Legend of the Five Rings General

The Daidoji always make me sad. They're proper, pragmatic warriors stuck in a Clan that wastes all of its energy on zero-sum court games. Iron Crane coup when?

>Iron Crane coup when?

When FuFu finally gets his KYoD

I disagree with changing rural trapmaking from Hunting to anything else.
Merely knowing how to sharpen a stick and make it hold tension is not enough. You have to be able to actually hide it from your potential victims and get it done with minimal tools and time.
Rural traps are not a battlefield thing. They're a scout vs scout thing. And the Kaiu are not scouts.
The Daidoji, Hiruma, and other scouts are and should be better at low-tech traps than anyone else.

Harriers pissed me off. Daidoji were always this heavy infantary spear wielding tanks, and then someone somewhere thought it would great to take their defensive tactic focus and use that as a justification to turn the family into blue ninjas. And now the harrier bullshit is seemingly the only thing people connect with the Daidoji.

Its kinda like what happened to the Unicorn and the Moto, just not nearly so bad. The Unicorn got turned into full on mongol gaijin barbarians because AEG is retarded.

That's because everyone remembers the bastards who ninja'd their way in and blew everything up with super illegal bombs over the guys who do what 90% of all Bushi are doing most of the time.
The Harriers are still a very minor part of the family, vastly outnumbered by the normal soldiers and normal military scouts.

The point isn't that Hunting would lose the ability to make Rural traps, just that Engineers with the Trapmaking specialization should gain it as well. They know how to hide and conceal engineered traps of a larger scale, so the hiding part is parcelled in with that skill as is.

If rural trap equivalents aren't a battlefield thing, then what traps are the Crab bringing to the field? Is a small hidden trap full of spikes a different beast completely from a large hidden trench full of spikes?

The Daidoji scouts will still be better at it than anyone else, because they specifically get damage bonuses from their techniques to their rural traps. At rank four they're adding +2k1 to all rural trap damage, along with skill bonuses they get for setting them up. Considering they're also good at the stealth elements and the scouting elements, they'll still be the undisputed masters of skulking about in the woods and setting up traps behind enemy lines. the Kaiu will be able to build these things, but will lack the maneuverability to deploy them in the fashion that you talk about.

Can you 'snipe' in L5R?
As in could a Harrier or an Infiltrator get multiple uses of their "attacking an unaware opponent" techs?
That Phoenix ninja path in Void offers a bonus to hiding on a battlefield, so I assume it's possible.

> so the hiding part is parcelled in with that skill as is.
When you're directing a team of workmen and working with a blueprint, masonry, steel, the full array of construction methods and tools known to Kaiu, and as much time as you need.
Doing it yourself and working with wood, dirt, and whatever tools you have on your person in the moment is an entirely different beast.

Do the harriers even exist anymore? I was under the impression Domotai told them all to get lost

But that would be like breaking up Craft: Shipwright into Craft: Shipwright Overseeing and Craft: Hands on Shipwrightmanship

They should overlap.

>The Kaiu were never really as good at hunting as the Hiruma, but might have some study in what those nutters do.
The tunnels under the wall are filled with the most lethal traps the kaiu can devise. I'd allow one to build equivalents to rural traps by engineering, but not without proper resources, stable ground, time.

I'd expect the setting's napalm equivalent wouldn't be used on samurai (even thigh the Dragon did), and the damned are "vs shadowlands only", but I'm not quite convinced on anything else.

>then what traps are the Crab bringing to the field?
Usually none. If the Crab are fighting in the field, they've done something wrong. They excel at defensive fighting. They don't bring traps, they pick battles where they had traps all along.
The only traps they bring are whatever the Hiruma decide to use against the other side's forward elements in the lead up to the battle.

>Do the harriers even exist anymore?
Yes, it's just now they also officially hide from Crane Magistrates/

Craft: Masonry and Craft: Carpentry are different skills, even though they are both used to construct buildings.

Engineering has always been a management and command skill.
If you're using Engineering, you're carefully designing blueprints and directing teams of masons, carpenters, and laborers to build something grand.
If you're doing it yourself, it's either a Craft skill or Hunting.
I'd say the (Traps) emphasis for Hunting should be considered a Craft skill for the purposes of effects that modify Craft skills (Like Soul of Artistry: Crafts)

By rules as written (as seen in Great Clans, page 32) an engineer can construct traps by themselves using the Engineering skill. A trap door can be made in a minimum of eight hours, the Kaiu "Grinder" in 12, and so on. Ingredients are the nebulously defined "extensive stoneworking" tools.

