So. I create a (sort of) Ward with Biting Steel. It is designed to active when the paper it is written on, is torn.

1) Since I roll for the Invocation when preparing the ward, presumably I also spend Opportunities when preparing the said ward?

2) The ward is wrapped around the saya and tsuba of an ally's katana, is such a way that if/when the sword is drawn, the paper will be torn leading to the Invocation being activated. I've spend an Opportunity to: "After performing this action, if you have the weapon you enhanced readied, you may immediately perform a Strike action with it." (L5R5th core, p. 202). Can this be used to grant the wielder of the sword (not me) an immediate attack?

PS: I've seen people put the symbols for successes, opportunities etc in their post. How was this done?

"After performing this action, if you have the weapon you enhanced readied, you may immediately perform a Strike action with it. "

So it would work if you cast the spell on your own weapon, but not an ally's. For the free strike I mean.

56 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

1) Since I roll for the Invocation when preparing the ward, presumably I also spend Opportunities when preparing the said ward?

Yes.

56 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

2) The ward is wrapped around the saya and tsuba of an ally's katana, is such a way that if/when the sword is drawn, the paper will be torn leading to the Invocation being activated.

That seems reasonable. You are tying it to a specific action (either Prepare or Iaijutsu Cut) so that doesn't seem too 'easy'.

57 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

I've spend an Opportunity to: "After performing this action, if you have the weapon you enhanced readied, you may immediately perform a Strike action with it." (L5R5th core, p. 202). Can this be used to grant the wielder of the sword (not me) an immediate attack?

I'd agree with @Avatar111 here; it says 'you', not 'the wielder'. For that matter, since it triggers after performing the action - I'm not convinced that would 'store' in the ward even if you were using it.

58 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

PS: I've seen people put the symbols for successes, opportunities etc in their post. How was this done?

I uploaded some images of the dice icons here and just copy the image address into the post.

6 hours ago, Tenebrae said:

So. I create a (sort of) Ward with Biting Steel. It is designed to active when the paper it is written on, is torn.

1) Since I roll for the Invocation when preparing the ward, presumably I also spend Opportunities when preparing the said ward?

2) The ward is wrapped around the saya and tsuba of an ally's katana, is such a way that if/when the sword is drawn, the paper will be torn leading to the Invocation being activated. I've spend an Opportunity to: "After performing this action, if you have the weapon you enhanced readied, you may immediately perform a Strike action with it." (L5R5th core, p. 202). Can this be used to grant the wielder of the sword (not me) an immediate attack?

PS: I've seen people put the symbols for successes, opportunities etc in their post. How was this done?

I would not allow that. Wards should not be used to save actions, that is way to easy to abuse. You want to make three actions into one: Draw weapon, cast spell and attack, and all that probably in a stance independent of the spell. No.

The wards are a sidebox, very short with few instructions, so easy to abuse. That should be kept in check.

I agree for the mechanical reasons of "You", not because of any bias against wards.

10 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

That should be kept in check.

You are treading on a fragile ground. I speak from past experience with that system, trying to keep things in check will just be too difficult, there are too many things to keep in check...

And you do not want to always have to "nerf" your players ideas. It is simply better to follow the ruling word for word and instead just make the downtime activities a rare thing so that your players have to make difficult choice about what they DO during their downtime activity.

otherwise, yeah, the rule for Wards is especially mushy, even considering that L5R is overall a mushy rule set.

I agree, any instance of "you" should be replaced with the person who triggered the prepared invocation. by breaking the paper and activating the ward, the person who broke the paper is now "you" and the action of readying the weapon is what activated it. Seems legit to me.

In terms of not using prepared invocations to save an action... thats exactly what they are for?

7 hours ago, Scrivener Spills said:

In terms of not using prepared invocations to save an action... thats exactly what they are for?

Wards have the following advantages:

- Since they are pre-rolled, you know their precise effects the moment you use them.

- You do not have to be in the stance of the invocation when you use it.

- Non-Shugenja can use them.

As discussed before, my reading of the rules is that for wards, only invocations that have locations as a target qualify, since they activate "at its current location". If you do allow human target invocations, they become very powerful from the effects above alone. Adding free actions seems excessive.

Are the wards pre rolled using Composition in place of the normal Theology check? Or you use Composition to succeed in writing the ward and then the player makes a Theology check when they activate?

1 hour ago, Seraph1m said:

Are the wards pre rolled using Composition in place of the normal Theology check? Or you use Composition to succeed in writing the ward and then the player makes a Theology check when they activate?

My understanding is that the composition skill replaces theology. So preparing a ward is like casting the invocation, but with Composition instead of Theology.

Making the check twice (first Composition, then Theology) would feel both redundant and lead to questions of what happens with Opportunities etc.

Since Prepared Invocations is just a short sidebox, some elaboration in a supplement would be great.

You don't make a check to activate a ward - since it may not be you activating it. That's why you record the results of the check used to prepare the ward.

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 7:40 AM, Harzerkatze said:

As discussed before, my reading of the rules is that for wards, only invocations that have locations as a target qualify, since they activate "at its current location". If you do allow human target invocations, they become very powerful from the effects above alone. Adding free actions seems excessive.

This is actually something not carried through from the Beta version of the rulebook. In the beta there were two examples of prepared invocations: Wards, using Composition, which " activates at its current location ", and Potions, using Medicine, which " affects the imbiber ".

(technically there were also rules for putting target location invocations into potions and then lobbing them as magical grenades, but they probably took that out so it didn't undermine their brand new Kaito family school).