11 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

The Kakita ability might not matter for First Strike (since landing any hit counts, unless the GM says a judge doesn't think it counts), but it should matter to First Blood as unless I'm mistaken somewhere, the target still rolls Fitness to take the crit (this is seperate from your ability to defend) and if they, in fact, reduce it below drawing blood that means you don't complete the objective.

That's correct; the critical has to inflict the Bleeding condition once any increases (Way of the Crane) or decreases (Way of the Crab) to the severity are taken into account. If you can keep reducing it to severity 0 with fitness checks I don't think you even give away any 'points' if it does to the judges...

Unless it changed from the Beta, Way of the Crab is only one-use-per-scene but even in ceremonial robes, taking 1 + school rank off the severity of a critical plus the effect of a fitness check is a huge deal, especially if they're fighting in earth stance so you have to either incapacitate them or pull something like Flowing Water Strike.

Flowing Water Strike is basically the I Win At Duels To First Blood technique - it's water stance allowing you to ready your blade and strike in one turn and it's only TN3 with no opportunity spends required - it doesn't (if they pass a fitness check) even inflict fatigue, so it's rather honourably drawing juuuuust enough blood to win the duel and no more.

Actually now, the Hida technique is applicable once per round! This said, even reduced to zero a crit will damage armor (which in the case of clothings will remove any protection they may grant).

Funny thing too about first blood duels: the description of the objectives on p. 258 does not even state that the Bleeding condition must be inflicted (quite counter-intuitively), but that a critical hit of Severity 5+ must be dealt. That's all the more puzzling that a crit of severity 3-4 will also inflict the Bleeding condition if inflicted with a razor-edged weapon... it's all a little bit confusing :s

12 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

That's correct; the critical has to inflict the Bleeding condition once any increases (Way of the Crane) or decreases (Way of the Crab) to the severity are taken into account. If you can keep reducing it to severity 0 with fitness checks I don't think you even give away any 'points' if it does to the judges...

Unless it changed from the Beta, Way of the Crab is only one-use-per-scene but even in ceremonial robes, taking 1 + school rank off the severity of a critical plus the effect of a fitness check is a huge deal, especially if they're fighting in earth stance so you have to either incapacitate them or pull something like Flowing Water Strike.

Flowing Water Strike is basically the I Win At Duels To First Blood technique - it's water stance allowing you to ready your blade and strike in one turn and it's only TN3 with no opportunity spends required - it doesn't (if they pass a fitness check) even inflict fatigue, so it's rather honourably drawing juuuuust enough blood to win the duel and no more.

duel to first strike is not about bleeding, its about severity 5+.

flowing water doesnt work.

way of the crab is now "all the time", but i personally nerfed that also....

32 minutes ago, Franwax said:

Actually now, the Hida technique is applicable once per round! This said, even reduced to zero a crit will damage armor (which in the case of clothings will remove any protection they may grant).

Funny thing too about first blood duels: the description of the objectives on p. 258 does not even state that the Bleeding condition must be inflicted (quite counter-intuitively), but that a critical hit of Severity 5+ must be dealt. That's all the more puzzling that a crit of severity 3-4 will also inflict the Bleeding condition if inflicted with a razor-edged weapon... it's all a little bit confusing :s

The game needed a second round of beta and proof reading.

But probably for corporate or human reasons (employees leaving, freelance contracts over, game took too long in development and wouldn't have been profitable enough if they kept working in it, or simply that the designers were new to pen&paper rpg mechanical design) they decided to press the "ship it" button before it was fully polished.

We can hope for a "revised" or "complete" edition in a few years if that one sells good.

11 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

The Kakita ability might not matter for First Strike (since landing any hit counts, unless the GM says a judge doesn't think it counts), but it should matter to First Blood as unless I'm mistaken somewhere, the target still rolls Fitness to take the crit (this is seperate from your ability to defend) and if they, in fact, reduce it below drawing blood that means you don't complete the objective.

