Slippery Maneuvers What Does It Mean?

By Truly Evil Bob, in Rules Questions

I have a question about the Slippery Maneuvers Shūji on page 221 of the core rules.
This has to do specifically with skirmishes.
What is the area of effect on this.
It says to "choose a position containing terrain" and then "Attack checks targeting any of your targets inside that terrain treat the terrain as having the Obscuring terrain quality."
Okay, so what is a position? Is that like a point? a range band?
Does the Obscuring effect apply to the position or the entire terrain and if so how big is a terrain? Does this mean that if we are fighting on a terrain with only one quality it applies to the entire map (battle area) as the book implies? This seems like a very powerful rank 2 ability if it can just make strikes against them jump to from TN 2 to TN 4 everywhere.
Does this technique work with conventional Obscuring terrain? For example can a character gain a +3 TN to be hit by being in fog and being the target of Slippery Maneuvers or does the greatest effect apply?
If a character using Slippery Maneuvers is in Obscuring terrain and pick a position whose terrain extends past his sight does the area outside his sight range still gain the bonus effect or does it only apply to parts of the terrain the character can see?
This effect seems to work only if the character using the shūji can speak (or signal) to give orders. Does this effect end if the shūji user is unable to give orders, for example is incapacitated or is somehow silenced and they don't have an alternate way of directing people, like a war fan, or does it unequivocally end at the end of the scene?

Edited by Truly Evil Bob
On 10/18/2019 at 8:46 PM, Truly Evil Bob said:

I have a question about the Slippery Maneuvers Shūji on page 221 of the core rules.
This has to do specifically with skirmishes.
What is the area of effect on this.
It says to "choose a position containing terrain" and then "Attack checks targeting any of your targets inside that terrain treat the terrain as having the Obscuring terrain quality."
Okay, so what is a position? Is that like a point? a range band?
Does the Obscuring effect apply to the position or the entire terrain and if so how big is a terrain? Does this mean that if we are fighting on a terrain with only one quality it applies to the entire map (battle area) as the book implies? This seems like a very powerful rank 2 ability if it can just make strikes against them jump to from TN 2 to TN 4 everywhere.
Does this technique work with conventional Obscuring terrain? For example can a character gain a +3 TN to be hit by being in fog and being the target of Slippery Maneuvers or does the greatest effect apply?
If a character using Slippery Maneuvers is in Obscuring terrain and pick a position whose terrain extends past his sight does the area outside his sight range still gain the bonus effect or does it only apply to parts of the terrain the character can see?
This effect seems to work only if the character using the shūji can speak (or signal) to give orders. Does this effect end if the shūji user is unable to give orders, for example is incapacitated or is somehow silenced and they don't have an alternate way of directing people, like a war fan, or does it unequivocally end at the end of the scene?

I have watched your shows.
And I understand your struggles...

L5R is NOT a balanced/tactical game, for all the "rules" that seems to say it is... it just won't work well. There are techniques that can break entire encounters in one shot (and it is OK that they can, but as the GM you should design encounters around it basically, so that every character can "break" the encounters once in a while.

You can put the biggest baddest Oni out there, basically the players can use "Bind the shadow" to immobilize it for a year...

L5R is about stories, and big moments and drama. "Breaking" the game is OK. But as a GM you need to shuffle your Conflict types and situations.

I would suggest that you need to rethink the way you design and GM your L5R games.
If you want to keep doing the very tactical gameplay and hope L5R will work for that, you will fall into a ton of pitfalls to the point that you would probably be served much better by games that are meant to handle such GMing style (hack and slash adventuring).
L5R is an extremely hard game to GM...

Edited by Avatar111
On 10/19/2019 at 2:46 AM, Truly Evil Bob said:

I have a question about the Slippery Maneuvers Shūji on page 221 of the core rules.
This has to do specifically with skirmishes.
What is the area of effect on this.
It says to "choose a position containing terrain" and then "Attack checks targeting any of your targets inside that terrain treat the terrain as having the Obscuring terrain quality."
Okay, so what is a position? Is that like a point? a range band?
Does the Obscuring effect apply to the position or the entire terrain and if so how big is a terrain? Does this mean that if we are fighting on a terrain with only one quality it applies to the entire map (battle area) as the book implies? This seems like a very powerful rank 2 ability if it can just make strikes against them jump to from TN 2 to TN 4 everywhere.
Does this technique work with conventional Obscuring terrain? For example can a character gain a +3 TN to be hit by being in fog and being the target of Slippery Maneuvers or does the greatest effect apply?
If a character using Slippery Maneuvers is in Obscuring terrain and pick a position whose terrain extends past his sight does the area outside his sight range still gain the bonus effect or does it only apply to parts of the terrain the character can see?
This effect seems to work only if the character using the shūji can speak (or signal) to give orders. Does this effect end if the shūji user is unable to give orders, for example is incapacitated or is somehow silenced and they don't have an alternate way of directing people, like a war fan, or does it unequivocally end at the end of the scene?

