L5R- Legend of the Five Rings General

I do something similar, but I base it on the Etiquette or Courtier skills of the involved character. Somebody makes a character without either skill, I am going to gotcha him with Breaches of Etiquette every now and then. I'll warn a character if he has the skills depending on the situation, the more obscure or refined the situation, the higher the skill will be needed for a warning.

Keep in mind what would and wouldn't be common knowledge in that world for a character of a given social class and clan. Ettiquette is such an ingrained thing in L5R that even the shit that seems esoteric to you and I would be common knowledge to even a Crab on the wall.

That Crab on the Wall is the setting equivalent of a redneck. He's a backwoods guy whose idea of what is polite is different than a refined Crane or even Lion samurai.

That said a character with even a single rank of Etiquette will get by in most situations. A guy with a 3 would be fine in most mid-level courtly situations. A guy with a 5 could navigate the high courts of the Great Clans or the Emperor's Winter Court without issues. True masters of the court with 7+ skills pretty much warp the rules around them.

Those ratings are for if the character isn't being targeted by hostile courtiers or the like. In most cases, he just won't make a breach out of ignorance. Being set-up to lose face is an entirely different animal.

Yeah, decent, I like the part about still caring for his brother who hates him and his plans

I wouldn't do something like that to my players, I'd definitely let them know how samurai handle social situations, especially since samurai were raised into the role.

It'd be cool to separate etiquette by the different clans. It'd make sense considering that Crab prefer blunt honesty while the Crane would use subtle hints.

Eh, they're not that different most of the time. Etiquette is pretty much universal. Really, the Crab are the only real outliers, and only because they can't afford to ignore mistakes and talk around uncomfortable subjects when mistakes can get everyone in the area killed horribly by uncomfortable subjects.

I once had a friend
His poems were much worse than mine
Are you there, my friend?

So, I started the L5R general in march where that OP is from, and it still irks me that those links are wrong.
Here are the correct links
mediafire.com/folder/2nbbe1kyny4qo/L5A
>basically everything from 4e

mediafire.com/folder/c7tfqff9sqp71/L5R
>previous editions and old d20 stuff

>Crab have etiquette
>It's just not that key, to us
>Unlike stuck-up Cranes

Can someone reccomend me an OK ronin school? I'm trying to make pic related in L5R.

Which of us is Crab,
and which is Scorpion, friend?
For 'worse' is a lie.

As you may recall,
it was not myself who fled
last time we duelled thus.

I have responsibility!
grandchildren more brave than wise
and my fool husband

Duty ever calls--
some of us towards glory,
some of us away.

Don't rely on schools if you're a ronin. You're going to have to use skills and stats.
That being said, the generic ronin school from Secrets of the Empire isn't that bad.

But now, I have time
I'll relax with a contest
Care to lose again?

Play 3e and take the godly Ronin Duelist school. Or play 3e Revised and play the less godly but still fucking good Ronin Duelist school.

I'm sure that one school at char creation is better than 10 measly xp

The games 4e, I'm afraid

What is this 'again'?
Some strange creature from the Wall?
I have not lost yet.

You mean Path, right?
Well, the generic ronin is an entire school, which means more than one rank of techniques.
But I'm saying that you should focus more on just getting good stats and skills. Techniques aren't going to do it all for you, except for the rank 3 or 4 (Depending on whether you're in the school or just trying to get paths) Single Action Attack. That's something you need as a bushi.
The problem with being a ronin and trying to get Paths is that they're all from different groups and are mostly exclusive. Unless your GM is specifically letting you get them piecemeal for game balance reasons, it's incredibly difficult to pick up more than one or two, and even a single one requires being a member of a larger group.

>I have not lost yet
Again, the scorpion lies
Try to lose with grace

Would a Crab know grace
if it came announced by horns
and two-score Mia?

Dishonor on you! Dishonor on your cow! How dare you misspell the family name of the honorable heralds of the Emperor, the Miya.

A display like that?
It would need greater fanfare!
But let us move on

Seen some plays lately?
I saw one the other day
about the "brave" crane

Friendly reminder that The Kolat did nothing wrong. Literally everything wrong with the setting can be tied back to insane Kami and Onnotangu being a fucking idiot and ignoring the Lying Darkness.

