2 PCs are dueling. Iaijutsu duel to the death. The duel is settled when one person is dead or dying.

So the 2 PCs fight and one person is struck with a severity 13 critical strike and suffers an Agonizing Death. Since they are now dying, the conditions of the duel is fulfilled.

However - Since the Dying condition doesn't specify that you cannot act, the PC decides to spend their 3 final rounds trying to take their opponent to the underworld with them.

Does the duel continue? Do we repeat phase 2, do another staredown and so on, until the dying character dies or manages to kill their opponent?

Or does it stop being a Duel and instead become a Skirmish between two people?

I would say the duel continues. If there are judges, the one who struck the first killing blow has probably "won," even if he takes a lethal wound as well. They may call for the duel to end, and if the loser keeps fighting after that, outsiders are perfectly justified to step in without losing honor. But hey, things get heated, and there may be much more blood spent before the day is out.

Well, so mechanically, I think the "duel" ends when an objective occurs - so the killing blow is struck and you as GM score the duel. But the scene doesn't necessarily end right away, so if the other party wants to keep fighting they can roll init on a skirmish, I just don't know if you need to keep using dueling special rules. If for simplicity you want to say it's still a duel, that's perfectly fine, though.

Indeed the loser could still fight... with the Bleeding and Severely Wounded conditions mind you, but the latter can be mitigated by using another stance and you can even negate one or the other by spending a Void point at the start of your turn (if the poor guy’s gonna die, there’s no reason not to spend those Void points now!).

I would not continue to apply Duel specific mechanics though, like gaining strife during staredown, bidding Strife for initiative and most importantly finishing blow. As UnitOmega stated, when either participant fulfilled the duel’s objective, it comes to an end (page 261). Chalk it on the fact that the feud is resolved and the tension of the event drops or something...

On 11/16/2018 at 9:48 PM, Daniel Akbas said:

2 PCs are dueling. Iaijutsu duel to the death. The duel is settled when one person is dead or dying.

So the 2 PCs fight and one person is struck with a severity 13 critical strike and suffers an Agonizing Death. Since they are now dying, the conditions of the duel is fulfilled.

However - Since the Dying condition doesn't specify that you cannot act, the PC decides to spend their 3 final rounds trying to take their opponent to the underworld with them.

Does the duel continue? Do we repeat phase 2, do another staredown and so on, until the dying character dies or manages to kill their opponent?

Or does it stop being a Duel and instead become a Skirmish between two people?

Whatever the players want to do, they can - but there is still the setting to consider. There's presumably a judge present, as well as a secondant on either side. A duel to the death is already a matter of honor. How many duelists will further besmirch their honor in front of witnesses by continuing to fight after they lost?

We have to go deeper here: what happens if the dying character removes Dying from himself with a support action?

Just now, AtoMaki said:

We have to go deeper here: what happens if the dying character removes Dying from himself with a support action?

a duel in the streets? all good. the goal is to survive.

a ritualized indoor duel in front of prominent figures? you just lost the duel, they won't let you die on the floor (well, maybe a scorpion would).

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

We have to go deeper here: what happens if the dying character removes Dying from himself with a support action?

Then they will be expected to commit sudoku after. They lost the duel to the death. Thus, they must die.

oh, for a duel to the death ? sure, remove that dying condition, i'm going to hit you again... and again... and again

This is more complicated than that, guys. You can suffer Dying while having 0 Fatigue and you restore yourself to fully functioning when you remove Dying. Once you remove Dying, the duel is on again, and it is entirely possible that your opponet's next strike will trigger Finishing Blow. If you instakill your opponent there then you win by scoring with a 'No Contest' result being highly likely (you gain +14 points for killing, your opponent gains +6 for achieving the duel objective).

4 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This is more complicated than that, guys. You can suffer Dying while having 0 Fatigue and you restore yourself to fully functioning when you remove Dying. Once you remove Dying, the duel is on again, and it is entirely possible that your opponet's next strike will trigger Finishing Blow. If you instakill your opponent there then you win by scoring with a 'No Contest' result being highly likely (you gain +14 points for killing, your opponent gains +6 for achieving the duel objective).

