5 hours ago, JBento said:

I'd like to point out to the "but samurai wouldn't use trident" people that the art of the Daidoji Iron Soldier depicts him wielding a trident. And Iron Forest Style says that a) it's not that easy getting in the face of the trident-wielder and b) you're almost certainly taking Strife and Damage for doing so.

FFG explicitly put in several weapon entries that samurai use them in this version of Rokugan - otsuchi references the Hida, gao references the Mirumoto, and so on. To me at least it seems clear there's supposed to be less of a stigma against using anything other than a handful of typical samurai weapons in this edition than previous ones.

The trident issue is I think some a case of some fiction mis-match, the description emphasizes the historical "trident" as a fishing tool (though a Crane might like the symmetry there) but as Ultimatecalibur pointed out there are actually yari variants which have a similar blade setup. The trident in book is certainly priced like an elite polearm, but the description doesn't really evoke "honorable samurai weapon". Crab using hammers and axes though is supposed to be a sign of their pragmatism over bushido those really are sized-up peasant tools (and not in the list given by Akodo's leadership).

well Coiling Serpent is so strong, that a samurai would be foolish not to use a trident or a ji (they say some shiba use that in the description).

I mean, my samurai will have one of those weapon on his back, i guarantee you that. and he will win all his 1v1 with it. he will call "challenges/clash" during skirmish, and if the fool doesn't accept, i'm gonna make void points and strife out his buddies.

my dude is a 1v1 specialist, a trident is the weapon for me. coiling serpent + iron forest. lets go.

13 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

I believe the Trident stat line is also intended to represent the Jumonji-yari or the Maga-yari, but your points still stands.

Anyone smart seeing a character armed with a snaring weapon should be able to take it as a sign to expect Coiling Serpent Style and change tactics. 5e has been pretty good about having ways for characters to handle techniques that appear overpowered in a vacuum.

28 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

The trident issue is I think some a case of some fiction mis-match, the description emphasizes the historical "trident" as a fishing tool (though a Crane might like the symmetry there) but as Ultimatecalibur pointed out there are actually yari variants which have a similar blade setup. The trident in book is certainly priced like an elite polearm, but the description doesn't really evoke "honorable samurai weapon". Crab using hammers and axes though is supposed to be a sign of their pragmatism over bushido those really are sized-up peasant tools (and not in the list given by Akodo's leadership).

Yep. HEre are a few examples of such Yari:

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

well Coiling Serpent is so strong, that a samurai would be foolish not to use a trident or a ji (they say some shiba use that in the description).

I mean, my samurai will have one of those weapon on his back, i guarantee you that. and he will win all his 1v1 with it. he will call "challenges/clash" during skirmish, and if the fool doesn't accept, i'm gonna make void points and strife out his buddies.

my dude is a 1v1 specialist, a trident is the weapon for me. coiling serpent + iron forest. lets go.

You do realize that only a third of the sides on both types have opportunities on them and that you need to roll 6 dice to have 2 opportunities appear on average?

1 minute ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

You do realize that only a third of the sides on both types have opportunities on them and that you need to roll 6 dice to have 2 opportunities appear on average?

i have 3/3

and as long as i have at least 1 opportunity. i'm good. a second one is gravy.

4 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

i have 3/3

and as long as i have at least 1 opportunity. i'm good. a second one is gravy.

Nope. You need both to do the **** you want. Your "awesomeness" is also killed by any who can disarm you, armed with more than 1 weapon or is armed with a bow. You can be beaten. You have not found an unbeatable or broken combo.

4 minutes ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Nope. You need both to do the **** you want. Your "awesomeness" is also killed by any who can disarm you, armed with more than 1 weapon or is armed with a bow. You can be beaten. You have not found an unbeatable or broken combo.

armed with more than one weapon ? i hope you are in water stance. and i hope i dont eventually get 2opp to double activate coiled serpent, because then you need yet another weapon.

disarm me ? how you do that

a bow ? i hope you have 2 bows, because one of them won't be able to attack me. unless again you run away in water stance and then shoot. but then, i might just run away too.

it is not unbeatable. but it is busted, read: overpowered. for a rank 2.

and remember, i'll have that "boon" in every, each, all the time, encounters. so you better always prepare people with a few back up weapons. because that is how the game is going to play.

Why would I need Water stance for two weapons?
If it's a duel, then I can draw both with a single opp on an Iai tech, if not, we'll have started far enough apart that I can have both drawn before we're in melee range.

Bows counter this because they stand far enough away to hit you before you can reach them, and to reach the archers you have to get past their friends - so either you ignore those guys and get cut up but reach the archers, or the archers get to shoot you without worrying about your Coiling Serpent.