My understanding is that the terrain has to have a terrain effect from p.267, like unbalanced, since terrain is a rules entity. You cannot simply choose grassland or earth.

If you are in e.g. unbalanced terrain, then the Shuji makes that obscuring, too. Range hasn't been named and doesn't matter, a skirmish should have no more than a few combatants, those easily fit into a few square meters.

Obscuring means Attack TN+1, or +2 with an opportunity.

Double Obscuring is not a thing, but Obscuring is a terrain. So in thick jungle, you can use the ability with an opportunity and gain +2 instead of +1.

The rules say nothing about duration, so end of scene sounds about right.

The Shuji can be very effective, no doubt. But terrain other than obscuring (dangerous, defiled, entangling, hallowed, imbalanced) isn't that often encountered, and in obscuring terrain, the effect is lessened. Also, you usually have to spend actions or Opportunities beforehand to identify terrain. That balances the +2 for potentially all on one side.

33 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

My understanding is that the terrain has to have a terrain effect from p.267, like unbalanced, since terrain is a rules entity. You cannot simply choose grassland or earth.

Is an item an item even if it doesn't have an item quality ? interesting train of thought though, I genuinely asked myself the question.

Aside from that, all else is fair rulelawying. End of scene is usually a safe bet... Yeah, lots of techniques need a duration (and a direction too, but lets forget that for now).

Also, In the original poster's live game, the player was spamming the technique. The whole "battlefield" was a slippery maneuvre, since doing a new one didn't cancel the previous one he did. Which was totally oblitarating the encounter he prepared...
By the rule, the player was doing it allright.
Which led me to the conclusion that this game is about story and that techniques are "counters" that will sometimes have their use but if you start to create encounters that can always be broken by the same technique, you probably are not doing the game a favor.

I tend to agree with you that if the terrain is flat open ground.. the technique would "maybe" not work (or would require some props like smoke grenades, or camo suit... maybe?) But in most fun areas, it should work. Even if the terrain does not have a quality.
Though, not allowing it to work would require convincing the player, and if the player starts to argue back... then.. it leads to unfun moments... Which is also a problem with this game since the rules are very vague and unclear/unprecise. In my personaly exprience, I basically just allow everything to work. And adjust to it by mixing my encounter types.
Starting to make open field encounters against standard minions or lowbie enemies back to back as you would do in D&D just isn't the game's strong point.

You do not WIN a ttrpg like L5R, you make a STORY with your players.
And that saying is reinforced with the L5R system many narrative rules (though they wanted to grab the tactical players too, and unfortunately, the tactical fluff ended up being what hurt the system the most. IMO).

12 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I would suggest that you need to rethink the way you design and GM your L5R games.

How you run a game is probably a very different thread, I was just asking some very crunchy rules questions.

6 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Also, In the original poster's live game, the player was spamming the technique. The whole "battlefield" was a slippery maneuvre, since doing a new one didn't cancel the previous one he did. Which was totally oblitarating the encounter he prepared...
By the rule, the player was doing it allright.
Which led me to the conclusion that this game is about story and that techniques are "counters" that will sometimes have their use but if you start to create encounters that can always be broken by the same technique, you probably are not doing the game a favor.

That said, yes my player was spamming that ability, and it made a challenging encounter that was balanced by the game rules something far less challenging. The solution to this is to either send threats above their pay grade which could backfire, use mobs which I've employed but generally hate using because it makes things far harder to run any combat or just let them roll over the NPCs using that one singular tech. Sure, when they use something cool in a critical moment to get the upperhand it makes for an awesome scene, but here this tech is not 'that special something' but rather that 'thing we always do' and lost its specialness. So I either have to make encounters specialty for it and which case I feel like I'm just trying to negate their advantage instead of building good encounters.

12 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

L5R is NOT a balanced/tactical game, for all the "rules" that seems to say it is... it just won't work well. There are techniques that can break entire encounters in one shot (and it is OK that they can, but as the GM you should design encounters around it basically, so that every character can "break" the encounters once in a while.