That said, there is some ambiguity in the rule set there, as the presented legendary Kaiu trap-maker in the book has "Crafts: Traps 9" and doesn't even have an emphasis on Traps for his engineering skill.

I would let Engineering (Traps) work for rural traps and so on, for the simple reason that there's no need to bully artisan and craft-focused characters, they're useless enough as it is. There are practical arguments that can be made on the grounds seen above, but mostly I'd allow it for gameplay reasons.

>for the simple reason that there's no need to bully artisan and craft-focused characters, they're useless enough as it is.

That's harsh, user-sama.

What mon is that?

Toturi's Army/Wolf Legion?

It was never issued by an emperor and is not officially recognized, but that is the generic mon for ronin.
Anyone can just make up their own personal mon if they really want to. Some ronin use that one.

I want to make a blind void specialist shugenja. Is there any way to make that happen without going Phoenix/Isawa? I'm not familiar enough with other shugenja schools or non-corebooks to know where to start looking.

Pretty sure the Ishiken school in Fenix only, but they make a point of hunting down any void touched in the empire and 'taking them in for training before they become a danger to themselves and others'. The Fenix are 'compassionate' like that. They also tend to claim that any void touched obviously have Isawa blood from somewhere, so of course they're welcome in the school of the Void.

There are two ways to do it without strictly being Phoenix'd.
One: Have a hell of a lot of connections with the Phoenix and justify it as them babysitting you through your normal School. Probably a max Obligation, Allies, ect. You're still going to be heavily tied to the Phoenix.
Option two: Void Mystic. Rather than deal with the political bullshit with the Phoenix, your family kicked you to the curb or you wandered away in a Void daze and never found your way back. Or you were a ronin or peasant to begin with anyway.
Void Mystics literally can only use the Void and are usually a little insane. And the Isawa become really, really interested in them if they find out they exist.

They actually claim that nobody else can correctly train an Ishiken and they're usually right. A connection to the Void is dangerous and the Phoenix would rather deal with it than allow it to exist outside of their control.
Usually the family gets compensated anyway, or the Phoenix lay on political power and the weight of tradition to get the kid. Sometimes they'll even just straight kidnap someone and hope the Elemental Masters can worm their way out of repercussions.

There's also a few nascent void traditions elsewhere. It was deliberate setting change that supposedly more and more ishiken are being born. I think the Scorpion were developing one tradition at least. Really though this is a situation that calls for the Book of Void. Since this is an ultra niche concern.

>They actually claim that nobody else can correctly train an Ishiken and they're usually right.
I've read both, but it's been some time.

After a certain point in the story arcs, void shugenja start becoming more common in other clans, and the Phoenix stranglehold on ishiken loosens somewhat.

Now see I love the dynamic of the Daidoji being both the heavy infantry reliable Crane that even the Crab respect while also having in their ranks blue terrorists who use gaijin pepper. Because it says a lot about how the Crane operate. It's all that surface appearance bullshit.

I like bringing up that conflict of appearances in games set near the Crane Lands, and it has been an important plot point twice. The Harriers have been disavowed and some characters have history with them and it is a matter of loyalties. Because to a lot of the characters the Harriers were just following orders given to them by their masters elsewhere in the Clan--to have them be punished for following orders and doing their duty bothers some Crane. While others in the Daidoji are disgusted because they had some hand near it but were honorable and busy being a public face that's now tainted by association.

So the Harriers come across as these "true patriots" who disagree with the new leadership because they know what needs to be done to keep people safe and to defeat their enemies; because they were this close to oblivion many times when Harriers were able to handle things that could've gone sideways. Whereas everyone else in the Crane Clan sees them as dissidents and terrorists, not enough to cause a civil war but enough to hurt some people and expose their own filth.

But that could be boring in non-Crane games and I only like working with it because I like the burnt spy angle.

>the Harriers come across as these "true patriots" who disagree with the new leadership
The harriers were always about plausible denial. They knew their shit would get them killed if discovered, and operated out of a barely remembered castle that burnt down hundreds of years ago. They even had the place declared a gaijin embassy in some deeply buried Otomo record, so their gunpowder wasn't technically on Rokugani soil.

