Hello everyone! My name is Karol and Im a long time RPG player - in January it will be 9 years, so almost half of my life :D

I was interested in Legend of the Five Rings when it was in its 4th edition, but I did not have money for it back then and it was really expensive. Now mostly I play Call of Cthulhu and D&D, but I also bought L5R Core Rulebook with Beginner's Game. I have them for almost two weeks now and as Im reading through the Rulebook from Beginners Game and Core Rulebook I CAN NOT understand conflict scenes at all!

What I mean is, that I understand the concept of stances and approach - they are amazing tools that blend roleplaying with dice/skill system - but I do not understand the concept of fatigue, critical strikes and weapon deadliness. Its like the whole book is quite easy to understand (with my lacking english that is) and then suddenly the difficulty level spikes up with lots of new things that GM needs to keep up with like: "is that character capable of defending or not?", "how does the critical strike works?" or "how do my players keep track of the damage they can not defend against?"

Its just so much information and just so poorly explained. I wish there would some examples of how all of this work. Im DMing a Beginners Game on 25th of November and I need to know all these things before our first session.

Im currently reading through the pages 268 - 270 trying to understand it all. Could anyone please describe it for me (and maybe a lot of other players) how does it all work in the game? Just write the page number or something so I can find it in my book or if You are kind enough to describe it in your own words - It would be wonderful!

the game is hardcore, in many ways it is a game for experienced gamers.

it would be a bit difficult to explain everything here... specific questions we can answer. but yeah, there are a lot of rules that kind of work with each others in intricate ways that doesn't seem obvious at first and that balance each other out if you know the other rule/technique exists (or are a bit mindblowing in the way they are written, or simply don't make full sense) and it can be overwhelming for gamers without as much experience that didn't really combed the book over and over.

I would also be curious if someone has an example combat to point at.

It is actually really simple, they just present it a little more convoluted to allow advanced level playing. But you can ignore the latter, it is, like, super-deep gaming, you can return to it once you have a good hold of the basics.

So. Basically, Fatigue is the Wounds/Hit Points characteristic you most likely know from other games. You take Fatigue from attacks, and when your Fatigue caps out at your Endurance, you fall Incapacitated and start taking Critical Strikes. If you are familiar with the FFG 40K RPG line then it is almost exactly like that: attacks eat up your buffer HP (Wounds in the 40K RPG, Fatigue in 5R5) until you hit the limit and you start taking real (Critical) damage.

When you take Critical Damage, its severity is determined by the Deadliness stat of the weapon. A katana has Deadliness 5, so when you take a Critical Damage from a katana, it is resolved with a severity of 5 (minus your soak).

Ignore this whole defense/no-defense deal for the time being - it is essentially about an ability to not take Fatigue and tank a Critical Strike instead, but it is not something you should worry about early on. You take Fatigue, end of story.

fatigue doesn't cap out. if you are 11 fatigue out of 12 endurance and get hit by 10 dmg, you are now at 21 fatigue.

also to note, yes you take a critical strike when you cannot defend (because your fatigue is = or higher than your endurance so you are "incapacitated") and at this point you don't take fatigue anymore, you take critical strikes instead whenever you take dmg. But, if another "effect/technique/ability" make you take a critical strike, it is possible to take a critical strike even if your are not incapacitated.

ie: the strike action. you can spend 2opp to do a critical strike, that is ON TOP of the fatigue damage your attack does and that critical strike will happen even if the opponent is not incapacitated. If the opponent is incapacitated when you strike him and use 2opp, he will actually take TWO critical strikes (because he cannot defend from the dmg of the strike, and because you spent 2opp to do a critical strike).

it is just not clearly explained in the book... i've seen these type of questions asked many times.

That's exactly what I could not understand! You guys are amazing ❤️

Thank you so much for the help, everything is crystal clear from now. I had problems with understanding fatigue and critical strikes, endurance not being the real Hit Points is great - adds more to the roleplaying, and from what I see on critical strike chart - critical strikes mainly damage the rings that one is using to defend (or soak) against it - Fitness (ring) check. If the severity drops to 0 then the critical strike did not hit.