You can put the biggest baddest Oni out there, basically the players can use "Bind the shadow" to immobilize it for a year...

L5R is about stories, and big moments and drama. "Breaking" the game is OK. But as a GM you need to shuffle your Conflict types and situations.


As for 'broken-ness' of it, I want to reiterate that the tech feels like more of a rank 3 or 4 tech. At rank 2 the threats aren't big enough so every PC getting a TN 2 bonus basically makes any combat encounter a walk through, no NPC can actually hit a PC without a phenom roll. But at ranks 3 to 4 the bad guys are strong enough to overcome the TN bonus but not without some effort, hits and misses would be more in line with encounters at lower levels. This that crunchy rule threat v balance thing, but when you are running a combat centric adventure like Mask of the Oni it matters quite a bit. I'm sure when I start to run Winter's Embrace it will matter far less.

7 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

My understanding is that the terrain has to have a terrain effect from p.267, like unbalanced, since terrain is a rules entity. You cannot simply choose grassland or earth.

If you are in e.g. unbalanced terrain, then the Shuji makes that obscuring, too. Range hasn't been named and doesn't matter, a skirmish should have no more than a few combatants, those easily fit into a few square meters.

Obscuring means Attack TN+1, or +2 with an opportunity.

Double Obscuring is not a thing, but Obscuring is a terrain. So in thick jungle, you can use the ability with an opportunity and gain +2 instead of +1.

The rules say nothing about duration, so end of scene sounds about right.

The Shuji can be very effective, no doubt. But terrain other than obscuring (dangerous, defiled, entangling, hallowed, imbalanced) isn't that often encountered, and in obscuring terrain, the effect is lessened. Also, you usually have to spend actions or Opportunities beforehand to identify terrain. That balances the +2 for potentially all on one side.

I do want to know some actual rulings on this Shūgi specifically cause I like to know the RAW. That said I will be ruling in my personal game that any Shūgi will end if a character is incapacitated or no longer able to direct things. Shūgi by their nature are social techniques and if you are unable to fulfill the social duty I feel the bonuses the techniques give should end, no matter what RAW says.

Thanks for those clarifications.

Edited by Truly Evil Bob
12 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I have watched your shows.

And thanks for watching. *Highfive*

"If you succeed during a skirmish, choose a position containing terrain that you can see. Each target may immediately move 1 range band toward it. Attack checks targeting any of your targets inside the terrain treat the terrain as having the Obscuring terrain quality. This effect persists until the end of the scene."

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

My understanding is that the terrain has to have a terrain effect from p.267, like unbalanced, since terrain is a rules entity. You cannot simply choose grassland or earth.

Agreed. It would make a lot more sense if the technique had said "terrain feature", since that's the phrase used on page 268. Mind you, tactical assessment instead says 'choose a piece of terrain in the scene' so it's not like they're consistant!

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:46 AM, Truly Evil Bob said:

Does the Obscuring effect apply to the position or the entire terrain and if so how big is a terrain?

A terrain feature is as big as the GM allows it to be. The fact that it's a position you can see and indicate to everyone would suggest it needs to be a feature which doesn't encompass the entire field - since the whole point is using some critical terrain feature against the enemy.

The rules don't force you to do that if the GM decides to create a woodland 6 range bands in every direction, I guess.

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:46 AM, Truly Evil Bob said:

Does this technique work with conventional Obscuring terrain? For example can a character gain a +3 TN to be hit by being in fog and being the target of Slippery Maneuvers or does the greatest effect apply?

As noted, terrain is either obscuring or not. It is worth noting that the opportunity doesn't seem to restrict its use to the terrain targeted by slippery manoeuvres, though, so if there's also a fog bank as well as the terrain you targeted, you'd get TN+2 instead of +1 when sheltering in that as well.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

The rules say nothing about duration, so end of scene sounds about right.

It specifically says the end of the scene.

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:46 AM, Truly Evil Bob said:

If a character using Slippery Maneuvers is in Obscuring terrain and pick a position whose terrain extends past his sight does the area outside his sight range still gain the bonus effect or does it only apply to parts of the terrain the character can see?

You could argue about whether "that you can see" applies to the position or to the terrain, but given the inclusion of the phrase I'd be very hesitant to let it affect anything outside line of sight.

