I was reading the rules for character creation and advancement yesterday and I noticed something...

The rules for advancements seem pretty flexible and seem to allow for interesting combinations (like a court poet who is also a suprisingly good sword fighter). Still, it seems a bit weird that there are no restriction on how you spend your PC's XP to advance in the school rank? There's the curriculum, but you can also buy out-of-curriculum skills etc. They do count toward rank progression - to a lesser extend than curriculum skills, but they do. And I can't find any information that you need to advance in at least some of the curriculum skills to progress to the next school rank...

... which, in theory, seems to mean that you can have a PC that belongs to a Bushi school, but then spends a lot of XP on completely non-Bushi advances - and still progresses through the school ranks. Even though the PC doesn't actually learn anything his school teaches...

Is this deliberate? Is this a possible hole in the rules that's allowed to stay, because actually doing this makes no narrative sense for a PC? Or am I just reading the rules wrong?

10 minutes ago, Varsovian said:

I was reading the rules for character creation and advancement yesterday and I noticed something...

The rules for advancements seem pretty flexible and seem to allow for interesting combinations (like a court poet who is also a suprisingly good sword fighter). Still, it seems a bit weird that there are no restriction on how you spend your PC's XP to advance in the school rank? There's the curriculum, but you can also buy out-of-curriculum skills etc. They do count toward rank progression - to a lesser extend than curriculum skills, but they do. And I can't find any information that you need to advance in at least some of the curriculum skills to progress to the next school rank...

... which, in theory, seems to mean that you can have a PC that belongs to a Bushi school, but then spends a lot of XP on completely non-Bushi advances - and still progresses through the school ranks. Even though the PC doesn't actually learn anything his school teaches...

Is this deliberate? Is this a possible hole in the rules that's allowed to stay, because actually doing this makes no narrative sense for a PC? Or am I just reading the rules wrong?

All you said is doable: check

It is not unbalanced/overpowered at all: check

Some amount of narrative nonsense is unavoidable in ttrpg: check

Progression system is not the best designed part of the game: check

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

Progression system is not the best designed part of the game: check

Nooooooo!!! I want this game to be perfect

That's an interesting point, Varsovian. I see how it's a problem theoretically, but I think in practice it won't be an issue. From a mechanics standpoint, I see two reasons to choose a school:

• You like the school ability
• You like the access to techniques

If you're only spending XP outside of your curriculum, you're not taking advantage of either well. So why did you choose the school?

If you're doing it for role-playing reasons (a brash and violent young Shiba, shepherded off to an obscure library somewhere for training as a Loremaster, who still wants to become a great warrior), then you're probably going to do what makes role-playing sense anyway and take some skills to reflect your experience.

If it's because your DM made you play something you don't actually want to play, then there's probably a separate issue that needs to be addressed.

Oh, it's not something I actually plan on doing... I agree that it doesn't make much sense, unless there are some very specific RP reasons for that. It's just something that occured to me when reading this part of the book - and I wondered whether I'm missing something there?

I think the Half-XP is really more of a balance thing - there's only so much on your curriculum table anyway, so it makes sense to let some of it bleed over even if it's not necessarily "in school" learning, as Rank is one of the major balancers to techniques (besides your school giving you access to technique groups in general), so if you didn't progress School Rank at all, you'd have very cookie-cutter characters or you'd have characters who just aren't getting access to new abilities at all. It prevents you from being "completely" left behind if you feel a sudden desire or pressure to buy out of school. Conversely, one of the major pluses to certains schools is the early or otherwise unique access to some techniques.

You could make it a bigger deal in RP, but you don't have to, I think it just keeps players from feeling like complete dead-weight just because "Oh crap, nobody bought any Theology and suddenly we're all spooky all the time. Better bite the bullet".

9 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

You could make it a bigger deal in RP, but you don't have to, I think it just keeps players from feeling like complete dead-weight just because "Oh crap, nobody bought any Theology and suddenly we're all spooky all the time. Better bite the bullet".

This. Everyone has access to every skill, and no-one gets punished too much for buying a rank 1 'out-of-school'.