at playing harder.

3 minutes ago, JBento said:

@omnicrone Air LOOKS bad, because it doesn't bump either Composure or Endurance and it has the worst Kata (it's saving grace is Thunderclap Strike, which is the only Bushi melee AoE and is therefore mandatory if you intend to use Styles to their maximum efficiency; it looks especially bad at the start, because Striking as Air is, well, crap), but it has the best Invocation package, and good-to-great Shuji and Kiho. It also has the utterly fundamental Analyse approach, plus some really good base Opp expenditures (like wall walking for maneuverability).

The REAL issue people have with Air is that you need to play smarter, not harder, because it utterly fails at playing harder.

Yeah, exactly. And also because people forget that information is half the battle, and knowing things that others are trying to hide AND hiding your own secrets is what the Air ring is about (though the second part is a little gimped since Vigilance is now static).

2 hours ago, omnicrone said:

Also, you are considering Air to be bad, but that isn't the case. Air is AMAZING at one of the most important things in Rokugan: knowing things about others.

This is the only reason Air is not the obvious dump stat.

13 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This is the only reason Air is not the obvious dump stat.

Air also makes you harder to gank by anyone with Fitness/Skulduggery, and provides defence in Intrigues, seeing as plenty of Shuji target your Vigilance.

You might as well say "Air is not the obvious dump stat because it DOES stuff", which, well...

10 hours ago, Arolem said:

" I would recommend playing the game rules as written for a little while before you go mucking around with it. "

It is up to individual tables to do as they wish with it, after all.

Sorry, but reading your comment it felt quite condescending in nature. Not sure if that's what was intended or not. Simply telling folks how to have fun never really comes off as anything else...

Also, not sure if he specified it in another post, but avatar may very well have played already. He did mention the changes were talked about with the group, and they are changes for his group.

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That said: Avatar I like some of the changes on paper. I can't say I'll be able to test them any time soon, but I like the weapon changes, giving some heft and fluff.

Though I can't speak for mechanical balance, I can understand the reasoning behind the ring changes to secondary stats.

Hopefully the changes work out at your table.

He cant have played RAW for very long. It has been out a couple weeks.

1 hour ago, JBento said:

You might as well say "Air is not the obvious dump stat because it DOES stuff", which, well...

Nah, Analyze is pretty good, I can even say that it is the second best Scholar Approach.

15 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

He cant have played RAW for very long. It has been out a couple weeks.

I've got the book something, like, less than a week ago and I'm already past a 6-hours session, prepping for a 8+ hours one for tomorrow. And we are taking it slow .

9 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Nah, Analyze is pretty good, I can even say that it is the second best Scholar Approach.

I've got the book something, like, less than a week ago and I'm already past a 6-hours session, prepping for a 8+ hours one for tomorrow. And we are taking it slow .

The Air change, to me, feels like a solution looking for a problem. The importance/usefulness of a given Ring - particularly Air - depends in no small part on playstyle. Playing a couple of weeks with likely the same group, even if you played 20+ hours every week, is probably not going to let anyone properly explore enough of a range of playstyles to be able to definitively say whether any Ring is a dud or not. What is considered a dump stat might change from module to module in my experience (an excellent incentive not to be too quick to write off any stats if you're creating a character for the long haul).

Loving this thread. As you, I like the system but I believe a lot could be tweaked for the better. GM81 Protocol Droid has some nice posts in the Big Bad Thread of Homebrews and Im gonna pick stuff from both since I think they are pretty well reasoned.

Besides your tweaks to weapons (which I think are very needed) and GM81's tweaks to starting school techniques, Im reworking duels completely. Have been testing it with my players and we are much more comfortable with these house rules.

I will keep the Striking as Air technique from Beta. Its good, pretty good 1vs1 but its terrible against a zerg of goons, goblins, ronins or whatever. So its not a big deal for me.

51 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Nah, Analyze is pretty good, I can even say that it is the second best Scholar Approach.

I think you misunderstood me. I LIKE the Air ring. The Air ring is very much a good ring. Even its most glaring weakness (it sucks on the kata department) is countered by the fact that the one thing it does do good in kata (Thunderclap Strike) is unique. I certainly find it more interesting than the Fire ring, 90% of which is "I hit it" (Fire ring, btw, has the worst Invocation package, which is the area Air is the best one at).

28 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

The importance/usefulness of a given Ring - particularly Air - depends in no small part on playstyle.

This is very much true, but I feel the Air Ring is getting into this too hard. In comparison, Void checks out everything, Water can be useful all the time too, Earth and Fire are a bit playstyle-dependent indeed around the Scholar and Social Approaches, and then there is Air.