6 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

you are obviously an experienced player with a lot of fair and logical insights.

You watch what you accuse me of.

Thoughts: for the most part, they all look very sensible. I tend not to like having house rules as.....a house-rule, I guess. But if you're going to have an agreed corpus of changes, none of them look game-breaking and many are good ideas and important loopholes that could do with closing.

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

CONDITIONS:

Severely Wounded condition: Change 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.

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.

Unconscious condition: Clarification: A character can spend one Void Point to remove this condition from themselves.

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.

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.

Fine for the most part. Being able to act whilst incapacitated will only apply to PCs and Adversaries, of course, because minions get Defeated rather than Incapacitated. Since you've left in the one-hit-unconscious, the biggest change is probably the ability to use Guard - as a base TN1 it remains an achievable TN3 - meaning TN+1 or even TN+2 for an air-heavy character to land the killshot. How big a deal this is a table-by-table decision.

90% of the time it won't make much difference, if incapacitated in a skirmish and not taking the sensible option of 'run away', your best bet still probably remains the assist action to lob a skill die to someone who's not incapacitated, but it means that PCs with unique abilities (critically things like kiho and invocation techniques) still have a fighting chance of using them. It might also help the always-a-problem balance between single adversaries and multiple PCs.

My main comment is the suffocation change - whilst adding incapacitated is a good change (because as written suffocation otherwise can't kill you), you've lost the prohibition on critical strikes. This actually means that your change becomes unnecessary, as fatigue whilst incapacitated will cause a critical strike, which will cause unconsciousness and so on. I think that prohibition was a sensible one to stop weird interactions like suffering scars or bleeding from drowning, and would add it back in: "The character does not suffer critical strikes for fatigue wounds suffered this way."

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

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

Short version; you can't be scarred without also being wounded, and can't be dying without also being scarred. Makes sense; a no-consequence, easy-to-remove Dying can actually make failing your fitness check tempting, which seems logically wrong.

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

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.

This objective requires the character to put strife on someone. I felt it needed a way aside Fire opportunity to do so. It is a tiny amount of strife, in line with how many Momentum points you would have gained while performing a Persuade action.

Fine - I would suggest that doing so would be something you may choose to do instead of generating momentum points. I know Discredit doesn't track momentum, but that prevents any argument that you can somehow do this and score towards another objective

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

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.

This soften the curve between different types of weapons and reduce, slightly, the finishing blow potential of weapons with 6+ deadliness.

I'm not sure I'm so much of a fan of this - the double-handed katana finishing blow being deadliness 12 instead of 14 doesn't look a big change but it means any successes on the fitness check render the blow non-fatal unless the severity is further increased somehow (yes, bonus successes on the attack check are a possibility, but the fitness check is easier so I'm assuming them to be equivalent for simplicity). For a situation that's most likely going to come up in duels to the death with swords, that feels wrong.

Equally, adding a +5 deadliness to a 'weaker' weapon makes it almost impossible to win a duel via a finishing blow and not leave the loser with a permanent injury. For a warrior's duel or even a sparring match with bokken (or heck, bare hands) to end with a scar rather than lightly/severely wounded adds a big narrative impact.

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade: add: : if you succeed, the target cannot defend against the damage dealt by this technique.

Striking as Air : replace by : Air +: Reserve one of your dropped dice, plus one additional dropped die per spent this way. When making a check with the same skill before the end of your next turn, you may add your reserved dice to your rolled dice, set to the value they had when reserved.

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

It's been mentioned a lot, and ultimately the only way to get a 'one cut' win is either to use water stance, to add this ability to the Iai techniques, or to win via finishing blow. My issue is that I don't want Rising Blade to be 'strike plus', and the lack of the ability to inflict a critical strike on an opponent inclined to defend is its big downside at the moment.

Striking as air - it's a reasonable change. I don't think it's too bad a kata, but adding it as a rolled dice (i.e. no free 'kept' dice) is a nice balance in power. I'm more a fan of consistency in rules, though, so would you apply this change to channelling and the centre action?