On ‎10‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:46 AM, Truly Evil Bob said:

This effect seems to work only if the character using the shūji can speak (or signal) to give orders. Does this effect end if the shūji user is unable to give orders, for example is incapacitated or is somehow silenced and they don't have an alternate way of directing people, like a war fan, or does it unequivocally end at the end of the scene?

It requires a command check; if a player is logically unable to perform that check then they can't perform the shuji. It does require directing people, which requires you either to be able to speak to them or at best to make commanding gestures having pre-agreed some sort of plan. The Silenced condition wouldn't prevent them attempting it, but would increase the TN by 3 as normal.

However, the effect would still carry on to the end of the scene once successfully used.

It's the same as assistance; unskilled assistance to a skilled PC is very powerful given that the unskilled player would otherwise be sat there like a lemon - it's important to ask how and why what you're doing qualifies as meaningful assistance.

3 hours ago, Truly Evil Bob said:

That said, yes my player was spamming that ability, and it made a challenging encounter that was balanced by the game rules something far less challenging. The solution to this is to either send threats above their pay grade which could backfire, use mobs which I've employed but generally hate using because it makes things far harder to run any combat or just let them roll over the NPCs using that one singular tech. Sure, when they use something cool in a critical moment to get the upperhand it makes for an awesome scene, but here this tech is not 'that special something' but rather that 'thing we always do' and lost its specialness. So I either have to make encounters specialty for it and which case I feel like I'm just trying to negate their advantage instead of building good encounters.

The thing there is not to allow enough terrain features to let them create an insta-bunker for the entire party. Not everything is a terrain feature - or more accurately, you can have a battlefield which contains terrain without it being full of terrain features the players can be inside .

Also note that you can always either duck the problem (there is a generic void opportunity to ignore terrain qualities) or else turn their trick on them, by spending opportunities yourself to establish terrain details with air opportunities in initiative and making the obvious insta-bunker Dangerous.

I'm not sure if there are any specific NPCs with abilities related to terrain worth looking at.

10 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Is an item an item even if it doesn't have an item quality ? interesting train of thought though, I genuinely asked myself the question.

There are items without item qualities. But it is generally important to separate rules entities from other things. For example, a bushi may invoke his patron fortune if he likes. But that is still not an invocation that allows him to spend earth opportunities to increase his resistance. Invocation here is not just the word, it is a rules entity that describes a limited subset of what the word invocation means. Likewise, a heated argument with a foe does not suddenly allow you a critical strike with double deadliness because you could call it a duel of words.

Likewise, the terrain chapter pretty clearly talks about describing specific features with clear effects. I see no reason to think that there are terrains (the rules entity) without terrain features, just as I do not expect to see invocations (the rules entity) that do not concern dealing with the kami.

A shuji that deals with terrain in a conflict context probably means terrain as described in the conflict chapter: the rules entity. Not open grassland or evenly laid floor tiles.

The shuji does not talk about terrain qualities, because there could be multiple different terrains available with a shared quality: bushes and mist, or active fires and dangerous rubble. The shuji calls for chosing one of those. But as GM, I would not accept a switch to a general-word interpretation of "terrain", when it is pretty clearly defined as a rules entity in the very chapter the shuji deal with.

To me a terrain can be featureless. And I think FFG would clarify it as such. But your interpretation is valid.

Regarding the power of slippery maneuvre technique, as I said, this game is busted from all direction (not that it is necessarily a bad thing...)

I had a major kami in my game, took down in ONE technique (bind the shadows) that immobilized it for 1 year. Game over. Can I put any more of these types of kami in my game? No. Was it a bad encounter? No, because I roll with the punches. I have juice to keep going, I play with a ton of npc sheets (and that is mostly it, aside the pretty maps). Everything is disposable.

That is just an example... This system just create these things. Slippery maneuvre is not even that much of a problem compared to many other things.

All I am saying is that you cannot, should not, play this game as something tactical/balanced, because it won't work. The important thing is too have narrative choices and drama, let the dice tell a story.

As a tactical game, if you want to play as such, L5R is simply one of the worst option you can go for. I really wish there was a good live L5R session to represent how I think the system is best handled, but there is not...

Though, honest answer here, this system is bloated and unconsistant when it comes to tactical gameplay. It simply doesn't work for always the same type of encounters. In EvilBob's shows, hes throwing bodies at the party of 8 (4 players, 4 npc controlled by players) on an open fields.

It just doesn't work.

This is not an encounter that works for L5R. Sorry to be blunt. A shugenja will probably nuke that in one turn, or it will become a dragging mess.

