Warning! Wall of Written Words!

Hey everyone! I think and hope I have this in the right place, but through a combination of roleplay of an game I am in and a story I am writing, I've come up with a school. Without getting too much into the back ground of it, the basics are. A Shiba trained in the Kiato shrine keeper school. Father is a well respected Shiba Yojimbo. He has a twin brother who follows in his father's footsteps. His mother is married into the clan, formally of the Yogo family and secretly trained him in the Yogo Shikigami school. In an effort to blend his family together, and in hope to appease his father while mainting his own way, he crafted the following school. Here is what I have so far and I was wondering peoples thoughts on it?

So this would be a pheonix clan based school. Usually meant for those who want to protect their charge, no matter the means. Those who are too physically weak themselves, but wish to do nothing more then to help and protect others. Those who are shine keepers and have an oath against fighting themselves so they elect to have a 'guardian kami' for their shrine or similar for a person who wants a guardian for a small village, etc.

I would love some feed back, if anyone has any input. If you guys like it, feel free to use it. Let me know! I would love to hear how it is being used.

Draft 1.2

Protective Shikigami School [Monk, Artisan]

Rings: +1 Fire, +1 Void

Starting Skills (choose four): +1 Aesthetics +1 Fitness, +1 Martial Arts [Melee], +1 Martial Arts [Unarmed], +1 Meditation, +1 Survival, + Theology

Honor: 30

Techniques Available: Kata, Rituals, Kiho

Starting Techniques:

• Kata (choose one): Lord Shiba's Valor, Warrior's Resolve
• Kiho (choose one): Earthen Fist, Body is an Anvil
• Ritual: Craft Shikigame

Sacred Kami (School Ability): Choose an Artisan Skill. This is your skill for the ritual, Craft Shikigami. While crafting a shikigami, you no longer lock invocations into the shikigami. Instead you lock kiho. Follow the TN difficulty as normal. Follow the Ring rules for the Shikigami as normal, based off your kiho's rank.

During a Downtime activity you may perform a Craft Shikigami roll, TN 2. Spend opportunity in the following ways.

• Your Shikigami gains one skill rank per two opportunity spent this way. Not to exceed your ranks in the skill.
• You teach your Shikigami one kata with opportunity equal to the rank of the kata. Not to exceed the number of kiho locked in the shikigami.

School Ranks:

Rank 1

• Artisan Skills
• Courtesy
• Fitness
• Meditation
• Rank 1 Air Kiho
• Striking as Air
• Tactical Assessment

Rank 2

• Martial Skills
• Medicine
• Theology
• Labor
• Rank 1-2 Water Kiho
• Striking as Water
• Flowing Water Strike

Rank 3

• Scholar Skills
• Composition
• Courtesy
• Survival
• Rank 1-3 Fire Kiho
• Striking as Fire
• Silencing Stroke

Rank 4

• Artisan Skills
• Fitness
• Martial Ranged
• Theology
• Rank 1-4 Earth Kiho
• Striking as Earth
• Soul Sunder

Rank 5

• Martial Skills
• Command
• Sentiment
• Skulduggery
• Rank 1-5 Kata
• Striking as Void
• Way of the Edgeless Sword

Bonded Shikigami (School Mastery): Your shikigami may now do the following.

• During a Downtime activity you may swap kiho with your shikigami. This requires a Craft Shikigami check equal to the original check. Opportunities must be spent equal to 1+ the difference of the Kiho being swapped. You can only swap 1 Kiho per downtime activity (GM descretion)
• The shikigami gains a number of forms equal to its highest ring. These forms cannot be changed after they have been determined without a Craft Shikigami check TN equal to the shikigami's highest ring. The forms cannot exceed silhoutte equal to your Air + Water/2. They cannot replicate the form of an existing person besides their creator. Even then there is enough different that the duplicate can be noticed with a Sentiment check TN 4 (Water 3, Fire 5) to tell the difference.
• You can communicate with your shikigami at any distance. With a TN 2 Theology (Void) check you may see through its senses. With a TN 5 Theology Void check you may act through your shikigami as if it was you. You take 1 fatigue and 2 strife for each round you maintain this.

I've made a few small changes here and there. I dropped one of the Sacred Kami ability options and the rings changed. It was originally Water/Air. But after the PoW book came out and I went over their school crafting suggestions, Fire/Void made more sense, but again I am open to questions, comments, and concerns.

Looks like an interesting idea. I like the concept!

