20 minutes ago, T_Kageyasu said:

In game terms it's the difference between a mediocre yojimbo and an excellent one (ie. guard of a more influential NPC).

That is mostly represented by the Glory stat. I think.

20 minutes ago, T_Kageyasu said:

Well, if to some, the only benefit of a title or bond is the status improvement, shouldn't investment increase status further?

Is it ok to pay XP for status? Why would you take "Yoriki" when you can take "Emerald Magistrate" for the same XP ?
And if the GM decides what he wants to "allow" you to take, isn't it a bit, wrong? Since the GM forces you to ditch XP in the title he allows you to take?

Hence why, keeping it purely RP, you can create a better progression. The GM can present options like "hey, you are a Yoriki now, gain that much status (or ability, or gear, or whatever GM feels like)", now a few session later maybe the PC then become an Emerald Magistrate, again, you adjust his status, and rewards.
But never along the way the PC felt penealized by having a hefty 24+xp cost ditched on him for a "yoriki" title.

But under the core rules, if the PC had taken the Yoriki Title, he couldn't get anything else until he completes his title with a lot of XP. Now, considering that a title is more or less the equivalent of a rank in XP... and that not every PC will be interested by the same titles. You start to fall into very weird roleplay dead ends and limitations as the story will need to adjust for whatever XP the player feel to drop in their titles (if they even want to drop XP in there).

This is not even a question of "balance or powergaming" (personally the least of my concern in this game), but the way they are designed is simply bad for the story.

(bonds are not titles, they are another badly designed progression gimmick available in Courts of Stone)

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

Is it ok to pay XP for status? Why would you take "Yoriki" when you can take "Emerald Magistrate" for the same XP ?
And if the GM decides what he wants to "allow" you to take, isn't it a bit, wrong? Since the GM forces you to ditch XP in the title he allows you to take?

Hence why, keeping it purely RP, you can create a better progression. The GM can present options like "hey, you are a Yoriki now, gain that much status (or ability, or gear, or whatever GM feels like)", now a few session later maybe the PC then become an Emerald Magistrate, again, you adjust his status, and rewards.
But never along the way the PC felt penealized by having a hefty 24+xp cost ditched on him for a "yoriki" title.

I think, again, Avatar111 that this boils down to differences in perspective. This is a game where name, rank, title, etc mean nearly everything and here we're comparing apples and oranges. Why someone would want to be a Yoriki vs an Emerald Magistrate might be the difference between PCs being a police or intelligence officer and being a personal body guard in the real world.. there are plenty of reasons I can think of why it would be better to handle the private security details of say, Natalie Portman vs the thankless hours monitoring persons of interest as a public service / government agent.

Personally, I like how titles open doors for multiclass options and versatility from a mechanical perspective too.

You have a system that works for your table, and that's great. For me, XP in L5R is a resource that helps guide character development not only in abilities and techniques but as a currency for interests and direction (as an honest indicator for planning campaigns as a GM). So yeah, I'm fine with XP being spent on character development and everything that entails (such as status increases, otherwise inaccessible techniques, etc).

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

... and that not every PC will be interested by the same titles. You start to fall into very weird roleplay dead ends and limitations as the story will need to adjust for whatever XP the player feel to drop in their titles (if they even want to drop XP in there).

This is true in any RPG, but is par for the course with L5R, considering all of the clans, families, and career paths. Many things simply need to be carefully orchestrated by the GM and PCs. I'm not saying titles are perfect in their inception either, but it's far more engaging and balanced than the old multiclass rules!

20 minutes ago, T_Kageyasu said:

This is true in any RPG, but is par for the course with L5R, considering all of the clans, families, and career paths. Many things simply need to be carefully orchestrated by the GM and PCs. I'm not saying titles are perfect in their inception either, but it's far more engaging and balanced than the old multiclass rules!

I have no experience with old5r systems, unfortunately.

Our main concern is not availability of techniques, it is mostly how long it can take for a title to be completed, and how binding it to XP is weird as it make you less good in your school.

I guess if you consider it purely as a multiclass system then that would mean the only way for you to play a daimyo, narratively speaking, is if you bind yourself to that strict title, making you unable to achieve other titles unless you fully complete it. Which, for example, can cause a character who is the son of a daimyo but have a priest title unable to take the daimyo position in case their dad/mom pass away until they fully complete the priest title. And how would you handle someone who marry to a daimyo? Would you just give them "free status" ? Mechanically, the titles system, seen purely as a multiclass tool can make sense. But it is very restrictive when it comes to the story.

Again to each their own. But my opinion is quite evident considering how we play at our table (things can move very fast between sessions, the story goes fast. And having to spend 24+xp (hours?) of gametime to progress the story is a bit of a crutch for us. Maybe for a campaign that is much slower, the system works, hard for me to judge that. I'd say a campaign for us can last about 15 to 20 four hours long sessions. And if we want the story to go big within that time frame, we found titles to be a stick in the wheels.

Interesting. The only thing I can think of is that he really wants the title ability!

In terms of a lower school a rank, a lot of techniques use the school rank number for things, how many dice, strife, damage bonus, times per day, ect. So a lower school rank with the same xp COULD be weaker, but it really depends.

15 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

That is mostly represented by the Glory stat. I think.

Definitely. There might be a status shift associated with who you're a bodyguard to (after all, looked at from a certain point of view the Emerald Champion is arguably the Emperor's Yojimbo) but not how good you are at it.

