As written, quite some rule mechanisms work on an attack without requiring a hit. I am not convinced that that was always intended.

We talked about the Cut Off the Head objective in Mass battles. But there are many examples:

- While spending 2 opportunities to produce a critical hit requires that you hit first, a snaring weapon can immobilize without hitting.

- Various kata produce effects when you spend opportunities, e.g. Breath of Wind (Disoriented) or Disappearing World (Dazed).

- Katana of Fire with one opportunity will possibly set targets on fire after you perform an attack action, not only after you hit with one.

- Fury of Osano-wo with one opportunity requires a check from eveyone within 2 range bands of the target or will make them Dazed and deal Strife equal to 3x your Fire ring.

Do you allow all those to work without hitting? On weapon qualities and opportunity uses from kata, I would expect those to be intended to work this way.
But e.g. with Fury of Osano-wo, the effect of 9 - 12 Strife per enemy in range plus Dazed with a TN of effectively 0 (you only need an opportunity, no successes) seems a bit off, even if I include the fact that you often would hit comrades as well.

14 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

While spending 2 opportunities to produce a critical hit requires that you hit first, a snaring weapon can immobilize without hitting.

I don't mind this - simply because it's not hit/miss - succeeding in a check doesn't automatically cause you to hit your opponent (because it's fatigue , not wounds ) - arguably you only actually 'hit' if you inflict a critical strike - and wanting to use a snaring weapon to pin someone without inflicting fatigue seems quite a likely use of the weapon.

Given that you need equal to the vigilance of the target to immobilize them, for most opponents you need or even to trigger snaring. So whilst you might not care about succeeding at the Martial Arts (Melee) check, you need two results to do what you want, so it's essentially just as hard as a TN2 check. If you were required to succeed on the check as well, immobilizing an average opponent with a snaring weapon would require - four results of what is normally 2-3 kept dice, and hence nearly impossible unless you roll one or more .

Spinning Blades style is much the same.

(obviously both are a lot easier against a compromised opponent)

24 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

- Various kata produce effects when you spend opportunities, e.g. Breath of Wind (Disoriented) or Disappearing World (Dazed).

Breath of Wind and Disappearing world (also Crashing Wave and Iron In The Mountain) aren't 'free', though - you get to trigger them off a without succeeding in the check, but for them to take effect your opponent then has to fail the check to resist the effect.

24 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

Katana of Fire with one opportunity will possibly set targets on fire after you perform an attack action, not only after you hit with one.

Agreed. But there is a check to resist the effect (as above) and you also have to have performed the Katana of Fire invocation in the first place; this is an opportunity when attacking with the already-created flaming sword.

28 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

- Fury of Osano-wo with one opportunity requires a check from eveyone within 2 range bands of the target or will make them Dazed and deal Strife equal to 3x your Fire ring.

This one I'll grant you. I'll be honest, I'm surprised this one isn't "if you succeed"; this is an effect of a bolt of lighting hitting near the target; which logically wouldn't happen if you failed to perform the invocation.

I agree with you on all points. Grabbing someone should work independent of whether you hit. While the kata have varying levels of believability when it comes to a miss (easy to imagine unbalancing someone without hitting so they become disoriented, harder to imagine making someone bleed without hitting), they were specifically designed only for opportunities, so the designers probably thought about that.

I can also imagine the Katana of Fire being so hot that things catch fire without being touched.

But the lightning is a bridge too far, especially as it is a TN 5 invocation, which normally would balance its extreme damage. Not easy having 5 successes plus bonus successes plus an opportunity.

1 hour ago, Harzerkatze said:

they were specifically designed

Lol

You only scratch the surface. Wait until you start to play

It is messy (read; weak af), unless you disregard most rules, just eyeball everything, and play a more RP drama type of game.

26 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Lol

You only scratch the surface. Wait until you start to play

It is messy (read; weak af), unless you disregard most rules, just eyeball everything, and play a more RP drama type of game.