(Sorry - for some reason didn't notice this before..)

Thoughts:

• As a basic concept, I'm not entirely sure about the idea of a Kiho-Shikigami. I've had a 'custom' Shikigami using Maho instead of normal invocations appear in my campaigns before, but Kiho are more.....mindless raw elemental force? Invocations tend to involve a Kami or Kansen which ultimately ends up providing the animating 'mind' of the shikigami, but Kiho do not (making the name for your school ability feel a bit wrong).
• I would suggest that the resulting shikigami would therefore be much more animalistic than a 'proper' shikigami; something animated by infused elemental Ki is fine in theory, but I don't see it being intelligent.
• It doesn't have to be a shikigami per se, of course.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Protective Shikigami School [Monk, Artisan]

Ignoring the stuff above.

Tags - fair enough. Artisan makes sense, and if you're talking about a 'shrine keeper' or 'shrine guard' then following the example of the Kaito they're going to have the Monk tag.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Rings: +1 Fire, +1 Void

Eh. Pick an element, pretty much. If the 'guard shikigami' is driven by passion and elemental force then fire makes sense, and for crafting from scratch, too. I don't have Path of Waves, but certainly in the core book, crafting from scratch requires Fire. 'finishing work' requires Air, but I guess Void is a classic Monk ring. Pays your money, takes your choice. Either way, you're not a fighter yourself, so not giving Earth is a correct choice.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Starting Skills (choose four): +1 Aesthetics +1 Fitness, +1 Martial Arts [Melee], +1 Martial Arts [Unarmed], +1 Meditation, +1 Survival, + Theology

Four skills is equivalent to the Kaito. So far so good.

Observation 1: this person creates 'guardian spirits' rather than fighting themselves. You've got rather too many combat skills in that table for my liking given that starting point. Martial Arts [Melee] - essentially for close-quarter weapons - feels especially out of place in a school with technique class access to Kiho.

Observation 2: 'choose four' schools (the Kaito, Togashi, Fortunist and Shinseist monks) get six options to choose from. You've given seven options.

Theology and Meditation are fine for a monk, Fitness and Survival fine for what seems from the description to be an itinerant school going from place to place where needed, Aesthetics is fine for an artisan school and...maybe one other artisan skill? Smithing or Composition?

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Honor: 40

No.

I'm not trying to do down the character, but essentially, this individual is starting their own new school, trying to blend techniques from other schools (one of which is 'foreign' to the extremely traditionalist Phoenix and comes from the really-not-very-honourable Scorpion).

I'm sure the character is honourable themselves, but the 'starting honour' of a school is based in part on the ethical nature of its teachings and in part on its reputation. I'd not want to push it down much, but I'd suggest it should be lower than for established great clan schools (high 30s?)

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Techniques Available: Kata, Rituals, Kiho

Fine.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Starting Techniques:

• Kata (choose one): Lord Shiba's Valor, Veiled Menace Strike
• Kiho (choose one): Earthen Fist, Body is an Anvil
• Ritual: Craft Shikigame

Three techniques isn't unheard of, but when a school has access to a 'Clan Signature' kata, it tends to be mandated rather than an option. Remember Lord Shiba's Valour requires preferential access - it's a rank 2 kata. Also, having a void increase in the school makes it a lot more reliable (arguably more so than for the Shiba Guardian, though admittedly you're forcing enemies to target you....and it's questionable if you're tough enough to take the punishment!).

Veiled Menace feels wrong, by comparison - you're not a sneaky assassin yourself.

As to the Kiho - given that you've taken a fire ring school, earthen fist seems like an odd pick. The Body Is An Anvil is a great technique to pair with Lord Shiba's Valour , though - to the point I'm hesitant to allow the combination - but then I guess any Phoenix could get the combination through the Stolen Knowledge heritage. A situation where an opponent must target you and if they choose to target you their weapon becomes damaged and they suffer burning feels rather too much of an exploit for my taste to put it in the school's default build.

Obviously you need Craft Shikigami to....craft shikigami. So that's a given. But note that that's ALSO a preferential access - Craft Shikigami is a rank 2 ritual. I can't think of many schools which get two rank 2 techniques in their starting kit-bag.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Sacred Kami (School Ability): Choose an Artisan Skill. This is your skill for the ritual, Craft Shikigami. While crafting a shikigami, you no longer lock invocations into the shikigami. Instead you lock kiho. Follow the TN difficulty as normal. Follow the Ring rules for the Shikigami as normal, based off your kiho's rank. Your Shikigami gets +1 Skill Rank per your Level of School Rank. This must be in a Skill that you have Skill Points, you cannot exceed your number of Skill Points in the Skill.

