Soshi Illusionist School: Possibile writing error?

By Akasha666, in Rules Questions

Hello everyone
I'm playing a Soshi Illusionist and she has just reached Rank 2.
Now, all this Dojo is clearly based on the Air and Water rings, not only for the Shinoby and Courtier skills approach, but especially for the Invocations: you always and only get air and water invocations in the curriculum.
Moreover, you get a +1 in both those rings during the character creation by joining this Dojo, and I'm doing fine having reached a score of 3 in those rings. I think I'll have to rise them further for 4 rank invocations.

The strange thing I've just noticed is in the curriculum Rank 4... Suddenly it gives you Rank 1–4 Earth Invocations, which is a nonsense in my opinion. This Dojo addresses you from the very beginning to concentrate on Air and Water rings, so why should it give you Earth Invocations all of the sudden at that point? In order to use high level invocations you need a very high ring score, but I find impossibile (or awful) having to also raise Earth ring so high.
May this be a writing error in the manual? I would find more natural if at Rank 4 you get Rank 1-4 Water Invocations, also because in the remaining curriculum ranks you can't get them.

What do you think about?
I've attached a screen of the curriculum for clarity

Thank you

Legend of the Five Rings - (5th Edition)-81.jpg

Edited by Akasha666

I think all shugenja schools put at least 3 different rings in their curricula. Granted, Embrace of Kenro-Ji-Jin is an awesome rank 2 Earth Invocation for a Soshi. Just remember that you can still learn rank 1-4 invocations of Air and Water at rank 4, it will just count as 2 xp for rank advancement though.

1 hour ago, Akasha666 said:

Hello everyone
I'm playing a Soshi Illusionist and she has just reached Rank 2.
Now, all this Dojo is clearly based on the Air and Water rings, not only for the Shinoby and Courtier skills approach, but especially for the Invocations: you always and only get air and water invocations in the curriculum.

Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding: There are only air and water invocations in the first few scholl ranks, but the Soshi Illusionist can learn invocations of all elements right from rank one (of his rank, of course). They only count half towards his school progression, but noone keeps a Soshi from learning e.g. Armor of Stone.

So the only effect of the "Rank 1–4 Earth Invocations" entry in school rank 4 is that buying such an invocation adds ONE additional XP towards school progression: 3 instead of 2.
That is so little effect that it does not pay to spend too much thought on it.

If I wanted to complain about the Soshi Illusionist, I'd complain that he has no access to the Ninjutzu from Courts of Stone (just like the other Shinobi from the Core Rulebook), because during the design they obviously didn't factor in later releases.

Edited by Harzerkatze

I agree, I think it’s a missed shot that Ninjutsu techniques are kind of considered OP by the design team that no school actually has access to the entire Ninjutsu category and just grabbing the ones that show up specifically at each rank.

For what is worth, I would remove the Kata access from both the Hiruma and Shosuro school in the list of accessible techniques and replace with Ninjutsu instead, they can get enough kata by their curricula anyway.

Thanks everyone for the replies
I know that I can choose every Invocation, but only the ones in the rank curriculum I am count full points in order to rank advancing. The only thing is that with rings and ability out of curriculum both to rise, I'm always taking half points in the advancement : )
Regarding Ninjutsu I think you're right, there are so little techniques to choose (one per rank) and they don't seem so useful, at least the first rank ones. However so far I've picked them all, playing a stealthy shugenja

1 hour ago, Akasha666 said:

Regarding Ninjutsu I think you're right, there are so little techniques to choose (one per rank) and they don't seem so useful, at least the first rank ones. However so far I've picked them all, playing a stealthy shugenja

Do not underestimate Deadly Sting. With a regular knife and Noxious Poison, it deal 10 +Bonus Successes as damage.

Must shugenja schools rotate the full selection of rings. Starting with the aligned ring and ending on the 'opposed'

Earth spells have huge utility, even if you are not playing the Shadowlands campaign. I play a Soshi myself and it's definitely my second go-to ring after air.

Edited by Zolt51