Couple questions on kihos.

First: Do you have to be in the relevant stance to use a Kiho? Water for water fist, etc.

Second: The fire that makes your attacks supernatural, does this mean that it ignores armor? That seems really strong on a Taoist Blade!

Thanks.

18 minutes ago, NitroXanax said:

First: Do you have to be in the relevant stance to use a Kiho? Water for water fist, etc.

As far as I can tell, yes. Like everyone else. (Shugenja using Invocations, bushi using kata bound to a specific ring, etc).

18 minutes ago, NitroXanax said:

Second: The fire that makes your attacks supernatural, does this mean that it ignores armor? That seems really strong on a Taoist Blade!

"The fire that makes your attacks supernatural"?

But otherwise, yeah.

Fire Fist is what he's thinking of, iirc. Turns your unarmed profile supernatural. So yes, pretty strong with a sword, unless someone has supernatural resistance.

Got it. If you change stances AFTER activating a kiho do you lose that kiho?

From my understanding, no. The kiho is active till you change to another one or end it by choice.

Taoist Blades are quite powerful through their Kiho, yes. Flame Fist makes your katana attacks supernatural AND increases their Deadliness to 5 +Fire Ring, which is ouch.

Earthen Fist increases katana damage by Earth ring. Water Fist gives you armor penetration equal to TWICE your water ring, which should be enough to ignore pretty much any armor.

The downside is that you have to activate it each scene, which costs you an action. And yes, you have to be in the right stance, because otherwise you could not make e.g. a Martial Arts Unarmed (Fire) check for Flame Fist.

Taoist Blades are quite powerful through their Kiho, yes. Flame Fist makes your katana attacks supernatural AND increases their Deadliness to 5 +Fire Ring, which is ouch.

Earthen Fist increases katana damage by Earth ring. Water Fist gives you armor penetration equal to TWICE your water ring, which should be enough to ignore pretty much any armor.

The downside is that you have to activate it each scene, which costs you an action. And yes, you have to be in the right stance, because otherwise you could not make e.g. a Martial Arts Unarmed (Fire) check for Flame Fist.

On ‎1‎/‎31‎/‎2020 at 7:19 PM, Arganas said:

From my understanding, no. The kiho is active till you change to another one or end it by choice.

Correct. Generally you'll want to stick to a stance, since - presumably - you'd have picked kiho suited to your best ring(s), but if you, say, need to drop into water stance for a turn to catch a calming breath, you don't lose an active Kiho.

On ‎1‎/‎31‎/‎2020 at 3:53 PM, NitroXanax said:

Second: The fire that makes your attacks supernatural, does this mean that it ignores armor? That seems really strong on a Taoist Blade!

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 9:02 AM, Harzerkatze said:

Taoist Blades are quite powerful through their Kiho, yes. Flame Fist makes your katana attacks supernatural AND increases their Deadliness to 5 +Fire Ring, which is ouch.

Earthen Fist increases katana damage by Earth ring. Water Fist gives you armor penetration equal to TWICE your water ring, which should be enough to ignore pretty much any armor.

The downside is that you have to activate it each scene, which costs you an action. And yes, you have to be in the right stance, because otherwise you could not make e.g. a Martial Arts Unarmed (Fire) check for Flame Fist.

• Agreed. The Taoist Blade does come with some downsides.
  • Fire Fist is awesome - as you note, it means your sword will ignore (most) armour - few normal types provide supernatural resistance - and will increase its deadliness by their fire ring
  • HOWEVER - getting, say, +3 deadliness (for a fire 3 character) on your sword sounds awesome, but - since you have to wield the sword one-handed to use the kiho - you could have gotten +2 deadliness simply by taking a two-handed grip , and if you're inflicting a critical strike, you do so regardless of the target's resistance anyway. Fire Fist Blade is still better than a mundane sword strike, but not by as much as it looks like it is on first impression.
  • As @Harzerkatze says, you have to activate the Kiho. Which means a) being in the right stance, b) 'wasting' an action (especially since, unlike the Togashi Monk, they don't get an increased chance of triggering burst effects), and c) passing the check. That last one is more significant than you'd think - because whilst most of the Kiho checks aren't that hard, note that a Taoist Blade still has to use Martial Arts [Unarmed] to activate Kiho and Burst effects, even though they then need to switch to Martial Arts [Melee] for the "stabbing people" bit. Which means that unlike most schools, they really need to be training up in two separate martial arts skills

2 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

(especially since, unlike the Togashi Monk, they don't get an increased chance of triggering burst effects)

Actually they do, the last line of the Taoist Blade school ability is to add bonus success equal to school rank when you successfully activate a kiho which works with sharpened ki.

