With the forums still up for about a month, maybe it is okay to ask the following. I'm thinking how the 5th edition mechanics could be simplified and improve. So if you fellow homebrewers were in charge of developing a 5.5 edition of l5r, what mechanics would you change from the 5th edition? You can't change the layout of the book, let us say that's in the hands of the marketing department

• I would combine Focus and Vigilance into one stat.
• Find a way to include the Void ring in the stats of the characters, other than void points. Then remove the rule that a ring other than Void, can't exceed the Void ring rank +1.
• I like the idea of opportunities on the dice, but the table for extra opportunities is just unwieldy.
• I would include a table for unmasking, were we would have general emotions on one side, some examples were this emotion is used in the outburst in the middle and some general loses of Honor, Glory or extra narrative consequences.
• I would shrink the school curriculum to just the rank with their special access techniques.
• Create a mechanic were in certain scenes your Honor rank matters.
• Include the price of a Rokugani pony.
• Ask the marketing department to include an example for intrigue scenes.

So what are your changes?

DELENDA CAPITULUM VI EST! 😁

Get rid of range bands or find another way to use it as movement that makes sense.

Find a way to make other action beside strike matter in duels.

Improve intrigue rules with other types of actions and objectives.

Create new rules for Mass Combat.

Guidelines on how to adjudicate intrigue/martial level of custom NPCs.

37 minutes ago, DSalazar said:

Get rid of range bands or find another way to use it as movement that makes sense.

I have seen you mention this part of the game before. So what kind of distancing measuring in game do you prefer? A grid game, were every distance is measured in 5ft as is done in D&D? or maybe two range band, which are close distance and far distance. Close distance would be everything with melee weapons and certain invocations, and far distance would be range weapons and other invocations.

On page 265 of the core book, it gives the range bands together with a distance of certain weapons. This at least gave me a feeling for the distances. Though I'm not a fan of yard and feet measurements. Please give me meters.

43 minutes ago, DSalazar said:

Create new rules for Mass Combat.

Fingers crossed for those in the next book.

So, range bands for weapon distance work. The problem is movement and how every movement is dependent on the distance between two characters. Say Kakita Makita is range band 4 from Matsu Tatsu and range band 3 from Kitsu Mitsu (who are range band 2 from each other). Makita can move to range band 3 to Tatsu and be range band 1 to Mitsu where if he had moved towards Mitsu, he would get to move to range band 2 only.

So, yeah, I don’t know what else to do besides grids, but the way they set up distance and placement information for weapons and invocations it kind of begs you to put up a grid in place and that is where range bands stop working.

That and the whole, duelists can strike each other from any distance bull that I kind of understand was put there to prevent kiting but at the same time just think that maybe, just maybe, they could put more kata that allow movement while they strike besides HPS so kiting gets less possible.

31 minutes ago, Kiso said:

Fingers crossed for those in the next book.

Well, it’s still going to be the FFG team (which honestly I don’t know how much different it is from the EDGE team) so I honestly won’t hold my breath for better rules on that book.

a 5.5, with the right fixes, can easily be one of the coolest RPG ever made, and even probably a stronger core system than Genesys.
But, depending who you ask, it may require a lot or a LOT of fixes.

1 hour ago, Avatar111 said:

a 5.5, with the right fixes, can easily be one of the coolest RPG ever made, and even probably a stronger core system than Genesys.
But, depending who you ask, it may require a lot or a LOT of fixes.

L5R I think will always be a niche game, but a stronger core system must be possible. I have always liked your small game fixes in your fixes to the game thread.

8 hours ago, Kiso said:

L5R I think will always be a niche game, but a stronger core system must be possible. I have always liked your small game fixes in your fixes to the game thread.

the setting will always be niche (especially more so that cultural appropriation and all that stuff is a thing), but there are some mechanics in there; endurance vs crits, strife, cinematic pacing, that, have a ton of potential to create better scenes than a lot of other systems. I think. I always liked this new system, I also always thought it was unfinished.

I am a big fan of 5th edition L5R, it is probably still my favorite system. So I CLEARLY do not want a 6th edition; I would fear to lose a lot of the great things.