But what about armor? Does it defend against Fatigue damage only or does it drop the severity of critical strikes too?

Edit. Now I also know why you would sacrifice void points to get hit without defending.

23 minutes ago, Brzoskwin said:

If the severity drops to 0 then the critical strike did not hit.

But what about armor? Does it defend against Fatigue damage only or does it drop the severity of critical strikes too?

Close. If the severity drops to 0 then the target's armor is damaged.

My understanding is that armor only reduces the Fatigue damage, not the severity of the critical (unless you're a Hida Defender). Seems counter-intuitive to me, and I probably would have designed it the other way around. To mess with it now would probably screw up about half a dozen school abilities and techniques.

But yes, sometimes you will want your character to take the critical and keep fighting. When we played the Beginner Box, the Lion Bushi took a nasty slice to the leg in order to avoid going over his Endurance. The ronin who inflicted that wound is still out there somewhere...

7 hours ago, Brzoskwin said:

That's exactly what I could not understand! You guys are amazing ❤️

Thank you so much for the help, everything is crystal clear from now. I had problems with understanding fatigue and critical strikes, endurance not being the real Hit Points is great - adds more to the roleplaying, and from what I see on critical strike chart - critical strikes mainly damage the rings that one is using to defend (or soak) against it - Fitness (ring) check. If the severity drops to 0 then the critical strike did not hit.

But what about armor? Does it defend against Fatigue damage only or does it drop the severity of critical strikes too?

Edit. Now I also know why you would sacrifice void points to get hit without defending.

If you take a critical strike then you are 'hit', even if the strike doesn't do anything.

One thing which helps get people's mind in the right place is the duelling rules:

• A severity 0 critical, as @The Grand Falloon says, can still damage armour (although if you don't have any armour it doesn't do anything else). But it still qualifies as "you are hit by the weapon" so you can, for example, win a Duel-to-first-strike with it (but not a duel-to-first-blood, which, special qualities and techniques aside, requires a critical strike of a certain minimum severity to cause the Bleeding condition).
• By comparison, a successful strike action is not a 'hit' if the target is able to defend (takes fatigue to dodge/deflect/whatever) and that won't win a duel to first strike, even if it inflicts a shed-tonne of fatigue. It can win a duel-to-incapacitation, like an all-out sparring bout with bokken where one side basically backs off, bruised, out of breath, exhausted, and goes "okay, okay, enough already...."
• Try and avoid using the word 'hit' with your players on attack actions if that's going to promote confusion.

Armour reduces the fatigue you take from a successful strike (or other attack) - because if you've got armour protecting you, you don't need to bother so much about a minor impact, you basically just let your armour soak it and "defend" by essentially doing nothing.

It doesn't reduce critical severity. To qualify as 'a critical strike' it already assumes it's penetrating or otherwise bypassing your armour - note that L5R doesn't roll to hit locations and any type of armour gives a blanket protection to the whole body, rather than any given strike being resolved against arm/torso/face whatever like it would in Dark Heresy.

Basics of 'stabby conflict' - Duels and Skirmishes:

• Initiative:
  • You have two initiative values - focus and vigilance. Basically, the former is when you know conflict is about to start (say, a formal duel) whereas the latter is for 'surprise' conflicts (like an ambush) - you'll notice it's generally lower.
  • Assessment checks are a roll which let the players boost their initiative with successes. The nature of the assessment check varies with the type of conflict (meditation for duels, tactics for skirmish)
  • They also give you bonuses for passing (like noticing key details of the environment) and as checks you can use opportunities for other stuff
  • The ring you use for assessment also sets the stance you're in before your first turn if you're not going first.
• Rings
  • In non-conflict scenes, the ring used for a check is a debate with the GM based on the approach you're using, but by and large it's fixed depending on what you're doing - if you're doing "awareness"-ey stuff (do I notice XYZ that I'm not aware of) it's water, whilst deceiving, tricking and misleading people is air, and so on.
  • In conflict scenes, you can use whatever ring you like (okay, there are a couple of special cases which can force you to use or not use a given ring but they're very much the exception), but once you pick a stance you're locked into it until the next turn, and you have to use it for everything - martial arts checks to attack, fitness checks to mitigate critical strikes, the ring to suffer wounds to, etc. Plus, you get a passive bonus from the stance (like Void's ability to ignore strife results) - note that these abilities are conflict scenes only
• Actions
  • You get a free move and one action per turn (water's passive benefit gives you a second action, provided it doesn't require a check, so stuff like calming breath to recover fatigue or an extra move are fair game).
  • Actions have 'types' like attack, support, scheme, move or several of the above. Some abilities trigger off a given action type, and they're not all limited to a specific conflict scene type. A lot of the 'battlefield command' techniques are schemes, for example.
  • Also, strike is a 'generic' attack action - not all attack actions are strikes.
    • Spending ** for a critical strike is specific to a strike action - other attack actions don't inflict critical strikes unless they say they do. Ditto for using the range of the weapon, inflicting fatigue, whatever.
      • As an example, Heartpiercing strike doesn't use either the standard TN of a strike action or the standard effect - it inflicts an automatic critical strike instead. Other techniques which are 'an attack action' may use ranges different to the 'printed' range of the weapon, or substitute the deadliness value for the damage, or other changes.
      • By comparison, some abilities let you use a strike action "when XYZ" (crescent moon style is a good example, letting you counterattack after someone attacks you). Because this specifically uses the strike action, just out-of-sequence, this does follow all the standard rules for a strike action - meaning you might be entitled to a free strike but unable to do anything with it because of the range of the weapon you have equipped.
        • As an aside, remember you always have 'punch', 'kick' and 'bite' unarmed attacks 'equipped' - although expect to risk loosing the odd point of honour and several million style points if you pick up a reputation for settling formal duels in front of high-status nobility by hoofing your opponent in the groin.
• 'Damage'
  • You essentially have two 'hit point tracks' which don't necessarily represent actually being hit with your opponent's weapon; Strife (Composure) and Fatigue (Endurance).
    • Losing fatigue could represent a hit - it could be tiredness, it could be bruises, or minor 'shaving cuts', or anything else which basically hurts, slows you down and generally makes the rest of the fight awkward.
      • This is why 'blunt force trauma' weapons generally inflict a lot of fatigue, but have low deadliness
      • Armour reduces it, allowing you to take minor hits without using up fatigue.
      • your fatigue counts 'up' to your endurance, and doesn't stop when it hits it.
      • When your fatigue is over your endurance, you're incapacitated - basically unable to act (you can do actions which don't require checks, so it's basically run away or do calming breaths to recover) but not 'dead'
      • Note that 'incapacitated' and 'unconscious' are not one and the same (although the one often leads to the other).
    • Strife is also a combination of fear, anger, exhaustion and any other emotion which is bad for your self-control. That's not to say it can't be useful (letting go your rage on the battlefield as an unmasking is potentially advantageous), but it's certainly limiting your ability to keep precise control of yourself - which is why when you're compromised in a duel, it's assumed to represent a blink or a wobble in your guard, and your opponent gets a potentially extremity-removing Finishing Blow immediately.
      • Strife again counts up to your composure
      • When strife is over your composure, you're compromised, which means you can't keep any further strife results on dice - which is bad generally but really bad for anyone relying on ring dice rather than skill dice.
      • You can one-time-zero your strife by unmasking (the exact way you lose it to be agreed between player and GM based on the situation and your personality) but you are not forced to unmask, nor are you forced to accept a particular means of unmasking proposed by the GM, but sometimes the consequences for the unmasking can be as bad as just toughing it out with hobbled dice or spending a few turns calming yourself (especially in a formal setting like an intrigue)
  • Critical strikes represent actual serious cuts and shattered limbs.
    • The severity depends on the deadliness of the weapon inflicting the strike, the fitness roll of the victim, and the reroll for parrying (at a cost of damage to whatever you're parrying with).
    • Blunt force trauma weapons often have low deadliness, which is why you'd spend a void point to not defend - defend, and you'd take a load of fatigue, be incapacitated and unable to fight back, and then they'd hit you again and render you unconscious. By comparison, don't defend, and you'll take a low-deadliness critical that you can probably reduce to nothing more than armour damage, and you can keep fighting with no penalty.
    • Critical strikes are how you deliver the archetypical samurai one-blow-kill: razor-edged weapons give you the ability to increase the deadliness of a weapon by spending * results. To kill someone with a single strike, you need to:
      • Make a successful strike action
        • Spend ** to inflict a critical strike
        • Spend sufficient * on the Razor-edged quality to increase the deadliness of the weapon to the point the resulting critical inflicts the Dying condition.
        • Spend sufficient * on the Razor-edged quality to further counteract any reduction in deadliness from the target's fitness check to resist the critical
      • Or, if your opponent is a minion, pretty much any serious damage will kill them. Minion opponents (unless in big groups) are basically there to make samurai look awesome.

