If I want to prepare a prepared Invocation (L5R5th, p. 190), is it safe to assume that I can use Channeling (also L5R5th, p. 190)?

It'll take twice as long sure, but that's not a problem.

I would say it doesn't work because Channeling works when you Perform an invocation, not when you Prepare it.

But obviously, the answer is not clear and it is up to your GM to decide (like a lot of "rules" in this game).

I would agree.

• When you read the rules for Preparing an invocation, it says " Preparing an invocation is a downtime activity that requires a preparation check, which sets the skill used, and ingredients. The check uses the ring and TN of the invocation ."
• Saying that it uses the TN and ring of the invocation means it's not " a check to perform the invocation "; because if it was you wouldn't have to define that; that's what the ring and TN of the invocation is .
• Since Channelling is only an option " When making a check to perform an invocation ", I would say it's not, by default, an option for preparing a ward/potion/whatever (as noted, the GM may decide to allow it as a house rule, or for a particularly plot-critical situation, or for a void point, or whatever).
• Compare with Kaito Sacred Arrows , which explicitly says you do " perform the invocation ", and hence channelling is allowed.

my GM allowed it, but required double the materials for sacrifice / building. I did it because I specifically wanted to make sure I had enough opportunities to super power jurogin's balm to get both the resistance to maho and the cure any poison currently afflicting effect.

OK

Wording as written its not allowed. So technically your GM houseruled it

My understanding of prepared invocations seems to differ from yours.

- Wards are the only kind of prepared invocation published yet.

- Wards activate at an area, so they can only be used with invocations that target an area. Jojuro's Balm would not qualify, as it needs a target, unless you want to heal the ground.

Wards are for spells like Wall of Stone, Blessed Wind or False Realm of the Fox Spirits, that target areas.

If you want to make sure you have a highly rolled invocation, you channel and just cast instead.

As a GM, I would not allow other spells to be used in wards, as there are game balance considerations: If the player can channel and store a spell, he can just make sure he has e.g. a successful Fury of Osano-Wo ward ready and use it on an enemy. That would mean he casts a spell in round one that was effectively cast over three rounds, with do-over, if the roll was not good enough.

I don't think that was the intent of wards.

36 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

My understanding of prepared invocations seems to differ from yours.

- Wards are the only kind of prepared invocation published yet.

- Wards activate at an area, so they can only be used with invocations that target an area. Jojuro's Balm would not qualify, as it needs a target, unless you want to heal the ground.

Wards are for spells like Wall of Stone, Blessed Wind or False Realm of the Fox Spirits, that target areas.

If you want to make sure you have a highly rolled invocation, you channel and just cast instead.

As a GM, I would not allow other spells to be used in wards, as there are game balance considerations: If the player can channel and store a spell, he can just make sure he has e.g. a successful Fury of Osano-Wo ward ready and use it on an enemy. That would mean he casts a spell in round one that was effectively cast over three rounds, with do-over, if the roll was not good enough.

I don't think that was the intent of wards.

Whatever the intent is, we do not know. Like most of the "design" of this game, it is unclear garbage. The GM need to decide what the rules are at almost every turn.

You have your opinion on the "intent" as we all do. But that's just that... An opinion. Because as written, it can be many things.

8 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Whatever the intent is, we do not know. Like most of the "design" of this game, it is unclear garbage.

I do not share your hostility to the rules design, I think the L5R 5th edition is awesome from a design standpoint.

Prepared invocations are just a short sidebox, however. They could have elaborated more.

In the beta I believe there was one more of Prepared invocations, using Medicine to prepare alchemical mixtures. I'm not sure why they paired down the sidebar, maybe they want to relocate those to future books or something, but I think the intent is that you can justify any skill and material if it makes sense, as the sidebar is titled "prepared invocations" and then wards are the example (because they're explicitly called out by the Yogo school, I presume).

Considering that though, I wouldn't take too strict an interpretation of using Composition. While perhaps not the exact same as a "Ward", there's no real reason why you could not, say, write Jurojin's Balm onto a paper tag with a couple Opportunity stored, and then scribe the condition "if you're attached to a person who is poisoned, sick or Dying, activate". Jurojin's Balm is range 0-1, and the "rule" of wards is just "you attach it to a surface", so it could be stuck to clothes or skin and then pop when needed. Just takes a lot of work for anyone not a Yogo who get extra slots (and for their Mastery ability, can capture any Maho or Invocation into a ward, once per scene).

