/L5R/ General

I hate to ask but all my searching has turned up nil. I've been trying to find a pdf that includes the 3e School for the Daidoji Iron Warriors. Even the pdfs in the link by OP don't have it. I swear that this is a real school that I really read about in a friends hard copy 3e Core book but it just doesn't seem to exist anywhere online.
Can anyone help me out?
Have I just been looking in the wrong places?
Or have I actually lost the plot and gotten confused with the Harriers?

lasthaiku.wikidot.com/sccrane#toc6

This it?

Did you mean: The Daidoji Bodyguard School from Way of the Crane?

So now that the PDFs have been posted I'm probably gonna be able to get my group to play this, but what edition would you guys use? I don't mean to start an edition war but like is there a "THE BEST" edition or is it a lot of personal preference? What's the big changes?

people generally use 4th edition. Unlike in DnD where editions are vastly different, L5R's editions are iterations. They're all roughly the same game, just the balanced and implantation of certain mechanics are different.

So use 4th.

that said, even 4th is busted as shit. Shugenja and monks are absolutely bonkers. I would suggest restricting them, if not banning them outright.

I'd use 4th, because it's generally better.
Then 1st, 3rd, 2nd, and D&D 3.5 Oriental Adventures, in that order.
Just imagine that there's a small gap between 1st and 3rd, a large gap between 3rd and 2nd, and the Grand Canyon between 2 and Oriental Adventures.

That has got to be the manliest looking Mirumoto ever.

NOT the D20 version. Don't do it mang

Shugenja and monks are only bonkers in the hands of people who know how to break them. Don't worry too much about it.

OP missed best edition

Thanks man, imma get to learning and distributing, maybe now we can play something that isn't dnd

I disagree about Shugenja being bonkers.
At least at lower school ranks. Never played a high insight game. Monks *can* be bonkers, but they aren't by default.
If you've got a player who is breaking the game wide open as a shugenja or monk, all you need to do is remember that both of those have very strong social obligations and the shugenja gets literally all of their power from spirits that are 100% capable of pulling the plug if the shugenja starts acting disrespectful towards or neglects them.

Shugenja are masters of specialization. Anything they choose to specialize in, they are the best at. They can be much stronger than bushi in combat, they can be much more proficient than a courtier in court. At rank 1, a shugenja can be rolling +2k2 to basically any social roll should they choose to take those spells. At rank 1 a shugenja can hit harder and take more hits than any other bushi, should they take those spells.

It's telling that you mention the way to stop this is for the GM to fiat the spells into simply not working.

It's not fiat if that's literally how magic works in the setting.
Also, I can't find any rank 1 or 2 spell that adds to social rolls.
There's a spell that lets the shugenja be a bit more accurate with their hits (But if they're not a Fire Shugenja specifically, it only brings them up to par with any given bushi), and another spell that gives them reduction roughly equal to light armor (But also slows them down) at Rank 1.
Wasting two rounds of a three round combat to barely bring yourself up to par with a basic bushi wearing light armor isn't too great. Especially when you could just buff an ally and make them actually better than their enemies.

Fires of Purity is pretty good as combat shugenja spells go.

that adds +2k2 to social rolls*
There's Benten's Touch at rank 2, which adds 1k1+the caster's air ring.
So a dedicated shugenja with air affinity can have a +1k1+3 for an hour as a starting character.
Useful if they're going directly to a brisk negotiation, not particularly great for court where you might be hanging around and chatting people up all day.

It is, but you know who would benefit from it more? Literally any bushi (For example, the one directly between you and the enemy), because they're more accurate and do more damage by default.
Again, every spell cast is a complex action. That's your whole turn in a game where combat might only last two or three turns.

Are you seriously advocating buffing a bushi (who can effectively be disabled in one hit) rather than using a single spell slot to potentially disable an opponent? At rank 1, Shugenja have such a selection of damage spells that they're practically a one-man platoon. Need raw ranged damage? Fires from Within or Earth Becomes Sky (both easily 3k3 at a measly TN 15). A group of peasants need to be put down? Hope they're not standing next to eachother or Entincing Dance of Flame can cripple the whole group before they even get a swing in. Getting into an extended fight? Tail of the Fire Dragon. A melee combatant yourself? Fires of Purity even with 3 agi and no other fire investment is usually fine (5k3 average rolls is ~24, usually enough to hit anything you care about). Just wade in there with light armor and a good earth ring and wreck face. And that's just for 1 agi point and 2 skill points in a weapon skill.

Everything you've said so far is so mired in ignorance I don't even know what to say.