During a Downtime activity you may swap kiho with your shikigami. This requires a Craft Shikigami check TN equal the total of ranks for both kiho being swapped, minus 1 per school rank.

During a Downtime activity you may perform a Craft Shikigami roll, TN 2. Spend opportunity in the following ways.

• Your Shikigami gains one skill rank per two opportunity spent this way. Not to exceed your ranks in the skill.
• You teach your Shikigami one kata with opportunity equal to the rank of the kata. Not to exceed the number of kiho locked in the shikigami.

I'm going to say openly here, I don't have access to Path of Waves - I assume that's what the 'Yogo Shikigami School' is from? But there are some issues here.

Craft Shikigami has a TN equal to the number of Invocations Kiho sealed in it. Giving it a bunch of skill ranks for free seems potentially harsh, but I guess a shikigami isn't actually that powerful a fighter without having multiple pretty high level Invocations Kiho sealed inside.

The problem is that if you're wanting it to be a 'guardian' then....aside from the difference between invocations and kiho listed above, having a 1-1-1-1-1 shikigami with earthen fist and Martial Arts [Unarmed] 1 is going to achieve... what, precisely?

Put that in a 'brawl' with a one-legged lame goblin and it's still going down in the second round by technical knock-out.

If you've created the 'swap, change, and upgrade' Shikigami rules from scratch, they feel a bit weird. Teaching the Shikigami kata seems really unnecessarily harsh - you're going to end up with a shikigami having loads of techniques, loads of skills - and not having the ring rank to use any of them effectively, whilst being able to 'retrieve' the Invocations Kiho you sealed in the shikigami feels like it makes the sacrifice for creating one becomes a lot less relevant.

Also, also - you haven't specified that the Shikigami needs to be present. Since Shikigami can act independently that feels kind of important!

Also, also, also - Living Invocation would also need modifying since I assume you'd want it to be able to function with Kiho instead of Invocations.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

School Ranks:

Rank 1

• Artisan Skills
• Courtesy
• Fitness
• Meditation
• Rank 1 Air Kiho
• Striking as Air
• Tactical Assessment

Okay....seems sensible. One skill class, one technique class, three skills and two techniques, one of which is preferential access.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Rank 2

• Martial Skills
• Medicine
• Theology
• Skulduggery
• Rank 1-2 Water Kiho
• Striking as Water
• Flowing Water Strike

Seems fair enough. I would suggest once again that a focus on Kata seems odd for a monk school. I'd have expected to see - especially given how Sacred Kami works - preferential access to some higher rank Kiho.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Rank 3

• Scholar Skills
• Labor
• Courtesy
• Survival
• Rank 1-3 Fire Kiho
• Striking as Fire
• Silencing Stroke

Hang on....we're giving this monk Ninjitsu now? Remember, if we're considering this a new school, this is stuff being taught to other Phoenix monk students, and the Phoenix consider Righteousness the single highest tenet of Bushido. 'Slit that dude's throat so he can't scream' really doesn't feel like it fits in a 'sacred protector' curriculum!

Also, with the school being a fire-heavy one, having your 'fire' school rank be halfway up the curriculum feels a bit wrong.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Rank 4

• Artisan Skills
• Fitness
• Martial Ranged
• Theology
• Rank 1-4 Earth Kiho
• Striking as Earth
• Soul Sunder

I can't say anything at this rank feels too far off.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Rank 5

• Martial Skills
• Command
• Sentiment
• Skulduggery
• Rank 1-5 Kata
• Striking as Void
• Way of the Edgeless Sword

I don't know what Way of the Edgeless Sword does, so can't comment.

Having Skulduggery appear as a curriculum skill at two ranks feels like it's pushing the ninja-ey aspects a bit too much for the description you gave. If you want to do so in a more subtle fashion, maybe make the skill class 'Trade Skills' - that covers both skulduggery and also survival and labour, both not unreasonable skills for a wandering monk.

On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 8:27 PM, ShibaRen said:

Bonded Shikigami (School Mastery): Your shikigami may now do the following.

