24 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

But I'm strictly thinking in terms of how this ability interacts with the game's mechanic. To make it safe for publication. You cannot have "cannot heal this strife" in there without a way to "stop" this effect aside from killing the monster (which might or might not/never happen!).

Ok, I changed it to an escalating mechanic that is healable. What do you think of that?

The idea, if a PC is affected, isn't that the Jorogumo goes on vacation. But finding it takes time, which is a limited factor if the Strife builds up.

Since triggering events of a Jorogumos demands wouldn't happen that often (you only need to tell the others once, and Not Doing something cannot be punished very often), a flat 4 Strife creates little pressure, especially since Strife partially heals automatically after each scene. The +1 per time happening would create a growing pressure, especially if the PC realizes that when they face the Jorogumo, she'll make new demands of him, and by then, the Strife inflicted per denial should better not have risen to high...

4 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

Ok, I changed it to an escalating mechanic that is healable. What do you think of that?

The idea, if a PC is affected, isn't that the Jorogumo goes on vacation. But finding it takes time, which is a limited factor if the Strife builds up.

Since triggering events of a Jorogumos demands wouldn't happen that often (you only need to tell the others once, and Not Doing something cannot be punished very often), a flat 4 Strife creates little pressure, especially since Strife partially heals automatically after each scene. The +1 per time happening would create a growing pressure, especially if the PC realizes that when they face the Jorogumo, she'll make new demands of him, and by then, the Strife inflicted per denial should better not have risen to high...

don't get me wrong, I love the design of this monster, I just find permanent abilities like that weird. You are imposing that the PCs find and kill/convince that creature otherwise the PC will just, die ? losing endurance all the time?

In conflicts, this is strong enough! for one action, she can force the tn4 void check or ditch 4 strife on a PC. You could make it 2, or 3 times per turn on the same PC if I understand carefully ? I mean, the "lets heal that strife fast" becomes a major part of the combat. Which is cool.

I do understand that you also want to charm a PC in narrative/downtime scenes also, over a long period of time. That is ok! But I feel the mechanics to do so are not quite nailed.
Lets start from the beginning...

In narrative scene, the PC will know something happened to them, because they do the resist check.
The question is, how do you represent this "charm" over a long period of time without making it a permanent thing.
This is quite weird. As in term of how the PC feels, you want them to feel like they HAVE to find this beautiful girl or they just, die? A bit hardcore.
Lets think outside of the box. I think something like "changes the charater's ninjo to: must be with this woman. until the charm is broken". could be more interesting. It really hinders the player without outright killing them slowly. For narrative scenes I find it is enough.
For conflict, the 4 strife per action is already quite strong, especially since she have 3 actions. But you could make it stronger. maybe: auto unmasking at the beginning of your turn if you ever become compromised while under this ability.

4 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

don't get me wrong, I love the design of this monster, I just find permanent abilities like that weird. You are imposing that the PCs find and kill/convince that creature otherwise the PC will just, die ? losing endurance all the time?

In conflicts, this is strong enough! for one action, she can force the tn4 void check or ditch 4 strife on a PC. You could make it 2, or 3 times per turn on the same PC if I understand carefully ? I mean, the "lets heal that strife fast" becomes a major part of the combat. Which is cool.

I do understand that you also want to charm a PC in narrative/downtime scenes also, over a long period of time. That is ok! But I feel the mechanics to do so are not quite nailed.
Lets start from the beginning...

In narrative scene, the PC will know something happened to them, because they do the resist check.
The question is, how do you represent this "charm" over a long period of time without making it a permanent thing.
This is quite weird. As in term of how the PC feels, you want them to feel like they HAVE to find this beautiful girl or they just, die? A bit hardcore.
Lets think outside of the box. I think something like "changes the charater's ninjo to: must be with this woman. until the charm is broken". could be more interesting. It really hinders the player without outright killing them slowly. For narrative scenes I find it is enough.
For conflict, the 4 strife per action is already quite strong, especially since she have 3 actions. But you could make it stronger. maybe: auto unmasking at the beginning of your turn if you ever become compromised while under this ability.

