Salutations. So, I tried to look for the answer for this, but couldn’t find it, so here we go! What is the exact steps taken by a Kaito using their school ability? As I read it, they spend an action and roll their [ring+theology] for the spell, and that is it? They can’t channel, they can’t choose to make a sacrifice to Reroll blanks, nothing else?

Do they suffer elemental backlash? If so, when the arrow is charged or when it is fired? And does it effect the terrain around the arrow, or them? If the arrow when it hits, you may wish to trigger some backlash to get enemies stuck in the mud from water, or in flames for fire.

I’m probably overthinking this, but not being able to channel your spells seems a bit off to me, even if you’re putting them into an arrow, and getting to trigger backlash on top of enemies seems a bit strong, although I suppose that maybe balances out?

Idk, sorry for the ramblings. Thoughts?

2 hours ago, fyrm said:

Salutations. So, I tried to look for the answer for this, but couldn’t find it, so here we go! What is the exact steps taken by a Kaito using their school ability? As I read it, they spend an action and roll their [ring+theology] for the spell, and that is it? They can’t channel, they can’t choose to make a sacrifice to Reroll blanks, nothing else?

Do they suffer elemental backlash? If so, when the arrow is charged or when it is fired? And does it effect the terrain around the arrow, or them? If the arrow when it hits, you may wish to trigger some backlash to get enemies stuck in the mud from water, or in flames for fire.

I’m probably overthinking this, but not being able to channel your spells seems a bit off to me, even if you’re putting them into an arrow, and getting to trigger backlash on top of enemies seems a bit strong, although I suppose that maybe balances out?

Idk, sorry for the ramblings. Thoughts?

They can do all of the channeling, importune, elemental backlash. I guess. Don't oversweat it, the game is whatever you feel like.

Breaking it down:

Quote

As an action, you may augment one of your arrows with a prayer to the kami.

Make the check to perform one invocation you know, reducing the TN by your school rank, and record the result.

The arrow gains the Sacred quality, and remains infused with the invocation until the end of the scene.

After you perform an Attack action using the arrow (or fire it at a location, at the GM’s discretion), you may resolve the effects of the invocation from the place the arrow landed.

You may spend + to delay resolving the effects of the invocation for 1 round per spent this way, and may spend from a failed check to affect one target of the attack that you missed.

1. Sacred Arrows is an action, 'nested within which' is an invocation action (because invocation techniques are all actions to use).
2. The invocation action is 'perform one invocation you know' - there is nothing implying normal rules affecting invocations would not work (such as offerings)
   1. There is a question whether the rules on page 190-191 for channelling, backlash, and offerings do apply because the Kaito don't have the [Shujenga] school tag, but that is a general rule, not one specific to Sacred Arrows.
3. Nothing stops the Kaito using any invocation normally.
4. Channelling can be done as part of any invocation (which the Sacred Arrows action contains).
   1. It's not normally useful in Sacred Arrows because you'll channel one turn, then Attack with the Bow (and sacred arrow) the next, meaning channelled dice are lost. If you augmented an arrow one turn then used a different invocation normally the next, I don't see why kept dice couldn't be used.
5. Spiritual Backlash either will or won't occur (see above for your view on P190-191) but if it does it would occur immediately. It doesn't care if you passed, failed, or whether the effect is immediate or delayed; it is triggered by having on your kept dice on an invocation check . The check happens as part of your Sacred Arrows action.
   1. Earth & Water backlash explicitly centre on the person performing the invocation. Fire does not, but if it occurs when you suffer backlash on the check, you must still be holding the augmented arrow since you haven't had a chance to attack with it yet.

9 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Breaking it down:

1. Sacred Arrows is an action, 'nested within which' is an invocation action (because invocation techniques are all actions to use).
2. The invocation action is 'perform one invocation you know' - there is nothing implying normal rules affecting invocations would not work (such as offerings)
   1. There is a question whether the rules on page 190-191 for channelling, backlash, and offerings do apply because the Kaito don't have the [Shujenga] school tag, but that is a general rule, not one specific to Sacred Arrows.
3. Nothing stops the Kaito using any invocation normally.
4. Channelling can be done as part of any invocation (which the Sacred Arrows action contains).
   1. It's not normally useful in Sacred Arrows because you'll channel one turn, then Attack with the Bow (and sacred arrow) the next, meaning channelled dice are lost. If you augmented an arrow one turn then used a different invocation normally the next, I don't see why kept dice couldn't be used.
5. Spiritual Backlash either will or won't occur (see above for your view on P190-191) but if it does it would occur immediately. It doesn't care if you passed, failed, or whether the effect is immediate or delayed; it is triggered by having on your kept dice on an invocation check . The check happens as part of your Sacred Arrows action.
   1. Earth & Water backlash explicitly centre on the person performing the invocation. Fire does not, but if it occurs when you suffer backlash on the check, you must still be holding the augmented arrow since you haven't had a chance to attack with it yet.

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! All of that makes sense.