Personal experience is anecdotal, but in my personal experience at least Way of the Crane hasn't mattered yet. Between the various ways to avoid a severity 5 crit, it simply hasn't happened yet that increasing that initial severity has decided a duel. Right now I'm inclined to think that when it does help decide a duel it's more likely to be through inflicting strife via the Fitness check than through getting that winning crit - unless the opponent is already compromised or otherwise unable to make a proper Fitness check, but at that point Way of the Crane isn't going to matter anymore anyway.

d/p

43 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

Personal experience is anecdotal, but in my personal experience at least Way of the Crane hasn't mattered yet. Between the various ways to avoid a severity 5 crit, it simply hasn't happened yet that increasing that initial severity has decided a duel. Right now I'm inclined to think that when it does help decide a duel it's more likely to be through inflicting strife via the Fitness check than through getting that winning crit - unless the opponent is already compromised or otherwise unable to make a proper Fitness check, but at that point Way of the Crane isn't going to matter anymore anyway.

Way of the Crane is not inherently bad.

it is the duel rules and some of the game system rules that have kinks, mostly.

1st: there are no reason why iaijutsu techniques cant crit with opp spending.

2nd: there are too many ways to hard counter critical strikes in duels (earth/fire stance). only the "predict" action can help with that, but not even that much and it is just a terrible ability anyway because it doesn't put pressure on the opponent (ie: because it doesn't have a check).

3rd: there are no ways to fish for that finishing blow, because the only way to strife an opponent would be to use fire stance (or the terribad predict action)

4th: resist checks. that you can spend opportunities in resist checks is totally busted. if you resist a crit in fire stance, with 1opp you can put 2 strife on your opponent, and with 3 opp (ok, thats lucky, but still) you can put 2 strife + make him have to gain 2 strife if he wants to attack you next round. so basically, by resisting crits, you gain the upper hand...

shameless plug:

go see my houserules.

i have 600+ posts in these forums only, countless of hours of studying the game rules, multiples discussions with many people about fixes and rules, went thru many iterations (i remember when i was thinking of nerfing/changing earth stance...)... and now... now, i feel really confident in my houserules. i think they are very hard to argue with.

First off, Iajutsu duelists become stronger lategame, where crits are easier to get and their severity threat is higher. If you want to powergame it, use wait in duels for your opponent to take a stance, than strike with a crippling crit. At this point, your biggest worry is earth stance as it can ignore crits. To deal with earth, you can either take the air fatigue technique that is base tn 4 for earth and scales with opportunity, or the water school and predict earth stance to force them out of this, although you can no longer wait and predict in the same turn via water.

Regardless, fire packs unresistable strife damage, so you need to bump up composure through either water or earth, use water to recover strife during your turn, or get a power gamy passion that can be used in social circumstances.

you cannot wait in duels.

predict is bad. and with water stance it isn't much better. predict is an attack/sheme action if i recall correctly.

so unless you take earth stance and use predict (so that the opponent doesn't crit you while you "predict"), it is useless.

your best option is to: go earth stance, use predict earth. and win the initiative next round and use water stance to draw + strike (because iaijutsu tech cant crit and your weapon is not out since you had to predict in earth stance so that the opponent doesnt water draw crit you)

so you get ONE chance, at a water strike to have the crit you need.

while the opponent probably took out his weapon and strike you with water while you predicted earth in the first round (or took out his weapon only and used another stance, or even just centered) and then, if your ONE chance with water ring strike doesnt work... hes going to pick that fire stance (or his best ring) and give you another whack.

you see how wrong that is ?

answer is; its boringly wrong.

oh and i forgot: hope that the opponent is not an hiruma because he could choose fire (when you predict earth) and then switch to earth after he attacks you with his school ability (predict only work on "the next time he choose a stance" so that went down the drain when he picked fire).

9 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

you cannot wait in duels...

...your best option is to: go earth stance, use predict earth. and win the initiative next round and use water stance to draw + strike (because iaijutsu tech cant crit and your weapon is not out since you had to predict in earth stance so that the opponent doesnt water draw crit you)

so you get ONE chance, at a water strike to have the crit you need.

