As the rules seem to be silent on the matter, as far as I could find, a question how other solve this:

A player casts an invocation with multiple targets, e.g. Strike the Tsunami.
One of the three targets is in Earth stance, another in Air stance, a third in Water stance and in Obscuring terrain.

Does the player...

a) ...roll one check, get two successes and only hits the first target, as target 2 and 3 have TN 3?

b) ...roll one check, get two successes and hit no targets, as the second target's Air stance gave him TN+1, as did the Obscuring terrain?

c) ...roll three Attack checks, one against TN 2 and two against TN 3?

Option c) seems to be out: It would allow the player to roll three checks with one action, thus spend Opportunities to e.g. heal Strife or Fatigue 3x in that one action.

Option one seems like the most sensible one (why should one target dodging or being obscured make hitting the others more difficult?).

But as the rules do not seem to say anything about it, I wanted to ask if everyone went with a).

I'd go with A)

Seems like the most logical answer, even if the rule as written seem to imply that option B) is the right one, it definitely MUST be option A).
Otherwise if you target 3 characters all in air stance you would get a +3tn ? At least to me, that doesn't make sense.


But thats another strike for the system... How unpolished and rushed it was so that multi targetting is not even adressed despite being in so many techniques.

I, too, would go with option A.

I'd distinguish between techs that target multiple targets and ones that target all in an area. For the former, a), clearly. For the latter, however:

D) It hits targets one and two, as Air stance specifies, iirc, that it makes things "targeting you" harder, and the tech doesn't actually, it targets the area.

I might've played a bit much MtG in my youth 😁 😅

13 hours ago, Myrion said:

I'd distinguish between techs that target multiple targets and ones that target all in an area.

Agreed. The specific example of Strike The Tsunami, though is "you may make a TN 4 Theology (Water) check targeting a number of characters up to your Water Ring at range 0–3.", so you're definitely picking the enemy in air stance as a target.

With a rules-strict hat on, I would probably say the TN should be the TN of the hardest target (B), simply because the rules don't currently allow for a 'partial success', but if a player actually got four successes on the roll, I suspect I'd feel cheap at not letting them hit the easy target for the lack of a fifth, so I'd place good odds I'd actually end up allowing (A) in play.

'Area Effect' attacks - fine. Their TN is unaffected by stuff like air stance - because, narratively speaking, you may be in a 'defensive guard' but that does very little to stop a 500lb bomb going off a couple of paces away.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Agreed. The specific example of Strike The Tsunami, though is "you may make a TN 4 Theology (Water) check targeting a number of characters up to your Water Ring at range 0–3.", so you're definitely picking the enemy in air stance as a target.

With a rules-strict hat on, I would probably say the TN should be the TN of the hardest target (B), simply because the rules don't currently allow for a 'partial success', but if a player actually got four successes on the roll, I suspect I'd feel cheap at not letting them hit the easy target for the lack of a fifth, so I'd place good odds I'd actually end up allowing (A) in play.

'Area Effect' attacks - fine. Their TN is unaffected by stuff like air stance - because, narratively speaking, you may be in a 'defensive guard' but that does very little to stop a 500lb bomb going off a couple of paces away.

What are "area effect" attacks in L5R?

Option A) seems more fair to me. I can see Air stance helping in dodging them as much as "Evade" in d&d.

On 1/16/2020 at 3:54 PM, Tenebrae said:

I, too, would go with option A.

If you roll multiple times (as per option c), that's potentially a lot of Strife (and/or opportunities) that are suddenly added to the Invocation, which further complicated matters.

On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 12:59 PM, Avatar111 said:

What are "area effect" attacks in L5R?

The example that jumps to mind is Breath of the Fire Dragon .

"As an Attack action, you may make a TN 4 Theology (Fire) check targeting one character at range 0–3."

(so it only 'targets' the original named target)

"Each character at range 0–1 of the target must make a TN 3 Fitness check (Air 4, Water 1) or suffer supernatural damage equal to your Fire Ring."

(But also 'hits' everyone within sword's reach of them for a lesser effect)

In this case, if one of those characters at range 0-1 is in air stance/obscuring terrain/etc, I'm not convinced the original TN should be affected if your main target isn't.

On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2020 at 6:48 PM, Tenebrae said:

If you roll multiple times (as per option c), that's potentially a lot of Strife (and/or opportunities) that are suddenly added to the Invocation, which further complicated matters.

Indeed. Adding extra checks adds a whole load of complications so whatever the correct resolution is, I agree it shouldn't be that .

32 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

The example that jumps to mind is Breath of the Fire Dragon .

"As an Attack action, you may make a TN 4 Theology (Fire) check targeting one character at range 0–3."

(so it only 'targets' the original named target)

"Each character at range 0–1 of the target must make a TN 3 Fitness check (Air 4, Water 1) or suffer supernatural damage equal to your Fire Ring."

(But also 'hits' everyone within sword's reach of them for a lesser effect)

In this case, if one of those characters at range 0-1 is in air stance/obscuring terrain/etc, I'm not convinced the original TN should be affected if your main target isn't.

In this case, it's simple: There's no TN requirement to hit the secondary targets. Them being in Air stance, obscured or whatnot is irrelevant.

PS: Oh gods I hate this forum software!

33 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

In this case, it's simple: There's no TN requirement to hit the secondary targets. Them being in Air stance, obscured or whatnot is irrelevant.

Indeed. That's what I meant earlier when I said about trying to distinguish between 'multiple target' ("this ability targets any number of characters within range 0-2") and 'area effect' abilities where only one individual (or even a terrain feature) is actually the 'target' and other characters nearby get hit as a side-effect.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Indeed. That's what I meant earlier when I said about trying to distinguish between 'multiple target' ("this ability targets any number of characters within range 0-2") and 'area effect' abilities where only one individual (or even a terrain feature) is actually the 'target' and other characters nearby get hit as a side-effect.

Sure, invocations like Armor of Radiance that hit without a check are a sort of area attack that ignores Obscuring or Air Stance. But those have no bearing in the question above.

I don't know, even with "aoe" targets I am tempted to still consider Air stance, or guard.

Like "evade" in d&d. I just don't like to start to differentiate between single or multiple targets when the game doesn't explicitly. I also believe defenses work as well against fireballs and sword attacks.

There is also the fact that I do not really like the fact that the original target can be in Air stance and then all others are defended too. Or even more cheesy, the shugenja targets a location so that nobody have their defense.

Dunno, feels weird and not intended.

I find it generally simpler, and still works logically to just go with opiton a)

Though, can't argue that this is something that should be in a decent errata/faq.