I would allow disarming with a Martial Arts (Earth) check similar to Crimson Leaves Strike. TN 3, because it doesn't knock the weapon away all that far, and only deals base damage, no Bonus Successes. Leaves plenty of niche for Crimson Leaves, but anyone can try disarming. The game makes it trivial to make up any rules you need. Or not need, but feel you do because you've got it in your head that your theorycrafting is actually how this game plays.

Let us also not forget the esteemable Soaring Slice (R1 Kata), throw your weapon at range 2-3 (more with Opp). If he's gonna bind your weapons anyway, why not just throw them at him?

3 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Let us also not forget the esteemable Soaring Slice (R1 Kata), throw your weapon at range 2-3 (more with Opp). If he's gonna bind your weapons anyway, why not just throw them at him?

And... save him the trouble? If you're fighting someone with CSS, the last thing you want is to have LESS weapons.

Yeah, Soaring Slice is more of a finisher for someone who's trying to run away or if you want to hit them with a poisoned weapon rather than poisoning all your arrows or shuriken.

Throwing a poisoned knife at someone can be quite effective, too...

1 minute ago, Myrion said:

Yeah, Soaring Slice is more of a finisher for someone who's trying to run away or if you want to hit them with a poisoned weapon rather than poisoning all your arrows or shuriken.

Throwing a poisoned knife at someone can be quite effective, too...

It can also be used to create an opening for others by use of one of its opportunity expenditures.

It can also be kind of an order of operations thing, SS means you're getting your chance to strike in before they can bind the weapon, because you're preferably at range. Is it better to actually be able to deal damage, or not? I mean, people take this "oh no I'm out of weapons" thing a bit seriously, you always have five ready weapons, barring some disadvantages (they're your limbs guys), this is more just way to kind of out range the spear guy. If he's chasing you, you can probably circle around and get your weapons back.

Though if we're bringing Ninjutsu into this, Noxious Cloud would also be pretty good for this situation, you can even spend opportunity to shift range bands, change the terrain or slip in a crit. But that's also getting kind of specific, you'd have to annoy some particular people for that kind of countermeasure to be used.

49 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Let us also not forget the esteemable Soaring Slice (R1 Kata), throw your weapon at range 2-3 (more with Opp). If he's gonna bind your weapons anyway, why not just throw them at him?

edit: does work indeed if you throw it before he binds it.

53 minutes ago, JBento said:

And... save him the trouble? If you're fighting someone with CSS, the last thing you want is to have LESS weapons.

lol

but you carry a belt of daggers and took soaring slice to beat those trident users.

sensible.

CSS is too strong, it requires lots of playing around. I would be "ok" with it if it would be spend as many opp as target's vigilance to bind a weapon, this way, low vigilance characters would need to be careful, or the trident user would need to decide to miss his attack to have enough opp to activate it. but 1opp ? to me it is insane. it just "Works" vs everyone. even if we think of all the ways to play around it, and you guys sure are imaginative! as I said, i don't thing it is unbeatable... but, i feel the technique is quite probably on the busted side when it forces everybody to alter their playstyle to take one thing in consideration. no other kata does that so, easily and decisively.

that is my houserule so far:

CSS

opp+ : need a many opp as target's vigilance to "bind" his weapon (can't attack)

opp1 : give a readied weapon +1tn to every checks (or keep 2opp to immobilize, but since snaring weapon can immobilize if they spend as many opp as target's vigilance, i found it slightly redundant, even if better than the base snaring quality)

(not gonna go into exact wording, but thats the idea).

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

lol

but you carry a belt of daggers and took soaring slice to beat those trident users.

sensible.

CSS is too strong, it requires lots of playing around. I would be "ok" with it if it would be spend as many opp as target's vigilance to bind a weapon, this way, low vigilance characters would need to be careful, or the trident user would need to decide to miss his attack to have enough opp to activate it. but 1opp ? to me it is insane. it just "Works" vs everyone. even if we think of all the ways to play around it, and you guys sure are imaginative! as I said, i don't thing it is unbeatable... but, i feel the technique is quite probably on the busted side when it forces everybody to alter their playstyle to take one thing in consideration. no other kata does that so, easily and decisively.

that is my houserule so far:

CSS

opp+ : need a many opp as target's vigilance to "bind" his weapon (can't attack)

opp1 : give a readied weapon +1tn to every checks (or keep 2opp to immobilize, but since snaring weapon can immobilize if they spend as many opp as target's vigilance, i found it slightly redundant, even if better than the base snaring quality)

(not gonna go into exact wording, but thats the idea).

