I'm a bit worried where this topic will go, but I'll try it anyways: There are a lot of possible tactics that PCs could go for in skirmishes or duels.

What are effective tactics you have encountered, and what are effective counter-strategies? I am interested in low-to-medium level tactics. Not just things that require a ring of 5 and skills of 5.

For example:

- Going with Fire Stance and Heartpiercing Strike with a two-handed katana is a very effective tactic in both skirmishes and duels that are not Iaijutzu, as in my game everyone seems to specialize in one Ring, and taking a Crit there is serious. A possible counter is Coiling Serpent Style to immobilize, since Heartpiercing Strike is a Movement technique, or alternatively using the same kata to bind the weapon (but then watch out for the counter-counter: a quickly-drawn knife with the same technique).

- Mirumoto Two-Heavens Adepts are especially good at Heartpiercing Strike, since they can trap the enemy weapon to lower the TN of their attack. But that requires taking an attack from the opponent, which both means that a critical hit from him can make that a net negative, and that a tactics that does not involve a melee attack gives the Mirumoto nothing to trap.

- Avatar111 recounted his PCs using the weird combination of knives on horseback with Iaijutzu Cut: Crossing Blade, which perhaps isn't the most cinematically sound technique. A possible counter would again be immobilizing, since that kata, too, is a Movement technique.

- I have found that Armor of Radiance is very effective in both skirmish and duel, since it deals auto-damage and Strife and makes Dazed, which significantly can hamper the enemies attacks. A good counter is the Flowing Water Strike kata, since it can undo Dazed and deal a lot of damage, especially against Fire Stance.

- Thunderclap Strike kata can push a foe back 2 range bands, which makes it very difficult for him to close back into striking range and attack in the same round (does not work in duels), and it works best against the popular Earth Stance. Iron Forest Style kata with a movement to range 3 has the same effect, worst for Water stance. A good counter to both is of course not closing at all, but switching to ranged attacks (or starting with those in the first place).

- The Slippery Maneuvers shuji was mentioned (depending on the definition and/or availability of terrain, of course). The Void stance opportunity use "ignore terrain" was mentioned as a counter-tactic.

What are other tactics for skirmishes/duels that you guys/gals have encountered? And what would be good counters? ("All L5R skirmishes/duel suck" is not a valued response.)

it is more cicrumstantial than that.

Is it and all out duel to the death in the middle of the wood ? it is basically a skirmish with a composure timer.

Is it a ritualized duel with "rules" ? then it really depends on the "rules".

-A duel to the death is usually pretty cool. There are different gameplays, strategies, its honestly fun BECAUSE it is similar to a skirmish, with a timer. Which is great.
-A duel to first strike should not exist, they are just garbage/unfun. Nothing around it, it is basically Earth stance and the size of your composure pool or some very specific technique (heartpiercing). I highly suggest to avoid running those if possible.
-A duel to first blood is not ideal, it is a bit gimmicky, BUT they are not that bad, because you can often reduce the crit severity below 5, even if you are not in earth stance. So it is often a gamble between choosing to take the hit or the crit.

A duel "with only one strike" as people seem to imagine in this game ? I think the system is especially working against this very idea. Sure, in courts of stone they talk about losing "1", yes, "1", point only for every strike after the first... But thats it. I mean, they explicitely made Iaijutsu strike unable to do critical hits.
So. The fantasy of the one strike duel relies on crossing cut + huge dice pool, or heartpiercing strike. Mostly. Which is a bit... restrictive?

In my opinion. These are the duels I like to run:
duels to the death or incapacitated, and duels to first blood, with my small houserule adjustment to Rising Blade.
I also consider that "winning in one strike" is only the schtick of a few samurai/clan, and is not the usual. Sure a high rank Kakita CAN achieve this, and it is glorious, but having to attack multiple times is not unusual or shamed, it is socially acceptable. It just mean you are not Kakita Toshimoko and have not perfected the "crane style". But that's about it.

18 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I also consider that "winning in one strike" is only the schtick of a few samurai/clan, and is not the usual.

Sure, it's the Kakita style of dueling, and through the influence of the Crane at court, it used to be the style of dueling done before the emperor.