There is really no other way to put it. When the GM realize the players are using slippery maneuvre technique here and there and have and insurmountable advantage, do not try to "nerf" them. Just roll with the punches, let them clear that encounter narratively, make it epic how they simply are too coordinated and strategic for the ratlings.

Move forward.

If you want to play a mostly narrative game, very combat light (skirmishes being as rare as other form of scenes) the dice and techniques and character details like advantages/ninjo etc can create an awesome story.

At this point, trying to defend the crunch is... Meaningless. The important thing is to teach people how to play this game; open the gates, have a lot of npc at the ready (with ninjo and giri, hardest part of the design for the GM right here) don't fret in details, create drama and choices for the PC, play with a relatively small group, and make all types of scenes as common, not just skirmishes.

Edited by Avatar111
24 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Though, honest answer here, this system is bloated and unconsistant when it comes to tactical gameplay.

We disagree there, as we have found before. In my experience, tactical gameplay works fine, with some spectacular surprises sometimes. But thus, your mileage might vary.

But out of curiosity (sorry to derail the thread a bit): Why was a Fitness TN 4 check so difficult for a major Kami? A regular Manifest XY Kami should ace that most of the time, at least when using a void point. Sounds to me rather like bad luck combined with a situation where the player had the perfect tool for the job, than like a lost cause of a combat system.

Just now, Harzerkatze said:

We disagree there, as we have found before. In my experience, tactical gameplay works fine, with some spectacular surprises sometimes. But thus, your mileage might vary.

But out of curiosity (sorry to derail the thread a bit): Why was a Fitness TN 4 check so difficult for a major Kami? A regular Manifest XY Kami should ace that most of the time, at least when using a void point. Sounds to me rather like bad luck combined with a situation where the player had the perfect tool for the job, than like a lost cause of a combat system.

Not that easy. Especially when the kami take a crit from another player, or gets compromised (resist checks will do that to you eventually), or any other factors. The players can definitely "combo" and focus to make that happen all the time.

Maybe your experience with tactical encounter went well, or your players are not really shugenja, kakita, or any other kind of character than can one shot almost anything at rank 2-3. But in my experience, it is extremely swingy, abusable and spammable and some parts of the system simply won't hold because they come back skirmish after skirmish as a general go to tactic and it starts to get boring. Other things, like sacred weapons, are also problematic in their own right.

I do not hate the game. I really like some parts of it actually. But I find it extremely hard to believe anybody who thinks this system runs well as a hack and slash, tactical combat game. At least, all the youtube/poscast games I've checked were just not really fun when trying to do tactical gameplay.

1 hour ago, Harzerkatze said:

Why was a Fitness TN 4 check so difficult for a major Kami? A regular Manifest XY Kami should ace that most of the time, at least when using a void point.

It may not have had a void point. Or it might be wounded, or it might be in Water stance (as one would expect a manifest Water Kami to be) - or it might just have suffered dumb bloody luck. TN4 is realistically doable but not trivial even for a Kami.

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

I had a major kami in my game, took down in ONE technique (bind the shadows) that immobilized it for 1 year. Game over.

Bind The Shadows itself needs a bit of looking at, since it's not entirely clear what 'bound' is intended to mean.

By which I mean:

"If you succeed, crackling arcs of jade light smite and purify your target; it must resist with a TN 4 Fitness (Air 2, Water 5) check or suffer the Immobilized and Silenced conditions. This effect persists for a number of rounds equal to your Earth Ring."

Note the lack of the term 'bind' anywhere in the effect.

"Earth : Each target that fails its Fitness check to resist is bound for one year instead."

Now what in this case is "bound?" - since Immobilized and Silenced are standard conditions and both include a rule for shaking the effect off (basically not moving or not talking for a round)

  • The target cannot remove Immobilized and Silenced until the time expires?
  • The target can remove Immobilized and Silenced as normal but suffers the persistent effect (i.e. the fitness check) at the start of each turn?

The rule stating fitness check in the singular implies the former, but saying 'the effect persists' instead of 'the conditions may not be removed' leaves it somewhat open to interpretation.

51 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It may not have had a void point. Or it might be wounded, or it might be in Water stance (as one would expect a manifest Water Kami to be) - or it might just have suffered dumb bloody luck. TN4 is realistically doable but not trivial even for a Kami.

Bind The Shadows itself needs a bit of looking at, since it's not entirely clear what 'bound' is intended to mean.