I kind of dislike this way of doing things, at least in this L5R system where you're supposed to know in advance what you need to roll to get your desired result at all times. In a skirmish, do you tell your players all the opposing NPCs' Vigilance attributes? If you're using a Snaring NPC, do you base your choice of who to use CSS against on your knowledge of the PCs' Vigilance stats? It feels a little metagamey to me to have and get to use that info, but without it Snaring can be severely gimped, what with Vigilance being rounded up.

If CSS were going to be a fixture kata in my games, I'd probably look at capping the snarer's damage from the Attack he's activating CSS with (because the combo of doing massive damage and severely restricting the opponent's ability to retaliate with a single action seems excessive) or imposing some kind of penalty on any Attack actions the snarer wants to make the next turn (a snaring-means-being-semi-snared-yourself type of thing).

5 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

I kind of dislike this way of doing things, at least in this L5R system where you're supposed to know in advance what you need to roll to get your desired result at all times. In a skirmish, do you tell your players all the opposing NPCs' Vigilance attributes? If you're using a Snaring NPC, do you base your choice of who to use CSS against on your knowledge of the PCs' Vigilance stats? It feels a little metagamey to me to have and get to use that info, but without it Snaring can be severely gimped, what with Vigilance being rounded up.

If CSS were going to be a fixture kata in my games, I'd probably look at capping the snarer's damage from the Attack he's activating CSS with (because the combo of doing massive damage and severely restricting the opponent's ability to retaliate with a single action seems excessive) or imposing some kind of penalty on any Attack actions the snarer wants to make the next turn (a snaring-means-being-semi-snared-yourself type of thing).

well, in all honesty, you don't tell them the vigilance before they attempt something on them.

same as everything else that have vigilance as a TN...

to me at least vigilance is "a bit hidden", compared to "that dude is wearing plate armor, so i'll hit the other guy".

and, the basic ability of snaring weapon is: spend as many opp as target's vigilance to immobilise him. thats like... the base, if you have no technique. so my thing works the same.

i know, not perfect. you could basically be a very nasty GM and never tell your players the amount of success or opportunity they need to beat a a "vigilance". of course, they might figure it out after a few tries/hit, but that would be the most "evil gm" way to go about it

10 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

I kind of dislike this way of doing things, at least in this L5R system where you're supposed to know in advance what you need to roll to get your desired result at all times. In a skirmish, do you tell your players all the opposing NPCs' Vigilance attributes? If you're using a Snaring NPC, do you base your choice of who to use CSS against on your knowledge of the PCs' Vigilance stats? It feels a little metagamey to me to have and get to use that info, but without it Snaring can be severely gimped, what with Vigilance being rounded up.

If CSS were going to be a fixture kata in my games, I'd probably look at capping the snarer's damage from the Attack he's activating CSS with (because the combo of doing massive damage and severely restricting the opponent's ability to retaliate with a single action seems excessive) or imposing some kind of penalty on any Attack actions the snarer wants to make the next turn (a snaring-means-being-semi-snared-yourself type of thing).

I'll note that the best way to CSS is by using Thunderclap Strike to hit a bunch of people and taking Opps over successes, since you don't need to hit to snare. Severely diminish the other side's ability to attack and let the rest of your team bash their skulls in.

11 minutes ago, JBento said:

I'll note that the best way to CSS is by using Thunderclap Strike to hit a bunch of people and taking Opps over successes, since you don't need to hit to snare. Severely diminish the other side's ability to attack and let the rest of your team bash their skulls in.

Yup. Feels like one of those instances where FFG's apparent choice not to put restrictions in their rules that can prevent breakaway combos and/or to really tighten up their mechanics is opening up a can of worms. That's a larger issue I was reluctant to get into, since I'd prefer to have more experience with the system first (and to give FFG the chance to put out some errata and clarifications first, though the fact that I expect them to need to do that already is a bad sign in itself).

Just ban CSS and any other OP technique, at least in this version schools still function if a technique or two is banned.

And any player that whines about it: ban them.

38 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Just ban CSS and any other OP technique, at least in this version schools still function if a technique or two is banned.

And any player that whines about it: ban them.

mmm...

Just now, Avatar111 said:

that is a way of dealing with it

I know my L5R experience got better when I just banned all players...

8 minutes ago, Amanda the Panda said:

I know my L5R experience got better when I just banned all players...

lol, if he bans a technique upfront, and tell the players. it should be fine. thats why I laughed a bit, his "ban the player" part was super epic