But the Crane's influence is waning, and outside of Crane-controlled court, that is not how it's done. The dueling chapter tells us that the Crab duel in full armor and rarely to the death, while the Unicorn wrestle or shoot bows.

Anyway, other powerful strategies for skirmishes/street duel:

- for a Water ring fighter, the Flowing Water Strike kata combined with Iron Forest Style kata, using a bo staff. Requires 3 successes plus one opportunity, but unless the foe makes a TN 4 resist check while both bleeding and in dangerous terrain, he takes 9-10 physical damage. Counter technique again is immobilizing him or being in earth stance, which lowers the fitness TN to 2.

- for the dedicated shinobi and Dreaded Enforcers, Silent Elimination is deadly and very hard to counter once used, since Silenced seriously undermines invocations and being forced to fight unarmed leaves most bushi harmless. But it is another movement technique, which means that immobilization ends its threat. So Coiling Serpent Style is a good counter, since Silent Elimination takes more that one round to be decicive.

Perhaps ironically, shugenja duels (or skirmishes) may actually look like the Kakita One-Strike-Duels, only with invocations instead of swords.

That is because there are not many effective invocations for a duel, if you expect the shugenja to wear sanctified robes with their supernatural resistance of 3. And the invocations that are good usually have a high TN. So both participants channelling for a few rounds before one casts a devastating spell might actually happen.

(Do not make my mistake and overlook the Spiritual Backlash rule, BTW.)

When we look at the invocations:

- Air Ring only offers Grasp of the Air Dragon and Rise, Air as real dueling options. The former is Rank 3 and works badly against Fire stance, the latter has a TN of 6 and requires Rank 4.

- Earth offers primarily Earthquake and Rise, Earth. Both are Rank 4 and TN 5 / 6.

- Water only has Rise, Water on offer, with Rank 4 and TN 6.

- Fire has more options. Armor of Radiance is a great option, since it not only deals auto-damage and increases the TN of enemy attack invocations by two through Dazed, it also cancels channeling. Fury of Osano-wo is very powerful, but requires sky and has a TN of 5 (I allow invocation-specific opportunities only on successful invocations, as if the kami do not answer, you cannot use their power. Otherwise the opportunity use of this spell is an instant duel winner.) Rise, Fire is as the other Rise spells, above. Und Breath of the Fire Dragon has enough damage to work despire Sanctified Robes. The Fires from Within, too, to a lesser degree.

- This means that in a shugenja duel, channeling in Water stance while using the Predict action to predict Fire is a sound tactic, since Fire offers so many useful options that this cuts off. This is the best counter for Armor of Radiance.

- Since winning the duel by invocation alone in the first round isn't all that easy, just creating an invocation weapon and attacking the foe with it is actually a good tactic. Tetsubo of Earth with the Iron in the Mountain Style kata deals a ton of damage, as does Biting Steel on a regular or summoned weapon. The dueling tradition should make clear whether this is an acceptable way of winning an invocation duel.

2 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Sure, it's the Kakita style of dueling, and through the influence of the Crane at court, it used to be the style of dueling done before the emperor.

But the Crane's influence is waning, and outside of Crane-controlled court, that is not how it's done. The dueling chapter tells us that the Crab duel in full armor and rarely to the death, while the Unicorn wrestle or shoot bows.

Anyway, other powerful strategies for skirmishes/street duel:

- for a Water ring fighter, the Flowing Water Strike kata combined with Iron Forest Style kata, using a bo staff. Requires 3 successes plus one opportunity, but unless the foe makes a TN 4 resist check while both bleeding and in dangerous terrain, he takes 9-10 physical damage. Counter technique again is immobilizing him or being in earth stance, which lowers the fitness TN to 2.

- for the dedicated shinobi and Dreaded Enforcers, Silent Elimination is deadly and very hard to counter once used, since Silenced seriously undermines invocations and being forced to fight unarmed leaves most bushi harmless. But it is another movement technique, which means that immobilization ends its threat. So Coiling Serpent Style is a good counter, since Silent Elimination takes more that one round to be decicive.

If you open other weapons than the katana... And all techniques... You open a world of broken possibilities. There is no "strategy" there, it is basically you, as a GM, coming up with how you will make it interesting and challenging for your player by picking soft counters and such, but without going too much meta.

