41 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

hes got like 1 less vigilance as a starting character... and that is compensated by his school ability. hes perfectly fine to sense threat, and will get very GOOD at it once he gets some more school rank and put a point or two in water (because he shouldnt really care about air). sensing threat is mostly all about having a good vigilance INITIATIVE. and the +1 per school rank is better than any amount of air and water will give you.

all I'm saying is mechanically it works, the school is good. and it is a great (if not the best early on) duelist. he can sense supernatural threats with his good void too, have a lot or resilience and sacrifice (earth/void). to me that is really good and works for a yojimbo in court.

You know the more I read into this the more sense and the more I like it.

48 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

hes got like 1 less vigilance as a starting character... and that is compensated by his school ability. hes perfectly fine to sense threat, and will get very GOOD at it once he gets some more school rank and put a point or two in water (because he shouldnt really care about air). sensing threat is mostly all about having a good vigilance INITIATIVE. and the +1 per school rank is better than any amount of air and water will give you.

all I'm saying is mechanically it works, the school is good. and it is a great (if not the best early on) duelist. he can sense supernatural threats with his good void too, have a lot or resilience and sacrifice (earth/void). to me that is really good and works for a yojimbo in court.

blame the designers then? dunno what to tell you. or do like me and houserule stuff you don't like... but the honor guard is not a broken design, it is merely a design you might not like "narratively". but we're talking about a game in which almost half the roster have more duel potential than kakita. so take that into consideration too, if you start houseruling stuff, you'll never see the end of it. trust me on that, i'm doing it and to keep everything "light and clean" you need to make a lot of sacrifice and be accepting of the design when it is only for narrative reasons.

The Imperial Families as a 'clan' get Air. I hypothesized pre-release that they might get +1 in any Ring, to represent their doing literally everything (bureaucracy, messengers, map making, divinations, protection, magistrates, members of the Emerald Legions, etc...), but no, they got air, which is deceit/trickiness/analysis/ambush. I'm not particularly impressed with this choice, but I can accept it, as the Imperial Families are political animals by default.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Lot of little mechanical ambiguities are a bit overlooked. same as in star wars, it isn't one of their strong point.

But in that case, seppun guard seems like a duelist to me, or at least, a very good duelist, and he starts with an Iai cut, the one he wants, thats even better than Kakita. And earth and void are 2 very very good duelist rings (much better than water and air which are probably the 2 worst rings for duels). Vigilance is not that useful for a bushi, and almost useless for a duelist. and his school ability give him better initiative without having Air.

honestly. if i play a seppun guard i'd MUCH rather have earth/void than air/water.

it could still be a mistake, i'm just saying that these rings are very good for the guard as is.

edit: and the astrologer should be talkative and vigilant. they are astrologers after all. water and air is good for them.

Hilariously, the book specifically calls out the Seppun guard as not participating in duels, and focusing their talents on protecting the Emperor and their other charges (like the Forbidden City).

48 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

hes got like 1 less vigilance as a starting character... and that is compensated by his school ability. hes perfectly fine to sense threat, and will get very GOOD at it once he gets some more school rank and put a point or two in water (because he shouldnt really care about air). sensing threat is mostly all about having a good vigilance INITIATIVE. and the +1 per school rank is better than any amount of air and water will give you.

all I'm saying is mechanically it works, the school is good. and it is a great (if not the best early on) duelist. he can sense supernatural threats with his good void too, have a lot or resilience and sacrifice (earth/void). to me that is really good and works for a yojimbo in court.

blame the designers then? dunno what to tell you. or do like me and houserule stuff you don't like... but the honor guard is not a broken design, it is merely a design you might not like "narratively". but we're talking about a game in which almost half the roster have more duel potential than kakita. so take that into consideration too, if you start houseruling stuff, you'll never see the end of it. trust me on that, i'm doing it and to keep everything "light and clean" you need to make a lot of sacrifice and be accepting of the design when it is only for narrative reasons.