By which I mean:

"If you succeed, crackling arcs of jade light smite and purify your target; it must resist with a TN 4 Fitness (Air 2, Water 5) check or suffer the Immobilized and Silenced conditions. This effect persists for a number of rounds equal to your Earth Ring."

Note the lack of the term 'bind' anywhere in the effect.

"Earth : Each target that fails its Fitness check to resist is bound for one year instead."

Now what in this case is "bound?" - since Immobilized and Silenced are standard conditions and both include a rule for shaking the effect off (basically not moving or not talking for a round)

  • The target cannot remove Immobilized and Silenced until the time expires?
  • The target can remove Immobilized and Silenced as normal but suffers the persistent effect (i.e. the fitness check) at the start of each turn?

The rule stating fitness check in the singular implies the former, but saying 'the effect persists' instead of 'the conditions may not be removed' leaves it somewhat open to interpretation.

That is because of cases like that (and MANY others, as we often discuss) that I simply just roll with the punches.

Allright, you bound the kami, no big deal. I do not get attached to anything or start to argue the unclear rules.
The player feels epic, and next time, I throw a different kind of encounter at them, basically always trying to not fall into their strongest powers or abilities. (permanent Sacred weapons have been the hardest one for me to deal with.. It is really badly designed)

This is basically that higher level of thinking that I advocate for most of the time, just that I use words "the crunch of this system is trash" (which it is, mostly) instead of "I'd rather play a more narrative type of game and avoid the pitfalls that the rules can create for there are some really good elements within the rules to tell stories"

Unfortunately, I have not heard any podcast of L5R 5e that was able to present the game under such light (not even the official FFG one, which was quite poor for a one shot game in this system/setting).

Edited by Avatar111
7 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

(permanent Sacred weapons have been the hardest one for me to deal with.. It is really badly designed)

Why on Earth did you let them have those then?

7 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

This is basically that higher level of thinking that I advocate for most of the time, just that I use words "the crunch of this system is trash" (which it is, mostly) instead of "I'd rather play a more narrative type of game and avoid the pitfalls that the rules can create for there are some really good elements within the rules to tell stories"

If that is what you're advocating, I'm sorry, but you're doing a rather worse job of it than the the author team did of writing the game.

I'm not saying that L5R5th is perfect, but I could not have guessed that from you comments. And since communication isn't about what you emit, but what your audience receive, maybe it's time to evaluate how you come across and how you communicate?

1 hour ago, Tenebrae said:

Why on Earth did you let them have those then?

If that is what you're advocating, I'm sorry, but you're doing a rather worse job of it than the the author team did of writing the game.

I'm not saying that L5R5th is perfect, but I could not have guessed that from you comments. And since communication isn't about what you emit, but what your audience receive, maybe it's time to evaluate how you come across and how you communicate?

Agree with the second point.

For the sacred weapon, it was a lineage thing from the 20 questions. I didn't know the game much then, but I am also not a fan of "nerfing" things or players.

Later in the campaign, I realized how strong were sacred weapon, removing all armors. It doesn't matter if your ogre is in full plate, he takes it all. Ultimately, it made the armor stat irrelevant for many monsters and the players who didn't have a sacred weapon thus felt a bit useless or, muuuuch weaker than thr guy with the sacred weapon. I ended up just diminishing the armor on monster and adding endurance to their stat. To balance it a bit. But yeah, I think the sacred quality is overtuned and borders on the "unfun" when it starts to alter encounter design in A LOT of cases.

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

Agree with the second point.

For the sacred weapon, it was a lineage thing from the 20 questions. I didn't know the game much then, but I am also not a fan of "nerfing" things or players.

Later in the campaign, I realized how strong were sacred weapon, removing all armors. It doesn't matter if your ogre is in full plate, he takes it all. Ultimately, it made the armor stat irrelevant for many monsters and the players who didn't have a sacred weapon thus felt a bit useless or, muuuuch weaker than thr guy with the sacred weapon. I ended up just diminishing the armor on monster and adding endurance to their stat. To balance it a bit. But yeah, I think the sacred quality is overtuned and borders on the "unfun" when it starts to alter encounter design in A LOT of cases.

Sacred can be balanced when it only applies to a single attack per encounter, or requires spending opportunity for each applied point of damage. Awakened items are supposed to be exceedingly rare!

There are regular ways for PCs to get Sacred weapons:

- Tetsubo of Earth (but that weapon will also be cumbersome, which with an intelligent opponent means TN+1)

- probably Blessing of Steel with Fire ring, as it is in the name. But that requires a Downtime activity and is only good for one scene.

