Hey, have a game maybe coming up in a few weeks and i've been looking through 5E since that seems to be what we'll be using. I like it so far, but I want to play a concept i was originally going to do for 4E.

It used some advantages and stat combos to be a great performer, artisan and even be pretty sharp (like basic kakita level) at iaijutsu. Though probably even less of a fighter than most Crane.

It was for scorpion, and as i'm looking through 5E i'm seeing Shosuro (ninja) and the two Bayushi Styles (courtier and deathdealer), and i like them all, so it doesn't really press on me which one is better for the job.

Just looking for some character building input on this, really.

You'll want a school that has access to kata and shūji, so you can take the appropriate techniques.

Since in this edition you're much less tied to specific rings for specific activities, you might want to figure out their style of performing and dueling and go for that. You'll also want high composure as a duelist and courtier, I think.

Yeah, though theme is important too. While you never want to be the one who loses their cool in a duel, i do have to think about things like people doing the Predict action, so focusing on 1 ring seems overly dangerous.

but you're right. Shuji and Kata are utmost importance. Maybe Infiltrator is the way to go, though I wouldn't be able to start with a Kata i don't think. hmm.

45 minutes ago, Alrik Vas said:

Yeah, though theme is important too. While you never want to be the one who loses their cool in a duel, i do have to think about things like people doing the Predict action, so focusing on 1 ring seems overly dangerous.

but you're right. Shuji and Kata are utmost importance. Maybe Infiltrator is the way to go, though I wouldn't be able to start with a Kata i don't think. hmm.

Do not worry for Predict, it is quite bad. They are losing their time doing that and you will gain the upper hand easily. You do not need to "build" to counter Predict.
You still need Composure though!!! predict or not, duels are mostly ALL about Composure.

You need to have at least all rings at 2. And hopefully, your GM won't be mean and put an opponent with double your composure for duels. (Your GM should aim to have opponents with about same, more or less, composure as you. Be carefull about opponents with 4+ composure than you, this starts to become almost impossible to win. You might chop them to pieces and wound all their rings, but then they will one shot you with a finishing blow. And if you plan to do duels to first blood... invest in a good Earth ring)

2 hours ago, Alrik Vas said:

It was for scorpion, and as i'm looking through 5E i'm seeing Shosuro (ninja) and the two Bayushi Styles (courtier and deathdealer), and i like them all, so it doesn't really press on me which one is better for the job.

If you want multifunctional, the Bayushi Manipulator is probably your best call. Way of the Scorpion and Path of shadows cool and all but is specific to fighting.

Using a scheme action in a duel is possible, whilst using an attack action in an intrigue isn't.

The school is an +air & fire one, which combined with the Scorpion +air and Bayushi +air or fire pretty much means you'll be air 3, fire 3 like it or not. High air is good, as firstly air stance is a good defensive one in most conflict scenes (the balance between air and earth depends on exactly what you're threatened by), and air opportunities help you ferret out disadvantages, which makes your school ability work.

Focus 6 straight out the gate is nice, but it's probably the least useful starting value - vigilance stops you being ambushed and often makes using kata and shuji on you harder, and obviously composure and endurance are good because you keep your head and don't die. Starting with a pretty minimal composure is a big problem both in duels and as a courtier. You can easily get at least one of water and earth to 3, and I'd recommend it. Water is probably best as as a courtier, you want water for a charm approach when schmoozing with the influential nobility. A combination of innovate, adapt and refine (fire, water and air) approaches is the bedrock of an artisan - provided you're doing actual art and not trying to make something like swords or plate armour, anyway.

19 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Do not worry for Predict, it is quite bad. They are losing their time doing that and you will gain the upper hand easily. You do not need to "build" to counter Predict.

It's not, but it is a reason not to have 'one good ring'. To a large extent, the system won't let you anyway, but if you've got a player who's got, say, 4-2-2-2-2, then they might have to worry about predict. But that's a stupid idea for a lot more reasons than just duels, because outside conflict scenes you need every ring for different things - it's not like, say, D&D, where a 'party face' needs high charisma and that's it, even just with courtesy and sentiment you can find yourself needing any ring depending on the situation. The fact that wounded criticals apply to ring is another.

hmm. Well, it seems to be a starting level game, no bonus points. And we can't do heritage rolls until we're about to start it would seem so there could be anything that comes along after the basic build is done.