You seem to keep assuming that I haven't. My campaign has more than a dozen sessions under its belt.

It is strange that you are one of the most prolific poster in the rules question forum, if the rules desinterest you so much. Why even play 5th Edition, if you prefer Freeform RP? There is way more material under the older editions, and cheaper, too. If you want to disregard the rules anyway, why play a relatively new edition with as of now few sourcebooks?

8 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

You seem to keep assuming that I haven't. My campaign has more than a dozen sessions under its belt.

It is strange that you are one of the most prolific poster in the rules question forum, if the rules desinterest you so much. Why even play 5th Edition, if you prefer Freeform RP? There is way more material under the older editions, and cheaper, too. If you want to disregard the rules anyway, why play a relatively new edition with as of now few sourcebooks?

How can you have more than a dozen sessions and only now started to ask basic questions about rules pitfalls?

You gathered all the weird loopholes and issues and suddenly decided to figure it all out? During those twelve sessions, how did you handle the issues you are raising now? Took on the spot decisions?

Well, Fury of Osano-wo being cast and missing is something that does not happen all the time. It is a quite specific spell, you need rank 2, and my only PC that knows it is Isawa and waited for a storm to use it.

Mass battles require armies, which are not listed as starting equipment.

So it is not like the issues I named here pop up all the time. And yes, if an issue pops up, of course i took on the spot decisions.

But I like to compare those decisions with how others have approached it, which is why I am here. I expect that to be the case for most posters.

6 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Well, Fury of Osano-wo being cast and missing is something that does not happen all the time. It is a quite specific spell, you need rank 2, and my only PC that knows it is Isawa and waited for a storm to use it.

Mass battles require armies, which are not listed as starting equipment.

So it is not like the issues I named here pop up all the time. And yes, if an issue pops up, of course i took on the spot decisions.

But I like to compare those decisions with how others have approached it, which is why I am here. I expect that to be the case for most posters.

At first yeah, but now, I just came to the conclusion that there are just so many issues that it is impossible to tackle them all

There is only one answer to all your questions; the GM makes the call.

And the players just deal with it.

that is the only ultimate truth you will find... If you want some not-ultimate truths, you can check my houserules in the relevant section. Though I tried to avoid small balance changes as much as possible (because honestly, this game is a minefield). But if you have major gameplay "fixes" that you want to propose I like that. But for details... I am honestly just worried you go insane when you start to see all the design issues lol

On 9/20/2019 at 3:43 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

I don't mind this - simply because it's not hit/miss - succeeding in a check doesn't automatically cause you to hit your opponent (because it's fatigue , not wounds ) - arguably you only actually 'hit' if you inflict a critical strike - and wanting to use a snaring weapon to pin someone without inflicting fatigue seems quite a likely use of the weapon.

Given that you need equal to the vigilance of the target to immobilize them, for most opponents you need or even to trigger snaring. So whilst you might not care about succeeding at the Martial Arts (Melee) check, you need two results to do what you want, so it's essentially just as hard as a TN2 check. If you were required to succeed on the check as well, immobilizing an average opponent with a snaring weapon would require - four results of what is normally 2-3 kept dice, and hence nearly impossible unless you roll one or more .

Spinning Blades style is much the same.

(obviously both are a lot easier against a compromised opponent)

Breath of Wind and Disappearing world (also Crashing Wave and Iron In The Mountain) aren't 'free', though - you get to trigger them off a without succeeding in the check, but for them to take effect your opponent then has to fail the check to resist the effect.

Agreed. But there is a check to resist the effect (as above) and you also have to have performed the Katana of Fire invocation in the first place; this is an opportunity when attacking with the already-created flaming sword.

This one I'll grant you. I'll be honest, I'm surprised this one isn't "if you succeed"; this is an effect of a bolt of lighting hitting near the target; which logically wouldn't happen if you failed to perform the invocation.

I wouldnt say that the failure means no bolt, a bolt appears, you just missed your target. still get the aoe of the shock and thunder.