Lore: Maho, Lore: Shadowlands, and Lore: Underworld are all Low Skills. Merely thinking about such topics causes a loss of Honor, even if one is a Jade Magistrate or Emerald Magistrate investigating bloodspeaker cults, incursions of evil spirits, or criminal gangs and trying to know thy enemy.

All four Legend of the Five Rings 4e GMs I have played with in the past have defended this.

Why is this allowed?

Probably, but not officially. I'd imagine there are still Harrier 'cells' operating as if nothing changed, though admittedly doing so with a little less gaijin pepper.

I'd probably not cause an Honor loss if such knowledge was used for good, like being a Jade/Emerald Magistrate. And if I did cause Honor loss, it'd probably just be a .1 per skill per session maximum, because unless one is using that knowledge to act in the interest of evil you're really just occupying your mind with thoughts on unclean subjects.

But I don't run that way and I think your GM is being weird about it. Maybe if it was the implication, such as your samurai happens to know about Maho and by knowing the right thing to say to confront Maho his allies and masters view him as someone who might be a little less honorable than they might once have viewed?

What was the situation?

I totally didn't know about that, and that'll be of use to me.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that just thinking about them is dishonorable enough to actually warrant honor loss, but they are actually dishonorable, and talking about it definitely can be. Demonstrating knowledge is as good as admitting to using it from most Rokugani perspectives, which is a big part of why the Kuni have such a sinister reputation and a big part of why nobody wants to hear about how Shadowland beasts work or how to fight them aside from "use jade".

>Maybe if it was the implication, such as your samurai happens to know about Maho and by knowing the right thing to say to confront Maho his allies and masters view him as someone who might be a little less honorable than they might once have viewed?

>What was the situation?

Using the Sage advantage to know about the enemies under investigation.

I don't know about her mon, but I'm pretty sure she's a fox.

Because a *LOT* of L5R GMs are objectively terrible, selectively-reading imbeciles who are incapable of recognizing a non-RAW, independent thought if it were to jump up on a table, strip naked, paint itself purple, and start singing "what a lovely independent thought I am!"

What you're looking for is Secrets of the Empire, p49 (wild fox doctrine), and Core, p144. (low skills used in GM-sanctioned honourable fashion do not cause honour loss)

>Sage

Yeah, no. Fuck that shit, if you're using your knowledge and your buddies KNOW you're not tainted/bloodmagicing, knowing about it isn't too big of a deal, especially if your duty is to hunt down said beasties. Talking about it openly in court? Sure, that's an honor loss because people look at you and go 'Why the hell are you talking about this shit in polite company!?'. At least, that's how I'd run it, but I'll probably never GET to run L5R (or play it).

I could see how that might implicate you in a very McCarthyist style investigation. Knowing one too many things and you might just be part of the KGB/Kolat as far as the people watching you are concerned. I'd say unless you were using knowledge of their files/history, it could be viewed as possibly being attached to the enemies in a delicate or painful investigation---but that'd be more of a cool plot element to go into than a static honor loss.

I guess it also depends on how your character knew aside from the Sage advantage; like had he read their files? Or was he in the loop as far as legal matters are concerned? I'm assuming you were playing a Jade or Emerald Magistrate.

I wouldn't have docked you honor on it. Those GMs are playing too straight with the books and penalizing you for the little things. You were in the right near as I can tell here.

>selectively-reading imbeciles
Might be true.
>who are incapable of recognizing a non-RAW, independent thought
Also might be true, but doesn't matter when there's a RAW out on the honour loss.

Rokugan is a rather McCarthyist sort of setting in that regard.
If you know exactly why the maho user is trying to kidnap people and where he's most likely going to do his unholy ritual, people assume it's because you've been there, done that. It's not enough to actually implicate you legally, but it is enough for you to lose honor and gain suspicion (And maybe even Infamy).
Veiled words, "I don't know, but I have to guess..." and gut feelings are how you need to communicate things like that without taking small hits to honor. The gain from successfully saving the day is almost certainly larger than whatever you might lose anyway.

The RAW out on Low Skills is that the GM can make exceptions if he judges the skill to be used in an honorable fashion, and there are some built in exceptions anyway.

>Also might be true, but doesn't matter when there's a RAW out on the honour loss.
> Those GMs are playing too straight with the books and penalizing you for the little things.

Found one of the GMs playing too straight.