This game isn't "balanced" for better or worse. Not that it really needed to be. But they decided to add a layer of tactical depth to it, and the mistake was made.

3 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

If you open other weapons than the katana... And all techniques... You open a world of broken possibilities.

We disagree on the viability of tactical combat in L5R, as we have found before.

Please share the broken possibilities.

Viable, yes.

Balanced, no. Options are often hard counters to something else to the point of rendering it useless.

In a balanced game, probably every character of similar rank would have a fighting chance against each others. While never being 50/50, it would be as close as possible to that number.

In l5r, many matchups are like 90/10. So the exercise in discussing strategies for duels that allows everything will just not lead us anywhere. It all depends who is fighting who, because one character could very be hard countered with almost no chance of winning because he/she doesn't have an answer to a specific technique or school ability.

For example, one of your character always duel with Coiling Serpent Strike. Right there, there is a ton of characters that you cannot put in a duel that allows everything against him. This is the cheese of this system, and as a GM you always need to figure out how to go around cheese. That is the game in a nutshell when it comes to "tactics".

15 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

Please share the broken possibilities.

Horsebow + Flesh-Cutter Arrows + Heartpiercing Strike + Pelting Hail Style. It is completely foolproof, you literally cannot get nothing out of this attack because it screws over the target either (or both!) way. You just deploy behind your Turtle Bushi and let it loose until the enemy is dead. Funny fact: this setup works best with the Matsu Berserker School as getting angry makes your arrows hit harder too (and the School has everything going for the build), making the Berserker (one of) the best archer school in my opinion.

A horsebow with Flesh-Cutter Arrows has exactly the same deadliness of 7 as a regular katana, and isn't razor-edged. If we talk about duels, where range is not a thing, this is exactly like wielding a katana with Heartpiercing Strike, which I mentioned above.
And there is a variety of answers to that: Disarm the Bow with Crimson Leaves style. Hold it with Coiling Serpent. In a skirmish: Close to below minimum range. As far as I can see, this tactic isn't at all foolproof, unless you mean "with a melee-only enemy multiple range bands away", which is hardly always the case, and certainly not in a duel.
Pelting Hail Style with a horsebow deals 4 Strife to someone other than the target, which is great, but hardly gamebreaking, especially since the rules in the NPC chapter to not really care too much about Strife in foes, they just unmask without much consequence. It may get problematic with a Biting Steel invocation, but it only works against more than one enemy. But I agree that in a skirmish for a shugenja, that kata can be problematic.

As for Coiling Serpent Strike, it requires a Snaring weapon, which are lower on the damage/deadliness spectrum than others. If a bushi with e.g. butterfly swords and Coiling Serpent Style fights a bushi with a standard daisho, knife and Heartpiercing Strike, he would have to both hit with at least TN 2 as well as get 4 opportunities: 2 to immobilize, one each to stop the two swords. Otherwise he either gets attacked by a sword that spends those opportunities in a critical hit, or gets a Heartpiercing Strike from the knife that gets drawn (an official samurai weapon, lest someone thinks that is un-samurai-like). That sounds like a fair counter to an otherwise dangerous technique and not like a totally unbalanced autowin. And I would expect a bushi to have more than a single kata available, seeing how cheap they are at three XP. Even if a technique were to completely counter one kata, it would only invalidate a one-trick pony.

That is the reason I started this thread: I keep hearing how totally unbalanced and unviable tactical gameplay is supposed to be in L5R. But I keep seeing quite carefully balanced techniques as far as I can tell, at least when I compare to other RPGs like e.g. D&D5, where the Vengeance Paladin will ride his Vow of Enmity/Great Weapon Master combo into the sunset.

So if I am missing the obvious problems, please show them to me.

54 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

A horsebow with Flesh-Cutter Arrows has exactly the same deadliness of 7 as a regular katana, and isn't razor-edged. If we talk about duels, where range is not a thing, this is exactly like wielding a katana with Heartpiercing Strike, which I mentioned above.
And there is a variety of answers to that: Disarm the Bow with Crimson Leaves style. Hold it with Coiling Serpent. In a skirmish: Close to below minimum range. As far as I can see, this tactic isn't at all foolproof, unless you mean "with a melee-only enemy multiple range bands away", which is hardly always the case, and certainly not in a duel.
Pelting Hail Style with a horsebow deals 4 Strife to someone other than the target, which is great, but hardly gamebreaking, especially since the rules in the NPC chapter to not really care too much about Strife in foes, they just unmask without much consequence. It may get problematic with a Biting Steel invocation, but it only works against more than one enemy. But I agree that in a skirmish for a shugenja, that kata can be problematic.