It's one of the things that makes me uncertain about how exactly the Seppun Astrologer has been made wonk. Air isn't a really solid ring lore wise, or design wise (design wise they have no air invocations, lore wise air is more about deceit/trickery/cleverness, so the scholarship and planning aspects of literal astrologers isn't represented by air, but it is by earth, and/or void, in different ways), but just suggesting the guard has their rings is a bit off, because the guard certainly has good rings for its general purpose, although I wouldn't be shocked if it was supposed to be different either. Air and Water WOULD be pretty surprising though, which is why I suspect the guard hasn't suffered anything in error, although since that combination wouldn't be quite as surprising on a guard as it is on a clearly earth emphasized shugenja, if I were told tomorrow it was a straight mix up, I'd probably accept it.

Funny that they say the seppun doesnt participate in duels but then give him, as a starting technique, iaijutsu cuts that were narratively created for duel and that only kakita and mirumoto (both duelist schools) get as part of their school curriculum.

If they mentioned that in Emerald Empire 5th ed then it becomes even more funny.

Anyway, not much surprises me anymore! The rule designers (not the writers) clearly shown lots of.. clouded thoughts? so far.

As written, Seppun is among the top duelists. Would be weird for him not to duel...

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

blame the designers then? dunno what to tell you. or do like me and houserule stuff you don't like... but the honor guard is not a broken design, it is merely a design you might not like "narratively". but we're talking about a game in which almost half the roster have more duel potential than kakita. so take that into consideration too, if you start houseruling stuff, you'll never see the end of it. trust me on that, i'm doing it and to keep everything "light and clean" you need to make a lot of sacrifice and be accepting of the design when it is only for narrative reasons.

Well, to be honest, I was planning on pretty substantial homebrew for my own use of the Imperials anyway, but I had wondered just how much of the "official" version I was going to be able to incorporate.

From what I have read on this thread-- the answer seems to be that, in the very least, I am looking at scrapping more of this than the parts I would keep. Which... I guess is good in a way? I mean, if the homebrew version were too close to the official, I guess we wouldn't want to share it online.

36 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Well, to be honest, I was planning on pretty substantial homebrew for my own use of the Imperials anyway, but I had wondered just how much of the "official" version I was going to be able to incorporate.

From what I have read on this thread-- the answer seems to be that, in the very least, I am looking at scrapping more of this than the parts I would keep. Which... I guess is good in a way? I mean, if the homebrew version were too close to the official, I guess we wouldn't want to share it online.

expending on the same subject:

weapons

core book "Dao" melee range1 , dmg3, dls5, rarity6, 15koku

mantis pdf "Butterfly Sword" melee range0-1, dmg3, dls5, concealable, snaring, rarity6, 10koku

that's for a game with only a corebook and a tiny pdf that have weapon stats in them...

the moral of the story ? aside from a big "OOF! scary!" don't feel bad about homebrewing, because they clearly don't double check or correlate what they write down for rules. it is surprising though that they don't have a guy/girl that keep track of the rules and numbers and balancing so that everything makes sense.

Oh, as for the Kakita being bad at dueling...

I feel like that is a result of them making the dueling rules in a bubble and totally forgetting that it is well established that the best duelists in the empire are those who have high "air" in the system they decided to make their game based on.

Then again, why is Kakita an Air/Earth instead of an Air/Water or Air/Fire-- I don't know which of the later two would be more suitable, but the Kakita have never been a particularly rational, book-knowledge or tough family so where is this Earth bonus coming from?

But the Imperials getting Air as a Clan bonus? Especially when there are already two "Air" Clans?

I just can't wrap my head around that. Earth definitely seems right, maybe Water would be possible.

But as much as they may be surrounded by courtiers, these are the people who don't much engage in artistic pursuits, wear the least colorful and striking clothes except for official service, tend to have the most boring haircuts and such, famously don't mince words or try to play on people's emotions and instead speak directly, sincerely and plainly whenever possible... Literally the only Imperial Family that shows any tendency towards things associated with Air are maybe the Otomo and putting aside how infamously inept they are at it and how they seem to only be good at being clerks and bureaucrats, even then getting people to argue with each other is more a "Fire" thing than an "Air" thing.

