Why would you need to annoy someone, when you can incite people to take specific actions? Strife causes unpredictable outcomes and isn't something you should really wish for. If you're trying to cause a fight to occur you could strife out the Doji courtier that you're opposing, causing him to break out into an impromptu poetry jam session and profess his undying love for his wife (because that's what he does when he breaks composure.), or you could simply incite that same doji courtier to take a swing at His usual nemesis, Ikoma Killsyuo, which is far more likely to get the result you wanted.

As for strife being "more important than fatigue", I would have to say that strife is more annoying than fatigue, but certainly not more important. When you max out on strife, you either unmask or you can no longer keep dice with strife symbols on them. When you go over your max endurance you literally can't take actions which require dice rolls. If you max out on strife and people keep hitting you with abilities to increase your strife, literally nothing happens. If you max out on fatigue and people keep hitting you with fatigue causing abilities, you start taking criticals. I can still see saying that strife is more annoying than fatigue, because with fatigue you're either still in the fight, or you can go play on your smart-phone while the rest of the group keeps playing L5R, but with strife your forced to keep paying attention and trying, even though your chances of succeeding at an action are greatly reduced.

Along with water and void stances being used to combat strife, I believe it was earth stance that allows players to remove strife from other targets, due to the stabilizing demeanor of the character using earth stance.

I completely agree that strife should be a bigger part of dueling. In the lore I remember that doing some pre-duel show-off stuff is supposed to be a common part of dueling and I believe this would be a great time to allow a duelist to use a strife inducing action of some sort. Keep in mind also, that all of the various conflict types allow for "special actions" which could easily be used to take some sort of strife management action. Furthermore, I personally would encourage other players to attempt to influence a duel by using subtle strife management actions. (This is largely because I feel like other players should have something they can do during a duel.) I picture the story with Akodo Toturi and Bayushi Aramoro dueling for the emerald championship. Before the duel starts, Aramoro and Toturi both show-off.. Toturi's pre-duel action is specifically noted to be a subtle insult to Aramoro, which probably would increase Aramoro's strife for the duel. Meanwhile, Aramoro has a helper in the crowd who is shining a light in Toturi's eyes, showing how people who aren't actually dueling might still have some influence over the duel.

13 minutes ago, Black_Rabbit_Inle said:

Why would you need to annoy someone, when you can incite people to take specific actions? Strife causes unpredictable outcomes and isn't something you should really wish for. If you're trying to cause a fight to occur you could strife out the Doji courtier that you're opposing, causing him to break out into an impromptu poetry jam session and profess his undying love for his wife (because that's what he does when he breaks composure.), or you could simply incite that same doji courtier to take a swing at His usual nemesis, Ikoma Killsyuo, which is far more likely to get the result you wanted.

As for strife being "more important than fatigue", I would have to say that strife is more annoying than fatigue, but certainly not more important. When you max out on strife, you either unmask or you can no longer keep dice with strife symbols on them. When you go over your max endurance you literally can't take actions which require dice rolls. If you max out on strife and people keep hitting you with abilities to increase your strife, literally nothing happens. If you max out on fatigue and people keep hitting you with fatigue causing abilities, you start taking criticals. I can still see saying that strife is more annoying than fatigue, because with fatigue you're either still in the fight, or you can go play on your smart-phone while the rest of the group keeps playing L5R, but with strife your forced to keep paying attention and trying, even though your chances of succeeding at an action are greatly reduced.

Along with water and void stances being used to combat strife, I believe it was earth stance that allows players to remove strife from other targets, due to the stabilizing demeanor of the character using earth stance.

I completely agree that strife should be a bigger part of dueling. In the lore I remember that doing some pre-duel show-off stuff is supposed to be a common part of dueling and I believe this would be a great time to allow a duelist to use a strife inducing action of some sort. Keep in mind also, that all of the various conflict types allow for "special actions" which could easily be used to take some sort of strife management action. Furthermore, I personally would encourage other players to attempt to influence a duel by using subtle strife management actions. (This is largely because I feel like other players should have something they can do during a duel.) I picture the story with Akodo Toturi and Bayushi Aramoro dueling for the emerald championship. Before the duel starts, Aramoro and Toturi both show-off.. Toturi's pre-duel action is specifically noted to be a subtle insult to Aramoro, which probably would increase Aramoro's strife for the duel. Meanwhile, Aramoro has a helper in the crowd who is shining a light in Toturi's eyes, showing how people who aren't actually dueling might still have some influence over the duel.

because in the Intrigue chapter, if you choose the goal of "discrediting" someone, the rule mentions you need to make them lose their composure.
that is like, the GOAL.