3 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

Actually they do, the last line of the Taoist Blade school ability is to add bonus success equal to school rank when you successfully activate a kiho which works with sharpened ki.

Though its still not QUITE as good since its a limited list of kiho it works with. Still nice though...

I'm actually playing a taoist blade as my first character in 5e. I'm still new to the system and trying to learn in general...trying to be more useful in social scenes beyond using my best "shuji", Earth Needs No Eyes, for the vigilance boost. Any suggestions folks might be willing to pass along would be appreciated.

Togashi is limited to kiho linked to your tattoos, so arguably a more limited list.

2 hours ago, Arganas said:

Though its still not QUITE as good since its a limited list of kiho it works with. Still nice though...

I'm actually playing a taoist blade as my first character in 5e. I'm still new to the system and trying to learn in general...trying to be more useful in social scenes beyond using my best "shuji", Earth Needs No Eyes, for the vigilance boost. Any suggestions folks might be willing to pass along would be appreciated.

I don't even know how you got a Shuji since Taoist Blade School don't have access to Shuji.

But honestly, no big deal. Get a Social Skill outside of school, work with that... Shuji are mostly hit or miss anyway, lots of garbage in there. Yeah, you will miss on the few very good ones... But hey, nothing can be done about it unless you cheese yourself a Title (Then all options in the Title mentioning "Shuji" suddenly unlock for you, unless they have a "special (not school nor rank)" requirement like a Clan or a Role and are not specified by Name and a Diamond symbol in the Title Curriculum)
(The rule on it wasn't clear, nor the errata for that matter... oh well.)

Though, as a Taoist Blade, you definitely are tied more into the Bushi/Monk archetype than Courtier/Artisan. And that was clear from the get go.

You are one of the best Bushi and Duelist in the game, and a good Scholar (There is no Scholar role... weirdly enough. But lets pretend).

Enjoy.

21 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

I don't even know how you got a Shuji since Taoist Blade School don't have access to Shuji.

But honestly, no big deal. Get a Social Skill outside of school, work with that... Shuji are mostly hit or miss anyway, lots of garbage in there. Yeah, you will miss on the few very good ones... But hey, nothing can be done about it unless you cheese yourself a Title (Then all options in the title mentioning "Shuji" suddenly unlock for you, unless they have a "special" requirement like a Clan or a Role) (The rule on it wasn't clear, nor the errata for that matter, but that is what it is)

Though, as a Taoist Blade, you definitely are tied more into the Bushi/Monk archetype than Courtier/Artisan. And that was clear from the get go.

You are one of the best Bushi and Duelist in the game, and a good Scholar (There is no Scholar role... weirdly enough. But lets pretend).

Enjoy.

First off, I don't have any shuji...that was the joke, Earth needs no eyes is my best shuji...Its come in handy a couple times when vigilance was handy to have for a social scene.

And yeah, kinda going for a classic "blind swordsman" sorta role. ENNE helps me avoid bumping into everything, though the GM hasn't decided if he'll let it help or not in combat, said he'd rule on that more permanently next session.

Scholar stuff i've kinda started poking my head towards that too...might be a good one to put more XP towards as we move along.

59 minutes ago, Arganas said:

First off, I don't have any shuji...that was the joke, Earth needs no eyes is my best shuji...Its come in handy a couple times when vigilance was handy to have for a social scene.

And yeah, kinda going for a classic "blind swordsman" sorta role. ENNE helps me avoid bumping into everything, though the GM hasn't decided if he'll let it help or not in combat, said he'd rule on that more permanently next session.

Scholar stuff i've kinda started poking my head towards that too...might be a good one to put more XP towards as we move along.

Yeah just read it. Its a kiho, good joke, you got me there!

Very strong too. You are basically personally immune to all form of intrigue checks. Well played. You cannot be the target of NPCs during Intrigues unless the GM decide to slap in a hard counter to your technique on one of their NPC. That will surely feel awesome.

7 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Yeah just read it. Its a kiho, good joke, you got me there!

Very strong too. You are basically personally immune to all form of intrigue checks. Well played. You cannot be the target of NPCs during Intrigues unless the GM decide to slap in a hard counter to your technique on one of their NPC. That will surely feel awesome.

Depends, because, yeah, it feels like I'm mostly immune if they want to target me. The problem is if they DON'T target me well...I'm just a nice big rock of vigilance in the scenery, and I don't really have a firm grasp yet on how to "make myself useful" for social encounters. More ranks in the appropriate skills will help some, but I'm more after little things and suggestions that might help me squeeze the most water from this stone as I can.