As I wrote in my first post-- I feel like they were in a rush to get an RPG out and include everything that exists in current canon as soon as possible. There is definitely minimal playtesting going on here and not enough consideration as to what they are doing. Would it really have killed them so much to do an intermediary stage where they involved the fanbase?

Its kind of like they felt that if they didn't get an RPG out and sell all the books they were going to sell within the first 2 years of acquiring the IP, then there was some good chance that they weren't going to sell enough books to make a profit off it when they finally did get it out.

The writers are pretty good at storytelling, but maybe aren't so good at translating their storytelling into mechanics. And then they get this stuff into print into a physical book and print off endless copies of it.

And, of course, there really isn't a good way to "patch" the game to fix these mistakes later.

Instead, each and every table may or may not homebrew solutions and, at the end of the day, we are all going to have to default to the versions that the writers tossed together haphazardly before rushing the books off to the printers.

2 hours ago, Isawa Miyu said:

Hilariously, the book specifically calls out the Seppun guard as not participating in duels, and focusing their talents on protecting the Emperor and their other charges (like the Forbidden City).

Iaijutsu isn't just applicable in dueling. A single draw strike allows them to react faster to any dangers to their charges.

19 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

Oh, as for the Kakita being bad at dueling...

I feel like that is a result of them making the dueling rules in a bubble and totally forgetting that it is well established that the best duelists in the empire are those who have high "air" in the system they decided to make their game based on.

The Kakita are not bad at dueling. A Rank 6 Kakita can end pretty much any Iaijutsu duel on their first action with Strike with No Thought something that even a Seppun can't do. Kakita may not start out as the greatest duelists but they do become them.

5 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Iaijutsu isn't just applicable in dueling. A single draw strike allows them to react faster to any dangers to their charges.

Yeah, I know, I didn't say it wasn't useful in other situations. I said something very literal, directly from the book. Was someone else arguing perhaps that the technique itself was not fitting?

6 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

The Kakita are not bad at dueling.

They're not bad, but they're also not good (and pretty much no bushi schools are absolutely terrible at it). And they should be good (great even), not just based on a school rank 6 ability nearly nobody masters.

More on point regarding the Seppun: I find it both strange and interesting that they would rarely, if ever, duel. I get that their status as Imperials puts them in a unique position with regards to disputes of honor, but still. In either case, I'd certainly expect them to train iai regardless.

53 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

They're not bad, but they're also not good (and pretty much no bushi schools are absolutely terrible at it). And they should be good (great even), not just based on a school rank 6 ability nearly nobody masters.

More on point regarding the Seppun: I find it both strange and interesting that they would rarely, if ever, duel. I get that their status as Imperials puts them in a unique position with regards to disputes of honor, but still. In either case, I'd certainly expect them to train iai regardless.

I suspect the idea of them not dueling much is based on the fact they are primarily stereotyped as guards of the Forbidden City, the Imperial castles (most obviously Kyuden Seppun), and the Emperor and his heirs. None of those jobs would involve dueling (the Emperor and heirs being sacrosanct, dissing them or implying things about them would be auto-fails, and guards don't tend to get involved in duels). The book doesn't address at all the fact that, when in need of yojimbo, every Seppun politician and/or bureaucrat in a non-Imperial court, every Imperial shugenja, and every Otomo who attends a foreign court (at minimum), not to mention anyone of sufficient rank (the Imperial astrologer, Imperial librarian, etc...) would have a Seppun (or someone trained in their school), and of course they'd sometimes end up insulted, insinuated against, or whatever causes duels to happen at court. I take the fact FFG stuck with saying the Seppun rarely due to represent two things in these other situations: 1) that given their prominence, an Imperial in a foreign court would likely have their choice of second from among their host's samurai, 1.5) similarly, that most any Kakita, Mirumoto, Lion, or anyone available who hears a rival clan besmirch an Imperial would be willing to act as their duelist, 2) that the Imperial samurai are less likely to receive permission for duels due to their rarity (all told, the entirety of the Imperial families might equal one or two large Great Clan families in size), their status 'above' the clans, and the fact that some would have to ask the Emperor himself for permission (and why would he give it when he can just dictate that the insulting samurai is wrong, and will be 'corrected').