But of course, some things are not perfect. Regarding this, ones blaring errors are the other's nitpicks, so there will never be a definitive list of deficits for 5.5 to fix.
But if I had to make my own:

1) Mass Battle really does not work, as called out above. Cut Off The Head is the best action by far, it does not even need to be successful to award its points, so it ignores stances etc, even sitting in a giant castle has no effect against it, and if successful, it will probably permanently ruin the character who had the bad luck to be the targeted cohorts leader, with pretty much nothing the character can do against it. That is just awful rules design.

That is the primary list in my eyes. Everything else are ideas where improvements would be nice, but if things stayed the same, that's also ok for me:

a) Duels are a great mechanique that sets L5R apart from other systems. It is also great that you can use them inside of mass battles and skirmishes, and that you can do them without having to specialize for them. But it would be cooler if you could do them more like in the source material: a long staredown followed by a single strike.

b) Ninjutzu is underpowered. Shinobi/Ninja are among the first things you would think of when thinking "japanese-legends-inspired fantasy RPG", but while there are many cool Kata and Kiho and Invocations, there are only 4 Ninjutzu in the book, the first ist mostly useless, because you rarely have only one opponent, the second and third require a component that costs you Glory and are still outclassed by e.g. similar invocations, and while the last one is nice, you need to be near the endgame to take it. Courts of Stone introduced new ninjutzu, but shinobi from other books can't take them. Thus, an Air-based shugenja will out-shinobi the shinobi, with turning invisible and jumping from shadow to shadow and whatnot.

c) I think Shuji and Intrigues are a cool idea, but Intrigues need to be expanded to be really useful. As the rules are, I have never used them, which is a shame.

d) The Titles mechanique to give characters important access to abilities that seem central in a samurai RPG is clunky and badly placed in the back of the book.

e) That the Scar critical hit effects are usually less effective than the Wound critical hit effects is problematic, but easily fixed.

f) A minor thing that is a per peeve of me: I really like the conditions and their effect and variety on the play. But e.g. it is strange that Prone almost always has no effect whatsoever, that you can immobilize someone and then move away from them, or that Bleeding has no effect one someone as long as they do not act a lot.

12 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

I am a big fan of 5th edition L5R, it is probably still my favorite system. So I CLEARLY do not want a 6th edition; I would fear to lose a lot of the great things.

But of course, some things are not perfect. Regarding this, ones blaring errors are the other's nitpicks, so there will never be a definitive list of deficits for 5.5 to fix.
But if I had to make my own:

1) Mass Battle really does not work, as called out above. Cut Off The Head is the best action by far, it does not even need to be successful to award its points, so it ignores stances etc, even sitting in a giant castle has no effect against it, and if successful, it will probably permanently ruin the character who had the bad luck to be the targeted cohorts leader, with pretty much nothing the character can do against it. That is just awful rules design.

That is the primary list in my eyes. Everything else are ideas where improvements would be nice, but if things stayed the same, that's also ok for me:

a) Duels are a great mechanique that sets L5R apart from other systems. It is also great that you can use them inside of mass battles and skirmishes, and that you can do them without having to specialize for them. But it would be cooler if you could do them more like in the source material: a long staredown followed by a single strike.

b) Ninjutzu is underpowered. Shinobi/Ninja are among the first things you would think of when thinking "japanese-legends-inspired fantasy RPG", but while there are many cool Kata and Kiho and Invocations, there are only 4 Ninjutzu in the book, the first ist mostly useless, because you rarely have only one opponent, the second and third require a component that costs you Glory and are still outclassed by e.g. similar invocations, and while the last one is nice, you need to be near the endgame to take it. Courts of Stone introduced new ninjutzu, but shinobi from other books can't take them. Thus, an Air-based shugenja will out-shinobi the shinobi, with turning invisible and jumping from shadow to shadow and whatnot.

c) I think Shuji and Intrigues are a cool idea, but Intrigues need to be expanded to be really useful. As the rules are, I have never used them, which is a shame.

d) The Titles mechanique to give characters important access to abilities that seem central in a samurai RPG is clunky and badly placed in the back of the book.

e) That the Scar critical hit effects are usually less effective than the Wound critical hit effects is problematic, but easily fixed.

f) A minor thing that is a per peeve of me: I really like the conditions and their effect and variety on the play. But e.g. it is strange that Prone almost always has no effect whatsoever, that you can immobilize someone and then move away from them, or that Bleeding has no effect one someone as long as they do not act a lot.

not bad of an initial list my dude.
earth stance, a bit weird too. But I like what you did there, its about 105% right!