4 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

Considering that though, I wouldn't take too strict an interpretation of using Composition. While perhaps not the exact same as a "Ward", there's no real reason why you could not, say, write Jurojin's Balm onto a paper tag with a couple Opportunity stored, and then scribe the condition "if you're attached to a person who is poisoned, sick or Dying, activate". Jurojin's Balm is range 0-1, and the "rule" of wards is just "you attach it to a surface", so it could be stuck to clothes or skin and then pop when needed. Just takes a lot of work for anyone not a Yogo who get extra slots (and for their Mastery ability, can capture any Maho or Invocation into a ward, once per scene).

In that case, you should be prepared for players wearing healing wards with conditions like "when I get wounded/start dying" to get extra spells in combat without spending the action.

I mean, if they want to spend their downtime actions, resources and their one singular prepped invocation slot on not dying, go for it. No reason to stop them, it's their prepped invocation. And if they happen to be a Yogo doing it, that's their entire school schtick. No reason to limit their choices unnecessarily.

Plus, I get to play literal genie with the triggers. And people can steal them, since only the Yogo school forces a special check for someone else to use your ward.

Yes, but it would still give a further edge to shugenja, who already are very well supported. Combat last only few rounds in L5R, so anything that gives you tge equivalent of free actions is relevant. In e.g. D&D3.5, those spells were typical balance-issues.

So my shugenja can create a ward with e.g. Armor of Radiance that activates when he says "Ftagn".

Combat begins? He enters Earth stance, cast Tetsubo of Earth and says Ftagn. Boom, 2 invocation in one round, and didn't even to go into fire stance for it. All at the cost of 2 hours work in the evening. Since samurai don't buy stuff, he doesn't have to pay for ingredients anyway, he'll get those from his lord.

On the other hand, creating an offensive ward and have the shinobi affix it to an enemy could be very funny with the right conditions defined...

So I remain in doubt, but as it is not clearly defined, any GM can interpret as he likes. But be reminded that players tent to be VERY creative.

The. "game". is. not. balanced.

Good to see new faces around the forums though! Welcome. I expect you dropping the rule talk sooner than later

2 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

The. "game". is. not. balanced.

I have to disagree, depending on your definition of balanced, of course.

Seeing that the design aims obviously were:

- enabling a variety of tactics and outcomes, since that is the strength of the SW/Genesys/L5R Opportunity mechanics

- making combat rather short and deadly, since that is how samurai fiction usually depicts its battles,

I have to say L5R is impressive in how good a balance they find, with a few mistakes, of course.

Most RPGs are very repetetive when it comes to combat: I hit him, he hits me, someone is at 0 HP and dead. Compared to that, L5R 5th offers a great variety of choices and tactics. In D&D, I know what a Barbarian will do: a strength attack. In L5R, each member of the same school can have completely different tactics, depending on their ring, weapon and technique choices. That is great, but also VERY HARD to balance. D&D5 fails there in my regard, and they had way fewer thing to balance. L5R works surprisingly well, is my impression until now.

I recently read the Witcher RPG and was struck by how unelegant and prone to exploitation its rules were, compared.

On ‎9‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 7:50 AM, Harzerkatze said:

Prepared invocations are just a short sidebox, however. They could have elaborated more.

If you look in the Beta (I believe it's still about) there was a second option for preparing invocations as 'potions' using Medicine, rather than as 'wards' using Composition.

Wards can just be on a scroll rather than the more common image of the word as something on a door or fortified wall, so other invocations being prepared is fair enough - given the Yogo Wardmaster's school ability is built around preparing additional wards, prohibiting them from using their default invocations with their school ability seems a bit off.

3 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

So I remain in doubt, but as it is not clearly defined, any GM can interpret as he likes. But be reminded that players tent to be VERY creative.

I agree. I don't mind wards, but I do think the main 'control' the players need is the GM being a bit careful about what is allowed as a triggering condition. As a rule, anything that's an incidental without even needing to have the scroll in your hand is overdoing it; if you at least need to prepare (to either dig out the scroll or swap back to your sword afterwards) it's a lot less of an issue.

5 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

I have to disagree, depending on your definition of balanced, of course.