By RAW:
-GM (playing the lord) asks PC (Emerald Magistrate) to discuss the Shadowlands beast he just killed.
-PC obeys his lord
-GM deducts Honor because the PC is CLEARLY thinking about Shadowlands stuff (since he's talking about it).
-Repeat ad infinitum until the PC's Honor is in the ground or he disobeys his lord and gets Ronin'd (NPC) or seppuku's.
-GM shrugs and says "not my fault, it's RAW."

There are times to say FUCK RAW.

Honor and Glory are different things.

Honor is purely internal. You still lose Honor for using Low Skills.

In modern Western culture it is generally accepted that a person can learn something and intellectually know about it without actually believing in it. One can learn a philosophy or a religion and understand it on an intellectual level without internalizing it as a personal belief. Any abstract concept can be learned and known; practicing the concept is not necessary.
This is not the case in Rokugan. To the Rokugani, a student cannot divorce learning and practice, because knowledge, true knowing, ultimately cannot come from external influences. It comes from “true insight,” which cannot be taught, only experienced. A student can study swordplay, read every existing text on the subject, recite Kakita’s The Sword from memory, and observe a thousand duels. This will make him an intellectual expert on the subject. But he cannot truly understand swordplay until he picks up the sword and practices it for himself. A warrior can read Akodo’s Leadership, understand its teachings, and know exactly how to utilize every lesson contained within its pages. But until he actually leads men into battle, he cannot possibly know what it is to be a general. Without practice, a student in essence learns nothing. Experience is how one develops “true insight,” the only way to actually know anything.

This is why sensei are generally chosen for their experience, not necessarily their intellect or learning. It is also why an appeal to authority is not considered a fallacy in Rokugani culture. Conversely, to teach something or claim wisdom on a subject which a person has never actually practiced is known as “Wild Fox Doctrine.” In essence, a sensei who tries to teach something on which he has no true insight is no better than a wild fox, leading his students in pointless circles in a chase that ultimately goes nowhere.
This is also why showing knowledge concerning the Shadowlands, maho, and other unsavory subjects is seen as harmful to a samurai’s reputation. If a samurai demonstrates insight on these subjects, there is an inherent assumption that he has actually practiced them.

Those GMs NEA was talking about in ?

Here they are:

Good work, double 0. You the whole thing in reading comprehension.

Here's a potential defense: it comes from a non-consequentialist view of morality. Handling corpses to bury them is both necessary and dishonorable, relegated to eta. Regardless of whether something is necessary, the idea is that of moral pollution. Knowing these things makes you impure, just like the eta making sure everyone doesn't die of a billion corpse related diseases is impure.

Oh, but in case it wasn't clear I wouldn't dock honor for this. Maybe that's my modern morality speaking though.

I wouldn't dock honor for touching a corpse either if you had to, just glory.

You should maybe read the posts you're trying to insult before you jump to support a namefag who doesn't know one of the basic mons used in the game.
Only one of those is what you said.

Your katana is an extension of your body. Therefore, killing someone with your katana is always a Honor loss since you're touching filthy body fluids and probably corpses with it. Poisoning on the other hand can be justified in the context of duty and loyalty and doesn't involve Honor loss that way.

(Never play with Scorpion GMs.)

Acting is a High Skill and is never a Low Skill. Acting covers disguises.

There is no entry in the Honor table concerning such deception.

Therefore, it is never dishonorable to pretend to be someone you are not.

Why is this allowed?

Harsh yeah, but can anyone really say otherwise? People talk about how they can curry favor with fancy gifts, but so can Yasuki Courtiers and they get a bunch of social and commerce benefits on top of it. Letting actual crafting be useful and important in the game requires setting up the campaign in such a way that characters have down time, and maybe restricting items in such a way that being able to make stuff is an asset to the party.

Because it makes for a great story that can later be turned into a play when found out.

>Being accomplice to a major crime, being accomplice to a minor crime, breach of etiquette major, lying to bolster your reputation, manipulating another into dishonorable behavior, using false courtesy to gain an advantage
Delete as appropriate.

Disguise is not a crime, a breach of etiquette, lying to bolster reputation, etc.

Impersonation of a samurai (without that samurai's consent) is certainly a crime .

After looking some things up, Void Mystic seems like the way to go - and the GM seems sympathetic to how totally fucked ronin are by RAW, so hopefully he'll be gentle. Time to be a qt seer with no Status.