I don't actually know much about Snake, but here's a decent Ronin track. Keep in mind that everything other than the generics are tied to organizations that are exclusive and might not even exist at the time your game is happening. Tweaking from the GM is necessary for you to learn most of these beyond the Rank 1 or generic options.
Rank 1: Tengoku's Justice
Rank 2: Generic Ronin or The Thousand (for duelling)
Rank 3: Generic Ronin or Hidden Sword (If you can keep your Honor rank high)
Rank 4: Generic Ronin or Sword of Yotsu (If you took Hidden Sword)
Rank 5: Generic Ronin or Wolf Legion (If you took Hidden Sword and Sword of Yotsu)
The generic ronin stuff makes you generally tough and good in a fight. The Hidden Sword of Yotsu Legion makes you super good guy ronin who gets all sorts of bonuses for high Honor. Also, peasants love you.
There are also paths for duelling at those ranks, but they're not great.
You can also substitue Legion of Two Thousand or Disciples of Sun Tao for three of those ranks (Up to and inlcuding ranks 6, 7, and 8), but be warned that replacing rank 3 means you don't get the magical SAA until you get to the end of LoTT or DoST.

I love how your tons of high honor techs lead in with a bandit path.

Master Coin - the Koku Kolat!
...I'll see myself out.

Like I said, you can't really use them with their organizations, and taken by itself, it's a path that starts with 4.5 honor (Somehow) and a decent enough sneak attack technique.

I beg forgiveness:
my mind knew the second's lapse
friend Crab's known for years.

A good friend of mine
from Shosuro's famed dojo
asked I see her play.

The play showed a ruse
by a young samurai-ko
to wed a poet.

After the play's end,
as I am not blind to hints,
we became engaged.

Greatest L5R card ever printed coming through.

Mazal Tov, my friend!
May you two have wise children
and only some fights!

Many thanks, friend Crab.
Dawn and Duty rise as one,
so I must depart.

Now we have both fled
From this sadane battle.
May we meet again!

Is it Sadane,
when insults fly less often
than words of friendship?

If so, then I think
we both must bear the same loss.
Goodnight, my true friend.

The third iteration of our ongoing confrontation, saved for posterity yet again.

Is it worth learning the L5R card-game, or is it too late?

Make his brother the 8th Thunder. Not only is it a twist of unforgettable proportions, it gives you the option of a future Rokugan with a partially good Spider Clan.

There's apparently a new one in the pipeline. Non-ccg.
We'll see.

Let's pray to the fortunes, and hope it's not shit

>MSF combat medic
Don't start as a ronin. Go with a monk-trained samurai, then work your way into roninhood.

Don't. The CCG is dead. Wait until FFG releases the game as a LCG and hope it is as good as someother of their LCGs. Announcment Gencon 2017

...

Yeah, that's what I was planning to do. They're both from the Hantei line since their grandfather is Daigotsu himself, so I was going to have one Thunder from each of the great clans, plus the descendant of Shinsei, and then have him as the representative of Hantei. After the battle, the brother will likely look for a way to purge the Taint that he picked up from living with the Spider, then the Empress will probably look into marrying him to her daughter so the Empire will have a Hantei on the throne again (assuming he does find a way to purge his taint, that is).

Actually, thinking on it more, I kind of like the idea of his brother starting a less-evil version of the Spider Clan. Maybe instead I'll have the Empress grant him his own clan, and if the Iweko want to cross their bloodline with a Hantei's, they'll wait for his kids since I'm not actually sure there's a way to purge taint from someone without killing them.

Speaking of Iweko, how would you stat someone from one of the non-Hnatei emperor's lines in 4e? The core book gives you family bonuses for Hantei, Miya, Ottomo and Seppun families, but not for Iweko or Toturi. Presumably Iweko I would have the Kistuki family bonus, but how would you handle descendants? Just treat them like Hantei anyway?

If there are people in your area still playing sure, its not expensive (especially now).

Toturi family samurai have stats, it's in the same sidebar as the Hantei family's stats. IIRC they get +1 Stamina. I don't remember if Iweko had stats in the same
Sidebar though, but I wouldn't give them the same bonus the Hantei get. The Hantei are supposed to be special, it's why they're the only family in the game that gets +1 Void.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a mostly-good Spider Clan. So much so, I kinda want to include them in my next campaign.