Here's part of an example fight, between a fairly competent bushi, two goblins and a scary oni. I think I've got all the rules right!

Hida Sugi has the following rings: Earth 4, Water 3, Air 2, Fire 2, Void 3. She has Tactics 2, Martial Arts: Melee 3, Meditation 1 and Fitness 3. She has 12 endurance, 14 composure, a focus of 4 and a vigilance of 3.

She’s wielding a ono (range 1-2, damage 5, deadliness 6; wargear) and wearing lacquered armour (physical resistance 4; ceremonial, cumbersome, wargear).

As a rank 3 hida bushi, she can ignore the cumbersome trait on her armour. She can also reduce the severity of one critical hit per round by 7 (!).

She probably has a lot of kata and shuji; the relevant ones for this fight are Lord Hida's Grip and Warrior's Resolve.

At the start of the fight, Sugi has 4 strife and 0 fatigue.

Initiative Phase

Sugi sees the two goblins coming towards her, and both sides make initiative rolls. As it’s a skirmish, they use tactics. The goblins are range 3 away from her.

Sugi choses to use Earth for her initiative roll, standing firm to meet her incoming foes. She gets two successes against TN 1, three opportunities and one strife on her kept dice. Her initiative is 6 (focus 4 plus 1 for succeeding at her Tactics roll, plus 1 for her bonus success). She uses the opportunities to remove strife; each opportunity lets her remove one strife. This takes her to 2 strife in total.

The goblins use Fire for their stance, as they charge straight at her, throwing caution to the wind. They get 3 successes and one strife. Their focus is 3, making their initiative 6.

As both sides are tied for initiative, the side with lower honour goes first. Unfortunately for Sugi, that’s the goblins.

Round 1

The goblins go first, and decide to launch arrows at Sugi and keep their distance. They both make ranged attack rolls with their yumi. They stay in fire stance, as they defiantly stand in the open, loosing arrows at the Hida.

The first goblin gets 2 successes (and 1 strife). That’s a hit, and he does 4 points of damage (basic damage of yumi, with no bonus successes). Sugi’s armour reduces this damage to 0, meaning she doesn’t have to defend at all. The second goblin only gets 1 success and misses.

On her turn, Sugi calmly advances in a defensive stance. Her ono has range 1 – 2, and so after taking her free movement action, she’s in range of the goblins. She attacks the first goblin and gets 3 successes, 2 opportunities and 2 strife. Using the basic Strike action, it means her ono does 8 damage (5 base plus 3 from bonus successes). The goblin has 3 points of physical reduction, so the damage becomes 5. Sadly the goblin only has 3 endurance and so it’s defeated (minions are removed once they take more damage than their endurance). She uses both opportunities to remove strife, keeping her at 2 strife total.

Round 2

Things get a bit trickier when an oni turns up to join the party… It charges into the fight, making an initiative roll using Fire stance. It gets 4 successes, 2 opportunities and 2 strife. As it joined the fight later, the roll is against TN 2, and so it only gets 2 bonus successes. Adding to its focus of 8, it’s clearly going first though!