The burst effect of The Body Is An Anvil is a weird one. I don't mind it being really good because you saw me prepare an awesome defensive ability targeting you specifically and you attacked me anyway rather than letting your mate hit me. I would agree that the Burst effect should be (is probably intended to be) one-hit.

Cleansing Spirit not being able to remove Afflicted..... I'm not sure I mind. Yes, it's TN1, but as it's a burst effect, it's effectively TN3 (and it's locked to earth, so no cheeky Fire bonus successes). Yes, a Togashi Monk can use a tattoo for it, but that means they're using their tattoo for that and not for anything else, and - since afflicted is normally dealt with as a downtime problem (post conflict scenes in tainted terrain, for example), Cleansing spirit is only really doing the same as cleansing ritual, but only affecting 1 target instead of 5.

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

Shikigami:

For their ability Living Invocation : change the text to: Once per scene, when a shikigami succeed on an check to perform an invocation, you can add 2 bonus successes and .

For their ability Restricted action : clarify that the ritualist cannot use this action as their water stance additional action if the action the shikigami performs includes a check.

Living invocation is a problem like that because it's not going to succeed in using the invocation in a lot of cases. Take, for the sake of argument, a 'maintenance' shikigami whose job is to lurk around their creator's workshop fixing stuff. Caress of Earth is rank 1, so its earth ring is 1. Caress of Earth is TN3 to activate, so even if you have an amazing composition skill, it's going to fail repeatedly and in a downtime scene it only gets one 'try'.

I agree shikigami are not balanced and need work, but I think the 'auto-pass' - even if it was changed to 'consume' the shikigami (or at least that particular sealed invocation) - is important.

As to the restricted action..... I dunno. if this rule is in effect the shikigami doesn't get its own turn, but allowing the shujenga to craft a shikigami and then be throwing multiple invocations per turn (one via the shikigami) is clearly wrong, too. I'd actually reverse matters; simplicity is good - treat it much like the attendant assisting a Crane Samurai.

"During a conflict, if a shikigami and the ritualist who created it are both present, the shikigami does not take its own turn. During the shugenja’s turn, it can move up to 1 range band. The Ritualist may perform invocations invested in the shikigami, and counts as having skilled assistance from the Shikigami. Where relevant, the range of these invocations is determined from the Shikigami rather than the ritualist, and any conditions or persistent effects affecting the Shikigami which would modify the TN of the invocation affect the ritualist for the duration of the action."

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

-Schools

Akodo Commander:

-In starting equipment, add to any weapon of rarity 6 or lower OR a tessen

Ikoma Bard:

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

mantis PDF Schools:

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"

The tessen for a commander makes sense.

The Ikoma having to pick one starting shuji puts them in line with others. Their ability is very powerful in duels but at the same time in a formal duel they start with no martial arts (melee) and no fitness - admittedly the latter is on their rank 1 curriculum - and it is a once-per-scene effect. It's nasty, but most of the courtier abilities are surprisingly good in duels (speaking in silence on a fire social check for a Doji courtier, for example) and unlike the phoenix or crane, ikoma don't have a tradition of palming off duels to their yojimbo.

I'm not sure why you want to swap over the air/water invocations, but I agree with making the rank 5 choice Soul's Blade instead of a rank 4 invocation. Plus Osano-Wo approves of lightning-related stuff, obviously.

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, Avatar111 said:

-Various:

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 Maneuvre (and not Movement) action check, add bonus equal to the mount's water ring.

CLARIFICATIONS ON THE KEYWORD "UNAWARE".
This is simply to define Unaware in mechanical terms, as some techniques or abilities can interact with this Keyword, I felt it needed a stricter interpretation.
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.

Typo on manoeuvre. Otherwise mostly fine....I do think being mounted should add bonuses to some movement-and-attack checks, but I'm aware it can easily be overpowered; I don't really mind either way.

Thank you for taking the time! As expected, some great insights.