She cannot charm another if she has someone charmed. If she has noone charmed yet, she can to it once as a action, and then the effect stays active. She can demand something she knows the charmed PC will not do, but that Not Doing happens on his turn, so he would take the Strife only once per turn. Her talking faster would not change that.

I agree that there should be an alternative way to break the curse of losing Endurance itself. Perhaps a sacrifice of something of personal value to the Fortunes? It should be an alternative if things go unplanned, but should not be easy to do.

The temporary change of the ninjo is an interesting idea.

2 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

She cannot charm another if she has someone charmed.

Yeah that must be made clear. Ultimately, what you want, is that the "I control you" ability works at least once in a confclit (you know, to make the story cool).
It is perfectly fine that she can do 4strife/turn on a PC. Just write it so this mechanic is understandable. I also suggest you to include the "auto unmask at the beginning of their turn if compromised" so that the player cannot just stay compromised as a mean of countering the ability.

The interesting part about the ninjo change is that you really put this ability in the roleplay territory, without making the player feel awkward because they are losing stats all the time. But no worries, by changing that ninjo, the player WILL want to go see that monster (thats the ninjo's goal after all).
And ultimately, what you want is for the player to unmask during a conflict (either a skirmish, or more interestingly in an intrigue) I think?

4 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Yeah that must be made clear.

"A Jorōgumo can have only one person charmed at a time." is in the text.

10 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

"A Jorōgumo can have only one person charmed at a time." is in the text.

Also note that, regarding the temporary Ninjo switch, acting in opposition to one's ninjo give 3 strife. In all types of scenes.
I'm starting to really like that monster now... This type of design could also be done for Rokurokubi (long neck woman) and stuff like that.

thumbs up dude. very L5R in term of design. and I do not praise things easily, as you know.

6 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Also note that, regarding the temporary Ninjo switch, acting in opposition to one's ninjo give 3 strife. In all types of scenes.
I'm starting to really like that monster now... This type of design could also be done for Rokurokubi (long neck woman) and stuff like that.

thumbs up dude. very L5R in term of design. and I do not praise things easily, as you know.

Thank you!

I changed it again, how do you like it now?

6 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

Thank you!

I changed it again, how do you like it now?

Still don't like the 1 endurance/day lost. But you seem adament in keeping it.

Also, You do not need to say that a character gains 4 strife if it doesn't do what the spider wants, because the PC WILL take 3 strife to go against their ninjo if they don't abide anyway!

I prefered the action to cause 4 strife + auto unmasking if compromised. Because it allows the monster to put pressure on the PC during a conflict, forcing other party members to try to heal their friend's strife or risk.. a really bad thing happening, like their friend attacking them? if they unmask .
And I find that fun.

16 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Still don't like the 1 endurance/day lost. But you seem adament in keeping it.

It kind of is part of her story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorōgumo#The_Jōren_Falls_of_Izu.

Since the charm can now be ended by a ritual, it can not as easily be abused by her as a death curse (but have fun talking a Kuni Purifier into burning 5 Fingers of Jade to save your star-crossed heart).

I used your suggestion of refering to the ninjo Strife mechanics in the latest update. I do not want to force unmasking, though, as that takes away player freedom, again. Being Compromized in combat hurts a lot, so if the PCs decides to rather tough it out, that is his prerogartive.

I chose not to give her an explicit Cause Strife ability, as that is part of fighting in Fire stance, anyway. Three attacks there can deal 6 additional Strife. I might buff her Fire ring, though, as emotions are sort of her thing...

9 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

It kind of is part of her story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorōgumo#The_Jōren_Falls_of_Izu.

Since the charm can now be ended by a ritual, it can not as easily be abused by her as a death curse (but have fun talking a Kuni Purifier into burning 5 Fingers of Jade to save your star-crossed heart).

I used your suggestion of refering to the ninjo Strife mechanics in the latest update. I do not want to force unmasking, though, as that takes away player freedom, again. Being Compromized in combat hurts a lot, so if the PCs decides to rather tough it out, that is his prerogartive.