So Sacred is something GMs have to deal with, and possibly balance-threatening, I agree.

For one, depending on your adventure, not every creature has to be a minion of Fu Leng and be Tainted. Ogres e.g. existed before the fall of the kami.

Also, since Sacred increases the Attack TN of Otherworldly beings, it is pretty clear that they can feel the quality on items or their bearer. That makes you both target No. One and convinces the being that a sneak attack is better than an open assault.

Anyway, giving out a permanent Sacred item without a balancing property as normal per the rules may have been a beginner's mistake, but hardly the fault of the rules.

And there is a difference between nerfing and developing a story. Why not have other parties try to steal/bargain for/demand that powerful weapon? Have cultists try to debase it? There is so much potential in a player having a powerful artifact. A simple samurai with an evil-slaying sword? That sounds like a magnet for trouble from both evil AND good powers. The Crab clan will want it as badly as Maho-Tsukai. You could do the Usagi Yojimbo Grasscutter storyline from that.

Also, unless you are very free with your jade, each Affliced condition will damage the weapon. Something for the players to keep in mind. You could rule that, if the Sacred weapon is destroyed, the Condition is permanently lost. That may make the Player more careful with it.

But, more generally, while I do not share your disdain for L5R combat, it doubtlessly is a system designed to be powerful and lethal, unlike e.g. D&D. There are no dungeon crawls in L5R, fights are too easily deadly. That fits well with the kind of fight the source materials depict, but it also means that players can focus on one powerful tactic, specialize in it and ride it into the sunset, which can be a problem for the GM. My approach to that would be:

- tailoring encounters to that, within reason, of course. If the PC wins two duel with a tactic, all spectators will have seen it, and the next challenger will have hand-picked her response. That happens in the UFC, it should also happen in L5R.

- Use it for story purposes. The PC is an invincible duelist? That has story consequences, from challengers to belligerent fans to courtiers trying to use him in their plans.

- challenge the PCs in other areas, like intrigues etc

- remind myself that the PCs are supposed to win their fights. Usagi Yojimbo wins all his fights with his sword style, too. That does not make him a munchkin, but a normal protagonist. Sure, some players like to brag too much about how powerful they are, but that should not lead the GM to increase the deadliness of all encounters. It is entirely ok if the PCs win some battles decidedly. That's heroism.

Edited by Harzerkatze

As per the rule, you can start the game with a sacred weapon. Maybe it was luck on the player's part, but it happened.

But beyond that, at any point in the game, a permanent sacred weapon is just way too strong (and really, just feels weird; a big monster with no armor but lots of health? It does nothing. A big monster with no health but a full plate? You one shot it. This just does not make sense to me, and maybe the quality should do more damage or deadliness, but not bypass armor, which is often just a mundane thing anyway)

Yes, it is the rules fault.

3 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

But more generally, while I do not share your disdain for L5R combat, it doubtlessly is a system designed to be powerful and lethal, unlike e.g. D&D. There are no dungeon crawls in L5R, fights are too easily deadly. That fits well with the kind of fight the source materials depict, but it also means that players can focus on one powerful tactic, specialize in it and ride it into the sunset.

No, L5R is much less deadly than D&D, aside duels.

The only difference is the size of the HP pool. You are at higher risk of dying in D&D, but resurrection exists.

And I do use all your tips to challenge the PC outside of their zone of comfort. Which is necessary in a game that one powerful tactic can totally break a specific kind of encounters.

At the end of the day, I play L5R with almost no combat and no duels. Mostly intrigues. Because, as a tactical combat game, it honestly is quite bad in the long run. So, combat need to be used sparingly, very sparingly. Which I do not mind. If I want to play a game with good combat, I'd play something else.

The best part of this game is the ring/approach, dice mechanics, and the setting. This is the main reason to play this game.

16 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

If I want to play a game with good combat, I'd play something else.

What RPGs have combat systems you do deem good?

5 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

What RPGs have combat systems you do deem good?

In term of flexibility I'd have to say D&D 5e allows for more tactics. But I tend to prefer more narrative games, so probably star wars or genesys. L5r does have its fun moments too, but as we've discussed, it have some rough areas that could use tweaking. Though used only in key moments, as a special thing and not as a crawling/adventuring common type of scene, and with a small group of players. It does a decent job. My issues with it, for all I seem to hate it, are nested in only a few specific things, mostly in the Conflict chapter, which requires a hefty polishing pass.