I'll put all of this in my pipe and think about it a bit.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It might also help the always-a-problem balance between single adversaries and multiple PCs.

One thing I'd note - if you're looking at NPCs, you could do worse than plagiarise FFG's other games a bit.

FFG's star wars RPGs - and I assume Genesys (but don't know for definite) include three 'tiers' of NPC rather than two; Minion, Rival and Nemisis. The latter is - obviously - intended for the 'big bad' of adventures or even full campaigns. L5R Adversaries fall somewhere between the latter two.

One thing that's discussed in....I think it was the Edge of the Empire GM's guide?....was that no matter how good the stats you gave a character were, they often found themselves outnumbered 3-1 or more by the PCs at the climactic scene, which often ends up being rather anti climactic.

Now, whilst in theory in L5R Samurai should line up like honourable little bushi and offer opponents a fair fight, in the heat of the moment players often won't and when facing shinobi or oni that's a rather unreasonable demand since their opponent isn't going to be honourable back.

For the most part a Nemesis uses exactly the same rules as FFG Star Wars PCs do; they have two rules that are worth noting, though.

One is, ironically enough, a talent called 'Adversary (X)', which upgrades the difficulty of any check targeting that character by X. It's not something to take lightly - given how big a deal a +1 difficulty can be in this system - especially stacked with air stance, and guard, but nevertheless a flat 'TN+1' talent affecting all checks is a good way to show how scary the big bad is. Quite a few NPCs increase the TN in specific circumstances, but I can't think of any with it as a global rule.

The second is much more significant; Nemesis-level NPCs get to act twice per turn. They act once at their normal initiative, and then once later in the turn (the default is after everyone else has gone). This is scary, obviously, but also interesting because one observation is that L5R includes very few ways (earth-shattering magical kabooms and one specific Kata aside) for a single character to affect multiple opponents. Minions are much scarier than their FFG equivalents for precisely this reason; there's no easy equivalent of 'linked X' to allow a competent jedi wanabee with a magic glowbat to scythe through 2-3 stormtroopers in a single attack action. Giving a suitably skilled swordsman NPC the ability to move twice and strike twice at different opponents creates a much more dynamic fight.

25 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

One thing I'd note - if you're looking at NPCs, you could do worse than plagiarise FFG's other games a bit.

FFG's star wars RPGs - and I assume Genesys (but don't know for definite) include three 'tiers' of NPC rather than two; Minion, Rival and Nemisis. The latter is - obviously - intended for the 'big bad' of adventures or even full campaigns. L5R Adversaries fall somewhere between the latter two.

One thing that's discussed in....I think it was the Edge of the Empire GM's guide?....was that no matter how good the stats you gave a character were, they often found themselves outnumbered 3-1 or more by the PCs at the climactic scene, which often ends up being rather anti climactic.

Now, whilst in theory in L5R Samurai should line up like honourable little bushi and offer opponents a fair fight, in the heat of the moment players often won't and when facing shinobi or oni that's a rather unreasonable demand since their opponent isn't going to be honourable back.

For the most part a Nemesis uses exactly the same rules as FFG Star Wars PCs do; they have two rules that are worth noting, though.

One is, ironically enough, a talent called 'Adversary (X)', which upgrades the difficulty of any check targeting that character by X. It's not something to take lightly - given how big a deal a +1 difficulty can be in this system - especially stacked with air stance, and guard, but nevertheless a flat 'TN+1' talent affecting all checks is a good way to show how scary the big bad is. Quite a few NPCs increase the TN in specific circumstances, but I can't think of any with it as a global rule.

The second is much more significant; Nemesis-level NPCs get to act twice per turn. They act once at their normal initiative, and then once later in the turn (the default is after everyone else has gone). This is scary, obviously, but also interesting because one observation is that L5R includes very few ways (earth-shattering magical kabooms and one specific Kata aside) for a single character to affect multiple opponents. Minions are much scarier than their FFG equivalents for precisely this reason; there's no easy equivalent of 'linked X' to allow a competent jedi wanabee with a magic glowbat to scythe through 2-3 stormtroopers in a single attack action. Giving a suitably skilled swordsman NPC the ability to move twice and strike twice at different opponents creates a much more dynamic fight.

