It's been awhile but I am back with something I need help with. I plan to take my players through the Winter's Embrace adventure and run them through the Scroll or the Blade during it, I read through it and noticed that it might be very easy for two of my players to run into issues where they may be accused of not being impartial but also may be able to pick up an advantage, as well, as mentioned before one is an Isawa Shugenja with Sixth Sense, I have a new addition, a Mirumoto Samurai, who also has Sixth Sense. I can only imagine those two will end up getting a leg over the others, the Shugenja probably has the biggest advantage, as well.

Also, another potential issue, I had planned to have my players become Emerald Magistrates prior to this, they have one adventure to go through before they get that title, but doing that would put them at 40 status, above the 34 status of Isawa Yoshiko. The pdf indicates she will not choose someone of a higher status than herself. Though I could see a glory seeking Shugenja (by way of his Delusions of Grandeur disadvantage) foolishly championing himself to her cause, he's already done it once, for another NPC and somehow survived to tell the tale, with his limbs and extremities attached

On ‎1‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 6:26 PM, Suimaru said:

One of my players took animal bond, they have a Hawk with them, which has proven interesting, they brought up a question, when does the Hawk act in combat? I was thinking of having it work like the attendant and just act on the same initiative but that requires a support action to let it do an action and they were wondering if they could have it assist them on martial checks.

Be very careful about letting them have a 'battle-trained' hawk - most animal companions aren't, and whilst a hawk's talons are relatively weak-looking, the thing has an Air ring of 4 (better than a lot of PCs!) and deadliness 6 talons.

We had a character with a hawk companion in the beta and it was ridiculously lethal.

My main comment is the phrase "It can be cajoled to do what you want, but it might need incentives (usually food) to perform difficult tasks on demand." - having it just joint the fight at your side by default all the time, every time feels too good. This is not a piece of starting gear, but an extra freebie.

I would stick to having it assist at most, rather than attack itself, but insist that you can't do so at will - you need to explicitly encourage it to get involved (basically take a moment out to reassure it, call it to you, and direct it at an opponent) or in extremis maybe have it intervene if you've been badly hurt.

1 hour ago, Suimaru said:

I plan to take my players through the Winter's Embrace adventure and run them through the Scroll or the Blade during it, I read through it and noticed that it might be very easy for two of my players to run into issues where they may be accused of not being impartial but also may be able to pick up an advantage, as well, as mentioned before one is an Isawa Shugenja with Sixth Sense, I have a new addition, a Mirumoto Samurai, who also has Sixth Sense. I can only imagine those two will end up getting a leg over the others, the Shugenja probably has the biggest advantage, as well.

Talking about The Scroll And The Blade:

Well.....yeah. If you've got a phoenix samurai involved in the decision making, one of the Dragon-supporting parties is probably going to say "How are they possibly impartial?!?!?!".

Ditto for the Dragon character with the Phoenix's supporters.

Ultimately, though, if Miya Bunji says they're impartial, then they're impartial. He's the representative of the Emperor in the matter, after all.

Specifically adding one samurai from each faction to his 'advisors' is arguably a sensible move, provided he thinks he can trust them to be impartial.

And as for Sixth sense.....getting a heads-up that supernatural doings are afoot with Masayo is going to offer an advantage, but the PCs will probably already know she has a strong connection to the elements because (certainly for the Phoenix) that's why they want her. It might well let them trip to Yamakaze's interest in her early on, but the "something freaky's watching over her" can be discerned by spotting the winds shifting with her mood immediately after meeting her even with, say, Void + Seafaring by a non-shujenga character. A Sixth Sense shujenga will find doing that easier, but it's far from impossible for anyone to get enough evidence to figure out what's going on.

1 hour ago, Suimaru said:

Also, another potential issue, I had planned to have my players become Emerald Magistrates prior to this, they have one adventure to go through before they get that title, but doing that would put them at 40 status, above the 34 status of Isawa Yoshiko. The pdf indicates she will not choose someone of a higher status than herself. Though I could see a glory seeking Shugenja (by way of his Delusions of Grandeur disadvantage) foolishly championing himself to her cause, he's already done it once, for another NPC and somehow survived to tell the tale, with his limbs and extremities attached

I noticed that myself.

Your choices are three-fold; I might suggest giving her stats a discrete leg up so that at least one PC is a viable champion for her to choose, or just ignore the status requirement, otherwise, if no-one is a viable choice just default to her asking Lionel Messi Daidoji Aki to be her champion first.

I see, yeah, bumping up her status will do the trick. It's going to be very amusing seeing the Shugenja, whose been getting drilled in how to properly use a sword, try to be a hero again, and heck by the time they get to this point, he'll likely have a Kata or two thanks to the Emerald Magistrate title.

15 hours ago, Suimaru said:

I see, yeah, bumping up her status will do the trick.

Be careful how much you up it if you do. Her illegitimate status and the fact that she has a distinctly lower status than any of the other major participants (even the minor clan Shika Yuki) is kind of important to her behaving the way she should.

should only need to up her to 41, from what I see, everyone else has 45.