The reason why I agreed with you about the design being flawed is because it seems to me (just IMO) that the designers expected everyone to wait until their opponent was compromised, forced into a finishing blow, and then the 'cooler-headed' duelist could interrupt with their own finishing blow. In this scenario, the kakita tech is good; since finishing blow auto-crits with weapon severity x2, it allows you to tune your blow to the sort of duel you're fighting. It seems to me they did not anticipate that duelists would generally just attack using regular strikes as soon as they could get an edge.

The dueling system needs a better reason to want your opponent to twitch first. Allow finishing blow interrupts even against regular attacks? Require a participant to stake honor to strike first (i.e. win or lose honor)? Cause a regular strike in a duel to accumulate strife fast (i.e. so you risk compromise when you do it)? One strike per participant only (so a regular strike that doesn't crit essentially loses you the duel)? I don't know.

19 minutes ago, easl said:

The reason why I agreed with you about the design being flawed is because it seems to me (just IMO) that the designers expected everyone to wait until their opponent was compromised, forced into a finishing blow, and then the 'cooler-headed' duelist could interrupt with their own finishing blow. In this scenario, the kakita tech is good; since finishing blow auto-crits with weapon severity x2, it allows you to tune your blow to the sort of duel you're fighting. It seems to me they did not anticipate that duelists would generally just attack using regular strikes as soon as they could get an edge.

The dueling system needs a better reason to want your opponent to twitch first. Allow finishing blow interrupts even against regular attacks? Require a participant to stake honor to strike first (i.e. win or lose honor)? Cause a regular strike in a duel to accumulate strife fast (i.e. so you risk compromise when you do it)? One strike per participant only (so a regular strike that doesn't crit essentially loses you the duel)? I don't know.

i'm fine with a character that wants to attack as soon as he can. initiative should be VERY important in duels. hence why the staredown exists, hence why you want a good focus stat. if the staredown is super important, the bidding is important, if the bidding is important... the strife game and finishing blows become important.

though, i'm NOT fine with the fact that iaijutsu techniques cannot crit, or that there are stances than basically make it impossible (or **** hard) to crit.

in my mind, you could have a duelist who's more about doing flurry of blows until he incapacitate his opponent (mirumoto), but then, you should have kakita who is willing to take the risk to get attacked once or twice so that he can "pimp himself" or "compromise his opponent" and then go for a crit.

in the current system, the option of going for a crit simply does not work because: iai tech can't crit, there are no good ways of inflicting strife to an opponent, and that some stances make it impossible to crit.

my houserule fixes that.

my rule doesn't make it so that a more aggressive style of "strike hard, fast, with two weapons and aim for incapacitated" wouldn't work, it still works pretty **** good!! I guarantee you that. and it actually could still be the best way to win. But, BUT, it makes it possible for the other style (the one strike style) to work.

hence the magic of my fix. i am not neutralising other styles, i'm simply making more styles viable.

also, since i really liked the concept of the predict action, but saw absolutely no case where it would be viable to use under the core rule, I took it and tweaked it to make it a major part of the duel, making duels a lot more about mindgames, and making duels a lot more about having a better balance of all your rings (musashi taught me). So, I even found a way to make Vigilance a useful stat in duels, making water and air rings a bit better (core rules, its all about earth and fire for duels).

i know i'm trying hard to sell my houserules here, but i've seen sooooo many threads and posts about how duels "doesn't seem to work as imagined" that i've spend countless hours and testing in coming up with the easiest, simplest, most efficient fix that doesn't break anything, doesn't make duels take 3 hours to finish, nor that take a bachelor degree to understand.

and I would be very pleased if someone could find a way to break my houserule. because I would go back to the drawing board and keep improving it.

16 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

That's correct; the critical has to inflict the Bleeding condition once any increases (Way of the Crane) or decreases (Way of the Crab) to the severity are taken into account. If you can keep reducing it to severity 0 with fitness checks I don't think you even give away any 'points' if it does to the judges...