"Boss" fights can be a concern. Many RPG actually deal with that problem in a very D&D style way (extra actions, or extra reactions for the Boss)
Now, how can it be interpreted for L5R ?
Increased TN by 1, for all actions, is good. Simple and effective.
But otherwise... the classic way to deal with it is basically to add endurance and/or composure to your NPC...
For extra action, it can be tricky. Overall I do not have "too much" that issue personally because I will NOT play this game with mroe than 3 players. Ever. I really think that this game simply doesn't suit any group larger than that. You want drama, roleplay, decisions that matter, and intertwined ninjo/giri, which is very very hard to do with 4+ players. also, since the rolls and player turns are very long and deep, the more players you add, the more sluggish it becomes.

There is also (at least in my experience) the problem of the Sacred quality. It totally destroy anything otherwordly. I don't like to say "it is OP" but I think it suffers the same issue as the Earth Stance... It is too much of a hard counter to a large amount of potential antagonists.

16 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Fine for the most part. Being able to act whilst incapacitated will only apply to PCs and Adversaries, of course, because minions get Defeated rather than Incapacitated. Since you've left in the one-hit-unconscious, the biggest change is probably the ability to use Guard - as a base TN1 it remains an achievable TN3 - meaning TN+1 or even TN+2 for an air-heavy character to land the killshot. How big a deal this is a table-by-table decision.

Not that much of a big deal, since unconscious will happen. And sure, you can maybe Guard, but that really isn't much of a winning action. And you are really risking what you DO NOT want to risk: the attacker hitting you + doing a critical hit. Which will be at +10.
It really makes the ending of skirmishes a bit more similar to the ending of duels, which is all good. If you are incapacitated, trying to keep fighting is highly risky.The only difference is that you can "try". But even around rank 3, the attacker can most probably devastate you with a "not so lucky" roll.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

My main comment is the suffocation change - whilst adding incapacitated is a good change (because as written suffocation otherwise can't kill you), you've lost the prohibition on critical strikes. This actually means that your change becomes unnecessary, as fatigue whilst incapacitated will cause a critical strike, which will cause unconsciousness and so on. I think that prohibition was a sensible one to stop weird interactions like suffering scars or bleeding from drowning, and would add it back in: "The character does not suffer critical strikes for fatigue wounds suffered this way."

Agreed.
The fact that this condition was requiring a specific "Earth" fitness check (the only such example in the corebook) is simply a proof that there is a mistake in its design. It probably is an earlier version. Because, it really doesn't make sense to "impose" an Earth check when the character can be in different stance in a conflict.
So that needed to be fixed.
Otherwise, yeas, I need to clarify that you do not take "crits" from this fatigue damage. Which I do, because, taking "fatigue" doesn't provoke a critical hit as per core rule. (some other techniques use this wording: gain 2 fatigues, for example, and it never cause a critical hit.
The prohibition on critical strikes was, in the case of the Suffocation condition, a non-necessary reminder. I could still add it back though.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Fine - I would suggest that doing so would be something you may choose to do instead of generating momentum points. I know Discredit doesn't track momentum, but that prevents any argument that you can somehow do this and score towards another objective

Yes, I can clarify that this "strife" is INSTEAD of gaining momentum point. Which is relatively clear since the way I worded it doesn't imply the gain of momentum points, but more clarity is always a good thing.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I'm not sure I'm so much of a fan of this - the double-handed katana finishing blow being deadliness 12 instead of 14 doesn't look a big change but it means any successes on the fitness check render the blow non-fatal unless the severity is further increased somehow (yes, bonus successes on the attack check are a possibility, but the fitness check is easier so I'm assuming them to be equivalent for simplicity). For a situation that's most likely going to come up in duels to the death with swords, that feels wrong.

