When is this applied? Every battle? Every attack?

It doesn't seem very clear to me. Can someone help me out?

good question.

i personally prefer to let advantage/disadvantage/passion/anxiety be unlimited(mandatory) for the first bullet point, and only once per scene for the second bullet point.

but the core book says its up to the GM; it can be unlimited or once per scene.

i am curious to see how other GMs see it because if it is "all the time" some of them become too good or, too harsh...

The first part is applied anytime it narratively makes sense. If you have a choice to show mercy, you always show mercy.

The second applies when making the appropriate checks as outlined in the mechanical section. So, any time your check would approach the subject or action of killing a person. It's nominally tagged "Fire" because that's overwhelming force when attacking - definitely intent to kill. But theoretically it can be other rings if the subject comes up. Other than some specific cases where it says like "first time in a scene", the book doesn't seem to specify a frequency on using Advantages or Disadvantages. If your small stature keeps helping you in a conflict, you keep getting rerolls. A Soft-hearted character does not like killing, if you keep trying to kill or discussing people dying with your involvement, it'll keep stressing you.

It only applies to "every" attack though if you're clearly striking to kill. Incapacitation is not necessarily to kill, for instance. So if you try and use Earth to dig in and defend, or say water to grapple and disable an enemy, that's not triggering your Anxiety. If you have medicine and could heal somebody, but leave them to die, you take the Strife.

Disadvantages suck, none of them are a free pass. Pick accordingly.

14 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

The first part is applied anytime it narratively makes sense. If you have a choice to show mercy, you always show mercy.

The second applies when making the appropriate checks as outlined in the mechanical section. So, any time your check would approach the subject or action of killing a person. It's nominally tagged "Fire" because that's overwhelming force when attacking - definitely intent to kill. But theoretically it can be other rings if the subject comes up. Other than some specific cases where it says like "first time in a scene", the book doesn't seem to specify a frequency on using Advantages or Disadvantages. If your small stature keeps helping you in a conflict, you keep getting rerolls. A Soft-hearted character does not like killing, if you keep trying to kill or discussing people dying with your involvement, it'll keep stressing you.

It only applies to "every" attack though if you're clearly striking to kill. Incapacitation is not necessarily to kill, for instance. So if you try and use Earth to dig in and defend, or say water to grapple and disable an enemy, that's not triggering your Anxiety. If you have medicine and could heal somebody, but leave them to die, you take the Strife.

Disadvantages suck, none of them are a free pass. Pick accordingly.

check p.137

creative vs discrete application

basically:

creative = GM decide

discrete = Rules decide

edit: for me and my group, we much prefer discrete. but i've listened to some podcasts and understand that we don't play the game like some others when it comes to rules. we roleplay a lot, but we don't "stretch" rules.

though, we play a "flexible" discrete application. if like everybody at the table says "yeah, that should apply" then it does. but if one player or gm argues, we go by the rule right away and don't go into an argument.

3 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

check p.137

creative vs discrete application 

Ah, a page after with no specific notation, and otherwise in a section I wouldn't think would be relevant, thanks FFG layout.

So, if you follow the purely discrete model, it only applies to the specific checks (or checks of a similar nature in the same skill group) as listed in the examples, and should only proc once per scene, unless the GM decides it doesn't. The creative is basically any time it makes sense narratively to apply, it applies, for better or worse. I mean, so if your GM is running the strictly discrete ruling, only once per scene does the Anxiety trigger, probably unless you get a bit cheeky with it and try to metagaming into killing somebody you want to kill out of character despite writing on your character sheet you don't like killing people.

Personally I feel like a "pure" discrete school might also be called the lazy and boring school, but that's mostly because FFG seems to have phrased the extreme as "yeah make them apply as little as possible, unless your GM feels like making it apply more, and don't encourage your players to come up with their own - we wouldn't want any of that pesky storytelling now would we?". But I might just be a bit biased against the vanilla advantages and disadvantages because man do they get repetitive after making a few test characters and also some pregens (seriously, it seems like statistically speaking every kid samurai in Rokugan needs to grow up scarred or cursed). If your group has a tendency to be argumentative or just long-winded though, I can see the simplicity in leaning more that direction in general to just get your simplicity out and move swiftly on in most of your cases. The book says it assumes the creative school of thought though.

yeah. layout is a bit weird sometimes... often...

i agree, a "pure" discrete is boring, but a "pure" creative is a bit too loose when playing with "gamey" players.

so we kind of settled down with discrete but flexible (if that makes sense?) .

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

yeah. layout is a bit weird sometimes... often...

i agree, a "pure" discrete is boring, but a "pure" creative is a bit too loose when playing with "gamey" players.

so we kind of settled down with discrete but flexible (if that makes sense?) .

