8 hours ago, Supermouse said:

Now  he's saying that the ability is too broken and overpowered, because a Rank 4 Asahina Artificer can 1 hit ko anyone with an Earthquake, an  d that it needs to be nerfed because the designers didn't preview what would happen in too high s  chool ra  nks.   

Of course, this power level is intended for a Rank 4. Shugenja are especially fearsome and that’s a feature, not a bug.

Has your GM imagined what a R4 Isawa Elementalist can do with Fury of Osano-wo!!?? Not even talking about the possibility of triggering a backlash (aka the suicide nuke). Earthquake is tame in comparison.

Maybe a cap to the number of times it can be used per scene is reasonable, but that’s about it.

1 hour ago, Franwax said:

Of course, this power level is intended for a Rank 4. Shugenja are especially fearsome and that’s a feature, not a bug.

Has your GM imagined what a R4 Isawa Elementalist can do with Fury of Osano-wo!!?? Not even talking about the possibility of triggering a backlash (aka the suicide nuke). Earthquake is tame in comparison.

Maybe a cap to the number of times it can be used per scene is reasonable, but that’s about it.

Artificers are great, no doubt, but in general I have more concerns about specific invocations being potentially problematic than shugenja school abilities. That said, I agree Earthquake is probably not that bad in terms of damage - TN 3 to resist unless you're in Earth stance (only 1 if in Air) and if you net 3 bonus successes there's no unconsciousness. That should not be a massive problem at rank 4 (if you choose not to train up your Fitness, that's on you).

However, Earthquake supposedly drops you a few range bands down in a chasm and the mechanics for climbing are a bit nebulous. That annoys me more.

13 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

>Implying I'm not permanently GM

I sympathise.

9 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

However, Earthquake supposedly drops you a few range bands down in a chasm and the mechanics for climbing are a bit nebulous. That annoys me more.

climbing mechanics are "ok" if you are not in a skirmish.

they mention that climbing a smooth surface without climbing gear is TN3 (in the TN examples at the beginning of the book, thx editing).

the problem is in skirmishes. how would you manage the "speed" at which a character can climb ? like, if i use a Unique action to climb during a skirmish, how many range bands do I climb ? it can't really be faster than using the Maneuvre action to run, right?

this is were the problem is. i've been toying with that a lot in the past few days. if you can quantify the speed at which somebody can climb, then the TN to climb is not an issue.

edit: if you are interested further in this topic, I discuss about it amply in the last few posts of my houserule thread and came up with a very slight adjustment to the "maneuvre" action to enable the maneuvre action to climb/swim as part of its movement in a logical way for Skirmishes/conflicts.

So... Not playing as often as I'd like but we manage a 6hrs session yesterday and I come back with more questions

1. Are shugenja somewhow restricted on the number of prayers he can do per day/session/scene ? it might be an old habit from previous editions where this was limited by the PC/NPC ring. I felt it wasn't anymore in 5th, but I just want to be sure.

2. I cannot find anywhere the mechanic about Meditation for losing Strife. Someone mentionned an answer from FFG but... Is it TN1 Meditation (void) and you lose Strife egal to your bonuses successes ?

3. Demeanor for NPC: I understand demeanor impact the way NPC react to your "active ring". i.e. peasants are more encline to an Earth approach (TN-2) and more distant to an Air approach (TN+2). Does that implies that lying to a "standard" peasant would be TN4 ? I mean RAW...

Thanks a lot!

15 minutes ago, eScoub said:

1. Are shugenja somewhow restricted on the number of prayers he can do per day/session/scene ? it might be an old habit from previous editions where this was limited by the PC/NPC ring. I felt it wasn't anymore in 5th, but I just want to be sure.

Page 190 sidebars:

Outside a conflict, you're only supposed to use the same invocation once per scene.

Importune invocations are also restricted to once per scene.

Otherwise, more or less unrestricted unless the invocation needs a component or offering you don't have.

18 minutes ago, eScoub said:

2. I cannot find anywhere the mechanic about Meditation for losing Strife. Someone mentionned an answer from FFG but... Is it TN1 Meditation (void) and you lose Strife egal to your bonuses successes ?

I'm not aware of a default mechanic.

1. You drop to half your composure at each 'end of scene'
2. You remove all strife when you unmask
3. You remove all your strife when you spend a downtime scene pursuing your ninjo
4. You can potentially remove strife when you spend water or an ally spend earth
5. The Courtier's Resolve or Tea Ceremony techniques
6. Some school abilities

This is the only comment regards a generic meditation test I've seen:

On ‎5‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 7:01 PM, kpsmith said:

I picked up Water 2 as my first ring purchase. We also discovered Meditation (Void) can be used to recover Strife (it was omitted from a book; a player has an e-mail from dev regarding it) so I'm taking advantage of Meditation as a Downtime activity to maintain my Strife levels.

23 minutes ago, eScoub said:

3. Demeanor for NPC: I understand demeanor impact the way NPC react to your "active ring". i.e. peasants are more encline to an Earth approach (TN-2) and more distant to an Air approach (TN+2). Does that implies that lying to a "standard" peasant would be TN4 ? I mean RAW...

Probably. Flat-out deceiving someone generally uses the target's Vigilance as a TN, which would be TN2. It may be that they spot the lie, or it may be that the moment you start speaking in a stand-offish and complicated fashion that they find confusing, they don't try and follow the logic but just assume you're lying, even if they can't say so.

Look at it this way; imagine a Performance or Skulduggery (Air) check to sneak into a village disguised as a peasant. The samurai on the gates probably won't look at you very closely, because they see ill-fitting tunic + straw hat + face with mud stains = peasant = no threat and basically just stop looking.

Fooling the actual peasants in the crowd is going to be much harder. The question is whether or not it matters.

On 11/21/2018 at 6:17 AM, Franwax said:

I think it’s because you can chose any side showing an opportunity, and for a Ring die, this can be either straight opp or opp+strife. Why would someone pick an extra Strife? Well in the example above rolling with Fire, that’s one bonus success if you made the TN

EDIT: I could be wrong on that one, and in that case I really don’t know why the technique doesn’t just read “add one free opportunity”...

I may have missed it in the rest of the discussion, but I wanted to say, I think it specifies ring, not skill, because skill has some success + opp slots, and they don't want you using this to also get extra successes.

I assume the intended way to do Strife removal with Meditation is something like downtime/end of scene make a Meditation (Void) roll, remove 1 strife for each success - this is akin to how clearing Strain is in Genesys/Star Wars.

1 hour ago, UnitOmega said:

I assume the intended way to do Strife removal with Meditation is something like downtime/end of scene make a Meditation (Void) roll, remove 1 strife for each success - this is akin to how clearing Strain is in Genesys/Star Wars.

Not at the "end of scene" for sure. You already set it to half when a scene ends.

As a downtime though, why not. It depends on the TN you set. I'm guessing you had a TN1 in mind? Also, since it is a downtime check you can still gain strife from your meditation(void) check.

But is it a necessary rule? Maybe...

Since fatigue goes away after each night of sleep (water ring x2, if I recall correctly), it is weird that strife can last forever unless you spam your passions/ninjo. But then again.. is it a big deal to clear out all strife after a night of sleep? Probably not. I just don't see the real purpose of the meditation check here, seems overkill to make a check for it imo.