Mass Battle for Small Groups

By KakitaKaori, in Houserules

bloated.

Interesting design, looks good, as far as I can tell without playtesting. A few observations:
- I would avoid naming the Success Points "Advantages", as that is a fixed term in 5th Ed.
- Water Stance seems to be very strong in battle Skirmishes, as it automatically dispatches multiple opponents. That seems unbalanced.
- Fixing the number of opponents in a battle skirmish without reference to Conflict Rank seems problematic.

Edited by Harzerkatze
10 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Interesting design, looks good, as far as I can tell without playtesting. A few observations:
- I would avoid naming the Success Points "Advantages", as that is a fixed term in 5th Ed.
- Water Stance seems to be very strong in battle Skirmishes, as it automatically dispatches multiple opponents. That seems unbalanced.
- Fixing the number of opponents in a battle skirmish without reference to Conflict Rank seems problematic.

Thank you for the feedback! I'll bring it back and work on it.

On 5/11/2020 at 10:53 PM, Avatar111 said:

bloated.

Have you tried taking a warm bath?

For Gunso, it seems odd to me that they need to use Air to issue a challenge. It seems to me that a Challenge should be an action taken by an individual soldier against another, and Air seems the least appropriate Ring for it. Most challenges in my mind would call for Fire, as you loudly question your target's bravery (and use any Strife symbols to make him risk extra Glory by declining).

In all, though, I'm eagerly looking forward to the end result. I loved the Game of Influence you did a while ago.

Selfish request: Your 5e conversions all seem to be multiple web pages. Any chance of ever seeing them as a simple PDF?

EDIT: Also, yes, maybe a little boated, but this seems like what you would use when the battle is the focus of an entire session. Much like the Influence Game, it might want some tricks for slimming it down, but that can come later.

Edited by The Grand Falloon

Thanks for the feedback. Tying things to elements was done late in the redesign for L5R since we tested this before in a system that didn't have elemental links like that, so I can definitely work on changing it.

As for the size, I've written it in depth because, in part, I felt like I needed to make an argument for /why/ you would use these alternate rules instead of just having the alternate rules by themselves. And as I am not an experienced game master, for me I need things spelled out in more detail to understand it. It is my husband who is the experienced game designer who made the original design and they are many pages longer in his writeup because he's like that. 🙂

I can try to make up a 1 page cheat sheet PDF for the Influence Game and Mass Battle for Small Groups at some point. That could help.

Thanks again.