The oni goes to Earth Stance and charges towards Sugi. It uses its Dread Bellow ability, forcing Sugi to make a Meditation roll to remain where she is. It’s only TN 2 thanks to her Earth stance and she easily passes.

The surviving goblin attacks Sugi with its yari, staying in Fire stance. It gets 2 successes, 1 opportunity and 1 strife. Thanks to fire stance, the strife counts as a bonus success. The goblin does 6 damage (base 5 from yari, plus 1 from bonus success). Sugi’s armour reduces this to 2 damage, which she takes as Fatigue.

Finally, Sugi gets to go. Not too worried by the goblin, she attacks the oni using Lord Hida’s Grip. She has to switch to Void stance for this, and the kata uses Fitness. She decides to spend a void point as well. She gets 4 successes and 1 opportunity (void stance lets her avoid gaining strife from her dice). She swings a massive attack and connects - the oni is now immobilised. She uses an opportunity to force it to make a Fitness check vs TN 3, which it easily passes (which makes this a bit of a waste for Sugi, hey ho). After that, Sugi uses her free movement action to retreat to range band 3.

Round 3

The oni goes first. It can’t attack Sugi as it’s attacks only have range 2 and so it spends the round standing up. It sticks with earth stance.

The goblin attacks Sugi, staying with fire stance. It gets two successes and a strife. The blow connects, doing 5 damage (reduced to 1 by Sugi’s armour). She takes 1 fatigue, for a total of 3 so far. The goblin has 4 strife, and so if it gets any more, it'll be compromised. For a cowardly fighter like this, it may flee when compromised or spend the round cowering and unmasking.

Sugi goes again, and switches to earth stance. She moves in to engage the oni and strike it with her ono. She gets 4 successes, 1 opportunity and 3 strife. She does 9 damage; the oni’s thick hide reduces this to 4 damage. She uses the opportunity to reduce strife, and so has 4 after this action is resolved.

Round 4

The oni strikes! Rearing up it launches an overwhelming attack at Sugi. It gets 6 successes, and 2 strife. It does 10 points of damage to Sugi, which her armour reduces to 6. She’s now taken 9 fatigue.

The goblin stabs her once again and narrowly connects, doing a total of 1 damage after armour. She’s taken 10 fatigue out of her 12 endurance.

Sugi shifts to a more mobile stance (i.e. water stance), and spends a void point to use warrior’s resolve. She removes 5 fatigue (she’s honour 52), taking her down to 5 fatigue. She attacks with her ono and gets 6 successes, 3 strife and 2 opportunities. She does 9 damage to the oni, which it takes 4 fatigue from (total 8 fatigue). She uses the 2 opportunities to activate a critical strike with deadliness 6. The oni resists with a fitness check, and gets 6 successes, which almost entirely negates it. On the plus side, there’s now a minor gash in its hide (i.e. its armour is damaged).

The oni still has 16 endurance, but Sugi is mostly unhurt as well. With her school ability and armour, she might just survive this! If the oni does manage to get a critical strike on her, she'll become afflicted due to the Unholy tag - but that's a problem for another day.

11 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

If you take a critical strike then you are 'hit', even if the strike doesn't do anything.

One thing which helps get people's mind in the right place is the duelling rules:

• A severity 0 critical, as @The Grand Falloon says, can still damage armour (although if you don't have any armour it doesn't do anything else). But it still qualifies as "you are hit by the weapon" so you can, for example, win a Duel-to-first-strike with it (but not a duel-to-first-blood, which, special qualities and techniques aside, requires a critical strike of a certain minimum severity to cause the Bleeding condition).

Technically, even a kimono is armor... So, unless you're naked, a hit damages your "armor"...
Edit to add: note that clothing is 5 of 9 entries on the Armor Table on p. 239.

also, if incapacitated, it's still a critical, and you still go nighty-night...

It can't be reduced below this by the fitness rule, either...

p 273 sayeth

Quote

After an Incapacitated character suffers a critical strike, they suffer the Unconscious condition in addition to any other effects.

