Concerning the Mirumoto Bushi, can such a series of techniques be allowed ...

Bushi is approached by another antagonist within range 0-1. He has two blades on him, but neither are readied. Something occurs so combat can begin and this Bushi gets to go first.

1. Use the Kata 'Rising Blade' which allows him to a) ready and draw his sheathed weapon with a one-handed, and strike.
2. Spend an Opportunity * from the Kata to ready a second sheathed weapon.
3. Use the Rank 6 Heart of the Dragon to make an attack with the second weapon in a one-handed grip since it was already readied and it has not been used to an attack action this turn?

Looks right to me, and seems like exactly the move a Niten Master would use.

Yes, you can do it for 2 opportunities and the Strike action from Heart of the Dragon would finish resolving before Rising Blade as well due to opportunities resolving before success is determined.

This can be fairly important as the Strike granted by Heart of the Dragon could influence the TN of Rising Blade by Compromising the target or otherwise reducing the targets Vigilance.

Note that that's not a combat style purely limited to a Mirumoto student.

Theoretically anyone with Spinning Blades Style (a Rank 2 kata so something most Samurai can expect to be able to buy at some point) could do something similar - albeit that they'd need to spend * to ready a weapon then spend *+ equal to the target's vigilance to trigger the Kata.

The advantage of the technique is that you don't then have to make a martial arts (melee) check to hit with the second attack, but you are stuck with the weapon's base damage.

I really think you finish the iaijutsu rising blade check before drawing another weapon.

Have you ever tried doing a iaijutsu strike with one hand?

Though this is yet another weird/mushy rule that isn't always very consistent (opportunities resolving before successes) as it can create absurd situations with many techniques.

the rules say that you can only use one chance opportunity per check. P. 28 of the core. I do not know if I have misunderstood it. So, as I understand it, you can not use an opportunity to draw a second weapon and then another opportunity to make a second attack with the same roll.

2 hours ago, Zurdo said:

the rules say that you can only use one chance opportunity per check. P. 28 of the core. I do not know if I have misunderstood it. So, as I understand it, you can not use an opportunity to draw a second weapon and then another opportunity to make a second attack with the same roll.

Do you mean this bit?:

Quote

A character can only resolve a given opportunity effect once per check, but many opportunities can scale with additional  symbols spent.

That means, for example, a character using the strike action cannot use four opportunities to inflict two critical strikes. The opportunity use to draw a second razor-edged weapon (from Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade) is different from the one that you then spend to strike with said second weapon (from Heart of the Dragon).

What's really fun, as @Ultimatecalibur pointed out, is that this second strike interrupts your first attack and resolves completely before you resolve the successes from the first attack. If you're in fire stance, you might use opportunities on the second attack to inflict strife and push your opponent into compromised, dealing a critical strike with the initial Rising Blade attack.

38 minutes ago, deraforia said:

Do you mean this bit?:

That means, for example, a character using the strike action cannot use four opportunities to inflict two critical strikes. The opportunity use to draw a second razor-edged weapon (from Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade) is different from the one that you then spend to strike with said second weapon (from Heart of the Dragon).

What's really fun, as @Ultimatecalibur pointed out, is that this second strike interrupts your first attack and resolves completely before you resolve the successes from the first attack. If you're in fire stance, you might use opportunities on the second attack to inflict strife and push your opponent into compromised, dealing a critical strike with the initial Rising Blade attack.

Nothing says it interrupts your first attack. You can understand it as the second strike check will be rolled after the first strike fully resolve.

The fire opportunity to put someone compromised is a fact with or without the second strike.

Unless the TN is declared during the activation and can't be changed by opportunities (which is how it makes most sense to be FAIR).

Ask the designers!

4 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Nothing says it interrupts your first attack. You can understand it as the second strike check will be rolled after the first strike fully resolve. 

The fire opportunity to put someone compromised is a fact with or without the second strike.

Unless the TN is declared during the activation and can't be changed by opportunities (which is how it makes most sense to be FAIR).

Ask the designers! 

Its due to how rolls are resolved. Resolving Opportunities is part of Step 6.3 while success is determined during Step 6.4. Heart of the Dragon, like the condition inflicting elemental opportunity Kata, make someone roll something while another roll is resolving.

8 hours ago, deraforia said:

Do you mean this bit?:

That means, for example, a character using the strike action cannot use four opportunities to inflict two critical strikes. The opportunity use to draw a second razor-edged weapon (from Iaijutsu Cut: Rising Blade) is different from the one that you then spend to strike with said second weapon (from Heart of the Dragon).

What's really fun, as @Ultimatecalibur pointed out, is that this second strike interrupts your first attack and resolves completely before you resolve the successes from the first attack. If you're in fire stance, you might use opportunities on the second attack to inflict strife and push your opponent into compromised, dealing a critical strike with the initial Rising Blade attack.

Thank you. I had misunderstood the phrase. now my players can make a lot of combos

3 hours ago, Ultimatecalibur said:

Its due to how rolls are resolved. Resolving Opportunities is part of Step 6.3 while success is determined during Step 6.4. Heart of the Dragon, like the condition inflicting elemental opportunity Kata, make someone roll something while another roll is resolving.

