28 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

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.

HPS is an auto win only for first strike duels, not first blood probably (unless you are a kakita rank3..)

Though, truly this technique by itself changes the game. EXCEPT, you need to draw your weapon first, so this is not a turn 1 tactic.

I dont think it is op or anything.

Especially with my duel rules, you could predict fire in the second round staredown and at that point, does he have enough composure to bid for the ini + take the strife hit if he goes fire HPS?

But even under core rule, it is fine I think, and it actually "unclog" first strike and first blood duels a bit.

2 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Except, you need to draw your weapon first, so this is not a turn 1 tactic. I dont think it is op or anything.

It is supposed to be.

Note they say skirmish in that response, and also the book says when talking about Iaijutsu you draw no sooner than turn one.

14 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

It is supposed to be.

Nah, the ffg guy talk about skirmish (not duels) and also, the draw a weapon during ini thing in the corebook is a remnant of the beta. Plus, since there are no explicit example of it on pages 328-29, the GM can say that it is impossible.

So at that point, if you allow drawing weapons with any ring opportunity in initiative phase.. good for you but i dont think this is standard.

Edit; though, as most people know, i'm totally cool with houserules! So no matter how you play, if it works with your group and playstyle, it is all good.

I had to adjust the rules because of how my players want to play (more tactical, very "gamey" players that will not abuse or try to break the rules but that will use the rule as written to their most optimal efficiency, and then we figured out the game had cracks when played as such)

6 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

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.

Not exclusive. Mirumoto get it at rank 2 as well.

9 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

Note they say skirmish in that response, and also the book says when talking about Iaijutsu you draw no sooner than turn one.

9 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Nah, the ffg guy talk about skirmish (not duels) and also, the draw a weapon during ini thing in the corebook is a remnant of the beta. Plus, since there are no explicit example of it on pages 328-29, the GM can say that it is impossible.

The reference is in the Skirmish section, but that paragraph further references the Opp tables at the end of the book where there are no "Skirmish-only" Opps. To the point where if you perform an Assault action in Mass Battle and make the Tactics Skill Check with Air, you can move your troops along a vertical surface if you spend the Opp for it .

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

To  the point where if you perform an Assault ac  tion in Mass Battle and make the Tactics Skill Check with Air, you can move your troops along a vertical surface if you spend the Opp for it .

City walls? What walls?

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

The reference is in the Skirmish section, but that paragraph further references the Opp tables at the end of the book where there are no "Skirmish-only" Opps. To the point where if you perform an Assault action in Mass Battle and make the Tactics Skill Check with Air, you can move your troops along a vertical surface if you spend the Opp for it .

In fairness, a 'round' in a mass battle is somewhere between one and two hours - long enough to bring up some sufficient ladders to move up en masse or create a breach with some siege weapons or something.

17 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

The reference is in the Skirmish section, but that paragraph further references the Opp tables at the end of the book where there are no "Skirmish-only" Opps. To the point where if you perform an Assault action in Mass Battle and make the Tactics Skill Check with Air, you can move your troops along a vertical surface if you spend the Opp for it .

It's going to be rather uncommon to get sufficient to get severity 12+. It's TN4 Fire... so you need 4 Successes, and can assume 2/3 of those are going to carry strive, but you need ∑( extra successes + strife). To be able to make the initial hit, you need 4+2k4 or 5+1k5 to expecte successes sufficient to trigger relatively reliably. You can expect 3 bonus successes (all from strife) Which puts a katana into Scar range.

Even with all kept being success+strife, that's only 4 of the 7 (keep 4) or 6 of the 7 (keep 5) needed.

But that's not the classic Samurai Fiction one-hit kill - that's usually depicted as either taking the head off (highly desired historically, and in fact practiced for!) or a diagonal slice through the chest (not usually successful at cleaving in reality, but still often fatal to the target. Sometimes results in a very stuck blade); lesser romanticized but more historical, the belly cleave, which was only useful on unarmored foes, and was pretty much an execution strike, not a combat one.

For the "1-hit decapitation" or "slice the torso in twain," you need a 16 severity... which is another 4 successes, or 2 successes with strife. So a total of 4+ real successes, and (15-successes) strife... the odds are long.

Rising Cut vs a compromised target does provide for it much easier, as to get to 16, you only need 3 bonus successes, and only TN1, due to the Severity being 2×(Deadliness+BS). But they need to be compromised, first. (Otherwise, its a fatigue hit of same, or a mere base deadliness crit if incapacitated).

