1 hour ago, Suimaru said:

The one they were in, was to first blood. Looking over it, Keinosuke probably could've won that, by spending opportunity.

Fire 3, Martial 2 with Seize The Moment and the Killer Instinct Distinction? Possibly, though it wouldn't be easy.

The rules as written say winning a Duel to First Blood takes a severity 5+ critical strike (which personally I think is stupid since Razor-Edged weapons give you the Bleeding condition at Severity 3 and some techniques can give you the condition directly).

A critical strike would need two successes (to hit), two opportunities (to inflict a critical strike) and ideally at least one more opportunity (to increase the severity of the critical so you can't lower it to severity 4 or less).

That's a fair ask, but not impossible; certainly 4 results on 6 dice with rerolls is pretty achievable, and 6 dice should net you at least one explosive success or success/opportunity pair.

Doubly so because if Keinosuke draws and starts stabbing away straight off, he can 'pre-spend' opportunities on striking as fire; keeping opportunities rather than successes on the first, unaugmented attack to boost the impact of the second (plus, if he attacks over a couple of rounds he can shift his grip to double-handed for that lovely deadliness 7).

It's all play and counterplay. For example, an easy answer to opportunity-criticals is earth stance. But if you expect someone to do that, predicting earth stance means they take strife and have to switch stance if they try that - but it wastes a precious action if they don't.

Duel to first blood is an interesting one because 'just hitting someone' isn't enough to win, you have to hit them and inflict a critical strike and ensure they don't reduce the severity to 4 or less.

Crucially, unlike duels to incapacitation, the finishing blow is a near-garuanteed victory, so concentrating on throwing out (or bleeding off) strife rather than resorting to swords at all is a perfectly valid approach. If Keinosuke's composure is better than is opponents (give or take any strife the PC might already have), then predicting and waiting in air or earth stance to avoid letting your enemy win until you have a chance for a finishing blow and dropping an iai cut on them from a sheathed blade is a classically perfect iai victory.

Keinosuke's composure 10 however is not bad but not great either.

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It's all play and counterplay. For example, an easy answer to opportunity-criticals is earth stance. But if you expect someone to do that, predicting earth stance means they take strife and have to switch stance if they try that - but it wastes a precious action if they don't.

You predicted? That was not predictable, probably the opponent will fall for it and pick earth...

Lol

Actually, when we ran A Ronin's Path, I predicted they'd predict I'd predict earth stance.

So based on this prediction, Keinosuke, predictably, didn't.

And, you know what, it worked. Who could have predicted that?

16 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Actually, when we ran A Ronin's Path, I predicted they'd predict I'd predict earth stance.

So based on this prediction, Keinosuke, predictably, didn't.

And, you know what, it worked. Who could have predicted that?

that was sarcasm, of course he didn't pick earth and picked anything else better than your wasted turn.

maybe fire ?

roll a unique action social check to laugh at you, get 1 opp to give you 2 strife, maybe another 2 opp to make you have to pay 2 more strife to attack him next turn.

and he didn't even have to succeed on his check.

Just now, Avatar111 said:

so, he didn't pick earth stance ? picked something else and basically had 2 out of 3 chance to not pick your prediction ? or just use void ?

nahhh don't try to make me believe that bs

The character - much like the situation described by @Suimaru featured a Crab Samurai, Hida Takeshi. He only had 2 decent ring scores - Earth and Water. In the first round he went for his best stance - Earth - and got predict-zapped. In the second round, he switched, got predict-zapped again, and (he'd gone into the duel with some strife plus picked up 3 more during the round 1 and 2 staredowns) ended up getting a finishing blow to the tender bits (which fortunately he managed to reduce with his fitness check to just "severely wounded" rather than "missing important extremities")

Keinosuke had taken a bit of fatigue due to the enormous crab flailing an otsuchi in his direction, but fortunately not enough to incapacitate him.

9 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

roll a unique action social check to laugh at you, get 1 opp to give you 2 strife, maybe another 2 opp to make you have to pay 2 more strife to attack him next turn.

and he didn't even have to succeed on his check.

Taking that example, Hida Takeshi's Fire ring was pretty second-rate, and his social skills not much better. It's a very good idea - and a great plan for courtiers in a duel (especially Ikoma bards!) - but unfortunately his dice pool wouldn't be guaranteed to get one opportunity, let alone three.

4 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

The character - much like the situation described by @Suimaru featured a Crab Samurai, Hida Takeshi. He only had 2 decent ring scores - Earth and Water. In the first round he went for his best stance - Earth - and got predict-zapped. In the second round, he switched, got predict-zapped again, and (he'd gone into the duel with some strife plus picked up 3 more during the round 1 and 2 staredowns) ended up getting a finishing blow to the tender bits (which fortunately he managed to reduce with his fitness check to just "severely wounded" rather than "missing important extremities")

Keinosuke had taken a bit of fatigue due to the enormous crab flailing an otsuchi in his direction, but fortunately not enough to incapacitate him.

that Crab was definitely not the smartest tool in the shed.