As for Coiling Serpent Strike, it requires a Snaring weapon, which are lower on the damage/deadliness spectrum than others. If a bushi with e.g. butterfly swords and Coiling Serpent Style fights a bushi with a standard daisho, knife and Heartpiercing Strike, he would have to both hit with at least TN 2 as well as get 4 opportunities: 2 to immobilize, one each to stop the two swords. Otherwise he either gets attacked by a sword that spends those opportunities in a critical hit, or gets a Heartpiercing Strike from the knife that gets drawn (an official samurai weapon, lest someone thinks that is un-samurai-like). That sounds like a fair counter to an otherwise dangerous technique and not like a totally unbalanced autowin. And I would expect a bushi to have more than a single kata available, seeing how cheap they are at three XP. Even if a technique were to completely counter one kata, it would only invalidate a one-trick pony.

That is the reason I started this thread: I keep hearing how totally unbalanced and unviable tactical gameplay is supposed to be in L5R. But I keep seeing quite carefully balanced techniques as far as I can tell, at least when I compare to other RPGs like e.g. D&D5, where the Vengeance Paladin will ride his Vow of Enmity/Great Weapon Master combo into the sunset.

So if I am missing the obvious problems, please show them to me.

I told you the problem, if you do not have the "counter" you are screwed. Whatever it is. As a GM you need to be careful about that. The line is very very fine. You either put an encounter a (or all) pc CANNOT counter, making one or more PC totally irrelevant to the encounter aside being assist buffs, or you put an encounter in which the PC techniques/gear/ability will just totally counter your NPC.
You always need to juggle between these encounter breaking things as to not make anything futile, too easy, or impossible.

That is the game, it plays a bit like a card game in that sense. I play this, do you have this? You don't? well GG my dude.
While in D&D (and hey, D&D ain't perfect either) most of the time everybody can do their basic schtick and get some damage in. No character is ever "hard countered" (or at least extremely rarely).

Thing is, the GM knows the player's hands while the players do NOT know the GM's hand. It just makes encounter design very limited and challenging, otherwise it becomes a faceroll or the players will find themselves frustrated by cheese.
In the case of coiling serpent strike, sure, in your "situation" the guy had a counter. But as a GM you always need to THINK about this. Because if you randomly put a warrior with a polearm and no other weapon... well that guy is totally screwed all of a sudden. So you need to make sure he have other weapons. And then, if your coiling serpent guy is fighting in an armor with earth stance. What is your polearm "random dude" is going to do ? YOU as a GM will need to take into consideration coiling serpent strike for almost EVERY encounters you design.

You see what I mean, the game creates those hard counter moments. The way you think about it is not how it plays out! you won't arm to the teeth every warrior they come across and add heartpiercing strike to their kit as in your example... you might do it here and there, but that can't be the standard.
Thing is, your player will have coiling serpent strike ALL THE TIME. So you need to find/prepare a counter to it ALL THE TIME. Pretty cheesy if you ask me.
And then your player will get used to screwing up everybody with his coiling serpent strike, then all of a sudden "POW" you release your kraken that hard counters him and gut your PC.

This is not "balance"...

It is already extremely difficult to GM this game in term of its narrative/roleplay/intrigue/setting rules.
My opinion is that they totally didn't need to add a layer of unbalanced hard counter spammable techniques and number crunching shenanigans and gameable range system.
At the end of the day, If you play a short campaign, without too much fights, you probably won't have time to start ot feel the spammable cheese. It can even have "style" to showcases these fighting styles once in a while. But the repetition of such becomes a chore for the GM.

1 hour ago, Harzerkatze said:

A horsebow with Flesh-Cutter Arrows has exactly the same deadliness of 7 as a regular katana, and isn't razor-edged.