Just started playing in a new L5R game and in the first session I had to talk the other two players out of being executed/dueled because they couldn't shut their fucking mouths around the leader of the most powerful faction. It was a really bad idea on the GM's part to start us there, but luckily I can play the fuck out of a smoothtalker(and the GM didn't want 2/3 of the party dead, so he just needed good excuses to not kill them). Otherwise, the GM would have had to handwave most of the game's code of etiquette to have them survive.

Still haven't run into combat, but One thing to look out for is that since the skills aren't already on the sheet, you may ask for a player to roll a skill they didn't know existed.

Buffing a Bushi with with Fires of Purity is a great plan actually, from a simple damage output perspective it outperforms any other rank one spell, it just does it as a sort of AoE rather than single target.

>who can effectively be disabled in one hit
This applies to you more so than a bushi.
>both easily 3k3 at a measly TN 15
The 7k4 that a buffed bushi does is better.
>Entincing Dance of Flame can cripple the whole group before they even get a swing in.
That is what it's good for, yes.
>Getting into an extended fight? Tail of the Fire Dragon.
Lasts 4 rounds and isn't significantly better at range than a bushi using a bow and isn't significantly better in melee than a bushi with a sword.
>Just wade in there with light armor and a good earth ring and wreck face. And that's just for 1 agi point and 2 skill points in a weapon skill.
You know that thing you just said about the bushi being disabled in one hit? Parrot that, but add the caveat that you're still less effective than them, because they have techniques and probably also have a higher agility, reflex, earth ring, and better skill.

It doesn't change the fact that stacking buffs instead of going wide is an awful strategy. Secondly, the point that a perma-buffer shugenja buffing a bushi is better than a combat shugenja is moot, because the point is that the shugenja simply has more impact in a fight because they're simply more powerful. If you disallowed buffing your team mates, the shugenja pulls ahead at most experience values in most situations. The only time a shugenja is ever at a disadvantage compared to their bushi counterparts is the powerspike at rank 3 (assuming the bushi is even of a school that gets second attack at 3) or when you've fought so much that the shugenja is simply out of relevant spell slots. The later of which is duboius because the shugenja is guaranteed to have done things so much more efficiently than the bushi at that point that they'll have more resources a bushi would have otherwise spent.

>>who can effectively be disabled in one hit
>This applies to you more so than a bushi.

Not at all. The only advantage a bushi has over you in raw defense stats is that the shugenja *might* not have light armor. Shugenja scale just as well with earth ring, and in fact, because shugenja are much less reliant on skills (most of their damage spells simply auto hit if they get the TN), shugenja are more likely to have *higher* earth ring than a bushi.

Nothing you just said is so much better than what a bushi can do that it is "bonkers", given casting times and the social implications of a shugenja wearing armor.

>It doesn't change the fact that stacking buffs instead of going wide is an awful strategy.
Most of the spells you listed have a single target and no dot.
A buffed bushi can easily kill 4 to 8 enemies before any buff wears off, and significantly more than that if you're using the longer duration buffs. Fires From Within hits one enemy and that's it, now you're down a Fire casting slot (And lets face it, you only have 5 or 6, including the ones you get from Void).
>The only advantage a bushi has over you in raw defense stats is that the shugenja *might* not have light armor.
You do realize that to cast well, a shugenja has to boost their Ring stats, right? All of the spells you're talking about here are Fire spells. So if you're boosting your Earth Ring (And Reflexes), you're not boosting your Fire Ring, and are doing less damage with your single target damage spells.

>The only advantage a bushi has over you in raw defense stats is that the shugenja *might* not have light armor.
Or a reflex trait worth a damn, since they're Fire specialized. Or an Earth ring worth a damn, since they're Fire specialized. Or the Defense skill, since they're not putting points into skills.
A support shugenja who just stays in the Defense Stance and protects themselves while buffing allies will do better overall than a direct damage shugenja.

At higher levels the shuggies can pump out some crazy stuff, no one is denying that, but the idea that they are just universally more powerful is flat wrong, especially at early levels. At a damage per round comparison between a shug and a bushi, the bushi will win hands down early levels, and only really loose later on due to the Shugs better AoE potential.

>A support shugenja who just stays in the Defense Stance and protects themselves while buffing allies will do better overall than a direct damage shugenja.

Who's side are you even on anyway?

A shugenja (Or a courtier, or anyone, really) with a few ranks in the Defense who just stays in the Defense stance can be harder to hit than someone wearing armor and can still cast all of their spells except for direct attacks. It's just better overall.