On 8/18/2019 at 2:11 AM, player4254778 said:

One of my group is playing a shugenja and has earned the emerald magistrate title. They want to learn more earth invocations so want to use this title as a way of learning more invocations as they will only need to add half the experience each time they learn a new invocation. As they are playing a Yogo wardmaster currently at rank 1 they have access to earth invocations as part of this class but will need to add the full XP if they learn them this way. I can’t see anything stopping them doing this but it just feels wrong. I appreciate it is slowing their progression as a wardmaster but it does not seem right that they can learn twice as many invocations by choosing to learn them through the magistrate title whilst ploughing all of their other experience into other skills via the wardmaster. Are they able to do this?

Hopefully this makes sense

Thanks for any clarification

Reading through the thread, I cannot shake the impression that both you and your player have misunderstood how spending XP and then allocating them to school rank or title works.

Let's try to find the error.

Your player has a Yogo Wardmaster who is an Emerald Magistrate as a title. To make two things clear:

- Yogo wardmasters have Invocations listed as Techniques Available, and they have Earth invocations listed in their rank 1 curriculum

- Emerald Magistrates have NO invocations listed in their curriculum.

Let's say he has 12 XP. What he can do is:

1) Buy Rank 1 Earth invocations for his school. 8 exist to choose from, each costs 3 XP and pays 3 XP towards becoming Wardmaster Rank 2. If he spent 20 XP towards that, he is rank 2. Earth invocations are then no longer listed in his school curriculum, but are part of his Techniques Available (all invocations are), so he can buy further rank 1 earth invocations, or now even rank 2. They still cost 3 XP each, but contribute only 2 towards wardmaster rank 3.

2) He could instead buy Rank 1 Earth invocations towards his title. They are not listed in his title curticulum, so they cost 3 XP each and contribute 2 XP towards fulfilling Emerald Magistrate and 0 towards Wardmaster Rank 2. Once he contributed 30 XP this way (e.g. buying 15 rank 1 invocations of various elements for 45 XP), he gains the Emerald Magistrate title ability. He is still a wardmaster rank 1 though, still can't take invocations rank 2, and still 20 XP-contribution away from becoming wardmaster rank 2.

That has literally no advantage at all, except for giving him the title ability, which isn't worth much in my eyes.

So I believe he (and you) think something works differently here.

Where does your understanding of what happens diverge from what I describe?

It doesn’t really. When I gave the title I just never considered that he would not use it for the abilities it offers, but would simply use it as a way to plough 30 xp into learning more invocations (not just earth invocations). I am aware that this does slow down his progression towards his school, but I don’t really see why this matters as I will always tailor encounters to his abilities anyway, so can’t really see why taking 30 Xp longer to complete his school is an issue. Eventually he will still complete his school ranks but have an extra 30 xp worth of invocations. I guess I just expected he would use the emerald magistrate title on the abilities it confers, not just a way of getting some extra invocations.

At the end of the day, you can also gain school ranks by only getting out of school buys, and take longer by doing so.

Similar.

Indeed. The main 'pull' of Emerald Magistrate (aside from the title) to me is the preferential access to Kata.

It's good for shujenga who want to grab the odd one (crescent moon style is nice to have) but it's also great for bushi, since it gives them access to (normally) clan-specific kata like Lord Hida's Grip and Lord Shiba's Valour.

Most seem to agree that titles are strangely designed, with changing titles requiring ending one through XP and whatnot. But I have a question to the experienced GMs here:

Has it been your experience that the access to kata for shugenja that many titles offer (if you play the official modules, emerald magistrate is pretty much expected) devalues the bushi?

Except for the school ability, a joriki shugenja can pretty much do anything a bushi can until rank 4, and do all that spellcasting, too.

But has it actually been a problem in your groups, either because bushi PCs felt outclassed by shugenja, or because players started avoiding bushi schools?

2 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Except for the school ability, a joriki shugenja can pretty much do anything a bushi can until rank 4, and do all that spellcasting, too.

A Yoriki Shujenga has access to all the same techniques. That's not the same thing - because if you end up buying Kata, they don't help that much unless you also but the martial arts skills to back them up....at which point what you've got is a shujenga spending most of their XP on not being a shujenga.

The Bushi will have a decent head start in the field of thumping other people with non-magical objects, because they generally get 'free' ranks of martial skills, fitness, and an almost-universal-to-all-bushi-schools + Earth Ring, upping their composure and endurance.

It's the same in reverse; a Bushi can take the Stolen Knowledge inheritance and take an invocation - and (in theory) can therefore cast any invocation in the game via importune invocations. But unless you're prepared to invest in the Theology skill to 'power' that ability, it's not going to turn you into much of a 'warrior mage'.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

A Yoriki Shujenga has access to all the same techniques. That's not the same thing - because if you end up buying Kata, they don't help that much unless you also but the martial arts skills to back them up....at which point what you've got is a shujenga spending most of their XP on not being a shujenga.

The Bushi will have a decent head start in the field of thumping other people with non-magical objects, because they generally get 'free' ranks of martial skills, fitness, and an almost-universal-to-all-bushi-schools + Earth Ring, upping their composure and endurance.

It's the same in reverse; a Bushi can take the Stolen Knowledge inheritance and take an invocation - and (in theory) can therefore cast any invocation in the game via importune invocations. But unless you're prepared to invest in the Theology skill to 'power' that ability, it's not going to turn you into much of a 'warrior mage'.

Indeed, balance is not really an issue in that game, it is so out of whack that basically it doesn't matter much. More Rings/Skill = Better. Even the inheritance table, which is totally busted if you decide what to pick (nemuranai, technique etc), can be balanced by the GM later on...
Just do not panik over perceived balance issues, and hope the GM can compensate for weaker characters (if they are indeed weaker... give it a few sessions before paniking).

The REAL design issues are mostly nested in other mechanical areas of the game (confict chapter especially, and titles, and opportunity tables as main offenders imo)