I chose not to give her an explicit Cause Strife ability, as that is part of fighting in Fire stance, anyway. Three attacks there can deal 6 additional Strife. I might buff her Fire ring, though, as emotions are sort of her thing...

yeah, without the auto unmask, it becomes a bit easy to cheese it out. I understand your point of view, but for a combat ability like that, which will obviously be your end of session big conflict... you want MAXIMUM effect.
the player's perogative is basically to heal their strife during their turn or their friend to cool them down during theirs.

if she only rely on 2strife/fire strike, this is not enough. And, narratively, she doesnt want to attack the PC she is charming (plus you gave her a fire disadvantage for social fire checks...)
so, I still think she needs a way to put strife on her charmed target.

31 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

yeah, without the auto unmask, it becomes a bit easy to cheese it out. I understand your point of view, but for a combat ability like that, which will obviously be your end of session big conflict... you want MAXIMUM effect.
the player's perogative is basically to heal their strife during their turn or their friend to cool them down during theirs.

if she only rely on 2strife/fire strike, this is not enough. And, narratively, she doesnt want to attack the PC she is charming.
so, I still think she needs a way to put strife on her charmed target.

You do not need to deal the Fire Strife to the one you are attacking. The text is "Inflame another character in the scene with your presence, causing them to receive 2 strife." Hitting his friends and taunting how they are no help to him is enough. The charmed character would each round take 3 Strife for disobeying the order to kill his friends, plus 4-6 as a side effect of her attacks on the others. That is quite some Strife besides dealing damage and bowling PCs all over the place.

2 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

You do not need to deal the Fire Strife to the one you are attacking. The text is "Inflame another character in the scene with your presence, causing them to receive 2 strife." Hitting his friends and taunting how they are no help to him is enough. The charmed character would each round take 3 Strife for disobeying the order to kill his friends, plus 4-6 as a side effect of her attacks on the others. That is quite some Strife besides dealing damage and bowling PCs all over the place.

yeah, if she explicitely can tell an order per turn as an action? or incidental? to force the charmed target to act for their temporary ninjo or take 3 strife. it works.
that probably also needs to be in the text.
anyway, at this point it is details. the "monster" is working. probably not enough for a published monster (too much things left in the void) but surely with minor interpretation you can put this in your campaign. I might even do so (in a tweaked, Rokurokubi, version). The whole design really provokes great thoughts and takes maximum advantage of the game's system. Which is cool and better than most other creature designs we got this far lol.

7 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

yeah, if she explicitely can tell an order per turn as an action? or incidental? to force the charmed target to act for their temporary ninjo or take 3 strife. it works.
that probably also needs to be in the text.
anyway, at this point it is details. the "monster" is working. probably not enough for a published monster (too much things left in the void) but surely with minor interpretation you can put this in your campaign. I might even do so (in a tweaked, Rokurokubi, version). The whole design really provokes great thoughts and takes maximum advantage of the game's system. Which is cool and better than most other creature designs we got this far lol.

The rules say "However, as a part of any action, a character may always convey up to five words (or six words, as long as the last word is “fool” or a similarly dismissive
form of address).". So saying "Kill them, my sweet beloved fool!" is not an action and can accompany anythingh she does. And once she did, not doing it of his turn is going against his ninjo, so it should deal 3 Strife. She would not have to repeat herself, but could without any cost.

(Since both the Jorogumo and me are smart, a Jorogumo played by me would of course get a Wargear item, to increase the Strife she deals 3-4 times per turn by one each...)

Great that you like the creature!

Just now, Harzerkatze said:

The rules say "However, as a part of any action, a character may always convey up to five words (or six words, as long as the last word is “fool” or a similarly dismissive
form of address).". So saying "Kill them, my sweet beloved fool!" is not an action and can accompany anythingh she does. And once she did, not doing it of his turn is going against his ninjo, so it should deal 3 Strife. She would not have to repeat herself, but could without any cost.

(Since both the Jorogumo and me are smart, a Jorogumo played by me would of course get a Wargear item, to increase each of the 3-4 times she deal Strife per turn by one...)

Great that you like the creature!