So i guess my next question is how should a starting character like this look? It seems like i'll end up kinda 1, 1, 3, 3, 2 or something and have the composure of a starving kitten. >.>

45 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

It's not, but it is a reason not to have 'one good ring'. To a large extent, the system won't let you anyway, but if you've got a player who's got, say, 4-2-2-2-2, then they might have to worry about predict. But that's a stupid idea for a lot more reasons than just duels, because outside conflict scenes you need every ring for different things - it's not like, say, D&D, where a 'party face' needs high charisma and that's it, even just with courtesy and sentiment you can find yourself needing any ring depending on the situation. The fact that wounded criticals apply to ring is another.

Predict doesn't work for Void. Which hurts the theory. Still. For only 4 strife, it is a really hefty, and risky cost (to skip your turn without having any guarantee it will work).

Also agree, we usually feel you need relatively balanced rings in that system.

well hearing balanced rings are good is a relief. that's how i preferred to play 4E and it was nice but other people would go full Air Forever and create huge problems for...well...everyone but themselves (even the GM lol).

10 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Still. For only 4 strife, it is a really hefty, and risky cost (to skip your turn without having any guarantee it will work).

Oh agreed. I've never suggested it's a good general-purpose option, merely that there are some (very) niche cases where it's useful. You're entirely right that you don't need to specifically build for/against it, but at the same time don't forget about it if you're actually in a duel or it could be very embarrassing if you lose because of it*.

10 hours ago, Alrik Vas said:

So i guess my next question is how should a starting character like this look? It seems like i'll end up kinda 1, 1, 3, 3, 2 or something and have the composure of a starving kitten. >.>

Depends what number is what ring, I guess, but yes - you'll have to keep your weak composure in mind but it can be dealt with - and at times can even be exploited.

A Scorpion/Bayushi/Manipulator has by default

Air 3 (scorpion adds Air, Manipulator adds Air)

Fire 3 (Bayushi adds Fire because Air is 'full', Manipulator adds Fire)

and a +1 to one ring from your personal excellence - probably either Water or Earth. Void 2 is nice in theory but is most useful if either you expect to be making lots of Void/Theology checks to sense mystical whommy stuff (more a shujenga thing), or are one of those schools who have specific interactions with void points (like the Shinseist Monk). By all means get Void 2 reasonably quickly because being able to hang onto a second void point is great, but you don't NEED it on adventure 1, day 1.

Having a minimal starting composure is a problem but it can be dealt with, especially if you talk to the rest of your party.

• A friend with a good earth ring can use to remove strife from you.
• Unmasking is risky but can actually benefit you if you use the opportunity right. It will mean you bleed honour and glory, but - as a scorpion - that's acceptable to get your duty done, right? Sometimes crocodile tears can be a deadly effective weapon in an intrigue.
• Being compromised by your anxiety will happen quite often...which makes it a reliable source of void points (depending on your anxiety and the current context), which means you should get more void points and hence be able to spend more void points than your fellow party members. Add to the fact that a Bayushi Manipulator doesn't have to spend a void point to exploit a disadvantage and you should be able to reliably get a bonus skill die and rerolls on really important checks.
• Being compromised during a skirmish is a pain in the neck, but it doesn't render you useless. Even if your ring dice are pretty ineffectual, the Support action doesn't require a check, and lending a ring or skill die to an uncompromised, rather scarier bushi (representing some ineffectual but distracting flailing with your wakizashi) can often add more damage output than attacking yourself, even if you weren't compromised.
  • Because it's all about damage in excess of the target's resistance, concentrating multiple successes into a single check is better than lots of 'just passed' rolls.
  • As a result, there is an argument in a skirmish for staying behind the bushi with their bigger swords and (depending on the setting of the fight) better armour, stepping out to land a heavy fire stance attack (which should do a lot of damage with fire 3, a void point, and rerolls, relative to a 'normal' strike) , accepting this will probably compromise you with a low composure, then dropping back to use Assist actions that don't require checks, in Air Stance which provides a passive defensive increase.

The Kaito in our campaign started with composure 4 (!) but did okay until she was able to build up her earth ring over time (she was an exception to the rule about void increases above, since she was able to start with void 3 , meaning she could fight primarily in void stance and not worry about strife, which means being able to keep chained results on ring dice without consequences, which she does with disturbing regularity with that bloody terrifying daikyu of hers)

8 hours ago, Alrik Vas said:

well hearing balanced rings are good is a relief. that's how i preferred to play 4E and it was nice but other people would go full Air Forever and create huge problems for...well...everyone but themselves (even the GM lol).