But then again, we do one combat per 6-7 hours of play, if even. The way I run this game is as a structured narrative experience, semi-sandbox, not allowing too many checks (only in downtimes or key moments) but putting a lot of impact and consequences on every actions.

My houserules, which are quite light now, deal with most of the issues I have. But if I wanted to really make it ideal for me, I'd revise the way deadliness and critical hits are calculated, make the earth stance a +1opp cost instead of "cannot". A change to the sacred quality (maybe just extra dmg or deadliness). On top of my current changes to the incapacitated condition. The range band system I find too granular for a narrative game like l5r, and it would probably benefit of being mostly "area/zone based" almost like a jrpg. But it would be too much of an endeavor to change and would affect too many things.

Little things. But nothing is ever perfect for everybody anyway.

In the end, the game is enjoyable with the right mindset, the right way of playing it. But that goes back to the original subject of this thread. If you listen to the live game he made, you can see how the combat just doesn't pull off tactical gameplay, or at least, it will have a lot of kinks. I still do not know why a game like l5r didn't fully embrace its narrative style even for combat instead of trying to add a layer of tactical gameplay that isn't that well put together. You are better off "rounding" the rules most of the time and allow the story to take over the crunch.

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

But then again, we do one combat per 6-7 hours of play, if even. The way I run this game is as a structured narrative experience, semi-sandbox, not allowing too many checks (only in downtimes or key moments) but putting a lot of impact and consequences on every actions.

Compared to my Ars Magica saga, one combat per 6-7 hours of play feels like D&D-style murder hobos.

L5R5th does not feel like a "lets kill everything in sight" game, so why work to turn it into one?

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

As per the rule, you can start the game with a sacred weapon.

"As per the rule" is rather ... imprecise. Could you point out what rule you mean?

Do you mean Q16? If so, you're capped at rarity 7 or less. Yes, you might allow Shirogane Jade Inlay, but that would be entirely optional.

Or do you mean Q19 and the heritage table? Because as a GM, you get to put a quality. And some of the qualities you can add, are very nasty.

Or is it some other rule, that I've missed?

Returning to the original topic (sorry for diverting the thread), part of the problem may have been the very large party of 8 characters. A shuji that gives boni to all characters of course becomes more powerful the more characters there are, like an area attack grows in power with the number of opponents. That is to be expected.

In my experience, BTW, e.g. the Conflict Rank given for opponents isn't very predictive. As Rank 3 PCs have about as much Endurance and Composure as Rank 1 PCs, the numbers are problematic if your group size is a lot different from 4. For example, even a Sinister Oni just needs 3 points of damage from everyone in a group of 8. Give the Rank 1 PCs some regular daikyu with regular armor-piercing arrows and they may do that in round 1, no Techniques or Blessed weapons needed.

If someone relies on Conflict Rank instead of gauging the foes data themselves, I'd advise imagining adding "for a group of 4". And being prepared for more varied results if one of the two sides has significantly higher or lower numbers.

5 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

Compared to my Ars Magica saga, one combat per 6-7 hours of play feels like D&D-style murder hobos.

L5R5th does not feel like a "lets kill everything in sight" game, so why work to turn it into one?

"As per the rule" is rather ... imprecise. Could you point out what rule you mean?

Do you mean Q16? If so, you're capped at rarity 7 or less. Yes, you might allow Shirogane Jade Inlay, but that would be entirely optional.

Or do you mean Q19 and the heritage table? Because as a GM, you get to put a quality. And some of the qualities you can add, are very nasty.

Or is it some other rule, that I've missed?

Q19, I added "Forbidden" to the weapon.
But that aside, Sacred quality is just not well designed I feel. No matter if it is hard to come by or not. To me, this condition was something I had to circumvent a lot of the time, not just an extra "edge" for the player, but basically there was no reason for any other PC to attack instead of just aiding or supporting the PC with the sacred weapon.
I definitely adjusted the next time and everything was fine. But I had to fudge health/armor ration of a creature to smooth it out while still giving the Sacred weapon an obvious edge.

One combat per 6-7 hours is murder hobo? Maybe. maybe. That is about 2 sessions for us. It could probably be reduced to less than that. I definitely do not think I run "combat heavy" campaigns.
But nobody here will really know how my campaigns are played, or would believe it for that matter. Lets just say all my props are about 20 fully fleshed out NPC characters (keyword here is NINJO and GIRI for all those npc), and a map with locations.