Equally, adding a +5 deadliness to a 'weaker' weapon makes it almost impossible to win a duel via a finishing blow and not leave the loser with a permanent injury. For a warrior's duel or even a sparring match with bokken (or heck, bare hands) to end with a scar rather than lightly/severely wounded adds a big narrative impact.

True.. I simply find it a bit unfortunate that a finishing blow from a low deadliness weapon doesn't really have any impact. Duelling with a Tetsubo? Well, at best you maybe can deliver a severe wound. I find that a bit cheap.
But, I must say.. I do not have the perfect solution.. I find the +5 to be a good "average", and I don't know about your table, but when it is a chill, pratice, duel with bokken, the character inflicting the finishing blow will decide to "miss" on purpose, which we roleplay as: "I got you, but decided not to wreck you". Or, in a more samurai drama way, stop the weapon an inch from your face. If you really want to deliver that finishing blow though, I find it MORE than fair that a punch can cause a Severe wound, or even a permanent wound.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It's been mentioned a lot, and ultimately the only way to get a 'one cut' win is either to use water stance, to add this ability to the Iai techniques, or to win via finishing blow. My issue is that I don't want Rising Blade to be 'strike plus', and the lack of the ability to inflict a critical strike on an opponent inclined to defend is its big downside at the moment.

Iaijutsu Cut; Rising Blade is solid with my houserule. Not Op or anything, simply: good for first blood duelling. Because in duels to the Death, it isn't really something you want to do anyway. The deadliness is pretty low...
So, with a usually higher TN (vigilance), the "cannot defend" is not that easy to achieve. The damage is equivalent, the critical is equivalent (or lower since one handed). And very importantly, both of these are not scaleable with successes.
Most of the time, Strike is BETTER than Rising Blade. But at least Rising Blade "can" crit, and draw the weapon.
Unless you are a Kakita, you will not win a duel with this technique (unless you are very lucky with the opportunities and your opponent screw up their resist check, which is mostly the case in duels with one very good warrior and one, very bad one. Also, duels with the weapon sheathed are 90% of the time, formal duels, in which this technique make sense. In challenges or what not, your weapon is more often than not readied.
It does step a bit on the Water Stance though... which can be a concern.
But if the houserule isn't there, a character will ALWAYS open with Crossing Cut, there is simply NO REASON to use Rising Blade... it is like a garbage kata that you take "if you got it free". But given the choice, or the need to spend XP, everybody will take Crossing Cut.
With the houserule... they both have their use.
Maybe the "cannot defend" should be changed to "inflict a critical strike", which would leave Earth a great defense against it though... Your opinion?

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Striking as air - it's a reasonable change. I don't think it's too bad a kata, but adding it as a rolled dice (i.e. no free 'kept' dice) is a nice balance in power. I'm more a fan of consistency in rules, though, so would you apply this change to channelling and the centre action?

True, I should just leave it as is. It is bad, but whatever. Not a "big deal".

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

The burst effect of The Body Is An Anvil is a weird one. I don't mind it being really good because you saw me prepare an awesome defensive ability targeting you specifically and you attacked me anyway rather than letting your mate hit me. I would agree that the Burst effect should be (is probably intended to be) one-hit.

We agree. All it needs is to make the burst effect a one-hit thing instead of "forever". It simply make sense.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Cleansing Spirit not being able to remove Afflicted..... I'm not sure I mind. Yes, it's TN1, but as it's a burst effect, it's effectively TN3 (and it's locked to earth, so no cheeky Fire bonus successes). Yes, a Togashi Monk can use a tattoo for it, but that means they're using their tattoo for that and not for anything else, and - since afflicted is normally dealt with as a downtime problem (post conflict scenes in tainted terrain, for example), Cleansing spirit is only really doing the same as cleansing ritual, but only affecting 1 target instead of 5.