Several people in this discussion probably should think about how one sets the momentum targets for social conflict... page 255.

As for Discredit... the explicit text tells to use momentum to inflict strife. So, the attempt to discredit is going to be done with a lot of Fire based social rolls, unless one has better strife options.

It's also quite plausible to expose their anxiety, by having someone they're obliged to answer ask them something covered by their anxiety.

Another fun way is to force them to confront their Ninjô and not pursue it... 3 strife. Which can be done by lying to them, if need be. (p. 38)

Or, for players to present evidence of failure at the target's Giri... possibly by deception. Failing in one's Giri defnintely meets the "... character’s ninjō and giri can cause turmoil whenever GM and player see fit." (p. 39) Such evidence should be good for some strife, even if faked, especially given the weight of written testimony in the Rokugani legal system.

37 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

Several people in this discussion probably should think about how one sets the momentum targets for social conflict... page 255.

As for Discredit... the explicit text tells to use momentum to inflict strife. So, the attempt to discredit is going to be done with a lot of Fire based social rolls, unless one has better strife options. .

No, "discredit" p.255 doesnt inflict strife instead of momentum. Read it again.

But it should, as per how I play it.

Some people...

On 5/3/2019 at 4:09 AM, T_Kageyasu said:

Ok I'll bite, difficulty in conflicts are character specific therefore there's no such thing as fairness: what is a challenge for one is not necessarily a challenge for another, and this scales by rank.

For this game, I disagree here. In my experience conflict difficulty is not character-specific in 5R5: a courtier can handle themselves in combat pretty well and a bushi is rarely at noticeable disadvantage at court. Because there are so few attributes, everyone has everything for essentially every situation, differences in character performance in various kinds of scenes is meager sans extreme min-maxing cases.

On 5/4/2019 at 3:02 AM, AtoMaki said:

For this game, I disagree here. In my experience conflict difficulty is not character-specific in 5R5: a courtier can handle themselves in combat pretty well and a bushi is rarely at noticeable disadvantage at court. Because there are so few attributes, everyone has everything for essentially every situation, differences in character performance in various kinds of scenes is meager sans extreme min-maxing cases.

Cross skill training and diverse experience is essential for any well rounded samurai, but do the shugenja in your game really stand toe to toe with duelists and other martial builds? How many bushi heavily invest in artisan or scholar skills? How well rounded a characters is largely depends on the campaign and challenges the PCs more regularly face, but the differences among classes aren't negligible. All else being equal, certain clans and families are just generally better than your average samurai at a few specific things.

On 5/3/2019 at 10:43 PM, Avatar111 said:

No, "discredit" p.255 doesnt inflict strife instead of momentum. Read it again.

But it should, as per how I play it.

Some people...

I never said it did. Is English not your native tongue? You sure seem to have a hard time deciphering it.

The discredit action tells you to use momentum to inflict strife. And it isn't based upon momentum, but forcing them into compromised.

Since the only way to do that unskilled is by making rolls in fire stance, and social conflict is about the social rolls, you make other social rolls in fire stance, and keep for opportunity.

7 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

I never said it did. Is English not your native tongue? You sure seem to have a hard time deciphering it.

The discredit action tells you to use momentum to inflict strife. And it isn't based upon momentum, but forcing them into compromised.

Since the only way to do that unskilled is by making rolls in fire stance, and social conflict is about the social rolls, you make other social rolls in fire stance, and keep for opportunity.

NO

the discredit action does not "explicitly tell you to use momentum to inflict strife" as you said.

Go read it again.....

11 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

I never said it did. Is English not your native tongue? You sure seem to have a hard time deciphering it.

The discredit action tells you to use momentum to inflict strife. And it isn't based upon momentum, but forcing them into compromised.

Since the only way to do that unskilled is by making rolls in fire stance, and social conflict is about the social rolls, you make other social rolls in fire stance, and keep for opportunity.