Striking as Fire combines with any of these to make it slightly easier - opp+strife is not a bad option if you can get the extra successes by popping explosives.

striking as fire as written is a bit trash.

the regular opportunity spending for martial fire on p.328 does a similar (and better under certain circumstances) effect

striking as fire: 1+opp = next critical strike +1 severity per opp spent. last until end of your next turn.

fire martial opportunity: 1+opp = increase the TN of the next check the target makes to resist a critical by 1 per opp spent this way. last until the start of your next turn.

razor-edged quality: 1+opp = +1 deadlines per opp spent this way.

as you can see, the fire martial opportunity is the best option if you are going to use it during the same turn. as it increases the TN so there is a chance the opponent doesn't resist enough to reach the TN so that the full critical hits him. because you need to succeed the TN to start reducing the crit severity.

it is also the best option to boost your buddies, as it last until the start of your next turn. so if its to enable a buddy, you are better off with that than striking as fire...

striking as fire is good if you sacrifice your current attack to "buff" your OWN next turn. which is very situational and quite... bad. to be honest.

razor-edged is also less good than the martial fire opp spending... unless deadliness improves your dmg or what not (like in a iaijutsu technique).

another thing to note, since all these options are written differently: increase TN, increase deadliness, increase crit severity... they all stack with each other. which is cool under certain circumstances like party based fights.

to balance things out, in my houserules (yes, those again), I made the following changes:

striking as fire: instead of being "the next time the target suffers a critical strike" i wrote "whenever the target receive a critical strike". this is a straight up buff as now it works on every critical strike the target receive during the round, but, striking as water works the same; it works on every attack a target receive until the end of your next turn... so to me, it is fair.

and for the fire martial opp, i made it last until end of your turn (instead of beginning of your next turn). again, to make it similar to the water martial opp spending to reduce resistance that doesn't work to buff your friends (unless you take strikign as water kata).

by nerfing a bit the martial fire opp, and buffing a bit striking as fire, i made the Kata much more worthwhile to get, and also, in line with striking as water and martial water opp spending. that makes everything clearer.

sorry for the wall of text

9 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

It's going to be rather uncommon to get sufficient to get severity 12+. It's TN4 Fire... so you need 4 Successes, and can assume 2/3 of those are going to carry strive, but you need ∑( extra successes + strife). To be able to make the initial hit, you need 4+2k4 or 5+1k5 to expecte successes sufficient to trigger relatively reliably. You can expect 3 bonus successes (all from strife) Which puts a katana into Scar range.

The trick behind Heartpiercing Strife is going Void with Meditation, get the -1 TN Opp, then drop the hammer in your turn with 9k5 (4 Ring, 4 Skill, 1 Seize the Moment) against TN 3. If I remember the numbers correctly, it will put the target into 12 critical damage pre-soak (counting 1 Opp for fast drawing) on average but you are aiming above that level.

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

(counting 1 Opp for fast drawing)

This aint a thing.

Not in the initiative, neither during your turn

It is just a way to make iaijutsu cuts useless... And was fix after the beta.

So the earliest you can HPS in a duel is round 2 unless... you use a concealable weapon.

A knife is actually extremely strong with HPS for a iaijutsu duel to first strike/blood

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

And was fix after the beta.

You couldn't fast-draw with an Opp in the Beta. You could sheath your weapon with an Opp, but you could not ready it.

Readying a weapon was an Iaijutsu-only Opp in the Beta too, where it could be used to switch into double-wielding. This was removed (guess why) and the sheathing Opp was made Iaijutsu-only. The reason the fast-drawing Opp didn't make it into the example table is most likely the lack of Any<OPP> entry in the Martial/Conflict examples. This one will get errata'd most likely if the linked answer is any measure.

14 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

You couldn't fast-draw with an Opp in the Beta. You could sheath your weapon with an Opp, but you could not ready it.

Readying a weapon was an Iaijutsu-only Opp in the Beta too, where it could be used to switch into double-wielding. This was removed (guess why) and the sheathing Opp was made Iaijutsu-only. The reason the fast-drawing Opp didn't make it into the example table is most likely the lack of Any<OPP> entry in the Martial/Conflict examples. This one will get errata'd most likely if the linked answer is any measure.

in the early beta you could ready/sheath an item/weapon at the beginning of your turn as part of taking a stance. they changed it to only "drop items".

so right now, the only way to draw and attack in the same turn is to use; water stance, iaijutsu or concealable weapon.

i feel this is mostly fine.

but, if they errata it that you can use initiative opportunities to ready weapon(s), then sure... but i feel like only 1 opp wouldn't probably be enough of a cost. and then again, would that be under "general opportunity spending" meaning it works with all rings you used for the initiative?

lots of questions and things to consider before doing a fix.