• Your kiho are not considered locked while inside your shikigami. Your shikigami is still limited to the original number of locked kiho and the crafting check is still required to swap kiho it has access to.
• The shikigami gains a number of forms equal to its highest ring. These forms cannot be changed after they have been determined without a Craft Shikigami check TN equal to the shikigami's highest ring. The forms cannot exceed silhoutte equal to your Air + Water/2. They cannot replicate the form of an existing person besides their creator. Even then there is enough different that the duplicate can be noticed with a Sentiment check TN 4 (Water 3, Fire 5) to tell the difference.
• You can communicate with your shikigami at any distance. With a TN 2 Theology (Void) check you may see through its senses. With a TN 5 Theology Void check you may act through your shikigami as if it was you. You take 1 fatigue and 2 strife for each round you maintain this.

If you make it 'air + fire'/2 (which makes sense for you 'innovating' the form) then you can just say "your focus" instead. Also, creating a life-model decoy that needs a TN3 check to recognise feels a bit too good. Also, spotting details about an individual is probably scrutinise, so the 'low TN' ring should probably be Air (and hence high TN be Earth).

Being able to use Kiho whilst they're inside the shikigami seems a bit harsh. I get it's a rank 6 ability, though.

What happens if you 'act through your shikigami' - do you gain the ability to use your rings/skills/techniques? Who takes damage if the shikigami is attacked?

I dunno. I'd be tempted to try and come up with something else other than a classic shikigami given your narrative description; something Kiho-based feels like it should be a lot more animalistic and based on raw ki energy rather than an animating intelligence based on techniques.

Something creating an animal spirit (using animal stats) akin to invocations which create elemental weapons, maybe? Being able to fashion and animate a sculpture of a hawk, or dog, or wolf, or something? The animals have their own stats and you could use their conflict rank to help set the TN.

Please note that some of the reasonings made in here were based off the original character and in game choices. Not the final story description of the original post.

9 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Looks like an interesting idea. I like the concept!

(Sorry - for some reason didn't notice this before..)

Thoughts:

• As a basic concept, I'm not entirely sure about the idea of a Kiho-Shikigami. I've had a 'custom' Shikigami using Maho instead of normal invocations appear in my campaigns before, but Kiho are more.....mindless raw elemental force? Invocations tend to involve a Kami or Kansen which ultimately ends up providing the animating 'mind' of the shikigami, but Kiho do not (making the name for your school ability feel a bit wrong).
• I would suggest that the resulting shikigami would therefore be much more animalistic than a 'proper' shikigami; something animated by infused elemental Ki is fine in theory, but I don't see it being intelligent.
• It doesn't have to be a shikigami per se, of course.

Thanks! I have been putting a lot of work into it. So I am appreciative of the break down. Going into a little bit further break down of the concept and creation of this:

• Shiba Tsuikikai started off in both the Kaito Shrine Keeper school and the Soshi Illusionist school. Proper Kaito by day, trained by his Soshi mother by night. (Twin brother followed in his Shiba father's footsteps to become a yojimbo)
• Topaz championship - Emerald Magistrate - Craft Shikigami - Sometime later his group was down near Crab lands. It was discovered a local Lady had been married to a Spider Spirit and was carrying his babies. Tsuiki helped with the pregnancy, purified the hatchlings of Taint, and sent them off to a monastery in Lion Lands.
• Using powdered jade, ink, the left over Taint, and left over Spider Spirit essence he crafted a traditional Shikigami (Shadowlands book). With enough opportunity the end result was that of a young boy of about 8, pale skin, black hair, and jade green eyes. This was a means at first to contain the Taint until it could be disposed of, but Tsuki took to it as a permanent Shikigami and named him Kumo.
  • He has since wanted to get Kumo more spider like powers, abilities, and forms, so the animalistic aspect makes perfect sense as he shifts from having invocations to Kiho in him.

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Observation 1: this person creates 'guardian spirits' rather than fighting themselves. You've got rather too many combat skills in that table for my liking given that starting point. Martial Arts [Melee] - essentially for close-quarter weapons - feels especially out of place in a school with technique class access to Kiho.

Observation 2: 'choose four' schools (the Kaito, Togashi, Fortunist and Shinseist monks) get six options to choose from. You've given seven options.

Comment OB1: Having this School is supposed to give the person a choice. A Guardian that fights for them, they fight along side, or the Guardian offers them support as they do the fighting. I will admit I had considered also putting 'Bushi' in the Keywords list as well, but was not sure if it made sense to add in.

Comment OB2: I used the Kaito, Soshi, and Yogo schools as guidelines for my first run at this. So I took the 'average' number of options to use.