It does so without a Downtime though... it is basically the BEST thing in the game to remove Afflicted. Making the condition, irrelevant, and making a monk the "best **** thing against shadowland", which is just weird.. With a monk you can basically go to the Festering Pit of Fu Len without giving a ****... Doesn't make sense.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Living invocation is a problem like that because it's not going to succeed in using the invocation in a lot of cases. Take, for the sake of argument, a 'maintenance' shikigami whose job is to lurk around their creator's workshop fixing stuff. Caress of Earth is rank 1, so its earth ring is 1. Caress of Earth is TN3 to activate, so even if you have an amazing composition skill, it's going to fail repeatedly and in a downtime scene it only gets one 'try'.

I agree shikigami are not balanced and need work, but I think the 'auto-pass' - even if it was changed to 'consume' the shikigami (or at least that particular sealed invocation) - is important.

As to the restricted action..... I dunno. if this rule is in effect the shikigami doesn't get its own turn, but allowing the shujenga to craft a shikigami and then be throwing multiple invocations per turn (one via the shikigami) is clearly wrong, too. I'd actually reverse matters; simplicity is good - treat it much like the attendant assisting a Crane Samurai.

"During a conflict, if a shikigami and the ritualist who created it are both present, the shikigami does not take its own turn. During the shugenja’s turn, it can move up to 1 range band. The Ritualist may perform invocations invested in the shikigami, and counts as having skilled assistance from the Shikigami. Where relevant, the range of these invocations is determined from the Shikigami rather than the ritualist, and any conditions or persistent effects affecting the Shikigami which would modify the TN of the invocation affect the ritualist for the duration of the action.

I like your point of view. But yes, as is, it is very much busted. Its a matter of finding the right sweet spot...
Living Invocation maybe shouldn't give those "free bonus successes and free opportunities" ?
and yeah, Restricted Action, I think we are trying to find the same solution. I'll double check and use either. They both are trying to achieve the same thing.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

The Ikoma having to pick one starting shuji puts them in line with others. Their ability is very powerful in duels but at the same time in a formal duel they start with no martial arts (melee) and no fitness - admittedly the latter is on their rank 1 curriculum - and it is a once-per-scene effect. It's nasty, but most of the courtier abilities are surprisingly good in duels (speaking in silence on a fire social check for a Doji courtier, for example) and unlike the phoenix or crane, ikoma don't have a tradition of palming off duels to their yojimbo.

I guess... It is just so insane to heal like 6 strife and put 6 strife on the opponent in a duel. If you played a certain amount of duels, you know how much this means "I win".
A fire social check will maybe put 2 (situationally 4 strife) on the opponent, but it won't make that much of a crazy swing.
A high rank Ikoma CANNOT lose a duel with core rules. Sure, he will get wounded here and there, but he will win. Investing in a bit of martial skill is not that complicated or costly.
Nothing in the game creates that much of a strife swing. This is INSANE as it deals straight up with the core duel mechanic.
I am not saying any Ikoma can take advantage of it as much, but an Ikoma built to duel will be almost unbeatable. Duels are almost strictly about finishing blows when you hit rank 3. This is absolutely OP, and pretty surely not intended to be a "duel thing".

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I'm not sure why you want to swap over the air/water invocations, but I agree with making the rank 5 choice Soul's Blade instead of a rank 4 invocation. Plus Osano-Wo approves of lightning-related stuff, obviously.

There was not enough choices of techniques. I tried to do my best so that all their techniques were in flavor with the school. Minor thing though.. because Mantis schools still suffer from "technique redundancies" that were fixed for Core Book schools. I'm just doing the work FFG should have done already The choice of techniques can vary.

17 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Typo on manoeuvre. Otherwise mostly fine....I do think being mounted should add bonuses to some movement-and-attack checks, but I'm aware it can easily be overpowered; I don't really mind either way.

Yeah... same. It just is so weird that the Kata it works with the best do not really need a horseback weapon.. they require a high deadliness weapon (crossing cut and heartpiercing strike). It just doesn't gel...
Also, it makes Mass Combat a total fail.
I think my "patch" is ok.
Sure I'd like a way to add a bit more damage to certain actions while on horseback, but the way they have it in the core book is not right, it just is broken for almost all the things you will use it with...
The Utaku school ability is more in line with what "core horseback rules" should be. But I think we have to wait for FFG to expend on these rules. For now though, the core rule needs to be fixed as it honestly doesn't make sense in almost all cases.