>If you've got a player who is breaking the game wide open as a shugenja or monk, all you need to do is remember that both of those have very strong social obligations and the shugenja gets literally all of their power from spirits that are 100% capable of pulling the plug if the shugenja starts acting disrespectful towards or neglects them.
>It's telling that you mention the way to stop this is for the GM to fiat the spells into simply not working.

I find the most effective way to depower a shugenja is to give them a reason to use their spell slots before they reach combat. All you have to do is look at their spell list, and tailor make a wounded target for healing, low grade nemuranai for inspecting / communing, or other reason for a simple use of the basic element spells. Easy, and it'll look like their idea.

>who can effectively be disabled in one hit
>This applies to you more so than a bushi
Depends on the shugenja type. Air become quite hard to hit, while earth shrug off damage.

I thought this game was super deadly. I might be looking at it wrong, though.
Everyone starts off with about 70 health give or take, and I've seen the biggest and best max damage outputs at like 40. I was under the impression more people can die in one hit, was I wrong?
My rank 1 samurai I've statted comes out with 7k3 to hit and hits with 6k2. Does that sound right?

70 health? An earth ring 2 character has 38 hit points to work with. Earth 3 is 57 total, but you approach uselessness once you go above 33.

Average between 32 and 48.

A standard Katana will likely take about half your health, making you seriously in trouble with wound penalties. The next hit will finish you.

three foot razor blades deserve respect

Which schools do you think are the most flavorful?

Whats your opinion on having acrobatics as an athletics emphasis?

Good for ninja.

After reading about the Mountain Summit Temple, I tought it might be a good fit for a kikage zumi monk.

I imagine it's excellent for entertainment in court, probably by Mantis who are accustomed to the rolling about of the ship and decide they want to take it to the next level.

Dragon schools, period!
Masterful swordsmen with an unique swordstyle that pisses off Kakita snobs, fashioned after a legendary real life swordsman? Check.
Superstition-shattering stone-cold logic sleuths who foil scorpion ninja at every turn, and are great in court? Check.
Monks tattoo'd with the literal blood of a god, pursuing enlightenment but still part of the samurai caste? Check.
Priests who not only do magic and secret alchemy, but are also as martial as some bushi and not afraid to get their hands dirty? Check, check, check!

Dragon schools are definitely pretty cool. I think a lot of Mantis schools are also pretty cool.

Tsuruchi have their rejection of Bushido in favour of their own more virtuous code, and rejection of katanas as a symbol of everything that's wrong with samurai in general, in favour of bows? Yes please! More pronounced when they were the Wasp, but still cool.
Yoritomo have their focus on naval combat styles-- the drunken brawler school based on being a rough and tumble sailor with no dojo to practice in, instead learning form whoever will teach you? Oh yeah. The basic bushi school all about being agile and adaptable, fighting with knives or whatever you can lay a hand on? Yes.
Moshi priests all about the power of the storm, but also so pious towards the sun that their power is directly linked to whether or not it's in the sky? Check.

> I think a lot of Mantis schools are also pretty cool.
Because they're almost all from Minor clans.
Every member of the Mantis (Including the Mantis themselves) became more boring when they got pokeclanned. They're all just whitewashed under the Yoritomo now and have lost a lot of their identities.

How do you figure that?

the moshi are stil matriarchal sun worshippers with a lot of shugenja within their ranks

the fox are still tree hugging isolationists with the occasional bestiality.

The wasp are still a very proud clan of archers and bandit hunters, with a certain level of disdain of the more traditional samurai values, and the katana that symbolises it.

Some details of the clans are going to change now that they are in close contact with eachother, and yes the yoritomo are a lot more dominant in the relationship than they should. But out of all the great clans, the Mantis have probably the most varied families among them, and there is little reason to assume that is just going away.

>Some details of the clans are going to change now that they are in close contact with eachother, and yes the yoritomo are a lot more dominant in the relationship than they should.
Not That Guy, but usually the problem seems to be how one way the clan culture osmosis is. It's always minor clans gaining mantis traits.

Bound to happen since the Yoritomo is the main family.

Does not make it less boring compared to the former alliance. Only compounds the sensation.

Who knows, maybe FFG will reset the story and keep the Mantis as a minor clan this time. Bonus points if Yoritomo gets his deserved punishment for his temerity.

I like Mantis as a Great Clan, I think they fill a couple of interesting niches, but their relationship with their vassal families should definitely be reworked.

For me, I'd have the whole clan run by a council of family Daimyos, with Clan Champion being a nominal position that rotates through the families each generation, and which acts more as the mouthpiece of the council when one is needed, than as an actual leader.

Which is already kinda the Phoenix schtick with the elemental council and the Shiba Champion.