8 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

I don't know which of the later two would be more suitable, but the Kakita have never been a particularly rational, book-knowledge or tough family so where is this Earth bonus coming from?

Anyone tagged as 'Bushi' gets Earth as one of their rings. Whether Kakita Duellists should have been bushi rather than just especially militant courtiers like the Bayushi Manipulator is a different question.

8 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

A Rank 6 Kakita can end pretty much any Iaijutsu duel on their first action with Strike with No Thought something that even a Seppun can't do. Kakita may not start out as the greatest duelists but they do become them.

In fairness, everyone's rank 6 abilities are pretty ludicrous. Don't get me wrong. Strike With No Thought is terrifying and I agree it's amazing in a duel.

But any ability which you need to get to rank 6 to use is hardly a typical exemplar of the school.

If a school has a supposed speciality, I should be able to see a good hint of it in - for the sake of example - a character in a Fate Of The Realm campaign, who's got 30XP dumped on them post-character-creation in addition to their 'magic weapon'.

I understand the purpose of a final rank (rank 6) ability.

but, since there is only 2 abilities per school in this game, putting one of them at the ultimate end of the progression is a weird design decision.

It's like those level 20 abilities in D&D... ever used one of those ? its a bit of wasted design, which becomes even more apparent when you only have 2 abilities per school.

anyway. just ranting... just ranting...

I understand too that Rank 6 School Mastery should be Amazing, however, why I have to wait until that moment to show my school dominance over a subject when others do it since the first rank? And more importantly how many campaigns will allow their players reach that level...

Anyway I’m done with the ranting let’s get this train back on track.

4 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I understand the purpose of a final rank (rank 6) ability.

but, since there is only 2 abilities per school in this game, putting one of them at the ultimate end of the progression is a weird design decision.

It's like those level 20 abilities in D&D... ever used one of those ? its a bit of wasted design, which becomes even more apparent when you only have 2 abilities per school.

anyway. just ranting... just ranting...

I inevitably agree. It's always a strange design decision to me. It makes sense in video games, where you play for 30-40 hours, get to max level, and still have 10 or so hours to go (if single-player, multi-player could have hundreds of hours more), but roleplaying game procession is slow, and occasionally very unsatisfying, enough as it is (sure I could save for 3-4 sessions to raise a ring, but I could also spend 12-16 sessions saving 1xp out of every 4, and spending the other three on combinations of stuff like kata, invocations, ranks 1-3 of skills. . .), so capstones that take 100+ xp if you are doing only in-school purchasing, instead of 2/3rds or so progression techniques, are odd to me as well. Are the developers trying to encourage me to just grind out my school? Or use the titles, and personalize using extra-curricular picks? Because it's basically one or the other.

Following and checking in for an answer on this. Did anyone get an answer from FFG on the correct Rings for the Seppun Astrologer? Earth and Void totally seem right.

I got an answer from Tim Cox at FFG for the Seppun Astrologer, and it makes sense looking at the curriculum they have for the school.

"Thank you for your question. The rings are correct as printed in Emerald Empire for both schools. The Seppun Astrologer curriculum features techniques that use a number of rings, but Air and Water are integral to the school’s core function of remaining ever-vigilant against threats to the Imperial Palace, and more broadly to members of the Imperial families and their servants."

Well that clarifies it... but the same would be true of Seppun guardsmen: they too need high vigilance, wouldn’t they?

17 minutes ago, Franwax said:

Well that clarifies it... but the same would be true of Seppun guardsmen: they too need high vigilance, wouldn’t they?

Everybody needs a bit of everything, I suppose? I mean, for a typical guardsman - security, not a bodyguard - I'd want Vigilance and Endurance. Which means every ring other than Void. 😛 Choosing is losing, but you can't have everything.