Just now, Magnus Grendel said:

Taking that example, Hida Takeshi's Fire ring was pretty second-rate, and his social skills not much better. It's a very good idea - and a great plan for courtiers in a duel (especially Ikoma bards!) - but unfortunately his dice pool wouldn't be guaranteed to get one opportunity, let alone three.

fire 2 + 1 skill in whatever social skill. probably all you need. if he had 1 fire, then yeah.. but having one in a ring is a no-no.

7 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

fire 2 + 1 skill in whatever social skill. probably all you need. if he had 1 fire, then yeah.. but having one in a ring is a no-no.

Fire 2 plus no social skills aside from 1 rank in command. With each die only generating 1/3 of an opportunity on average. I'm not saying it couldn't have worked, but his tendancy to plump for his best ring rather than "what would be the best plan" meant he was taking strife rather faster than he could either soak it off or pass it back

9 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

that Crab was definitely not the smartest tool in the shed.

That point, I will not contend (He was very good at battering the ever-loving snot out of things in a skirmish, though). My absolute favourite thing was his choice of disadvantages, which - both amusingly and rather touchingly - were the combination of Irrepressible Flirtation and Bluntness, making him (a) compelled to flirt with anyone he found vaguely attractive and (b) incredibly bad at it.

2 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

making him (a) compelled to flirt with anyone he found vaguely attractive and (b) incredibly bad at it.

"Unicorn-chan, your boobs are enormous, may I touch them?"

So, I'm preparing NPCs for martial conflicts for the players, I have a feeling I'll be needing them. As I am pretty sure at least two of the players are going to tick off some Crab bushi soon. Should I just use the Loyal Bushi NPC block for them?

10 minutes ago, Suimaru said:

So, I'm preparing NPCs for martial conflicts for the players, I have a feeling I'll be needing them. As I am pretty sure at least two of the players are going to tick off some Crab bushi soon. Should I just use the Loyal Bushi NPC block for them?

They're a good start (but keep in mind each has a conflict rank of 4 for combat - no idea how many players will be involved and what their ranks are). You might want to Crab them up a bit though: tetsubo instead of yari for instance.

Oh, eww... that could be an issue, it'd be 3 players and according to the book, a number of bushiroad equal to the players. This does bear another issue, if the players do not wish to be lethal but do not posses non-lethal means of combat, are they just sol in trying to defend themselves and not kill an opponent?

You can make it one bushi and one or two ashigaru with him, possibly. Depends on what the nature of the conflict is supposed to be.

As for lethality, it wouldn't be out of character for the setting for samurai to admit defeat and surrender if their opponent proves sufficiently superior. The players can also choose not to deliberately inflict critical damage to give their opponent the most opportunity to realize they're defeated. That said, it's Rokugan. If you bare steel in anger, you should be ready to accept the outcome.

well, they are drunk and if angered (they will be, it seems to be a skill for two of my players to anger NPCs) they will start a fist fight, to which none of the players have Martial Arts [Unarmed]

3 hours ago, Suimaru said:

Oh, eww... that could be an issue, it'd be 3 players and according to the book, a number of bushiroad equal to the players. This does bear another issue, if the players do not wish to be lethal but do not posses non-lethal means of combat, are they just sol in trying to defend themselves and not kill an opponent?

You always have access to snaring, low deadliness unarmed attacks. Trying to render one or more angry Crab samurai unconscious may take some time, though.

They'd only have ring dice to roll, I wouldn't see that going so well for them. Better than nothing, though.

49 minutes ago, Suimaru said:

They'd only have ring dice to roll, I wouldn't see that going so well for them. Better than nothing, though.

They always had the option of not starting a brawl with the inebriated crab bushi.

One would hope but given how the Unicorn and Crab player act... I am certain it will come to that (which will be unfortunate for the Phoenix shugenja player)

5 hours ago, Suimaru said:

Oh, eww... that could be an issue, it'd be 3 players and according to the book, a number of bushiroad equal to the players. This does bear another issue, if the players do not wish to be lethal but do not posses non-lethal means of combat, are they just sol in trying to defend themselves and not kill an opponent?

the damage level is controllable downward; If you roll hot, but want to do only enough to incapacitate, keep fewer. Armor will be (usually) a knowable quantity. Crits, harder to control, but if not wanting to kill, remember that any crit (including Sev. 0-2 armor damage) renders target unconscious.

So, fighting to KO is just beat them until they drop, and don't use HPS nor rising blade.

5 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

... any crit (including Sev. 0-2 armor damage) renders target unconscious.

?

6 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

12 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

... any crit (including Sev. 0-2 armor damage) renders target unconscious.

?

Any crit *on an incapacitated target* renders them unconscious.

10 minutes ago, Franwax said:

Any crit *on an incapacitated target* renders them unconscious.

Honestly, if you're incapacitated you're already done. Short of a team of emergency medics patching you up in record time, at best you're shambling around a bit trying not to get hit anymore. Have some dignity. Admit defeat.

Paradox of bushido. It might be honorable to accept your defeat, but can also be honorable to keep trying fight to your last breath.

Actually, incapacitated is not that big a deal if enemies discount you as “done for” and make the mistake not to finish you off. You can still get back into the fight with a (few) calming breath(s), and even if you’re too far out on the fatigue counter, you can still assist your buddies! (Though the latter is the perfect recipe to draw agro on yourself, at which point you deserve that crit).