Shuji provide lots of options, that seems to be their thing, providing lots of additional ways to spend opportunity. As a Taoist blade, I don't have access to these naturally. So I guess what I'm after is suggestions for ways to do more in social encounters with what I CAN do...like becoming the ENNE Wall of Vigilance...The last social encounter we were in i thought I'd stick to Earth Stance, and act as support for the others, using my opportunities to reassure them with strife reduction (2 strife once per roll for an opportunity, basically water stance for other people). Are there any other Kiho that stand out as being things that might be able to pull double duty in social encounters? Suggestions of ways to spend my opportunities, things I can do with stance shifting?

Help me, a taoist blade, learn how to make friends and influence people...

10 hours ago, Arganas said:

trying to be more useful in social scenes beyond using my best "shuji", Earth Needs No Eyes, for the vigilance boost. Any suggestions folks might be willing to pass along would be appreciated.

7 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Very strong too. You are basically personally immune to all form of intrigue checks. Well played. You cannot be the target of NPCs during Intrigues unless the GM decide to slap in a hard counter to your technique on one of their NPC. That will surely feel awesome.

You're essentially immune to persuade, but most of the time, the PCs aren't the ones being persuaded, it's PCs v NPCs with the 'target' being the lord in the local setting.

It is nice, though - since it avoids a lot of deceptive shuji, like Wolf's Proposal being useable. The main risk to you is being compromised, since that's vigilance 1, kiho or no, and unmasking in a court scene is generally a no-no - so anything boosting composure or reducing strife will be good.

Not having shuji does make it harder to get really into an intrigue. The main thing I'd suggest is the Tactical Assessment Kata. It works on initiative checks, and whilst your 'turn order' in an Intrigue is largely a matter of Status, not Initiative, you still make the initiative roll. Advantages and disadvantages are key weapons in intrigues and being able to identify/reinforce/bypass them makes you very useful.

13 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

You're essentially immune to persuade, but most of the time, the PCs aren't the ones being persuaded, it's PCs v NPCs with the 'target' being the lord in the local setting.

It is nice, though - since it avoids a lot of deceptive shuji, like Wolf's Proposal being useable. The main risk to you is being compromised, since that's vigilance 1, kiho or no, and unmasking in a court scene is generally a no-no - so anything boosting composure or reducing strife will be good.

Not having shuji does make it harder to get really into an intrigue. The main thing I'd suggest is the Tactical Assessment Kata. It works on initiative checks, and whilst your 'turn order' in an Intrigue is largely a matter of Status, not Initiative, you still make the initiative roll. Advantages and disadvantages are key weapons in intrigues and being able to identify/reinforce/bypass them makes you very useful.

Tactical Assessment...yeah, i can see where I could use that actually. Learning advantages, and negating disadvantages. I'd also debated picking it up in general recently. Think ill add that to the short list.

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

You're essentially immune to persuade, but most of the time, the PCs aren't the ones being persuaded, it's PCs v NPCs with the 'target' being the lord in the local setting.

Hmmm.. interesting take on it. And sure is a case where it can work.

You never do NPC vs PC social convincing? Or, how do you handle such cases? Outside of an intrigue, just with a plain competitive check?

That means that having all those nice "social HP" like Focus, doesn't mean anything for the players?

A lot of the time I use Intrigues against the PC to break their ideas or simply for the NPC to "learn" things about them. I feel the vulnerability of a low Focus PC in an Intrigue is something that cunning NPCs should take advantage of.

Agreed, it is a bit wonky sometimes how it works and it could use some streamlining, but the concept of social "battles" in which the NPC can also win is interesting. Makes all those defensive shuji worthwhile too.

It can sometime feel like the players lose "control" of their character (if they get persuaded for example) so it is something that needs to be done cautiously. The extent to which "social combat" can go, and how much the players can "lose" from it, is an interesting subject altogether that not enough ttrpg give an answer for.

I wonder how the designers really imagined Intrigues since all those Shuji are so uneven. And even the goal isn't clear (can PCs contribute to the same momentum track or not? Which can make it too easy to win if they all "attack" the same NPC, so I say no and had success with that way of playing, each player have their own momentum track (which can be the same goal, but that isnt the same track), but it isn't clear in the rules and I read it many times) There really isn't enough good example of how they expect it to be played, and I'm not certain it all holds up just by reading the corebook and shuji.

Anyway, I really think the system is meant for the NPC to also "attack" the PCs. And that makes the monk kind of immune to it, at least immune enough that it again feel like the game is very binary on its results. With techniques and abilities that can straight up break certain type of scenes unless the GM use a hard counter, which feels cheap.