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No.

I'm not trying to do down the character, but essentially, this individual is starting their own new school, trying to blend techniques from other schools (one of which is 'foreign' to the extremely traditionalist Phoenix and comes from the really-not-very-honourable Scorpion).

I'm sure the character is honourable themselves, but the 'starting honour' of a school is based in part on the ethical nature of its teachings and in part on its reputation. I'd not want to push it down much, but I'd suggest it should be lower than for established great clan schools (high 30s?)

Yeah, that makes sense. I think again I tried to average it out. But when you put it that way of inculding a new school verses established, a Honor: 30 does makes more sense.

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Fine.

Three techniques isn't unheard of, but when a school has access to a 'Clan Signature' kata, it tends to be mandated rather than an option. Remember Lord Shiba's Valour requires preferential access - it's a rank 2 kata. Also, having a void increase in the school makes it a lot more reliable (arguably more so than for the Shiba Guardian, though admittedly you're forcing enemies to target you....and it's questionable if you're tough enough to take the punishment!).

Yeah, Lord Shiba's Valour was included because at its heart, this school was crafted to be an alternative path to the traditional Yojimbo, but to still fulfill that role of protector. So I am happy with that choice.

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Veiled Menace feels wrong, by comparison - you're not a sneaky assassin yourself.

Thinking about it, here you are right. I had originally taken it for the mindset of 'Must protect the [protectee] by any means'. But I think Warrior's Resolve would work better.

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As to the Kiho - given that you've taken a fire ring school, earthen fist seems like an odd pick. The Body Is An Anvil is a great technique to pair with Lord Shiba's Valour , though - to the point I'm hesitant to allow the combination - but then I guess any Phoenix could get the combination through the Stolen Knowledge heritage. A situation where an opponent must target you and if they choose to target you their weapon becomes damaged and they suffer burning feels rather too much of an exploit for my taste to put it in the school's default build.

Yeah, it is a really good combo. The main thought is that it is one you would teach to your Shikigami. As you mentioned, they do start off kinda weak with 1 in each ring (I will be commenting on that later) so I figured it might work in that regard.

I also choose Earthen Fist to go along with Body Is An Anvil to go against the fact one is physically offensive and one is defensive. Again to give the crafter the choice of how they want to pair with their Shikigami.

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I'm going to say openly here, I don't have access to Path of Waves - I assume that's what the 'Yogo Shikigami School' is from? But there are some issues here.

Craft Shikigami has a TN equal to the number of Invocations Kiho sealed in it. Giving it a bunch of skill ranks for free seems potentially harsh, but I guess a shikigami isn't actually that powerful a fighter without having multiple pretty high level Invocations Kiho sealed inside.

The problem is that if you're wanting it to be a 'guardian' then....aside from the difference between invocations and kiho listed above, having a 1-1-1-1-1 shikigami with earthen fist and Martial Arts [Unarmed] 1 is going to achieve... what, precisely?

Actually for this part I literally copied the Craft Shikigami from Shadowlands pg 115 but replaced 'Invocation' with 'Kiho'. So yeah, low level Shikigami really do start with 1 in each ring. It is something I myself have had a problem with, but have not found the means to argue.

As for the skills. That parted I modified. Starting off at the initial crafting of the Shikigami you can spend Opportunities to give it ranks in Skills. I modified it so you can do this when ever you modify the Shikigami. Otherwise by the rules, to do such a thing you have to uncraft then recraft it, and hope you do better. One of the options I was originally gonna have was:

• As a downtime, make a Craft Shikigami check with TN2 + current rank in Shikigami ring. If you succeed raise the ring by one.

But figured that might get a little over powered.

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Put that in a 'brawl' with a one-legged lame goblin and it's still going down in the second round by technical knock-out.

If you've created the 'swap, change, and upgrade' Shikigami rules from scratch, they feel a bit weird. Teaching the Shikigami kata seems really unnecessarily harsh - you're going to end up with a shikigami having loads of techniques, loads of skills - and not having the ring rank to use any of them effectively, whilst being able to 'retrieve' the Invocations Kiho you sealed in the shikigami feels like it makes the sacrifice for creating one becomes a lot less relevant.

I agree with the retrieval. I think I will remove that to make the Rank 6 ability a bit more meaningful. I did create the Upgrade rules from scratch. Mostly to counter my own personal problems I have with the main Craft Shikigami rules.

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Also, also - you haven't specified that the Shikigami needs to be present. Since Shikigami can act independently that feels kind of important!