I'm running it as "the mechanics specified you don't need to ask for, just tell me; other off-label, make a case for it, and sure."

I have to laugh, tho'... for the last few sessions, every time SB has rolled using his lost memories disad, he's not failed the task. One of them, he went from two success with strife to one explosive + strife and one success without it. And made the "improbable TN 5"...

On 30 november 2018 at 6:29 AM, AK_Aramis said:

I'm running it as "the mechanics specified you don't need to ask for, just tell me; other off-label, make a case for it, and sure."

I have to laugh, tho'... for the last few sessions, every time SB has rolled using his lost memories disad, he's not failed the task. One of them, he went from two success with strife to one explosive + strife and one success without it. And made the "improbable TN 5"...

I.....vaguely.....remember...being....good...at....this?

So, ultimately I don't think I agree. It doesn't seem fair that softheartedness would be applied every time there is a fight or every time an attack is made, and the answer to my player is, sorry bro, disadvantages suck. At which point, he looks across the table to the guy who has Perfectionism, which comes up once a session if that, or to the player next to him, who took ferocity and never uses Air stance...

My point is that because he has a decent fire ring and wants to use that because his character is a Moto Conqueror, the answer of /shrug, guess you just get kicked in the balls every fight, is not satisfactory. Not to mention he has tons of void points and everyone else has very few. It seems poorly written. These things are not created equally and frankly a bunch of them are a "free pass."

I was looking for ideas to create a more egalitarian approach to the advantage and not have one player singled out mechanically because he wants to pick a certain disadvantage.

Well, so again, compare the sidebar. Discrete means the disad only applies once per scene, but it definitely applies when he hits the examples it gives, or anything you think similar.

Creative it can apply multiple times, but you should apply it to skill checks where it's actually coming up in the narrative. He can use Fire with like, Unarmed to try and rapidly overwhelm an enemy before anybody gets permanently injured without Strife, but if you're spending opp to crit with a scimitar (because those a can become lethal injuries) he should be taking the strife. If he doesn't want to take the Strife, he really should have considered that before he made somebody who was expected to keep killing not want to kill people (because remember, Softhearted is explicitly against killing and dying. Batman doesn't kill but he'll break your bones if he has to).

But it sounds a bit more like a table issue than a rules issue, if the Moto player put his anxiety in something he's supposed to be good at and is expected to do a lot while other players put theirs in things they felt they could "safely ignore", of course his is gonna come up way more than theirs. As a GM, you are armed with the players Disadvantages, you should arrange things to press on them more. That guy with Ferocity should have to deal with situations where he needs to be more subtle, and the guy with Perfectionism should have to be rolling to improve or adapt delicate works more. If their characters are built such they never have to, shame them for their metagaming and make them pick Anxieties their characters will actually interact with. The Moto guy is doing great, he's playing a character with real emotional conflict here.

9 hours ago, TheBoulder said:

So, ultimately I don't think I agree. It doesn't seem fair that softheartedness would be applied every time there is a fight or every time an attack is made, and the answer to my player is, sorry bro, disadvantages suck. At which point, he looks across the table to the guy who has Perfectionism, which comes up once a session if that, or to the player next to him, who took ferocity and never uses Air stance...

My point is that because he has a decent fire ring and wants to use that because his character is a Moto Conqueror, the answer of /shrug, guess you just get kicked in the balls every fight, is not satisfactory. Not to mention he has tons of void points and everyone else has very few. It seems poorly written. These things are not created equally and frankly a bunch of them are a "free pass."

I was looking for ideas to create a more egalitarian approach to the advantage and not have one player singled out mechanically because he wants to pick a certain disadvantage.

The GM is meant to make disadvantages suck. Some will always come up more than others, sure, but in L5R it is up to the GM to make sure disadvantages are baseline meaningful. Personally, if there's a disadvantage a player of mine is interested in that I think is not going to work I'll houserule it or disallow it altogether. I don't really like doing that (I consider it more a personal failure than one of the rules), but it's in the best interest of the game.

6 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

The GM is meant to make disadvantages suck. Some will always come up more than others, sure, but in L5R it is up to the GM to make sure disadvantages are baseline meaningful. 

This.

Since all advantages and disadvantages do one of the same two things, there's no question about their core mechanical effect being better or worse. The problems come with

1. Players trying to over or underuse the narrative effect
2. The regularity with which the triggering effect comes up

The former is a matter of debate with your players but the latter is entirely within the gift of the GM setting the story. Since a lot of them (Blackmail, Betrothal, etc) feature specific characters or groups, the GM can choose how they're being worked into the story.

Picking "sworn enemy of this one obscure badger clan ji-samurai who never leaves the northern border" during a campaign set on the wall, for example, is clearly trying to duck the issue...