With Range 2-4 and handing out 4 Strife to a target per Opp. You don't have to stay still or engage the enemy in melee, if you feel like your opponents can reach you then you can always run away with Maneuver and kite everyone into oblivion at will. Then, as you pointed out, the only threat to you is another gimmicky archer. Or getting trapped in a hole with a Sinister Oni, I admit that's an uphill battle.

If the PC is actually not alone and has another PC to roll with the build then the archer will become virtually untouchable if the other PC brings a proper Turtle Bushi.

4 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

- Earth offers primarily Earthquake and Rise, Earth. Both are Rank 4 and TN 5 / 6.

Remember that Earth Invocations can inflict physical damage with a single - usually not a good idea, but very useful against Sacred Robes.

1 hour ago, Tenebrae said:

Remember that Earth Invocations can inflict physical damage with a single - usually not a good idea, but very useful against Sacred Robes.

Good catch! I didn't see that. That certainly makes e.g. Earth becomes Sky more versatile and applicable in invocation battles.

10 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Thing is, your player will have coiling serpent strike ALL THE TIME. So you need to find/prepare a counter to it ALL THE TIME. Pretty cheesy if you ask me.

I mean no disrespect to you or your friends, but I am so happy that my gaming group is not your play group! Granted, I'm jealous that you probably play often enough that these static strategies arise at your table in the first place, but constantly compensating for player action spamming doesn't sound like fun to me. If it works for you, and you're all having fun, I guess that means you're doing it right.

33 minutes ago, T_Kageyasu said:

I mean no disrespect to you or your friends, but I am so happy that my gaming group is not your play group! Granted, I'm jealous that you probably play often enough that these static strategies arise at your table in the first place, but constantly compensating for player action spamming doesn't sound like fun to me. If it works for you, and you're all having fun, I guess that means you're doing it right.

Well you have no choice... If a pc have for instance, coiling serpent strike. You need to take it into consideration, a lot...

Now, make it 3 pcs, all with different techniques that have that much impact and that know the right things do to, and it becomes a puzzle to build the encounters, you need to consider hard counters, you need to tweak your npc a lot. Not impossible, but a hassle. And it severely limits what you can throw at them.

That is mostly for combat encounters. Intrigues, RP, etc are mostly safe.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Well you have no choice... If a pc have for instance, coiling serpent strike. You need to take it into consideration, a lot...

Now, make it 3 pcs, all with different techniques that have that much impact and that know the right things do to, and it becomes a puzzle to build the encounters, you need to consider hard counters, you need to tweak your npc a lot. Not impossible, but a hassle. And it severely limits what you can throw at them.

That is mostly for combat encounters. Intrigues, RP, etc are mostly safe.

Ok, I see what you mean, but accounting for PC abilities in order to make interesting combat challenges doesn't sound like a problem unique to L5R.

2 hours ago, T_Kageyasu said:

Ok, I see what you mean, but accounting for PC abilities in order to make interesting combat challenges doesn't sound like a problem unique to L5R.

Yes, my impression is that Avatar just isn't a fan of tactical combat RPGs.

I have played a lot of RPGs, and when it comes to combat, there are two kinds. In most RPGs, combat is exchanging numbers. I do 5 damage, he does 3 damage, I do 3 damage, he does 7 damage, I heal 10 damage. That works well enough in a richly described fantasy world, but it makes combats pretty interchangable.

The contrast is tactical combat RPGs, D&D4 was the biggest one, D&D 3.5 after level 10, too. There all kinds of things happen. He dazes me, I push him 4 squares and immobilize him, he pulls me into his reach, all kinds of crazy stuff. Fights could seem hopeless, players had to think on their feet. Harder to balance, no doubt, but also way more interesting fights in my opinion.

Now D&D4 was hated a lot by many, not least because they didn't like this kind of gameplay. But it was a feature, not a bug. And from what I see, same with L5R.

L5R wants to be a combat system where you can do other things than deal damage. I think that fits the source material, a lot of kung fu and eastern movie combat is grabs, disarms, trips etc, way more than e.g. western chivalric combat. Yes, that means that the GM has to take that into account. It is probably not an accident that even goblins have yumi listed as equipment, even these simplest of enemies has more than one way of attcking. From what I can tell, L5R succeeds in building counteroptions to all techniques, and not e.g. making one school waaay more powerful than the others.