Just a couple of extra points:

• With regards to the 'school tag' question - I personally come down heavily on the side that P190 uses the phrase "the shujenga" as a convenient shorthand for 'the character performing the invocation' and that the [shujenga] school tag is not required. NPCs don't have school tags, but the spiritual backlash rules specifically tell the GM how to handle the situation when an NPC triggers spiritual backlash, implying they (and hence other characters without the [shujenga] tag) can cause it.
• Whilst any character who knows at least one invocation can importune other invocations (albeit requiring a suitable offering and at a sharply increased TN), the requirement for Sacred Arrows to be a known invocation means you can't combine importune invocation with Sacred Arrows. That, combined with the fact that the Kaito don't get unrestricted technique class access to invocations, is probably intended in part to minimise the number of invocations a shrine keeper has access to which don't 'make sense' in the context of Sacred Arrows.

All very good points.

Two things; no problem with the Kaito using Importune Invocation with Sacred Arrow. It is not gamebreaking whatsoever. The Kaito can already Importune while casting regularly, that it is on their arrow doesn't change much.

And, never overestimate the designers and what they "intend". If some of the clarifications they gave before, or the quality of the live play they did, are anything to go by.

4 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

The Kaito can already Importune while casting regularly

Agreed, but the restriction on Sacred Arrows being a known technique is a pretty unambiguous one (nice to know they can do this...). It's more a case that specifically in the case of sacred arrows 'relocating' the point the invocation takes effect from to an enemy character or a point on the ground, a fair proportion of invocations accessible via importune invocations don't work.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Agreed, but the restriction on Sacred Arrows being a known technique is a pretty unambiguous one (nice to know they can do this...). It's more a case that specifically in the case of sacred arrows 'relocating' the point the invocation takes effect from to an enemy character or a point on the ground, a fair proportion of invocations accessible via importune invocations don't work.

Nothing game breaking, I'm quite certain.
But yes, it is "ambiguous"... which is standard for this game. Though, I personally prefer to allow things unless it is very clearly written, or blatantly overpowered.
In the case of the importune Kami on sacred arrow, it is easy to control, the character still needs a unique/rare item and probably just changing the location of the spell source is really not going to make it suddenly overpowered.

Fun technique, this one, and it has some fictional equivalents in other media. How magical it was is open to question, but in Tenchi in Tokyo Nobuyuki Masaki buys a blessed arrow to use against his idiotic evil doppelganger. And said doppelganger fortunately was stupid, because the arrow was labeled 'Traffic Control'. Similarly, Kaito might be able to use this technique to keep an arrow or two enspelled for later use, but I'd caution GMs to keep an eye on this. A good potential limit is that a Kaito can only keep as many arrows enspelled long-term as their Void ring... with all the potential problems of having enchanted items on their person.

On 5/23/2019 at 9:50 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

1. Spiritual Backlash either will or won't occur (see above for your view on P190-191) but if it does it would occur immediately. It doesn't care if you passed, failed, or whether the effect is immediate or delayed; it is triggered by having on your kept dice on an invocation check . The check happens as part of your Sacred Arrows action.
   1. Earth & Water backlash explicitly centre on the person performing the invocation. Fire does not, but if it occurs when you suffer backlash on the check, you must still be holding the augmented arrow since you haven't had a chance to attack with it yet.

This is a good point, and something to remember for players: You channel before you attack, so backlash will happen to you, not your target. Also, it sounds like common sense, but when the spell on the arrow triggers, it triggers on the arrow's location, not the caster's, so don't miss! Every time you loose one of these (arrows are loosed , cannons and other gaijin pepper devices are fired ), you are ruining somebody's day, somewhere. And quite potentially that of someone trying to help you, or that of the lord whose castle you're protecting... you get the idea. This is aimed (sorry) at you too, GMs: A missed shot will land someplace.

5 hours ago, Lieutenant Obvious said:

Every time you loose one of these (arrows are loosed , cannons and other gaijin pepper devices are fired ), you are ruining somebody's day, somewhere. And quite potentially that of someone trying to help you, or that of the lord whose castle you're protecting... you get the idea. This is aimed (sorry) at you too, GMs: A missed shot will land someplace.

Agreed. If the invocation is something like Biting Steel , no big deal, but if it's something like Tempest of Wind , a near miss could be as good as a hit.

Also, I believe the lack of invocation and addition of shuji on their tags is a typo, since they don't get any shuji, but do get invocations.

On 7/12/2019 at 5:48 PM, Scrivener Spills said:

Also, I believe the lack of invocation and addition of shuji on their tags is a typo, since they don't get any shuji, but do get invocations.

No. The kata/shuji/rituals tags are correct. Kaito get free technique class access to shuji - they can take any shuji they have the school rank for.

They only get the invocations they get via their school curriculum - partly (narratively) because they're not actually shujenga, partly (mechanically) so the writers can control exactly what invocations they get, now and in the future, to limit busted interactions with Sacred Arrows.

On 7/13/2019 at 11:09 PM, Magnus Grendel said:

No. The kata/shuji/rituals tags are correct. Kaito get free technique class access to shuji - they can take any shuji they have the school rank for.

They only get the invocations they get via their school curriculum - partly (narratively) because they're not actually shujenga, partly (mechanically) so the writers can control exactly what invocations they get, now and in the future, to limit busted interactions with Sacred Arrows.

Ahh, interesting. So while they get shuji in class, its always out of class for school rank purposes . And that explains why all the invocs had diamonds . Thanks!