I imagine that the reformed Spider clan, while being good and loyal, would have a mentality similar to the Scorpion where they believe in the importance of necessary evils.
>"Shourido may be more ugly than Bushido, but in the service of The Son of Heaven, even ugly things are necessary."
>"Yes, there are tainted samurai among the Spider. But they do not use the power of Jigoku for personal power, but in service of their clan and Emperor. All samurai are willing to give up their lives for duty, but only Spider clan samurai are willing to give up their souls as well."

Right, but Iweko I does become Divine, which I didn't think happened to the Toturi. I figure that mechanically you could represent that by giving her line the same +1 void, but I guess that depends on what becoming Divine even means-- I had thought it was the Heavens granting her the same mojo that made the Hantei line worthy of being Emeperors in the first place, but really I don't know.

Just cracked open my 4e pdf after some digging, Toturi gt +1 Willpower in the same sidebar that shows Hantei, but there are no stats for Iweko.

Oh yeah, while I'm at it and to keep the thread bumped, how do you know if an encounter is balanced or not? Because I build my villain to be Insight Rank 9, so I can't tell if he's where a Rank 9 Akutenshi should be, or if I went overboard.

Cherry blossoms fall.
Cicadas sing their last song.
So too this thread's fate.

Summer grasses,
all that remains
Of soldiers' dreams.

Holy shit, you weren't kidding. I just went to my FLGS, and they gave me a 2-player starter set for only 5 bucks!

Are schools limited by that particular family? As in only Hida can go to the Hida bushi school?

Schools are open to anyone of the same clan. It is perfectly OK for a Kuni or Kaiu samurai to train in a Hida bushi dojo.

Anyone in the clan can go to the school. Ideally, a kid's parents, lord, and a relevant sensei work together to figure out the kid's aptitudes and then send them to the school best suited for them, but factors like what the clan needs also come into it, and sometimes there are shady backroom dealings and bribes that need to happen before a kid can attend certain prestigious dojo. A Crab can go to any Crab school, but most members of a major family will go to that family's school, and in the case of a clan like the Crab, many will go to the Hida and Hiruma schools just because the clan needs way more soldiers than anything else.
The exception is for shugenja. If a kid has the ability to talk to spirits, his clan's shugenja school will push HARD for him to attend their school, and usually the parents will also want that to happen. A kid from a shugenja family who doesn't have the talent for it will need to go elsewhere.
Incidentally, there are lesser schools that don't even have Techniques, and these are where a lot of vassal family samurai end up going. Every samurai attends a dojo as part of a School, but not every School is worth mentioning in the grand scheme of things.

One addendum to shugenja. The ONLY schools that teach Void magic are Phoenix schools and as such if a child is Ishiken the Phoenix generally swoop in and take in the child. This is generally allowed as talent with Void magic is exceedingly rare even in the Isawa family and is so rare outside the family to nearly be unheard of.

How do people learn if a shugenjs can do Void magic?

Like, to learn a kid has magic is easy: his imaginary friends actually talk back. That's a pretty obvious red flag. But, since you can't commune with the Void, how do people learn if someone's an Ishiken-do, or if they're just a shugenja?

It is possible for another school to hang onto their ishiken (If the isawa miss the signals or the clan is hostile to them), but they can't really teach void magic and the most common outcomes for it are the kid going a little insane or the void connection to fade out, but if they don't and it doesn't, it's possible to have a member of another school to be an ishiken, but even then it's likely that they eventually get in contact with the Isawa, who either give them a crash course on how to not drive themselves and others insane or do some nasty ritual to cut their connection.
Frankly, I'm surprised that they've never caused a war due to their pushy, arrogant ways. "Yeah, we metaphysically mutilated your kid because he was too vaguely dangerous and we don't trust you to deal with it" isn't going to fly with most clans.

Sometimes the void comes through and someone recognizes it, sometimes another ishiken picks up signals through the void that they have a new peer and goes to do something about it.

It is mostly because it is so rare. Maybe one non-Isawa child in a generation is born with a connection to the Void. And the Isawa really go out of their way to not destroy new Ishiken, their rarity makes them too valuable.

They try to avoid destroying them, but are willing to kidnap the kid if they can't convince their family to hand them over. Entering a clan's land to kidnap a child isn't much better.

