L5R 4th Edition - Well... WotC did it first!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > L5R 4th Edition - Well... WotC did it first!

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Yawgmoth posted:

Quick rules question: if you cast Mists of Fear (instantaneous duration, causes a Fear 5 effect) on someone, do they take the -5k0 for the rest of the encounter? Or do they just get real scared for a couple seconds and maybe flee if they fail catastrophically with no other effect?

It's for the rest of the encounter or until the source of the effect (ie, the maho-tsukai who's casting the spell) is removed.

Along those lines, if people are interested I have some average values of XkY pulled from here. It's available in Google Drive form and .xlsx form. (With these my group found that rolling a 44 on 2k2 is about five standard deviations from the mean. Too bad that got wasted on the Antisocial Hiruma's comedy shenanigans.)

# ¿ Nov 13, 2013 05:38

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 07:37

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Yawgmoth posted:

Yeah, that's what I thought. my (now ex)-GM said the spell was the source, and thus it doesn't produce any penalty, just maybe making the guy flee if he fails by enough and has the ability to flee and is the type to flee.

Hmm, looking further at things that duration of Instantaneous seems to be a misprint or deliberate. There's another spell (Your Heart's Enemy, Air 3, Core) which also inflicts Fear on a single target, but in this case it has a duration of five rounds and inflicts Fear 4. Mists of Fear inflicts Fear 5, but with raises the Fear strength can increase; Your Heart's Enemy (not a maho spell) has no such provision.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2013 18:34

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

ProfessorCirno posted:

brings back Jigoku's taint.

Wait, what? What's the loving point of making a big change to the setting about taint if you're going to change it right back so quickly? (I wonder how much of the metaplot FFG will keep considering this weirdness.)

Also the bit about the gaijin pepper reminds me that Iron Empire is still one of the most interesting mini-settings in L5R. My current group has again taken to playing the game as Emerald Magistrates, and while no one has cared to use a firearm yet I suspect it's only a matter of time before someone decides to find a use for sniping. Or until the Tsi Smith decides to craft a gun and have the Doji Courtier gift it for mutual Glory and an Ally. (Three of the five PCs can throw Xk4 for damage, so ranged combat isn't a big deal for them as of yet.)

As of yet our only issue comes with an error in the Secrets of the Empire crafting rules, which would otherwise seem reasonable. You're supposed to triple the price for all purposes, even for determining the base crafting TN before throwing Raises at it which is the whole point of the advanced crafting rules. Thus attempting to make a katana with your stamp on it (and nothing else special) requires a TN 80 check with two Raises. :psyduck:

(We changed things with a house rule so the aforementioned crafting PC can make cool stuff without excessive minmaxing, since having to call several Raises on top of the default TN is still no slouch.)

# ¿ Dec 18, 2015 23:35

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

You're not inspiring hope here; those clan positions from the Crab and Phoenix seem at least a bit out-of-character. But I suppose a significant part of the problem is the mandate that every time an empire-spanning conflict in the metaplot ends, another must start within living memory of the participants. Wasn't the Scorpion Coup the very first piece of metaplot, after all? And thus far we've had one crazy thing after another within the span of an in-game century, which is pretty short in the context of Rokugan's size/social and technological structure. gently caress, even though Europe (as an example) regularly had conflicts every few decades over three or more millennia, very few such conflicts had quite the scope or stakes as the poo poo that regularly seems to plague the Emerald Empire.

Of course the real reason for keeping everything so close together is in all likelihood to avoid massive feature creep in the CCG as a result of introducing entirely new waves of characters every two years while simultaneously invalidating all the old ones, which is perfectly understandable. Or story creep when all the characters from the last arc are now just ancestors and some nobodies are in control. I just wish they didn't have to shackle that to a constantly evolving metaplot that could definitely stand to be slowed down or otherwise zoomed in at a smaller scale. (For all of the ways in which 40K is far loving crazier, at least it understands that social and political movements take a fair bit of time to form and play out.)

# ¿ Dec 19, 2015 08:03

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

ProfessorCirno posted:

As far as the ninja go, I rather liked how 4e covered both bases. The Shosuro "Infiltrator" is the one that wears black and throws shurikens and sneaks across the rooftops to stab someone with their lovely ninja-to. The Shosuro Actor is the real infiltrator.

The funny thing about the ninja-to being lovely is how it's one of the better weapons in the game with some investment. Despite the katana being the socially acceptable weapon reserved exclusively for nobles it's outclassed by a real master of some other trade. It's an interesting juxtaposition, and the game doesn't make more than a token effort to hide it considering that the no-dachi and the scimitar are both on the same page. Off the top of my head:

Heavy weapons obviously will do boatloads of damage (which is why the Crab love them so much).
Anything that natively throws k3 damage does well against k2 damage weapons. Technically the katana can also throw 4k3 + Strength with a VP, but with the scaling on unkept dice you can get comparable results with a k3 weapon by spending the once-per-round VP elsewhere.
Unarmed attacks can natively reach 1k3 on any character, or 1k4/2k4 with the right schools. Do not cross a monk if you don't know their schools, because they might just kick your rear end.
Scorpion ninjas can pull some surprising tricks with Shadow Blades and/or investment in Ninjutsu, to the point that several of their Ninja weapons can pull 3k3 for damage before modifiers. In particular, in such hands the three-section staff does damage comparable to a tetsubo without being so overt about its damage potential.
Flesh Cutter arrows are something of a mixed bag, unfortunately, but generally aren't too bad against non-Crab opponents.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2015 07:39

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Halloween Jack posted:

Isn't the Feint move just a different way of calculating extra damage? Really doesn't make sense.

Feinting is really good if you know that you'll be able to roll way over your target (such as if they're grappled, prone, or Full Attacking), and also if adding extra rolled dice with Extra Damage won't put you up an extra kept die. It's basically a way of adding damage that's orthogonal to the roll-and-keep system, and thus it's best used when the limitations of the latter start to arise.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2015 18:49

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

I'm not certain that the Suzume Bushi Rank 3 and Suzume Storyteller abilities are useless (since school techniques don't trigger the one-VP-per-round limit), but they do have a notable problem in completely failing to synergize with the rest of the school. This is particularly weird considering that the flavor text implies that a synergy should exist in the first place. (That said, while ronin paths can be annoying to deal with relative to their benefit at least the books do say that playing a ronin is basically hard mode.)

My particular patch to the problem of odd timing would be to allow an alternate path to be taken at the given rank or at a higher one corresponding to the relevant school. Of course it's a houserule, but prima facie it doesn't seem terribly weird considering that whatever you're replacing is usually (*coughSuzumeBushicough*) designed to work in concert with the rest of the school.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 21:45

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Tunicate posted:

http://lynks.se/probability/

Lets you calc roll and keep.

As a supplement to that, I'd compiled the results together a while ago for anyone who's interested in passing the graphs around. (I know my group ended up using these a bunch to get a sense on when to use VP and when to try raising.)

NGDBSS posted:

Along those lines, if people are interested I have some average values of XkY pulled from here. It's available in Google Drive form and .xlsx form.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 21:53

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 07:37

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

No. It's not difficult to puzzle out this sort of system mastery even if you don't have explicit data/graphs on the relevant order statistics, but the books don't mention it and most human NPCs are built to be bloated on skills instead.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 22:47

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