56 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

Yes, my impression is that Avatar just isn't a fan of tactical combat RPGs.

I have played a lot of RPGs, and when it comes to combat, there are two kinds. In most RPGs, combat is exchanging numbers. I do 5 damage, he does 3 damage, I do 3 damage, he does 7 damage, I heal 10 damage. That works well enough in a richly described fantasy world, but it makes combats pretty interchangable.

The contrast is tactical combat RPGs, D&D4 was the biggest one, D&D 3.5 after level 10, too. There all kinds of things happen. He dazes me, I push him 4 squares and immobilize him, he pulls me into his reach, all kinds of crazy stuff. Fights could seem hopeless, players had to think on their feet. Harder to balance, no doubt, but also way more interesting fights in my opinion.

Now D&D4 was hated a lot by many, not least because they didn't like this kind of gameplay. But it was a feature, not a bug. And from what I see, same with L5R.

L5R wants to be a combat system where you can do other things than deal damage. I think that fits the source material, a lot of kung fu and eastern movie combat is grabs, disarms, trips etc, way more than e.g. western chivalric combat. Yes, that means that the GM has to take that into account. It is probably not an accident that even goblins have yumi listed as equipment, even these simplest of enemies has more than one way of attcking. From what I can tell, L5R succeeds in building counteroptions to all techniques, and not e.g. making one school waaay more powerful than the others.

I played d&d 4e for many years. I also see it is an inspiration for L5r.

But they fail at, wait for it.. (because I was telling you all along), Balance.

Sure, d&d 4e also have its share of issues when it comes to that, but not even close to L5r. D&d 4e was MADE to accomodate this style of gameplay (limited ressources in the form of available powers, with at-will/encounters/dailies, a granular dice rolling mechanic with a variable target number based on resist scores)

But, L5r is a very swingy system without much granularity in the dice results (a +1 tn is a huge deal). But also, because the techniques are way too potent or abusable/spammable.

Lets take a Togashi Monk, with the Breaking Blow tattoo kiho.

Now, that single punk at rank 2-3 will DESTROY any weapon or armor, no matter how huge (an Oni cleaver from the festering pit of fu leng) or "ancestral" (kunshu) it is, everytime he wants, with 95% chance of success.

Sure, there "are" counters to that (kind of) but that single technique just screw up the design of encounters so much.

Well, this is only one case... The game is full of that.

And, then throw in "unchecked tactical opportunity spending" in there, which you have appendix made of "examples" for...

The result is? A good core system and narrative game layered with an astoundingly badly designed "tactical system" and conflict rules.

4 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

But they fail at, wait for it.. (because I was telling you all along), Balance.

Balance is the White Hart of game design, or at least RPG design.

Now what do I mean by the White Hart? Well, it was a mythological white deer hunted for years but never caught.

How does that make Game Balance a White Hart? Because it is sought by many, but never achieved. And it never will be, because groups are different. We play differently and emphasize different aspects of RPGs, to different degrees. Likely we have differing visions of what game balance even means.

So yeah, whatever dude. You do you.

On 10/30/2019 at 12:31 PM, Harzerkatze said:

- Since winning the duel by invocation alone in the first round isn't all that easy, just creating an invocation weapon and attacking the foe with it is actually a good tactic. Tetsubo of Earth with the Iron in the Mountain Style kata deals a ton of damage, as does Biting Steel on a regular or summoned weapon. The dueling tradition should make clear whether this is an acceptable way of winning an invocation duel.

Physical strikes are permitted by the spiritual leaders of some clans, such as the Crab and Scorpion, but forbidden by others, such as the Phoenix and Crane.

That covers that, right?

21 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

Balance is the White Hart of game design, or at least RPG design.

Now what do I mean by the White Hart? Well, it was a mythological white deer hunted for years but never caught.

How does that make Game Balance a White Hart? Because it is sought by many, but never achieved. And it never will be, because groups are different. We play differently and emphasize different aspects of RPGs, to different degrees. Likely we have differing visions of what game balance even means.

So yeah, whatever dude. You do you.

It is evident that I do NOT play this game for the "tactical" side of it...