You can still play a character with a single ring pushed in favour of all others, and don't get me wrong it can be effective, but there are several things which penalise you if you do.

• Narrative scenes don't use stances; a given approach always uses a specific ring, and the "I want to use my best ring" argument gets swatted forehand by "how do you think that approach applies" and backhand by the fact that the GM is at liberty to vary the TN of a given check for a given ring
  • (as an example, talking your way past an elite guard by intimidating them is Fire, whilst fluttering your eyelashes and charming them is Water. Whilst you may have a better fire ring than water ring, the difficulty of persuading the armoured-hatamoto-who's-significantly-scarier-than-thou that 'there will be consequences' is going to be MUCH harder).
• All invocations and Kiho, and quite a lot of Shuji and Kata, are ring-specific, meaning you must be in the specific stance - and hence using the specific ring - to use them. Whilst some techniques are universal (like the iaijutsu cuts), many aren't, and they tend to be the ones with very-hard-to-duplicate effects, like Thunderclap Strike (Air, the only melee attack to hit multiple opponents), Heartpiercing Strike (Fire, the only way to reliably inflict a critical strike on an opponent in Earth Stance), and so on.
• As noted, once you start eating critical strikes, Lightly Wounded and Severely Wounded inflict penalties by upping the TN of checks using the ring they are attached to - and they are attached to the ring whose stance you were in when wounded. So if you get stuck with Severely Wounded (Your Best Ring), you NEED to have a decent second stance to switch to or you're essentially out of the fight.

* @Alrik Vas - for context, the sort of example I mean:

You are relatively unlikely to 'walk into' the predict, because if your opponent performs a predict action, then either use your second-best stance if you're confident your opponent predicted your best, or void if you're not sure (because as @Avatar111 said, they can't have predicted Void Stance. So if you're expecting to win that way.....don't.

Therefore getting hit with 4 strife from it is relatively unlikely. Where it can be useful is not so much catching your opponent out, but 'locking them out' of a stance for a single turn. It's feasible for it to come up, for example, in an iaijutsu duel between two not-especially-great-combatant courtiers**.

As the strife racks up; iai duels are basically a strife management game, and one very worthwhile use of your actions is Fire-stance unique actions and shuji to dump strife on your opponent with Fire . Which is all well and good, but where a well-timed predict can really bugger them up is that if they don't have an iaijutsu cut technique (you don't have to have one to fight a duel - having them is just a nice-to-have option), the only way to draw-and-strike in the same turn is with water stance. So if you know the next turn's 'strife drop' is going to compromise both of you (which eventually it will) and they haven't actually drawn their sword yet, this can leave them unable to take advantage of the finishing blow - or even let you interrupt their finishing blow with a finishing blow of your own.

** As a second aside: Centre is also awful. If it's ever useful, again, it's for really feeble fighters, because without pre-rolling the odd or , getting the you need on a single attack to land a critical strike from a small dice pool is really, really hard. In theory it's the equivalent of channelling for Shujenga; you'd use it to build up a good roll over several turns. However, it's really not very good in practice because unlike channelling or Striking As Air, you only get to roll and reserve skill dice, and if you had a decent pool of skill dice to roll, you wouldn't be a really feeble fighter who wanted to preroll some results in the first place....

hmm. in the end, since i think they should be a bushi and the deathdealer style is good for dueling with it's ability mashed with the starting shuji (unless i'm mistaken, they seem to compliment each other if you play well) i might be sticking with that actually.

Though on the other hand, the courtier thing does seem very good and i understand you can scheme in a duel as well...hmmmmmmmm.

So i guess my question goes to what you were saying about reserve dice, i assume it had to do with striking as air. Do you think Striking as Fire is Superior?

14 minutes ago, Alrik Vas said:

hmm. in the end, since i think they should be a bushi and the deathdealer style is good for dueling with it's ability mashed with the starting shuji (unless i'm mistaken, they seem to compliment each other if you play well) i might be sticking with that actually.

Though on the other hand, the courtier thing does seem very good and i understand you can scheme in a duel as well...hmmmmmmmm.

So i guess my question goes to what you were saying about reserve dice, i assume it had to do with striking as air. Do you think Striking as Fire is Superior?

Both striking as air and striking as fire are among the worst kata in the game. Garbage stuff. I guess if you get them for free... But never spend for that.

42 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Both striking as air and striking as fire are among the worst kata in the game. Garbage stuff. I guess if you get them for free... But never spend for that.

One or the other would be free, yes.