Unless it changed from the Beta, Way of the Crab is only one-use-per-scene but even in ceremonial robes, taking 1 + school rank off the severity of a critical plus the effect of a fitness check is a huge deal, especially if they're fighting in earth stance so you have to either incapacitate them or pull something like Flowing Water Strike.

Yes, Way of the Crab changed. To once per round, Armor+SR, to minimum zero.

And 0 counts for Touch, and triggering unconscious.

9 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

in the current system, the option of going for a crit simply does not work because: iai tech can't crit, there are no good ways of inflicting strife to an opponent, and that some stances make it impossible to crit.

Re: 'no good ways to inflict strife.' That's because you house ruled it away lol. "Predict" was the system's way to inflict strife on ones' opponent. I have no problem with house rules in general or yours in particular, but keep in mind you're now complaining there's no good way to inflict strife...after you've changed the action that inflicted 4 strife.

Re: Iai tech can't crit. As I read it (and I could be wrong), Rising blade has no such restriction. In the errata'd description it's just a regular attack and can crit like any other. In the original (and this is poor writing, I admit, since it kind of 'hides' an implication of what the tech does), if you were compromised you couldn't defend against it...and in the skirmish section (p 268) it says if you can't defend against damage, it's an automatic crit. So even in the original text, rising blade could (and would automatically) crit compromised opponents.

So you can see kind of how the system was designed to work. Standoff keeps raising strife. Predict becomes a game of trying to raise your opponents' strife even faster while not letting them raise yours. Whomever compromises first probably loses, since they must strike and this allows their opponent to interrupt their strike with an auto crit. Calming breath and Center are used occasionally, when the situation warrants it (for example: it's round 2. You've got 3 strife. Your composure is 6. You know you're going to compromise in the next staredown, but reducing strife by even just that one point lets you hold off another round).

As I said earlier, I agree with you that I don't think the designers anticipated that duels would go immediately into skirmishes. The "flurry of blows" style of dueling that you prefer is not precisely the concept of an Iaijutsu duel, which is much more 'one strike only'. That is not a criticism; if your table prefers less strict and custom-bound duels, then yes you absolutely should tweak the system to make it support your play style better. You're right to point out that the dueling system as designed does not support a more skirmish style of dueling, where people are dodging and trading blows etc. But that's I think in part because that's not the 'vision' of how honor and custom-bound samurai who intentionally take off their armor before they start would duel. Let's face it: taking off your armor before lethal combat is unnecessarily risky. Waiting for your opponent to strike first is unnecessarily risky. But that's part of the dueling culture; you're demonstrating to the crowd that you're so sincere about the point of honor under question, that you're willing to take unnecessary risks with your life in order to defend your position. The difference between dueling and just fighting is that while the latter might be about maximizing your combat survival, the former is (at least in principle) more about demonstrating courage and saving face.

4 minutes ago, easl said:

Re: Iai tech can't crit. As I read it (and I could be wrong), Rising blade has no such restriction. In the errata'd description it's just a regular attack and can crit like any other.

No. " Spend ** to inflict a critical strike " is a property of the Strike action (the 'generic attack'), not a universal property of all attack actions.

Other techniques do not have this ability unless either they specifically call out inflicting a critical strike or have a strike action 'nested' within them (like Crescent Moon Style).

6 minutes ago, easl said:

if you were compromised you couldn't defend against it...and in the skirmish section (p 268) it says if you can't defend against damage, it's an automatic crit. So even in the original text, rising blade could (and would automatically) crit compromised  opponents.

This much is true. Any fatigue-inflicting attack action will automatically cause a critical strike against an opponent unable or unwilling to defend (for whatever reason).

1 hour ago, easl said:

Re: 'no good ways to inflict strife.' That's because you house ruled it away lol. "Predict" was the system's way to inflict strife on ones' opponent. I have no problem with house rules in general or yours in particular, but keep in mind you're now complaining there's no good way to inflict strife...after you've changed the action that inflicted 4 strife.