Sure, but I think what @Avatar111 is saying is that the opportunity could be worded such that you buy the opportunity during Step 6.3, but that it is resolved after the ongoing strike,

In this case I don't think the text supports that, but it might have been written like this:

Quote

Heart of the Dragon (Mastery Ability):
Once per round, when performing an Attack action check, you may spend * as follows:
*: After resolving this action, perform a Strike action with a readied weapon you have not used for an Attack action this turn.

Just to be clear - it doesn't say that, but if it had done so it would have been triggered at 6.3 but resolved after the action.

I'm going to slightly disagree with @Avatar111 interpretation of the action above:

Quote

I really think you finish the iaijutsu rising blade check before drawing another weapon.

Have you ever tried doing a iaijutsu strike with one hand? 

I would actually visualize it more like this:

Distract my foe with my primary blade, attack with my secondary blade, then follow up with my primary blade,

If you start to resolve the opportunities before check, the game gets ultra clunky.

Imagine the mirumoto with heart of the dragon and one of the elemental kata.

Roll for strike

Use opportunity for elemental kata

Opponent resist the effect

Opponent use opportunity (maybe even changing the TN, range, or strife the mirumoto)

Mirumoto use one more opportunity for heart of the dragon

Mirumoto roll heart of the dragon (but keep the result of his first check in memory)

Mirumoto use one opportunity for elemental effect

Opponent resist check

Opponent use opportunity (again, maybe changing TN, strife, or what not)

Mirumoto finish heart of the dragon

Mirumoto finish his original strike.

Honestly, YES rule as written it works like this, but this thing is garbage design.

I'm sorry to say so.

Lot of the cases are insane; you used an elemental effect on a range attack? Opponent resist with air then use opportunities to raise his TN to be hit by range attacks. LOL. You missed because you already "kept your dice".

Come on...

Anyway, you can play as RAW. But it doesn't change the fact that it is badly and tediously designed if you do so.

And if you resist an elemental effect and you decide to use water opportunities and move ? Could you then be out of range of the original strike?

At this point, might as well take out the spreadsheets to keep track of combat!

Hopefully you don't have 4+ players.

Okay, a bunch of issues I want to raise here,

Starting with:

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Anyway, you can play as RAW. But it doesn't change the fact that it is badly and tediously designed if you do so.

When people come on here asking questions, I think it's most productive to answer assuming that they are using the RAW unless they note otherwise . We can't just assume that they're using the same house rules that you are (or I am, or anyone else for that matter) - the answers would be incoherent.

That isn't to say that suggesting house-rules is bad, just that it isn't going to be helpful if you are assuming that they're using them when you answer questions.

Quote

If you start to resolve the opportunities before check, the game gets ultra clunky.

<snip>

Opponent use opportunity (maybe even changing the TN, range, or strife the mirumoto)

I fundamentally disagree with this part,

Knowing the TN when choosing dice is a pretty fundamental part of the system (to the point where you are specifically rewarded if you don't have that information for some reason),

The target number was determined at Step 2 / Part 4,

My interpretation is that once it is determined it is fixed.

Strife is just the breaks, Range is more of an issue.

Quote

If you start to resolve the opportunities before check, the game gets ultra clunky. 

The game was written with using opportunities before determining the effects of the check, and accordingly doing it the other way around will likely have significant consequences to the way a whole bunch of techniques work - for example, Hawk's Precision would do precisely nothing your way, Striking as Water is significantly weaker (it wouldn't apply to the current attack), etc.

A lot of Techniques use opportunities to enhance their effects (forget kata, the invocation section is rife with this sort of thing),

These don't work your way without a lot of tweaks.

Quote

Imagine the mirumoto with heart of the dragon and one of the elemental kata.

I'm a little baffled by what you mean by "elemental kata" - it can't be the "Strike as..." kata, as you don't roll to resist them (unless they cause a critical strike anyway),

It could be kata like thunderclap strike, etc - but the rolls to resist their effects happen after success, not as opportunities?

Regardless, I wonder if perhaps you're making a big deal out of something that comes up infrequently?

I do agree that "heart of the dragon" should probably resolve after the main attack - that would be much simpler to work out, but that clearly isn't RAW.

3 minutes ago, gareth_lazelle said:

Knowing the TN when choosing dice is a pretty fundamental part of the system (to the point where you are specifically rewarded if you don't have that information for some reason),

The target number was determined at Step 2 / Part 4,

My interpretation is that once it is determined it is fixed.

if the TN is fixed, then "compromising" the opponent with your heart of the dragon strike so that your initial rising blade kata is made against a TN 1 (because now the opponent is compromised) wouldn't work as per the people above are saying it would; " This can be fairly important as the Strike granted by Heart of the Dragon could influence the TN of Rising Blade by Compromising the target or otherwise reducing the targets Vigilance."

so yeah, I also agree the TN wouldn't change. But now you are just agreeing with me too.

