1 minute ago, nameless ronin said:

Maybe they all should. Just a thought.

Nah.... A lot of the techniques are good against certain elements. It creates a "counter" gameplay which I don't mind.

Example; someone is kiting you with water stance? Grasp of Earth will make him stop! Enjoy that crazy high TN in water.

My only issue is the opportunities (and maybe strife) on resist checks. This can be broken and ultimately makes the game so slow.

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Nah.... A lot of the techniques are good against certain elements. It creates a "counter" gameplay which I don't mind.

Example; someone is kiting you with water stance? Grasp of Earth will make him stop! Enjoy that crazy high TN in water.

Techs have the 1 regular/high TN, 1 low TN, 1 very high TN structure so you have a 60% chance of getting the normal TN and an 80% chance of not getting the very high TN, from the target's point of view. Sure, it's the tech user's choice so they can metagame and look for a tech that specifically targets your current stance but that means they need to have that particular one for that stance, the TN is only one higher (which can be significant, admittedly), and if the tech that they want to use happens to give a low resist TN for the target's stance that's annoying. There is counterplay possible, but it seems like in the end the target often gets the regular TN anyway.

The whole approach thing looks interesting at first sight, but in practice the varying TNs are a massive pain in the neck for me as the GM. Sometimes the official different TNs make sense, more often they just seem arbitrary, and there's certainly no rule or formula for them. But I definitely want varying TNs because otherwise approaches just mean "lemme describe how my best ring would approach this" 90% of the time and that's silly, so for skills I get to decide why approach X is easier/harder than Y and Z and usually they really shouldn't be different.

Disconnecting resist checks from stances won't fix this, I know that, but attaching a single fixed ring to resists at least incentivizes the players to also look after the rings associated with stances they don't use as often.

To be clear, I'm not saying this would definitely make a a great houserule, and I'm not doing this in my games anyway (I keep the houserules to a minimum) - I just feel the entire rings/stances/approaches system isn't thought through as well as it should be.

Many things are not super well thought of! But it is also definitely not a popular game. I think they know that and don't linger too much on it neither they have hope it will all of a sudden get many more players than the core L5R playerbase.

Overall, the biggest offenders for me are;

-Using Opportunities on checks to abuse them. When knowing what opportunities can do is often better than just trying to succeed.. it becomes a bit gamey and too complicated for keeping the game at a good pace.

-Way too malleable and interpretable advantage/disadvantage system. Just never clear.

-Overly stale and boring earth stance (too much radical of an effect with no counter even with amazing checks) Ruins duels, and make skirmishes against heavily armored opponents a weird affair that only have very few counters.

-Huge issues with many conditions (including dying and wounds) and critical strike outcomes. Creates a weird infinite loop of chopped arms that heal your wounds and nobody dies.

-Awful and tedious range band system.

-Problematic resist checks (using opportunities on them mostly, but I also really think a more passive type of resist system like for Vigilance would have been nicer. Especially considering how complicated and slow checks are.

The rest, is more classic problems; imbalances, errors, shoddy editing and wording etc.

So on...

...

Back to the subject; opportunities on resist checks. How weird can it get? If you AOE three characters in fire stance with an ability that trigger a resist check, you can very much take 6 strife.

And then if other players start to throw abilities with resist checks around (can be almost every turn at later rank) opportunities pop up from everywhere, can become extremely swingy and/or absurdly hard to track in the case of void or air opportunities or assistance etc.

Does the game really gain something by allowing opportunities on resist checks? I feel it just bugs the gameplay into a halt and a confused mess more than anything else.

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

Back to the subject; opportunities on resist checks.

I'm pretty sure this only got through playtesting because everybody assumed this was not allowed.

2 hours ago, nameless ronin said:

I'm pretty sure this only got through playtesting because everybody assumed this was not allowed.

Funny!

I just think playtesting was done with players who were more inclined to comment as to why this family had that ring and not the other ring because flavor wise it made more sense.

Ok. Hold my beer!

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Funny!

I just think playtesting was done with players who were more inclined to comment as to why this family had that ring and not the other ring because flavor wise it made more sense.

Ok. Hold my beer!

I don't know how playtesting was done, but that kind of thing is not playtesting. It's what you might get as feedback from fans, not playtesters, and I assume more playtesting was done than the public beta.

That said, it probably should be a bit more complicated than "no opportunities and/or strife" on checks to resist. The example from the book, resisting being thrown off a parapet, could certainly allow for narrative use of opportunities for instance. But without a rule or even some kind of guideline this is again an example of having the GM sort it out instead of providing us with something that works. I'm more than ok with the GM being an arbiter of the ruleset, like for interpreting whether something is a breach of etiquette and how bad it is, but that presupposes having a rule to go by. This - to me - seems to go a couple of steps beyond that into "do whatever's best" territory.

44 minutes ago, nameless ronin said:

I don't know how playtesting was done, but that kind of thing is not playtesting. It's what you might get as feedback from fans, not playtesters, and I assume more playtesting was done than the public beta.

That said, it probably should be a bit more complicated than "no opportunities and/or strife" on checks to resist. The example from the book, resisting being thrown off a parapet, could certainly allow for narrative use of opportunities for instance. But without a rule or even some kind of guideline this is again an example of having the GM sort it out instead of providing us with something that works. I'm more than ok with the GM being an arbiter of the ruleset, like for interpreting whether something is a breach of etiquette and how bad it is, but that presupposes having a rule to go by. This - to me - seems to go a couple of steps beyond that into "do whatever's best" territory.

It definitely can be more complicated. But in the end, versus always allowing it (as per the rules) or never. I think a houserule that makes it impossible to spend opportunities on resist checks ultimately makes the game better.

If your houserule is; "you can use opportunities if the GM agrees" then sure. That is a Get out of Jail free Card.