Re: Iai tech can't crit. As I read it (and I could be wrong), Rising blade has no such restriction. In the errata'd description it's just a regular attack and can crit like any other. In the original (and this is poor writing, I admit, since it kind of 'hides' an implication of what the tech does), if you were compromised you couldn't defend against it...and in the skirmish section (p 268) it says if you can't defend against damage, it's an automatic crit. So even in the original text, rising blade could (and would automatically) crit compromised opponents.

So you can see kind of how the system was designed to work. Standoff keeps raising strife. Predict becomes a game of trying to raise your opponents' strife even faster while not letting them raise yours. Whomever compromises first probably loses, since they must strike and this allows their opponent to interrupt their strike with an auto crit. Calming breath and Center are used occasionally, when the situation warrants it (for example: it's round 2. You've got 3 strife. Your composure is 6. You know you're going to compromise in the next staredown, but reducing strife by even just that one point lets you hold off another round).

As I said earlier, I agree with you that I don't think the designers anticipated that duels would go immediately into skirmishes. The "flurry of blows" style of dueling that you prefer is not precisely the concept of an Iaijutsu duel, which is much more 'one strike only'. That is not a criticism; if your table prefers less strict and custom-bound duels, then yes you absolutely should tweak the system to make it support your play style better. You're right to point out that the dueling system as designed does not support a more skirmish style of dueling, where people are dodging and trading blows etc. But that's I think in part because that's not the 'vision' of how honor and custom-bound samurai who intentionally take off their armor before they start would duel. Let's face it: taking off your armor before lethal combat is unnecessarily risky. Waiting for your opponent to strike first is unnecessarily risky. But that's part of the dueling culture; you're demonstrating to the crowd that you're so sincere about the point of honor under question, that you're willing to take unnecessary risks with your life in order to defend your position. The difference between dueling and just fighting is that while the latter might be about maximizing your combat survival, the former is (at least in principle) more about demonstrating courage and saving face.

My houserule makes it EASIER to predict the opponent since you basically get a predict action for free every round.

And if you dont realise that predict in RAW is awful because there is no check associated with it and that it eats your action... And that the opponent can easily play around it knowing you have to pass your turn to predict... You need to understand the rules better.

Edit; and no, iai tech cannot crit.

Edit2; and i've said the current dueling rules only support a skirmish style duel, and do not support a one strike duel.

And I LIKE to support one strike duels which is the whole point of my houserule...

Edit3; sure, rising blade can crit when opponent is conpromised. But so can crossing cut with a finishing blow.

Basically, you might want to go back and read the rules and playtest a bit before getting into mechanical discussions.

13 minutes ago, easl said:

Re: 'no good ways to inflict strife.' That's because you house ruled it away lol. "Predict" was the system's way to inflict strife on ones' opponent. I have no problem with house rules in general or yours in particular, but keep in mind you're now complaining there's no good way to inflict strife...after you've changed the action that inflicted 4 strife.

To be fair, I have seen the house rule in question and, if anything, it gives MORE prominence to the Predict action, since it becomes an automatic step nested in the bidding / staredown phase. I have to admit I kind of like the idea... I wanted to like the Predict action as written but it's true that doing nothing else on your turn is a bit too high a cost for the effective benefit this grants you (hypothetically chancing on the one Ring your opponent was going to pick next turn... assuming it isn't Void). Besides, it's telegraphed: your opponent knows you're taking the Predict action, so they may change their next stance selection in anticipation. If everyone auto-predicts each turn, this really becomes part of the game.

3 minutes ago, easl said:

Re: 'no good ways to inflict strife.' That's because you house ruled it away lol. "Predict" was the system's way to inflict strife on ones' opponent. I have no problem with house rules in general or yours in particular, but keep in mind you're now complaining there's no good way to inflict strife...after you've changed the action that inflicted 4 strife.