I actually advocate against playing this game "tactically" because, it is extremely poorly made when it comes to "tactical mechanics". If you emphasize the "tactical" aspect of this game, sooner than later (rank 2+ I'd say, but 3 for sure) you will realize the depth of this game's failing as a "tactical" game. You let me know...

20 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

It is evident that I do NOT play this game for the "tactical" side of it...

I actually advocate against playing this game "tactically" because, it is extremely poorly made when it comes to "tactical mechanics". If you emphasize the "tactical" aspect of this game, sooner than later (rank 2+ I'd say, but 3 for sure) you will realize the depth of this game's failing as a "tactical" game. You let me know...

It's awesome that you played D&D4, I would not have guessed. And I agree with you: That was the epitome of balanced tactical RPG. We had a pretty hardcore minmaxing group and played to level 26 without breaking the system despite dozens of rulebooks available, few other RPGs would allow that. D&D5 has like 2 rulebooks and already it is easy to break at high levels.

But D&D4 had balance as the one and final aim, everything was subservient to that. Tiny fairies could have hundrets of HP, and even fighters had moves they could do only once per day, whether that makes sense or not. I am sure you agree that that kind of balance fokus would not have been good for L5R.

As has been said upthread, part of the different viewpoints comes from different groups: What is problematic in one group need not be in another. As a player, you are always between two world-views, what I would call the objective vs. the subjective or maybe the meta vs. the personal. What I mean is you are both part of a group effort to craft a cool story and are being challenged by the DM to overcome his obstacles. You both think "oh, a dragon, a great opportunity to give the story some Wagnerian subtext" AND "Oh dear, a dragon, how do I kill it?". When a player goes too far towards one of the poles, it gets problematic. A player who takes only the most powerful school/technique/skill kombo and always uses that agaist everything is as tiresome as the player who does not even try to overcome the challenges laid out in the adventure just so he can read his death poem and commit seppuku.

For example, if we take the Breaking Blow kiho: If I imagine an arrogant Kakita duelist challenging the humble monk to a Iaijutzu duel and that duelists sword is shattered into a thousand pieces before he could even draw it, just by a wave of the hand of his opponent? That is awesome, like a movie scene! I like it! But a PC doing that to each and all opponents, however, is tiresome and boring. So a system that you find just keeps breaking all the time might work well with other groups. Leaving the Breaking Blow kiho out of the system would have been better for your group, it maybe would have robbed another group of an awesome scene. Styles vary, and so does what systems fit. For example, what AtoMaki upthread describes as a completely foolproof game exploit sounds to me a lot like "being an archer", so obviously not all things problematic in one group are problematic in other groups.

So if we for a moment imagine that the system sort of works for some groups, there are still parts that are more problematic than other parts. I try to find those parts here.

You mention the Breaking Blow kiho, and it already was on my list of potentially problematic parts, too. I think there are a few mitigating factors: It is only problematic for the two schools that get free Bonus Successes (but those two are the most important monks IMO), you cannot use the same kiho two times in a row, so a monk can only destroy one weapon or armor every two rounds, and almost every NPC in the rulebook has at least two weapons or a viable unarmed attack. Shattering armor is no doubt very effective, but Katana of Fire gives you supernatural damage that ignores most armor, too. Also, I think the technique has a very good foundation in the source materials, both are monks breaking things with their hands staples of eastern fiction, and also you can view Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as the story of an unnerving PC spamming Breaking Blow in sword form. But as I said, I see the problem side of that Kiho for Tattooed Monks/Taoists.

You also mention Coiling Serpent Style as problematic, I take it you primarily have the issue with the weapon-catching and not the immobilization? I seem to remember you have a house-rule increasing the cost of the feature to two opportunities.

If it does not pain you too much to comtemplate, what other techniques do you find ESPECIALLY balance-problematic (like, if we imagined the combat system was useful for some groups)? (For example, Crimson Leaves Strike allows you to disarm people, thus being roughly similar to Coiling Serpent Style, and in the popular Earth stance to boot. But it has a high TN of 4 AND allows a (tough) Fitness check to stop it, does that make it OK in your book?)