6 minutes ago, gareth_lazelle said:

The game was written with using opportunities before determining the effects of the check, and accordingly doing it the other way around will likely have significant consequences to the way a whole bunch of techniques work - for example, Hawk's Precision would do precisely nothing your way, Striking as Water is significantly weaker (it wouldn't apply to the current attack), etc.

A lot of Techniques use opportunities to enhance their effects (forget kata, the invocation section is rife with this sort of thing),

These don't work your way without a lot of tweaks.

yes, it is a case by case thing. but if it requires the character making ANOTHER CHECK, then I think it is fair to assume it is made after the initial check is fully resolved. Otherwise it gets very complicated (have to keep the initial check in memory, and lot of things can happen in the meantime).

8 minutes ago, gareth_lazelle said:

I'm a little baffled by what you mean by "elemental kata"

there are rank 4 katas (one for each ring) that apply some kind of Resist check + Condition using 1 opportunity.

they lose a lot of value if you enable the opponent to resist their effects and use his own opportunities before you even have time to finish your initial strike.

so here also, I think that if a "resist" check needs to be made it should happen AFTER the initial action is fully resolved.

basically no CHECK should interrupt an action, EVER. (aside Finishing Blows in duels).

10 minutes ago, gareth_lazelle said:

I do agree that "heart of the dragon" should probably resolve after the main attack - that would be much simpler to work out, but that clearly isn't RAW.

I am not saying this isn't how RAW works, I'm saying RAW is garbage

3 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

if the TN is fixed, then "compromising" the opponent with your heart of the dragon strike so that your initial rising blade kata is made against a TN 1 (because now the opponent is compromised) wouldn't work as per the people above are saying it would; " This can be fairly important as the Strike granted by Heart of the Dragon could influence the TN of Rising Blade by Compromising the target or otherwise reducing the targets Vigilance."

Do I have an old version of the rules or something? My book lists TN 3 for rising blade? And I can't see any reduction for a compromised target under it, the Compromised Condition or Heart?

Just now, gareth_lazelle said:

Do I have an old version of the rules or something? My book lists TN 3 for rising blade? And I can't see any reduction for a compromised target under it, the Compromised Condition or Heart?

yeah it got errata, it is now TN=Vigilance of the opponent

but that isn't the only case in which a TN change can happen during opportunity usage. Though, I totally agree the TN shouldn't change once it is SET during activation phase and the kept die phase.

3 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

there are rank 4 katas (one for each ring) that apply some kind of Resist check + Condition using 1 opportunity.

they lose a lot of value if you enable the opponent to resist their effects and use his own opportunities before you even have time to finish your initial strike.

so here also, I think that if a "resist" check needs to be made it should happen AFTER the initial action is fully resolved.

basically no CHECK should interrupt an action, EVER. (aside Finishing Blows in duels).

Ah - Breath of the Wind Style, Disappearing World Style, etc,

That's easy to fix though - spend the opportunity to trigger "Heart of the Dragon" first, then spend the opportunity to trigger the elemental effect,

Your main attack can still fail, but I figure that's just the risk you take by trying to get a better effect,

1 minute ago, gareth_lazelle said:

Ah - Breath of the Wind Style, Disappearing World Style, etc,

That's easy to fix though - spend the opportunity to trigger "Heart of the Dragon" first, then spend the opportunity to trigger the elemental effect,

Your main attack can still fail, but I figure that's just the risk you take by trying to get a better effect,

forget about Heart of the Dragon.

lets say you use a bow and shoot and arrow at a target in air stance.
you use opportunity to activate one of those rank 4 effect, the target resist, then use his opportunity to raise his TN to be hit by ranged attack (as per Air opportunity usage) and now your initial strike doesn't hit?

1 minute ago, Avatar111 said:

forget about Heart of the Dragon.

lets say you use a bow and shoot and arrow at a target in air stance.
you use opportunity to activate one of those rank 4 effect, the target resist, then use his opportunity to raise his TN to be hit by ranged attack (as per Air opportunity usage) and now your initial strike doesn't hit?

Well,

As discussed earlier, I would argue that the TN was fixed at the start of the attack (step 2, part 4), so it hits,

Actually, this is doubly important because many opportunities require success in order to use them - you may assess and resolve success at step 6 part 4, but it is clear that if you have the right number of successes at step 5 (choose kept dice) then the roll was a success ,

In other words, you can't have a situation where success is still in doubt when you choose opportunities...

3 minutes ago, gareth_lazelle said:

Well,

As discussed earlier, I would argue that the TN was fixed at the start of the attack (step 2, part 4), so it hits,

Actually, this is doubly important because many opportunities require success in order to use them - you may assess and resolve success at step 6 part 4, but it is clear that if you have the right number of successes at step 5 (choose kept dice) then the roll was a success ,

Opportunities requiring successes in order to use them are non-issues. All good here.

it is the others that are an issue (especially everything that interrupt a Check's resolution).

basically, a simple rule that says something along the line of; no check can interrupt another check and should be rolled after the initial check's is fully resolved (unless specifically stated), would probably fix a lot of bugs.