Page 255: "A character can back someone into a corner by causing them to become Compromised. The character can do this by inflicting strife on the target (or getting others to do so), which in turn is something they can accomplish by using various Opportunities (see page 328) and techniques."

Momentum is worthless to Discredit, just as Avatar111 wrote.

8 hours ago, Mirac said:

Page 255: "A character can back someone into a corner by causing them to become Compromised. The character can do this by inflicting strife on the target (or getting others to do so), which in turn is something they can accomplish by using various Opportunities (see page 328) and techniques."

Momentum is worthless to Discredit, just as Avatar111 wrote.

You are making the same error Avatar111 did in reading my post. I never claimed momentum was to be used. I stated fire ring social rolls. Those aren't for the momentum - they are for the access to the inflict strife opportunity spend.

So swhile you're both right about the rule, you're both attempting to refute a claim that exists only in your delusion.

Using only the Fire Strife Opportunity to Discredit is highly inefficient way to gain Strife on target. The opportunity is not scaling, so one can only cause 2 Strife on a roll no matter the result, as long as they get a single Opportunity.

3 hours ago, Mirac said:

Using only the Fire Strife Opportunity to Discredit is highly inefficient way to gain Strife on target. The opportunity is not scaling, so one can only cause 2 Strife on a roll no matter the result, as long as they get a single Opportunity.

But with 3 opp, you can use one to give them 2 Strife and two more to force them to take Strife if they make a scheme action against you on their next turn. Decreasing returns, but still some scalability...

I still think not letting the players use their success on the persuade check to inflict a strife then one extra strife per 2 bonus successes for the "discredit action" (as momentum works for the other "actions" in intrigue) is just something they forgot. They can't be serious when they say "go look at p.328" and use techniques (like what technique again?)...

It is just another thing they didn't have time to review and polish before the release, something that happened in the dark times between the beta and the release when everybody stop working on the project.

Anyway, I play it like that! (1 success = 1 strife. +1 strife per 2 bonus successes.

It is more fun, still balanced, and streamlined as it plays the same way as the momentum rule. And most of all more FUN as you can use other rings to inflict strife (less than if using Fire but still). And I'm sure even "earth Reason" can be a source of strife.

I sure used a lot of earth Reason and created a lot of strife. So I feel it can work in an "intrigue" which is more like a debate and more intricate than casual social encounters.

On 5/7/2019 at 4:08 AM, T_Kageyasu said:

Cross skill training and diverse experience is essential for any well rounded samurai, but do the shugenja in your game really stand toe to toe with duelists and other martial builds?

They do, especially with duelists because Meditation is a core shuggie Skill so at the very least their Initiative is going to be stellar.

On 5/7/2019 at 4:08 AM, T_Kageyasu said:

How many bushi heavily invest in artisan or scholar skills?

All of them because the bushi max out their core Skills (Martial Arts (Your Choice), Fitness, Meditation/Tactics) very quickly and their second tier has Smithing and Sentiment to get at the bare minimum.

On 5/7/2019 at 4:08 AM, T_Kageyasu said:

How well rounded a characters is largely depends on the campaign and challenges the PCs more regularly face, but the differences among classes aren't negligible.

Again, I disagree here. The only place where differences might be felt is with a 0 XP starting party because things tend to be quite on the edge when your character is still a noobie so any extra you have counts.

10 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

They do, especially with duelists because Meditation is a core shuggie Skill so at the very least their Initiative is going to be stellar.

All of them because the bushi max out their core Skills (Martial Arts (Your Choice), Fitness, Meditation/Tactics) very quickly and their second tier has Smithing and Sentiment to get at the bare minimum.

Again, I disagree here. The only place where differences might be felt is with a 0 XP starting party because things tend to be quite on the edge when your character is still a noobie so any extra you have counts.

I'll accept that characters can have considerable skill overlap, but the role of professions are distinct. If your bushi are calling upon the kami why bother having schools in the first place?

2 hours ago, T_Kageyasu said:

If your bushi are calling upon the kami why bother having schools in the first place?

Flavor, maybe? Dunno but in 5R5 the bushi can double-up as a discount shugenja just fine with Rituals.

5 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

Flavor, maybe? Dunno but in 5R5 the bushi can double-up as a discount shugenja just fine with Rituals.

In practice I don't see many bushi taking downtime scenes for a discount shugenja ritual mid conflict.