Predict is a pretty bad choice because it allows your opponent to Center and force you into a staredown showdown.

5 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Predict is a pretty bad choice because it allows your opponent to Center and force you into a staredown showdown.

Predict is awful. If you predict me, I'd rather use one of my low ring to strike you and get a chance at opportunities and maybe damage too.

You basically skipped your turn to predict me lol.

I really hope Emerald Empire discusses the dueling culture so we can put some of this past us.

I am with easl here in that generally, it seems like many people have different opinions on how iaijutsu works. To me, you should not be waling back and forth on each other with swords - iaijutsu/iaido does not mean generically "sword techniques" it's specifically the fast draw and single cut technique. The way the duel rules and iaijutsu win condition are set up, you are either good enough to use Water and draw and cut on a single strike (or if you're a Kakita Master just drop Strike With No Thought) or you engage in the extended staredown and try to use tricks like Center, Calming Breath and Predict to force your opponent to scoot up Strife ahead of you, they hit Compromise and blam you use an Iaijutsu Technique to draw and strike as a single action for Finishing Blow, which inflicts the crit you need to end it. If this seems too long and drawn out and showy for your group (where potentially nothing happens for 4-5 turns), you should maybe just use one-roll duels and resolve in a single flash of blades.

5 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

I really hope Emerald Empire discusses the dueling culture so we can put some of this past us.

I am with easl here in that generally, it seems like many people have different opinions on how iaijutsu works. To me, you should not be waling back and forth on each other with swords - iaijutsu/iaido does not mean generically "sword techniques" it's specifically the fast draw and single cut technique. The way the duel rules and iaijutsu win condition are set up, you are either good enough to use Water and draw and cut on a single strike (or if you're a Kakita Master just drop Strike With No Thought) or you engage in the extended staredown and try to use tricks like Center, Calming Breath and Predict to force your opponent to scoot up Strife ahead of you, they hit Compromise and blam you use an Iaijutsu Technique to draw and strike as a single action for Finishing Blow, which inflicts the crit you need to end it. If this seems too long and drawn out and showy for your group (where potentially nothing happens for 4-5 turns), you should maybe just use one-roll duels and resolve in a single flash of blades.

I agree, but I can't help but feel it should not be a matter of opinion. The rules spelled this out in previous editions. It should not be this open in this edition.

1 minute ago, nameless ronin said:

I agree, but I can't help but feel it should not be a matter of opinion. The rules spelled this out in previous editions. It should not be this open in this edition.

Well, In previous editions, I believe the duel "rules" were just iaijutsu, and some of the other stuff was just fighting in specific circumstances. Now "duel" is a toolkit type of scene which handles 1 on 1 contests with specific objectives, and you have to set out the terms and conditions in play. The ones given in the book are just some common examples, not meant to be the end-all-be-all for a GM, as they even talk about how you might arrange a duel with bows, or wrestling. Or an Utaku gets a bonus in a duel while mounted and moving which isn't really covered in any of the example forms. This is why I'm hoping for more clarification on the fluff end so we can establish "Marquess of Doji" rules and say what is and is not considered proper form in an iaijutsu duel.

1 minute ago, UnitOmega said:

Well, In previous editions, I believe the duel "rules" were just iaijutsu, and some of the other stuff was just fighting in specific circumstances. Now "duel" is a toolkit type of scene which handles 1 on 1 contests with specific objectives, and you have to set out the terms and conditions in play. The ones given in the book are just some common examples, not meant to be the end-all-be-all for a GM, as they even talk about how you might arrange a duel with bows, or wrestling. Or an Utaku gets a bonus in a duel while mounted and moving which isn't really covered in any of the example forms. This is why I'm hoping for more clarification on the fluff end so we can establish "Marquess of Doji" rules and say what is and is not considered proper form in an iaijutsu duel.