Oh strange. I thought you had to have the Dying condition inflicted on you before you could remove it on your next turn. Thus, as soon as Dying was inflicted, the Dying person lost.

Is removing it an instant, out-of-turn action, which prevents it from having been inflicted in the first place?

5 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

This is more complicated than that, guys. You can suffer Dying while having 0 Fatigue and you restore yourself to fully functioning when you remove Dying. Once you remove Dying, the duel is on again, and it is entirely possible that your opponet's next strike will trigger Finishing Blow. If you instakill your opponent there then you win by scoring with a 'No Contest' result being highly likely (you gain +14 points for killing, your opponent gains +6 for achieving the duel objective).

i get what you mean. lets say the duelist first strike is a critical strike that puts you in dying condition.

but you have all your endurance left.

then you remove dying, you are fresh as a rose again and the duel continues.

maybe it is fine as is then... the duel just continues.

or

maybe "dying" condition shouldn't be able to be removed by oneself.

it requires further analyse. thx for pointing it out.

Well in a witnessed ritual duel, there's absolutely the argument that someone might step in.

The game is very clear about this. Once you're dying, the duel is over. It doesn't matter that you could heal it or w/e, you got mortally struck, your enemy won. If you were dueling with witnesses, the duel would be considered over. It doesn't matter that you turn around and kill your enemy in the 3 rounds you have remaining, you still lost. In fact, doing so would probably always require a forfeiture of honour, and with witnesses would cost you glory.

But let's say there are no witnesses. Let's say you meet your old enemy Mifune as you're crossing Huan Song bridge, and there's not a soul around. The two of you just decide to settle your business there, once and for all, just the two of you. This is absolutely still a duel and should be run with the duel rules. But if Mifune forfeits his honour, and decides to try to kill you in his final 3 rounds of being alive, is this done with the dueling format or with a skirmish format? Fictionally it's not like you aren't squaring up, aren't measuring your stances, aren't fighting one on one, functionally it's very much the same thing. The main difference would be mechanical. If the duel format is still in play, once the next round ticks over, you might earn enough strife to push you into compromised, and even though Mifune is dying, he gets a final blow on you.

If you switch out of the dueling style and into a skirmish style, there's no risk of this, but what's the justification for changing the format of the battle? Why do we switch to Skirmish when, ostensibly, nothing has changed about us fighting?

This is why I'm asking when a Duel ends. Does it end when the conditions are met, or are the conditions merely fictional, and thus we would continue to use Duel if, for fictional reason, the 1v1 fight continued.

9 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Oh strange. I thought you had to have the Dying condition inflicted on you before you could remove it on your next turn. Thus, as soon as Dying was inflicted, the Dying person lost.

You can remove it on the same turn you gained it. Your opponent wins the duel only at the end of the round, so if you, say, have a lower Initiative Score, then you can remove Dying and the duel does not end... or does it? That's the question here!

here note that despite suffering a high-severity critical damage, you can still suffer only a minor injury due to circumstances (no Fatigue, resisting with bad Ring). At which point Bleeding might be your biggest hit because your Severely Injured Ring is a non-essential one.

Just now, AtoMaki said:

You can remove it on the same turn you gained it. Your opponent wins the duel only at the end of the round, so if you, say, have a lower Initiative Score, then you can remove Dying and the duel does not end... or does it? That's the question here!

Well, I don't have my book in front of me, but I thought the way to win a duel to the death was to inflict dead or dying on your opponent.

In your example, Duelist 1 has inflicted Dying on Duelist 2. Ergo, he has achieved his duel objective, won the duel, and it doesn't really matter what Duelist 2 does on their turn.

But I could be mis-remembering what the Duel to the Death victory condition is.

1 minute ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Well, I don't have my book in front of me, but I thought the way to win a duel to the death was to inflict dead or dying on your opponent.