Though with cranked skill/ring dice, wouldn't air be pretty good? Assuming you wouldn't just use an obviously better kata.

1 hour ago, Alrik Vas said:

One or the other would be free, yes.

Though with cranked skill/ring dice, wouldn't air be pretty good? Assuming you wouldn't just use an obviously better kata.

Good? I don't really think so. Maybe very situationally. The fact that it is linked to the skill you use (need to be the same skill, the next round) and that it makes your initial check weaker is very constraining. Maybe you can find use for it.. If it is free, why not.

2 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

Good? I don't really think so. Maybe very situationally. The fact that it is linked to the skill you use (need to be the same skill, the next round) and that it makes your initial check weaker is very constraining. Maybe you can find use for it.. If it is free, why not.

well it's only supposition on my part, but i would think that if you roll well initially to cause a problem or wound while dropping dice, you could more steadily get the job done on the following turn vs that opponent, and you'd be in air stance to better your defense.

Sure if you could just 1 shot them in the first attack that'd be best, obv.

4 minutes ago, Alrik Vas said:

well it's only supposition on my part, but i would think that if you roll well initially to cause a problem or wound while dropping dice, you could more steadily get the job done on the following turn vs that opponent, and you'd be in air stance to better your defense.

Sure if you could just 1 shot them in the first attack that'd be best, obv.

Maybe. It is a cool to have. I guess. You let me know if you ever use it.

You can already keep an opportunity on a kept dice with Air stance, and you roll less die on your next check. So it is probably good to keep an explosion that you don't need because your overkill the minion as is. Stuff like that.

It is better than striking as fire and battle in the mind!

12 hours ago, Alrik Vas said:

Though with cranked skill/ring dice, wouldn't air be pretty good? Assuming you wouldn't just use an obviously better kata.

Air Stance is good. It's the best general-purpose defensive stance, reducing incoming damage and enemy momentum by reducing bonus success and sometimes preventing the hit entirely without requiring your action to do either; Earth stance stops 'dirty tricks' but most of the really nasty dirty tricks are opportunities that come up if an attack/scheme succeeds, so you get at least a limited bit of protection from them too. Especially for a relatively low-level character or minion NPC, Air Stance + Guard is next to untouchable - combine with Crescent Moon Style for a very effective skirmisher.

Striking as Air is.....very situational.

You're spending to 'stash away' a good result for your next check - it's a great kata for those moments when your strike is clearly going to fail, but there's a sat there that's going to go unused otherwise.

However, there is a generic Air opportunity to spend to add a kept to your next martial skill, so even without striking as air you can salvage good results from a failed check.

The key thing is that doing your best to recover from a failed check < actually passing the check in the first place.

It's actually not totally awful in a duel - if you have an iaijutsu cut you can draw your sword in air stance and 'harvest' good results (since you can't inflict a duel-winning critical with the technique), it then gets a lot easier to hit the magic to land a critical strike. But that relies on an opponent not fighting in Earth Stance and being immune to it anyway.

(again, this is one of those 'niche' cases where Predict might matter - if you have enough guaranteed results in the tank that landing a duel-winning critical strike is trivial, then what you need to do is ensure the opponent isn't in earth stance when your turn comes up. So Predict-Earth isn't to try and inflict 4 strife, it's to force them to not be in earth stance when you make what you hope is the winning swing)

6 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Air Stance is good. It's the best general-purpose defensive stance, reducing incoming damage and enemy momentum by reducing bonus success and sometimes preventing the hit entirely without requiring your action to do either; Earth stance stops 'dirty tricks' but most of the really nasty dirty tricks are opportunities that come up if an attack/scheme succeeds, so you get at least a limited bit of protection from them too. Especially for a relatively low-level character or minion NPC, Air Stance + Guard is next to untouchable - combine with Crescent Moon Style for a very effective skirmisher.

Striking as Air is.....very situational.

You're spending to 'stash away' a good result for your next check - it's a great kata for those moments when your strike is clearly going to fail, but there's a sat there that's going to go unused otherwise.

However, there is a generic Air opportunity to spend to add a kept to your next martial skill, so even without striking as air you can salvage good results from a failed check.

The key thing is that doing your best to recover from a failed check < actually passing the check in the first place.

It's actually not totally awful in a duel - if you have an iaijutsu cut you can draw your sword in air stance and 'harvest' good results (since you can't inflict a duel-winning critical with the technique), it then gets a lot easier to hit the magic to land a critical strike. But that relies on an opponent not fighting in Earth Stance and being immune to it anyway.