On 12/4/2019 at 2:11 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

Equally, adding a +5 deadliness to a 'weaker' weapon makes it almost impossible to win a duel via a finishing blow and not leave the loser with a permanent injury. For a warrior's duel or even a sparring match with bokken (or heck, bare hands) to end with a scar rather than lightly/severely wounded adds a big narrative impact.

You could make the +5 (or doubling) optional, and if you use it, it's obvious to most observers that you're going for a "killing blow." This will allow duels to first blood to be settled by a non-lethal iaijutsu strike (though I still give Rising Blade the option). It will also give the Deceitful Strike ninjutsu technique a clear time to be used.

When practicing with boken, that +5 probably won't come off as, "He tried to kill him!" but will still be a "What is your problem?!"

I haven't seen all the iterations of these house rules, but I'm picking up a few things from the early discussions that match up with tweaks I've had in mind for a while. Notably, ignoring Strife on Resistance rolls. It doesn't seem to be in your updated list, but I 100% agree with that, for a few reasons. First, I agree with your assertion that it slows things down. More importantly, allowing Strife makes Fire the best ring for soaking up critical strikes. Most of those fitness rolls are TN 1, so every success you can grab is gonna save your bacon. That just seems the antithesis of Fire to me.

Is there a particular reason that was cut from the list?

5 hours ago, The Grand Falloon said:

I haven't seen all the iterations of these house rules, but I'm picking up a few things from the early discussions that match up with tweaks I've had in mind for a while. Notably, ignoring Strife on Resistance rolls. It doesn't seem to be in your updated list, but I 100% agree with that, for a few reasons. First, I agree with your assertion that it slows things down. More importantly, allowing Strife makes Fire the best ring for soaking up critical strikes. Most of those fitness rolls are TN 1, so every success you can grab is gonna save your bacon. That just seems the antithesis of Fire to me.

Is there a particular reason that was cut from the list?

A lot of good changes were cut from my houserules...

I really want to keep it as clean and simple as possible. At some point, when I realized I was at around 10 pages of houserules, I started to feel that it was a hassle to have that many changes that were not in the book/pdf when I played the game. So, I started to cut. A lot. What is left is really the core of the fixes that tackle most of the issues I have with the game.

Opportunities on Resist checks are definitely also an issue (I think), but it affects so many moving parts that I decided to let it go. Again, to focus on the ultimate minimum. I think right now the houserules are pretty thin, while fixing a ton of recurrent core gameplay issues that I had with the game. Also they are thin enough to be easily adoptable by any group or gm without much reprinting.

If someone ask me my opinion for a "revised edition" of this game, I'd go way crazier lol!

Over 25k views now, wow. In honor of this, I decided to update the character sheets a bit more so that they fit the houserules (included the Earth Stance change and streamlined a bit more some other parts).

Keep playing L5R rpg!

Hi, in regards to the Earth Stance change. How much actual play you saw with this and were you comfortable with it?

I thought of something similar for my group but I got afraid it would make the Earth Stance weaker or useless on Intrigue conflicts as some conditions can be applied even if the user didn't achieve any success. (Then again, the argument can be made that this makes Earth Stance too strong already as it is)

I was hoping I would find something here in regards to range bands and mass battle as I feel they are the weaker part of the system, but then, I think the whole system should be rewritten if I could have my way, the only good parts of the system being the fluid of the curricula, the concept of titles for the old advanced schools and Strife as social "fatigue"

30k views. wow.
Btw, I am not playing anymore, so if anybody wants to take these fixes and make them their own and go from there. feel free.

keep gaming!

@Avatar111 Thanks for the work with those!!!!

Would you mind if I translate your files into spanish and catalan and reshare them again?

What program did you use for the formatting?

photoshop. its my goto.

and yeah, share all you want!