Yup. But it is a bit obscur taken from a random reader's perspective. I know that's the goal (that was the point of making it a ninjo switch after all! among other reason!)
But it probably needs to be pointed out in the stat block ability for a mroe customer friendly version (which is what most of my comments are trying to achieve). You need to take into consideration that the customer/reader needs to be spoon fed a bit more. Especially with an obscur and slightly confusing system like l5r.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

(Since both the Jorogumo and me are smart, a Jorogumo played by me would of course get a Wargear item, to increase the Strife she deals 3-4 times per turn by one each...)

To be fair, the shadowlands environment does that by default, so any deeply "dark magic" tainted environment can be assumed to have a similar property.

And here is my version of the Jinmenju (Rising Sun boardgame monster):

And the next entry: the Komainu, or Lion Dog, guarding shrines and chinese restaurents. Also a Rising Sun boardgame monster.

I try to design each creature in a way that at least one adventure idea naturally grows from it.

For the Komainu, the PCs could be called to a local shrine because the resident kami seems to be unhappy, throwing stuff around every now and then.

Investigating, the PCs might find out that a group of burglers tried to rob the shrine a few weeks back, but were chased off when the komainu activated (their claw marks can still be seen near the front steps). Unnoticed, the spirit of a recently deceased local woman entered the shrine at the same time, with the wards down, and became trapped inside when the Komainu returned. It is her spirit that has caused the recent commotion.

The PCs will have to activate the Komainu long enough for her to leave without destroying them, as they are parts of the shrine. Aand, for bonus points, find out what keeps the spirit in this world, and solve that problem.

The next entry: The Tengu Swordmaster.

I purposefully do not say whether the Tengu has a raven's head or a human head with long nose: Both a legendary creatures from japanese myth, the latter usually are the swordmasters, but the former of course look way cooler. So I leave that detail to each GM.

And another one: The Con-Tinh, a lonely princess found in the woods that does not behave like a princess at all.

Since printing out web pages is a headache, I also compiled all my monster into a single PDF document, with some GM remarks and adventure ideas each:

Strange Creatures of Rokugan.pdf

Oops, calculated the Vigilance-values wrong, round up instead of down!

I corrected the JPGs and PDF.

The PDF could only use open source pictures, of course, so I was forced to use Wikimedia pictures.
But it came out better than expected, as now I use original pictures of artists depicting the creatures, centuries old.
The downside is that a few creatures have no pictures.

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2020 at 10:04 AM, Harzerkatze said:

Tengu Swordmaster

Observation - you might want to compare with the 'generic' Tengu in the beginner rulebook. It has a few abilities which are better (it's 'Impressive Robes' are resistance 2, for example, and it's Composure 16). This is a different version, so it doesn't have to duplicate it exactly, but I think you're missing one key ability from the beginner rulebook for the more bird-like versions:

NPC ABILITY: FLIGHT

While in their winged form, a tengu may move via flight vertically and ignore the negative effects of terrain.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Observation - you might want to compare with the 'generic' Tengu in the beginner rulebook. It has a few abilities which are better (it's 'Impressive Robes' are resistance 2, for example, and it's Composure 16). This is a different version, so it doesn't have to duplicate it exactly, but I think you're missing one key ability from the beginner rulebook for the more bird-like versions:

NPC ABILITY: FLIGHT

While in their winged form, a tengu may move via flight vertically and ignore the negative effects of terrain.

Thank you, I didn't realise that the Beginner's Game has its own monsters (although mostly only the Warrior Monk, Kitzune, Tengu and Ogre are relevantly different from what is presented in the Core Rulebook). So L5R tengus DO have raven's heads and can fly, I didn't know that.

I updated the PDF and JPG. Now I can even show a picture for the Tengu Swordmaster, great!

I didn't give the Swordmaster the Illusion abilities of the Beginner's Game Tengu. For one, that would only lead to question about the effects of invisibility on a fight, which is a bit of an unclear area, plus I see no reason why all should have learned that. I gave him flight, of course.

On ‎1‎/‎13‎/‎2020 at 9:47 PM, Harzerkatze said:

Since printing out web pages is a headache, I also compiled all my monster into a single PDF document, with some GM remarks and adventure ideas each:

Strange Creatures of Rokugan.pdf

I shall update the master NPCs roster forthwith!

2 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I shall update the master NPCs roster forthwith!

Wow, what an honor, my creations beside all the official creatures. Thank you!

I hope they measure up.