Idea I had from the last thread. A Kakita serial killer, who forces people into duels and then cuts them down (whether they agreed to the duel or not, serial killer and all) as an expression of their madness and having found the 'perfect strike'.

The ones who've been slain are mostly Dragons and Cranes and minor clan dudes, and the Scorpion have no reason to just poison him/her in their sleep, maybe even some political shit why they expressly can't do that.

But in the end it comes down to the party being asked to quietly handle things, as it can't be handled publicly due to the simple fact that none of the clans want to admit their best and brightest duelists are being cut down left and right by one insane Crane.

Is this a decent idea for an arc?

It really depends on the players. Are they smart enough to out smart the enemy? Or are they the type that will try to out duel himm?

It would be a different take on similar theme. The elemental council are all shugenja, and more important for the Isawa than for the clan as a whole-- and the Shiba Champion is as much their minder as their mouthpiece. They also are almost always all Isawa themselves.

A Mantis council would always, by it's nature, be representative of all of a clan's families, and the Champion would be a member of the council, rather than an external pawn. I think it would be an interesting contrast-- particularly with the existing animosity between Mantis and Phoenix.

Bonus points if one of the players has the rumor monger disadvantage.

I've been kicking around the idea of playing this, although I'm not big into bushido and Tokugawa era politics or whatever. Are ronin overplayed? I get the feeling everyone wants to be Musashi.

Kinda yes and no. Everyone wants to try it out at least once...until they realise how punishing the society is towards them. It's extremely rewarding to play one properly, but they are kinda thatguy bait on par with ninjas.

Are ninjas really that guy bait?

I was considering playing one as my next character whenever I got the chance.

Yeah, sounds like my kind of thing. I've always liked playing the underdog, but I imagine it's a big thatguy thing too. I'll see if I can find a game of it and give it a shot. Thanks dude

Without a fail. If you have a thatguy, I will make any bet with you that he will go Crimson red in clan colors.

Shame, I was interested in playing a Shosuro Actor.

Just because an archetype is that guy bait doesn't mean you can't play one.

Just don't be a that guy while doing it.

It's more a scorpion issue then a ninja issue, per se. Altough 4e hasn't introduced many non-scorpion ninja, and even then only in the more obscure sidebooks.

you can make and play proper ninja's, don't worry too much about that. It is just that the scorpion, especially the ninja's among them, are seen by some players as a blank cheque to be as much of an asshole as you want.

Scorpions aren't the only ones with Ninjas, user.

But yes, chances are That Guy is going to want to e a Scorpion Ninja.

Ronin are also generally sub-par mechanically because of the way they're supposed to gain Techniques by RAW, not to mention many of the ronin Techniques themselves being weak even if you can learn them.

One thing I'd like to do sometime is string some of the more decent ronin Techniques together as a full school, and run with it being an actual ronin School taught out of a single dojo run by the Kaeru in the city of the Rich Frog-- mostly for their own family members, but open to promising outsiders.

"The Wounds inflicted by an attack fill up
these Wound Ranks in order, with each Rank containing a maximum number of Wounds determined by the character’s Earth Ring."

Please help the book is lying to me I guess

I really want to try playing a Kuni witch-hunter, but it seems totally pointless unless the whole campaign is built around that one character.

This. Only because it attracts them, doesn't mean playing one makes you a thatguy.
As said before, thatguys consider ninjas basically the equivalent of playing a chaotic/neutral character in D&D.

Also, make sure to discuss the character with the ST. As a ST myself, shinobi and ronin characters can be a bit more work on our side. I personally enjoy it, making locations and encounter more challenging, but it will be more work for your ST nonetheless.

L5R is basically GoT with all the Great Houses/Great Clans, Battle for the Throne, Intrigue, Magic and Dragons.

If some TV producer made a show about a Day of Thunder or something do you think it could be successful?
The "problem" with it is that you could only cast Asian actors and that would alienate a large crowd. But still Samurai are beloved worldwide. I dunno if someone wrote a good script I think it could work and make lots of money.

What is whitewashing.

It even has a WALL that keeps out monstrous creatures and the Undead.

You couldn't whitewash the whole of Rokugan. You either use Asian actors or you don't make it at all. The good thing is you could employ all types of Asians (not poo in the loo one obviously).

Are you missing the difference between Healthy and the other wound ranks? Healthy is Earth x 5, all the remaining ranks are earth x2. So If you've got Earth 2 to start the game with, you get 10 wounds at healthy, and then 4 wounds each rank after that.