(again, this is one of those 'niche' cases where Predict might matter - if you have enough guaranteed results in the tank that landing a duel-winning critical strike is trivial, then what you need to do is ensure the opponent isn't in earth stance when your turn comes up. So Predict-Earth isn't to try and inflict 4 strife, it's to force them to not be in earth stance when you make what you hope is the winning swing)

Cannot draw your sword and predict at the same time.

Unless you use water stance. But then the Air shenanigans won't work anyway.

And you need to make sure the opponent doesn't have a good water ring themselves, because you probably just lost the first blood/hit duel if they do.

There might be ultra niche cases for Predict. But it doesn't warrant a spot in the "unique actions" of duels. Nor does Center for that matter. They really do not bring much.

A lot of the duel specific stuff is garbage though. Battle in the Mind, Kenshinzen's ability, Iaijutsu that can't crit. I really wonder how the devs really thought of duels. Like, whats going on in their head about how it should be played. It really doesn't seem to make sense to me on a few parts.

I'm guessing it is about swinging, and using void point to avoid damage, and resist crits as best as you can.

But even the conditions of winning. Like duel to first strike. Is absolutely busted due to earth strike, until people start to use like heartpiercing strike to manage to win those preemptively.

Add to that the destructiveness of finishing blows.

As a GM to make a player lose a duel without it seeming unfair (gm's advantage) is difficult.

You cannot really win a duel with finishing blow as a GM unless maybe your player was wanting it for narrative reasons or if they really really rolled badly. I just don't know where to set the bar. It needs to be somewhat challenging for the PC, while staying fair, but then the NPC have all those hidden abilities. There is a metagame going on, but the punishment for loosing is absolutely devastating and it can be so swingy and hard to balance.

So in the end, you just let the PC win the duel no matter what. So all those duel "strategies and tactical gameplay" do not mean anything. It isnt like if as a GM you are playing against your PC and trying to outplay then and land that finishing blow. This is not how ttrpg play out. So the whole system of player vs npc with the duel rules. Its weird. Might work better for pvp actually.

Anyway, just all so weird to me. The blocks just doesn't seem to all fit together for it to be a good design for duels. Too many random parts, with metagame, swingy outcomes, hard counters etc. Its just off.

Interesting. Is it that there are just too many ways to go about it and too many of them counter each other?

1 hour ago, Alrik Vas said:

Interesting. Is it that there are just too many ways to go about it and too many of them counter each other?

It mean that as a GM, it is very difficult to balance duels. It is difficult to balance the "mini game". It is very swingy, and it feels super cheap to GM those. Because you have all the knowledge of both the NPC and the PC: abilities, strife, etc, and you choose what you want to "hard counter".
But then again, you can't really make the PC lose duels to a finishing blow, because they explode.
It is just extremely hard to make a duel feel challenging but make the PC win at the end. It always feel like it is either an easy push over or impossible. And most of the time feel like the player had absolutely ZERO control over the outcome because the GM decides.

I don't know, maybe its just me, but I just feel the duel "mini game" is more suited as a PVP thing than a GM vs PC thing.

16 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

But then again, you can't really make the PC lose duels to a finishing blow, because they explode.

Depends. A Severity 10 critical (a finishing blow from a Katana one-handed) is nasty but not lethal - it's a scar at worst, and is the likely result of an iaijutsu cut finishing blow (as the GM I don't have to keep bonus success and an honourable opponent may not be trying to inflict a fatal strike).

I'd happily inflict that on a PC who ends up in a duel to first strike/first blood against a superior opponent through their own stupid actions. A scar disadvantage is something you can live with, after all.

20 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

Cannot draw your sword and predict at the same time.

I know. This was suggesting an iai strike to draw and get a martial arts roll at the same time on one turn, then predict on the next turn, then strike and hopefully land a critical which draws blood. It's not the simplest approach (and does require 3 turns, which will be an issue with a low composure character!) but depending on your respective rings is an alternative to turtling in earth stance and going potato-sack samurai on your opponent.

20 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

A lot of the duel specific stuff is garbage though. Battle in the Mind, Kenshinzen's ability, Iaijutsu that can't crit. I really wonder how the devs really thought of duels. Like, whats going on in their head about how it should be played. It really doesn't seem to make sense to me on a few parts.

Iai cuts are, to me, largely for either skirmishes, duels to incapacitation, or - for a classic iai duel, for the finishing blow itself. In none of those cases do they actually need to cause criticals.