This is true! The Shikigami does need to be present to be modified.

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Also, also, also - Living Invocation would also need modifying since I assume you'd want it to be able to function with Kiho instead of Invocations.

I had not even thought about Living Invocation . Thank you for bringing that up! I will have to consider what to do for it.

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Okay....seems sensible. One skill class, one technique class, three skills and two techniques, one of which is preferential access.

Seems fair enough. I would suggest once again that a focus on Kata seems odd for a monk school. I'd have expected to see - especially given how Sacred Kami works - preferential access to some higher rank Kiho.

Yeah, I tried to make it that each Rank got 1 Kiho and 1 Kata. Each of the same elemental type, though.

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Hang on....we're giving this monk Ninjitsu now? Remember, if we're considering this a new school, this is stuff being taught to other Phoenix monk students, and the Phoenix consider Righteousness the single highest tenet of Bushido. 'Slit that dude's throat so he can't scream' really doesn't feel like it fits in a 'sacred protector' curriculum!

Haha! Yes, so again that fell to the 'Any means' mindset, but I think it will end up being changed. Thank you!

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Also, with the school being a fire-heavy one, having your 'fire' school rank be halfway up the curriculum feels a bit wrong.

Honestly I wanted it to be a bit more balanced, then 'fire' heavy. Also with how destructive Fire can be, I wanted the students to be in a bit more control before they accessed such power.

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I don't know what Way of the Edgeless Sword does, so can't comment.

It is a Rank 5 Void Kiho that makes your unarmed attacks more powerful and deadly.

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Having Skulduggery appear as a curriculum skill at two ranks feels like it's pushing the ninja-ey aspects a bit too much for the description you gave. If you want to do so in a more subtle fashion, maybe make the skill class 'Trade Skills' - that covers both skulduggery and also survival and labour, both not unreasonable skills for a wandering monk.

I actually did not notice I had Skulduggery twice. So I think I will keep it with the higher school Rank and modify the lower school Rank to something else.

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If you make it 'air + fire'/2 (which makes sense for you 'innovating' the form) then you can just say "your focus" instead. Also, creating a life-model decoy that needs a TN3 check to recognise feels a bit too good. Also, spotting details about an individual is probably scrutinise, so the 'low TN' ring should probably be Air (and hence high TN be Earth).

I am actually confused as to what part you are referencing for th 'Air + Fire'/2 was that for the number of forms, TN for changing the forms, or for what silhoutte you can change it to?

If it changes to a more animalistic stylization, I think I will keep it TN3, but change it to Air2/Earth4. They will have some sort of quality of the animal they represent. (Wolfish grin, rabbit's timidness, etc) and if it takes your form same difficulty, but they physically have something different (extra eyes for insects, extra long sticky frog tongue, etc).

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Being able to use Kiho whilst they're inside the shikigami seems a bit harsh. I get it's a rank 6 ability, though.

Yeah, after thought I will move the school ability of swapping out Kiho and replace the Rank 6 ability of access to all your Kiho with it.

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What happens if you 'act through your shikigami' - do you gain the ability to use your rings/skills/techniques? Who takes damage if the shikigami is attacked?

You would still use the Shikigami's stats and abilities. The key thing is you could now do this at a distance. Say you are stuck in bed recovering from a really bad injury, or you are protecting your Lord while your Shikigami is protecting his traveling wife, etc. The Shikigami takes the damage, the downside it follows the same rules of distruction as normal. So if it dies it's spirit comes back to you, but you have to recraft the body.

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I dunno. I'd be tempted to try and come up with something else other than a classic shikigami given your narrative description; something Kiho-based feels like it should be a lot more animalistic and based on raw ki energy rather than an animating intelligence based on techniques.

Something creating an animal spirit (using animal stats) akin to invocations which create elemental weapons, maybe? Being able to fashion and animate a sculpture of a hawk, or dog, or wolf, or something? The animals have their own stats and you could use their conflict rank to help set the TN.

It is true, it doesn't follow the classic shikigami,

23 hours ago, ShibaRen said:

I had not even thought about Living Invocation . Thank you for bringing that up! I will have to consider what to do for it.

Honestly, the Living Invocation ability is one of the main things which makes Shikigami 'work'.

But whilst it's fine for "lob a fireball", Kino tend to enhance your basic unarmed attacks....and, Shikigami stats being what they are, they're never going to be scary, even if they now do supernatural damage (or whatever).