9 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

You couldn't fast-draw with an Opp in the Beta. You could sheath your weapon with an Opp, but you could not ready it.

Readying a weapon was an Iaijutsu-only Opp in the Beta too, where it could be used to switch into double-wielding. This was removed (guess why) and the sheathing Opp was made Iaijutsu-only. The reason the fast-drawing Opp didn't make it into the example table is most likely the lack of Any<OPP> entry in the Martial/Conflict examples. This one will get errata'd most likely if the linked answer is any measure.

Until it hits the official errata, it's just rumor of errata. (same can be said of my post of an answer I got from Customer Service.) I'm not claiming you're being dishonest about it, either; I've seen customer service answers get two different answers to the same question from two different questioners in other companies, and haven't had to use Customer Service for answers in FFG SW (one of the nifties of closed playtests...). So I am dubious of answers from CS even when I've gotten them.

(Then again, I played SFB in the 80s... new errata every other month. Plus additional collations about annually. And some rules changed back and forth due to interactions with other rules. And I've played most editions of Traveller... and seen errata flip from one interpretation to another and back in MT and TTNE days. And seen MWM actually rewrite entire chapters in T5. So, I've had experience with changing errata.)

Iaijutsu no longer has a sheathing opp; it has a draw another razor edged opp. Which is perfectly sensible - it allows you to sacrifice the second in defense, and is a historic part of Iaijutsu (albeit not a common one, from what I've read), one which is almost absent from Iaidō.

Since draw and ready is an action, I'd expect an opp spend to do so without technique to be to draw it, but not ready it. Why?
p. 252, turns, step 2: "As part of setting a stance, a character may set the grip with which they are wielding a weapon (see page 230). A character may also drop any number of items on the ground. Readying a new weapon requires an action, however."

Readying a weapon is also specifically part of the prepare action - it can draw & ready a weapon.

A general draw a weapon opp spend should be less efficient than the Iaijutsu.

Also, Opp spends are not supposed to cause a change between fail and success or vice versa... (p 28, ¶1), so it should instead be a TN mod, IMO.

9 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

A general draw a weapon opp spend should be less efficient than the Iaijutsu.

Well it is already less efficient because it eats up an Opp. Iaijutsu is essentially the +TN fast-draw technique if you are not very comfortable with fishing for that extra Opp. Also, there are actually quite a few example Opps that allow you to fail/succeed in the narrative while succeeding/failing with your Skill Check: the moving along vertical surfaces Opp is essentially the same beast as the fast-draw Opp, for example. I think what the designers meant here was that Opps can't substitute for Successes when it comes to see whether the Skill Check itself was a success or failure.

9 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

Iaijutsu no longer has a sheathing opp; it has a draw another razor edged opp.

Really? I don't have the bottom of that page, so I thought that they kept the sheathing Opp for the draw-strike-sheath maneuver. What a boomer !

51 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Really? I don't have the bottom of that page, so I thought that they kept the sheathing Opp for the draw-strike-sheath maneuver. What a boomer !

Both Iaijutsu cuts are ": Ready one other sheathed Razor-Edged weapon"

They took away the ability of rising blade to critical in return for "you cannot defend if compromised" - but in a duel compromised means finishing blow time anyway.

As written, outside of duels (which are broken anyway)

The purpose (mostly) of iaijutsu cuts as i see it;

-Can draw and attack without needing to use water stance.

-Auto crit on compromised target.

One slight issue i have is Crossing Cut doing more damage on average than a regular strike. So if you are not fishing for crits, using crossing cut is a great damage dealer (that also increases your range).

There is a bit of a shanenigan if you use a knife with it.

Because knife is conceable so you can draw or sheath it as part of an attack action. And it is only 1 deadliness less than a katana.

So you basically can, crossing cut with a knife every turn since you can sheat it after the iaijutsu cut.

So, you can run around with a range 1-2 knife, concealabe, that does more fatigue damage than a regular katana strike. And with iaijutsu rules as is, you can iaijutsu with one hand so you could still have a readied katana in the other hand if you need to do a regular strike sometimes.

I had to fix that...