I wholeheartedly agree battle in the mind is awful. The beta version - where you could lock someone into a specific ring (admittedly one of their choice) for the first round - was by comparison a bit harsh, since a high focus character could know what a player was going to pick, predict that, then guarantee dropping 4 strife on them. But I think they weakened it too much. Allowing you to lock someone out of a single specific ring - essentially a free predict action - would have felt about right for a kata with a fixed ring for your initiative check and a fairly high cost.

Kenshinzen is not bad - being essentially the equivalent of Killing Strike in the 40k RPG - if you know or suspect your opponent has know void points. Which ironically, as you say, makes it rather more useful against PCs than NPCs. Ensuring that's the case against an adversary NPC is rather more difficult (it makes the Kenshinzen absolutely brutal against NPCs who don't have void points - though a 'crossing cut' strike against a minion-level NPC tends to lead to 'spontaneous existence failure' anyway...). The main issue is needing to spend 24 XP to unlock the ability in the first place.

16 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

It mean that as a GM, it is very difficult to balance duels. It is difficult to balance the "mini game". It is very swingy, and it feels super cheap to GM those. Because you have all the knowledge of both the NPC and the PC: abilities, strife, etc, and you choose what you want to "hard counter".

That I'll wholeheartedly agree with.

If you take an NPC and add an NPC template to create 'bad-guy with a name-tag', you're generally invited to add a slack handful of kata and a ring increase. It takes a degree of....not exactly discipline? I'm not sure. Mental role-separation? Not to create an 'anti-that-PC' NPC when you know their main purpose in the story is to end up in a duel with a specific character. There's a reason quite a few are about discovering a character's advantages, disadvantages and known techniques; you as the GM get to 'know' all that stuff free, but your character doesn't so shouldn't act on it. It's quite dissociating.

16 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

It is just extremely hard to make a duel feel challenging but make the PC win at the end. It always feel like it is either an easy push over or impossible.

Ironically, we've had quite good fun with duels in the ones we've played in our current campaign.

One was won purely through luck, but very dramatically convenient luck, with a fire-heavy dragon NPC having gone for incapacitation and fallen short by a single point of damage after a truly awful roll, then a massively jammy roll by the shujenga managing to inflict a bleeding critical.

The other recent one was a very challenging warrior's duel with the hida versus a skeletal hatamoto (skeletal bushi + warrior template) in Daylight Castle. If you are featuring maho-related stuff, I can tell you that undead make for awesome duelling enemies when you want to throw in something different during a dungeon crawl or battle because of their composure ∞ - they don't tire, get distracted, or flinch, and turn a lot of the usual assumptions on duels on their head as a result.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

or - for a classic iai duel, for the finishing blow itself

What happened until that finishing blow? I am confused as what a classic iai duel plays out.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Depends. A Severity 10 critical (a finishing blow from a Katana one-handed)

That is exactly what I meant by "you fudged the result" by playing unoptimally as the GM. Feels cheap.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

This was suggesting an iai strike to draw and get a martial arts roll at the same time on one turn, then predict on the next turn, then strike and hopefully land a critical which draws blood.

Striking as Air only work for the next round. So no point in keeping die during iai draw if you predict next round.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Ironically, we've had quite good fun with duels in the ones we've played in our current campaign.

Thats cool! Many time us we had to fudge the results for first blood/strike duels. Sure I ended up putting a narrative twist on it to cover up the fudging and everybody had fun nonetheless, but I still really struggle to balance duels to first blood. Duels to the death are fine (they actually never been an issue for me). So I wasn't clear, but yeah, my problem really is the winning conditions of duels to first strike and first blood, which seem to favor "gimmicks" and are never really fun.

Duels to incapacitation/death are most often than not very epic!! I like it because there are many viable strategies that build up to the same goal.

I do play with slightly reduced finishing blow power (+5 instead of double) and the Earth stance nerf. Had really good experience with this. But even under raw, duels to the death are fine. A high earth character is still a bit boring because you cannot take him out of this ring with wound so he will always roll his max ring, but that is a bit of a niche case that you can avoid as a GM.

13 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

So I wasn't clear, but yeah, my problem really is the winning conditions of duels to first strike and first blood, which seem to favor "gimmicks" and are never really fun.

Duels to incapacitation/death are most often than not very epic!! I like it because there are many viable strategies that build up to the same goal.

That I'd definitely agree with you on; and frankly they're the ones I've used most.