In previous editions non-iai duels were simply one-on-one combat. You could add some specific rules if you wanted it to be more formal than just a two-man brawl, but that was it. The point is that "official" duels of iaijutsu to settle matters of honor or justice were recognized as such, because they are (presumably still, in this edition) so important to the setting and the game. I'm with you in hoping EE will go into this in detail, but for me it's a big oversight that the core book is so sparse when it comes to information about formal duels. This should not be sourcebook material.

31 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

I really hope Emerald Empire discusses the dueling culture so we can put some of this past us.

I am with easl here in that generally, it seems like many people have different opinions on how iaijutsu works. To me, you should not be waling back and forth on each other with swords - iaijutsu/iaido does not mean generically "sword techniques" it's specifically the fast draw and single cut technique. The way the duel rules and iaijutsu win condition are set up, you are either good enough to use Water and draw and cut on a single strike (or if you're a Kakita Master just drop Strike With No Thought) or you engage in the extended staredown and try to use tricks like Center, Calming Breath and Predict to force your opponent to scoot up Strife ahead of you, they hit Compromise and blam you use an Iaijutsu Technique to draw and strike as a single action for Finishing Blow, which inflicts the crit you need to end it. If this seems too long and drawn out and showy for your group (where potentially nothing happens for 4-5 turns), you should maybe just use one-roll duels and resolve in a single flash of blades.

duels rules are made to accommodate different types of 1v1. true. and that is fine! amazing actually.

if you want to play duels out like mini skirmishes with a strife counter, the system works perfectly fine, predict and center are still trash actions though, but otherwise the system works fine because it is like a skirmish with only a strife counter added.

it just falls flat for the iaijutsu "first strike / first blood" duel (which are extremely boring if played with rule as written, and don't favor the type of characters who actually should be favored)

IF you decide to implement that you can only do 1 strike for your duel (narrative reason etc), then do you allow the duellist to draw their sword ? otherwise it is all broken even more! because basically, stay in earth, predict earth, the other guy will take void and predict water (so you still cannot strike during your turn) etc etc... guy with highest composure wins. isn't that... limited and, honestly, broken ?

iaijutsu duels as fantasized don't work in the current rules.

they would need my houserule to be possible (iai tech can crit, and you can with the right prediction nullify stance effects). Now it creates mindgames and tons of possibilities, it also puts a lot of emphasis on the bidding phase which you really want to win probably in round 2 and/or 3. it puts tension/pressure and it makes the whole thing fun and active.

3 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

I really hope Emerald Empire discusses the dueling culture so we can put some of this past us.

I am with easl here in that generally, it seems like many people have different opinions on how iaijutsu works. To me, you should not be waling back and forth on each other with swords - iaijutsu/iaido does not mean generically "sword techniques" it's specifically the fast draw and single cut technique. The way the duel rules and iaijutsu win condition are set up, you are either good enough to use Water and draw and cut on a single strike (or if you're a Kakita Master just drop Strike With No Thought) or you engage in the extended staredown and try to use tricks like Center, Calming Breath and Predict to force your opponent to scoot up Strife ahead of you, they hit Compromise and blam you use an Iaijutsu Technique to draw and strike as a single action for Finishing Blow, which inflicts the crit you need to end it. If this seems too long and drawn out and showy for your group (where potentially nothing happens for 4-5 turns), you should maybe just use one-roll duels and resolve in a single flash of blades.

This. You basically summarize my thoughts. I can't believe they dropped the ball with duels which are such an important part of the setting. They are used to settle honor offenses, to settle war conflicts, to settle accusations (law stuff)... The duelling system as it is wants to cover too much stuff and it fails... It does nothing for my group. Strike, strike, strike... What travesty is this? Kakita's philosophy was summarized as "one man, one sword, one strike", not "strike, strike, strike"...

You get the "single strike duel" from Rank 3 (or from Rank 2 for the better) when Heartpiercing Strike (HPS) enters the field.

By the way, did anyone notice that the Matsu Berserker gets exclusive Rank 2 access to HPS? She becomes a fluffy Kakita-style one-strike duelist sooner than the Kakita Duelist. I found this very-very ironic, all things considered.