This one is true, but it is questionable whether the opponent fulfills their objective here if you remove Dying in an instant. See my edit.

imo, a duel to the death is a duel to the death. somebody needs to die. its not a matter of judges or honor/compassion here, i repeat: it is a duel to the DEATH.

so, if you have the dying condition, the duel is NOT over because you are NOT dead yet.

it goes on. try to remove the condition while your opponent keeps trying to kill you, you keep the duel rules going.

1 minute ago, AtoMaki said:

This one is true, but it is questionable whether the opponent fulfills their objective here if you remove Dying in an instant. See my edit.

Why is that questionable? You can remove Dying, but that doesn't prevent it from having happened. At the end of the round the Dying condition was still inflicted.

i dont have the book with me... but did they really wrote that a duel to the death ends after somebody gets the "dying condition" ?

why ffg... why.

this is almost as funky as saying a duel to first blood doesnt end when somebody have bleeding condition but instead when somebody suffers a crit 5+ severity.

anyway, in my game dying condtion =/= death. so a duel to the death, needs to end when somebody is dead, not when somebody is dying.

2 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

i dont have the book with me... but did they really wrote that a duel to the death ends after somebody gets the "dying condition" ?

why ffg... why.

Because inflicting dying means you hit someone hard enough that they're going to die? And the rulebook explicitly says (paraphasing): "even if they manage to survive after being hit with dying, they've lost and are expected to die anyways."

I know you hate the RAW, but c'mon.

5 minutes ago, Hida Jitenno said:

Because inflicting dying means you hit someone hard enough that they're going to die? And the rulebook explicitly says (paraphasing): "even if they manage to survive after being hit with dying, they've lost and are expected to die anyways."

I know you hate the RAW, but c'mon.

"they've lost and are expected to die anyways"

question mark ?

in a duel in court, i get it, probably a sepukku case most probably.

but in the middle of the wood ? expected to die ? care to explain how you would deal with that ?

edit: and i dont "hate" RAW otherwise i wouldn't have 700+ posts in this forum (thats a lot of hours dude). I just think there are flagrant issues with some of the RAW and that the game needed to cook a bit more before going to the printer.

1 minute ago, Avatar111 said:

"they've lost and are expected to die anyways"

question mark ?

in a duel in court, i get it, probably a sepukku case most probably.

but in the middle of the wood ? expected to die ? care to explain how you would deal with that ?

I would explain it by using skirmish instead of duel. Alternatively, if the two duelists in the middle of the woods agreed to the terms of Duel to the Death, then the Dying one would be honor-bound to die.

I would hit that person with massive honor loss, as suggested by the rulebook, for reneging the duel conditions.

5 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

"they've lost and are expected to die anyways"

question mark ?

in a duel in court, i get it, probably a sepukku case most probably.

but in the middle of the wood ? expected to die ? care to explain how you would deal with that ?

I think I can elaborate on this.
Remember that L5R is a game of honourbound samurai. If tradition decrees that you should acknowledge your defeat, say your final words and peacefully go to the next world, then that is what you're expected to do. Not doing so would demand a forfeiture of honour.

Some samurai for sure would not care, but the prevailing societal assumption is that most of them would.

EDIT: This guy gets it

2 minutes ago, Daniel Akbas said:

I think I can elaborate on this.
Remember that L5R is a game of honourbound samurai. If tradition decrees that you should acknowledge your defeat, say your final words and peacefully go to the next world, then that is what you're expected to do. Not doing so would demand a forfeiture of honour.

Some samurai for sure would not care, but the prevailing societal assumption is that most of them would.

makes sense.

would a samurai, again in the wood, would lose honor if he decide to end his dying opponent, to make sure they are.. dead ?

4 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

makes sense.

would a samurai, again in the wood, would lose honor if he decide to end his dying opponent, to make sure they are.. dead ?

I think it would certainly be acceptable to offer it. Your defeated foe is suffering an agonizing death. Offering to take their head and expedite their death could be seen as acting on the Bushido tenet of compassion.
I think the key is to offer it though. I think not letting your opponent die on their own terms would be bad form. You've already won, after all. That's just ficton-speculation from me though, so I would take it with a grain of salt ^^