It is sometimes easier to seek forgiveness than permission, especially when you bring back a new Void shugenja to serve the wronged Clan.

Assuming they actually bring the kid back.

This is true up to roughly the 1200s, when ishi started popping up in other clans in greater numbers.

Generally, people don't. They get superstitious, and someone learned will come along and deal with it.

Yeah, but by that point AEG has shitted on the Metaphysics of the setting so much that it should be disregarded.

How much free will do The Lost have? Are they kinda like Daemon Princes, where their nature is completely changed, but most of their character remains the same?

By definition, Lost are beyond the point of having free will. In practice, there are noted exceptions, but I can't recall any names off the top of my head.

Depends on exactly how Lost they are. Those who are just recently Tainted beyond hope are twisted and completely subservient to Jigoku, but still mostly themselves. Those who have been tainted for longer are just direct puppets of Jigoku with a thin veneer of their old personality on top.
Some very, very rare individuals (Fu Leng, Daigotsu, that evil goddess and... Pretty much anyone who is strong enough to be the Master of Jigoku) keep their own minds, but even they are servants of Jigoku. They can fight amongst themselves over who gets to boss around the lesser beings, and might be capable of changing how Jigoku works, but they can't actually go against Jigoku.

Are their every move controled by Jigokou, like puppets, or just their wants and desires?

It kind of depends on what Jigoku wants them to be. If they're supposed to infiltrate, they can keep their own mind and act on their own initiative. If they're supposed to run headfirst at the Crab, then it just takes direct control. If they're supposed to lead a horde, then it's up in the air and they might just get boiled down to horde based military tactics with nothing else going on in their heads.

There was also that Moto leader who was still running around being a douche, that gaijin from White Stag, and that Kuni who convinced the Crab to form an alliance with the shadowlands.
All three of them are super lost who still have their own minds.

As said it depends on what Jigoku wants them to be. A terminally Lost person can be totally sane and even close to asymptomatic and then boom, full crazy demon mode happens. It is part of what makes the taint so frightening.

I think there was also a Scorpion lady who did some nasty shit.

I'm gonna be playing in a campaign which uses that alternate history thing from Emerald Empire where Fu-Leng won in the Second Day of Thunder and possessed Fu-Leng. What should I expect?

The entire country has gone to shit and officials are people to be avoided.
There's a resistance movement that hemorrhages more people every day.
The Crane are dead because one of Fu Leng's buddies was a Crane and decided that there wasn't a single other Crane who was worthy of being in the same clan as him.
The Crab might as well be dead because they got stomped from both sides, and those that are left live as hermits in the mountains or are part of the resistance.
The Mantis aren't a Great Clan, but are otherwise mostly intact, since they're on an isolated island.
The Oracles were dumped like hot garbage when the Heavens retreated from Ningen-do and are all dead except for one, because only the Thunder Dragon thought it would be a good idea to stick around and fight back.

Kuni Yori.
One of the greats.

Point of order, there is still a "Crane clan", but they're not Cranes by blood and are not pussy courtiers. There's literally one real crane and he was a daidoji who started recruiting others to his side. The "Cranes" are universally Daidoji Harriers who were recruited from orphans and other disenfranchised youth.

Of course, he is opposed by members of the Kasuga family, and their Nezumi allies.

...

I should probably mention That we're all gonna be playing 'evil' characters in this game.

Also
>Lion clan follow Fu-Leng since he's the Emperor, and obviously they have to remain loyal to the emperor, right?
what the actual fuck

>what the actual fuck
What did you expect? They had their internal disputes about it, and brains lost to loyalty.

>"We have to stay loyal to the emperor"
>"but the emperor is literally satan!"
>"yeah, but he's still the emperor"
>"BUT HE'S SATAN!"
>"HEY! THAT'S EMPEROR SATAN! Show some god-damned respect"

Yes-ish. The body being inhabited by Fu Leng is still the emperor, and by divine mandate the emperor can do no wrong.

But there is no divine mandate; Satan has no divine mandate.
In fact, it's literally the opposite of a divine mandate.

Still physically the emperor.

Different user here, but wouldn't the Lions duty be then to do whatever they can to FREE the emperor from Satans control?

>imprying