Seeing that the design aims obviously were:

- enabling a variety of tactics and outcomes, since that is the strength of the SW/Genesys/L5R Opportunity mechanics

- making combat rather short and deadly, since that is how samurai fiction usually depicts its battles,

I have to say L5R is impressive in how good a balance they find, with a few mistakes, of course.

Most RPGs are very repetetive when it comes to combat: I hit him, he hits me, someone is at 0 HP and dead. Compared to that, L5R 5th offers a great variety of choices and tactics. In D&D, I know what a Barbarian will do: a strength attack. In L5R, each member of the same school can have completely different tactics, depending on their ring, weapon and technique choices. That is great, but also VERY HARD to balance. D&D5 fails there in my regard, and they had way fewer thing to balance. L5R works surprisingly well, is my impression until now.

I recently read the Witcher RPG and was struck by how unelegant and prone to exploitation its rules were, compared.

More or less, it is about hitting and doing damage. The rest is, more or less, clunky stuff the GM needs to balance out or judge carefully otherwise it can become spammy.

Not a bad game, despite what I say, but totally not a good one either. I guess after you played more than 3-4 sessions we can check how you feel.

5 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Not a bad game, despite what I say, but totally not a good one either. I guess after you played more than 3-4 sessions we can check how you feel.

Actually, my campaign is running since May, and my group is not free of powergamers. So my experience seems do differ from yours.

So there seems to be sort of a concencus that, no matter what invocations can be used with wards, activating them should be an action, to avoid problems with overly-smart actication conditions. Otherwise, why would any daimyo walk around without a ward set to "Heal Dying condition if it occurs".

But I have another ward question: The ward can be placed and activated by others, non-shugenja. Do I understand it correctly that I roll the preparation check in the downtime activity, and its results count directly as the invocation check? Meaning the skill and ring of the later activator does not matter, and the activator can be in any stance?

Well, I tried to fire off the question to FFG but the form is borked again, I'll see if I can't slip it in sometime.

In general, I would agree you must be specific with the triggers of a ward, as the ward obviously has no "brain" of it's own. You may need to move or ready an item to get it out and placed correctly, but the actual activation seems like it's a thing that just happens (even in narrative time, depending on the condition). Yes, this lets players accomplish stuff out of turn, but again, pretty sure that's the point. You only get one normally, it should be pretty useful. But since the ward has only the logic you programmed it with, you'll need to be careful to avoid accidents. The GM's balance comes in with figuring out what the limits of triggers are, though also if you go all "I prepared Explosive Runes today" that is also probably an honor hit (booby traps =/= bushido). I used the dying condition as an example, but I don't think that actually works for a Ward, unless a player can come up with a good way to phrase it, the "character" physically scribes the condition on the ward, so the characters have no idea about mechanics like that. This may mean more vague and narrative triggers.

If you also want to be very specific in your reading, while it doesn't phrase it like it's an order of operations, the sidebar does technically say first "attach it to a surface" then says "write a condition". So you may have to pick the target first by placing it, then make the trigger.

This is also a personal philosophy thing, but as a GM, I have unlimited toys and resources, players do not, in general I don't like to be picky about how players use their resources unless there's a very strict reason in the mechanics or narrative. If I want the PCs to die, they die, as I am playing the part of literally all other entities in Rokugan.

7 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

So there seems to be sort of a concencus that, no matter what invocations can be used with wards, activating them should be an action, to avoid problems with overly-smart actication conditions. Otherwise, why would any daimyo walk around without a ward set to "Heal Dying condition if it occurs".

But I have another ward question: The ward can be placed and activated by others, non-shugenja. Do I understand it correctly that I roll the preparation check in the downtime activity, and its results count directly as the invocation check? Meaning the skill and ring of the later activator does not matter, and the activator can be in any stance?

No choice but to go the route of "allow everything". Otherwise, you start to really complicate the gameplay... And there are holes like this everywhere in the game system's details.

The core mechanics are solid, but lots of the added layers on top were rushed and butched.

Anyway, I suggest you just allow everything, but don't use it against the PC. Yeah, it is super powerful (and broken, and cheesy to some extent) but it doesn't really "matter" as so many other things also are. At the end of the day, this game is about kissing a girl you shouldn't kiss and roleplaying all emo about it.

As a GM, you need to come up with dramatic choices that are beyond mechanics. Playing the mechanics only will result in a pretty bad experience.

By-the-by, I believe that when they say ward, what they mean is 'Ofuda' like these:

It's the thing that you see spirit-hunters use in anime.