1 hour ago, Harzerkatze said:

It's awesome that you played D&D4, I would not have guessed. And I agree with you: That was the epitome of balanced tactical RPG. We had a pretty hardcore minmaxing group and played to level 26 without breaking the system despite dozens of rulebooks available, few other RPGs would allow that. D&D5 has like 2 rulebooks and already it is easy to break at high levels.

But D&D4 had balance as the one and final aim, everything was subservient to that. Tiny fairies could have hundrets of HP, and even fighters had moves they could do only once per day, whether that makes sense or not. I am sure you agree that that kind of balance fokus would not have been good for L5R.

As has been said upthread, part of the different viewpoints comes from different groups: What is problematic in one group need not be in another. As a player, you are always between two world-views, what I would call the objective vs. the subjective or maybe the meta vs. the personal. What I mean is you are both part of a group effort to craft a cool story and are being challenged by the DM to overcome his obstacles. You both think "oh, a dragon, a great opportunity to give the story some Wagnerian subtext" AND "Oh dear, a dragon, how do I kill it?". When a player goes too far towards one of the poles, it gets problematic. A player who takes only the most powerful school/technique/skill kombo and always uses that agaist everything is as tiresome as the player who does not even try to overcome the challenges laid out in the adventure just so he can read his death poem and commit seppuku.

For example, if we take the Breaking Blow kiho: If I imagine an arrogant Kakita duelist challenging the humble monk to a Iaijutzu duel and that duelists sword is shattered into a thousand pieces before he could even draw it, just by a wave of the hand of his opponent? That is awesome, like a movie scene! I like it! But a PC doing that to each and all opponents, however, is tiresome and boring. So a system that you find just keeps breaking all the time might work well with other groups. Leaving the Breaking Blow kiho out of the system would have been better for your group, it maybe would have robbed another group of an awesome scene. Styles vary, and so does what systems fit. For example, what AtoMaki upthread describes as a completely foolproof game exploit sounds to me a lot like "being an archer", so obviously not all things problematic in one group are problematic in other groups.

So if we for a moment imagine that the system sort of works for some groups, there are still parts that are more problematic than other parts. I try to find those parts here.

You mention the Breaking Blow kiho, and it already was on my list of potentially problematic parts, too. I think there are a few mitigating factors: It is only problematic for the two schools that get free Bonus Successes (but those two are the most important monks IMO), you cannot use the same kiho two times in a row, so a monk can only destroy one weapon or armor every two rounds, and almost every NPC in the rulebook has at least two weapons or a viable unarmed attack. Shattering armor is no doubt very effective, but Katana of Fire gives you supernatural damage that ignores most armor, too. Also, I think the technique has a very good foundation in the source materials, both are monks breaking things with their hands staples of eastern fiction, and also you can view Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as the story of an unnerving PC spamming Breaking Blow in sword form. But as I said, I see the problem side of that Kiho for Tattooed Monks/Taoists.

You also mention Coiling Serpent Style as problematic, I take it you primarily have the issue with the weapon-catching and not the immobilization? I seem to remember you have a house-rule increasing the cost of the feature to two opportunities.

If it does not pain you too much to comtemplate, what other techniques do you find ESPECIALLY balance-problematic (like, if we imagined the combat system was useful for some groups)? (For example, Crimson Leaves Strike allows you to disarm people, thus being roughly similar to Coiling Serpent Style, and in the popular Earth stance to boot. But it has a high TN of 4 AND allows a (tough) Fitness check to stop it, does that make it OK in your book?)

Beautiful post. Not going to lie!

At this point I think we agree on everything.

Regarding houserules to techniques, I just try to keep it to a very minimum. So I removed the Coiling Strike "nerf" and the Breaking Blow "nerf" despite seriously thinking both of these are absolutely nuts (not because of their effect,but because they are way too easy to pull off).

d&d4e was probably my favorite edition of d&d. I still think d&d5e was the good step to make, and I think it is way cleaner. But some parts of 4e were good, at least, crazy combo fun.

l5r "tactical combo" are really hit and miss! And yeah, Personally, with a capital P, I would have prefered if L5R fully embraced its narrative style instead of trying to cram that much mechanical gimmicks. Maybe I am just getting older and story focused

Looks like I should really look into techniques for immobilizing opponents then