So, if not incapacitated, it damages your garments. If incapacitated, it damages your garments & renders you unconscious.

All of you, thank you for your time and help. I just finished my little tutorial for my players. I already made one for basic mechanics and dice rolls, Rokugan clans and now for fighting. There is still one thing I do not quite understand from the Core Rulebook. How does one character die?

I mean with all the rules for fatigue and critical strikes, how do I know that my character is closer to death than before? On character folios in beginners game there are four boxes to match critical strikes am i correct? But in the "full" version, my character needs to be hit with a critical strike that inflicts dying only? Or can I just give her three gashing wounds or broken bones with damaged rings and the character dies?

Ok...

The ways to die

• Hit with a crit that inflicts dying
• Hit with a second crit that inflicts a disadvantage (permanent injury or maiming blow; severity 7-11) (
• Falling damage, either by critical from the fall, or from a sufficiently
• Suffocation.
• Narrative effects that the GM accepts

How to get there in conflict:

• If incapacitated, target goes unconscious from any critical. (see p 272-273), followed by an additional critical.
  • If unconscious, +10 crit value.
  • This requires two crits and that the target be incapacitated already to do in one attack, and not be able to reduce the second crit below 12. This CAN be done with a katana, espcially if the GM doesn't clue in how much endurance the target has.
• If enraged and attacked by an enraged foe, there's a +4 right there; a katana is into the 7-11 for disad crits.
• Multiple lesser crits.
  • Two light wounds become 1 severe wound condition. (p. 273)
  • Two severe become one permanent injury disad. (p. 273)
  • two injury disads may become dying 5 (sidebar, 270)
    • Note that this is only doable if the crits are done by opportunity, save the final one.
    • The GM is the arbiter if the situation happens.
• Entering combat with a scar disad, then taking another scar disad (severity 7-11) (Sidebar, 270)
  • Since scars are permanent... This is reasonably likely to eventually happen.
  • again, the GM has final say.
• Bleeding out
  • take bleeding damage from strife while incapacitated, and with current fatigue ≥ 12 (as this inflicts a severity ≥12 crit) (p. 271)
    • At GM call, a 7-11 might also work.
  • This requires making a check while incapacitated - you won't bleed out over time mechanically.
• Suffocation
  • fail the save, and die. Suijin's Embrace is the most likely cause, but far from the only one.

Note that the sidebar is optional, but allows a severity 7 to kill.

On ‎11‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 11:22 AM, Kaikayi said:

On her turn, Sugi calmly advances in a defensive stance. Her ono has range 1 – 2, and so after taking her free movement action, she’s in range of the goblins. She attacks the first goblin and gets 3 successes, 2 opportunities and 2 strife. Using the basic Strike action, it means her ono does 8 damage (5 base plus 3 from bonus successes).

Sorry to come back on this (realy useful) topic but I thought that only bonus successes did more damage.

Following quoted example, I'd say Sugi does 5 base + 1 bonus success (according TN to hit the goblin was 2). Am I wrong ?

16 hours ago, eScoub said:

Sorry to come back on this (realy useful) topic but I thought that only bonus successes did more damage.

Following quoted example, I'd say Sugi does 5 base + 1 bonus success (according TN to hit the goblin was 2). Am I wrong ?

If it's TN2 to hit, and Sugi rolled 3 successes, then yes - one bonus success means +1 to your weapon's listed damage rating.

If Sugi were in fire stance, then if the Strike action succeeds, the strife also count as bonus successes, so it would be 8 - although it's unlikely Fire Stance would be considered a 'defensive' one as described.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

If Sugi were in fire stance, then if the Strike action succeeds, the strife also count as bonus successes, so it would be 8 - although it's unlikely Fire Stance would be considered a 'defensive' one as described

Well, attack is sometimes the best defense... but yes, I agree.

Thanks for your answer!

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

If Sugi were in fire stance, then if the Strike action succeeds, the strife also count as bonus successes, so it would be 8 - although it's unlikely Fire Stance would be considered a 'defensive' one as described.

Overwhelming defense?