You could whitewash/westernize the whole story without any problems. Just switch asian with europe/england, and the rest just falls in place.

they even got the family way off in one cardila direction that eschews normal social rules and etiquette and mans a fuckhuge wall. AND a family of totallynotpirates living on an island chain of the coast that also don't follow standard social rules and etiquette (altough unlike the ironborn, the mantis ways usually make sense)

Then you just have Game of Thrones again, and what was the point of the exercises?

Thats the point. L5R is a western story with an asian paintjob. Asian story telling is an entirely different beast. Don't get me wrong, I like L5R as any else here, but it IS GoT in Asia.

So it's the reverse of Record of Lodoss War. What's the matter with that?

Well, bugger me tender. I've never seen that. Thanks for pointing me towards it!
As it looks to me, a pseudo western style fantasy setting written by a Japanese. Basically, oldschool FF.
I hope the writer did at least a better job than Wick.

IIRC L5R pre dates GoT

Remind me what the their technique was again?

Record of Lodoss War is a really generic Western fantasy story though, not a Japanese fantasy story pretending to be a Western one, which would be the opposite of L5R.
It looks Japanese as hell because it's written and drawn by Japanese people, but it's a story about a motley crew of heroes who band together and save their imperiled kingdom from the rising forces of darkness.
That's every cookie-cutter fantasy novel ever back in the 1980's.
It's hard to be as shit a writer as Wick.
Lodoss is notable because of totally faithful and absolutely seriously it takes it's cliched storyline without making fun of it or poking holes at it, obviously enjoying itself as it does so.
It does by several years, though the SoIaF novels are older then most people think.

The Kaeru? As far as I know, they don't currently have one. There are a bunch of existing ronin techniques, but each technique is attached to an existing group, like the Forest Killers or Toturi's Army, which you're supposed to join in order to be allowed to learn that technique. But because a lot of those groups have a very short lifespans, the core book encourages you to refluff them for use in your particular campaign.

The refluffing I would do is to pick out five techniques from this disparate group, and just give them to the Kaeru, a longstanding and well-established family of ronin who actually could run a dojo, and just treat the collection of techniques as a Kaeru Bushi School.

What's ironic about that is that most of the supplementary material (and the books themselves if you read closely) show that the stereotypes the Houses have in Westeros are NOT that old or that accurate.
Basically every time a new lord comes to power his personality greatly shapes the entire house because his word and whim is literally law to them and thus he fully dictates the house's actions.

The generation of Starks before this one was led by an older man and his eldest son who was heavily into southern political ambitions (notice how the supposedly "disinterested" Stark's fostered strong relationships with the Southron houses?).
The previous Lannister head was a friendly a peaceable idiot who had no head for money, tactics, or anything else at all.
The previous Greyjoy head was, and I shit you not with this, a fierce warrior but an incredibly progressive and rational guy who kept his people in line and tried his damdest to bring them into modern day and stop them from being butchering pirates anymore.

Of course the previous Greyjoys were more civil and agreeable than Balon. Balon was an idiot who came within a hair's breadth of driving his house extinct. A house of nothing but Balons would not survive very long at all.

You'd think that, but apparently there's been a LOT of guys like him, and Balon isn't even the worst of them.
Part of the problem the worldbook notes (it's co-written by Martin himself) is that their religion is EXTREMELY resistant to anything changing on the island and every time a king who shows up that they do disagree with they spread anger against him and he's overthrown.

Also, Balon almost certainly murdered his dad. Poisoned, if it matters.

The wiki says he was killed in battle.

Now what are the most horribly abusive and over powered things a tattood monk can do, trying to avoid going Saitama in my next campaing.

Canonically, the Kaeru actually have several different dojo. Not for full schools, but they've got the pipe wielders who actually protect the city, and some kind of super secret assassin-for-hire dojo that has never been proven to exist or given mechanics, but is constantly mentioned alongside them in older fluff.

The Kaeru themselves would have a courtier school, because they're merchant-administrators who run a city.
The otokodate that they employ to protect the city (The Machi-Kanshisha) are bushi with their own rank 3 Technique. It just kind of sucks worse than most ronin Techniques, which is saying something.

I mean. Besides all the absolutely broken tattoos? All the absolutely broken kiho.

I'm not really in the know on whats broken and whats not, so share your enlightened view Veeky Forums

not that guy, but can you point out some of the broken ones? never played a monk myself.

in core alone? ki-ren, crane, dragon are three stand-out ones. balance and bamboo can be very strong if you use them just right and have the right party composition. lion if you use the tattoo merging rules from book of air (in conjunction with ki-ren, mostly).

as for kiho, just read them. a lot of kiho are easy to activate and let you become a god at something you were doing anyway.