It's failing to identify yourself, which is a breach of both Honesty and Sincerity, since you are not owning your own actions or legacy, a breach of travel laws, and will almost certainly be treated as an attempt to impersonate another samurai, which is a direct crime against them and their family.
Using acting for anything other than putting on a play or maaaaybe running some kind of sting operation will result in honor loss and probably legal consequences.

L5R requires the group to have basic knowledge on the tenets of Bushido and they are(n't) following them, rather than expecting a single page list to cover every possible honour gain/loss.

It might also be considered an attempt to harm the reputation or steal the secrets of another School if you're pretending to be a student of theirs, which is seriously something you might get executed for if they really think you were going after secrets that are not yours.

>maaaaybe running some kind of sting operation
That's more likely to mitigate honour loss than ever be a straight up honour gain.

Uh, I think you missed the joke. He's not saying she's Fox Clan, he's CALLING her a fox. As in "attractive".

Fail harder.

That's a terrible joke that really doesn't work when someone is asking about identification and he uses an objectively wrong one as the punchline.
Suck the namefag's dick harder.

Doesn't change the fact that you're wrong.

You know, once AEG closed their forums, I'd wondered how long it would take for the failures and autists to find a new home. Welcome! Enjoy your stay. Try not to destroy this community the way you fucks destroyed the one you were from.

It's basically like herding cats.

>Using acting for dishonorable purposes that are definitely illegal doesn't give you honor loss
If this was 6 months ago, I'd be posting bait.jpg.

>Y-you're all just trolls from offsite
Are you even trying?

No, user. Four months ago you couldn't keep an /L5R/ general bumped for 300 posts. Believe me. Something terrible has happened.

>Believe me. Something terrible has happened.
Summer vacation?

He wanted to know why disguises and deception didn't seem to have any honor loss and I showed him all the potential ways why that would be wrong and then myself and another user explained exactly why.
Accusing people of being "objectively terrible, selectively-reading imbeciles who are incapable of recognizing a non-RAW, independent thought" when they are literally saying the exact opposite of that doesn't exactly make you a quality poster. Defending the person who said it is also not good. You're either one or both of those, which makes you far worse than whatever your boogeyman of the month is.

Instead of all of this, let's talk about the mass combat system! All of the flavor in Fan & Blade and so on gets ignored in the RAW, which in both the core rules and the optional Diamyo rules in Emerald Empire boils down to contested Water-Ring rolls with opportunities for characters to have sword-fights. Heroic opportunities: good. The rest of the battle system? Bad. The battles in the text are very flavorful and have a concept of counters and specific stratagems, but all of this comes down to "Roll Battle and look at the chart!" in the rules.

A simple battle system that falls short of a full war game while still allowing for heroic opportunities in the skirmish mode of the normal system is the goal. Anyone else done any work on this front, or know a good set of rules that would work well with this?

I've never really needed to, since I've never had PCs in command of battles. They've been in or near battles, but never actually making those command rolls.

> I've never had PCs in command of battles.

This. If you're letting PCs control enough forces to warrant a mass Battle roll, then you're probably GMing wrong. PCs aren't supposed to be the ones telling other samurai to do things; that's what the published characters and the GM's own NPCs are for.

You should read this and follow its advice rather than letting your PCs get away with that sort of thing.
>johnwickpresents.com/product/play-dirty/

user, in any other thread I'd tell you off but this is a L5R thread and I'm concerned this is your honest opinion.

how dare those PCs become anything other than menial grunts

Does anyone recall how much of a mess the old AEG forums for the L5R RPG were?

The developers had an "ask the developers to clarify rules and/or errors" thread, but their near-universal answer to everything was "L5R your way," which truly made one wonder what the point of the thread was in the first place.

How would this have played out in Rokugan?

There would be no plane.
They would have cut his head off after arresting him before they even got there.
If Bane was a samurai he might have been offered a chance to commit seppuku and die with his honor intact depending on his lord and his crimes.

Like this: youtube.com/watch?v=wSRylVSfxyw

If it had to play out similarly, the plane scene would be replaced with him pretending to commit seppuku and then completely slaughtering his captors with just the seppuku wakizashi. And then probably burn it all down to hide what really happened and/or fake deaths.

They got so tired of being called their endless errors in Japanese culture and language, errors that could be fixed just by going and visiting Wikipedia or using Google for a day or so, that they basically gave up and stopped trying to be better rather then communicate constructively anymore.

Shame that, but perhaps to be expected.
Being good at something is hard work, being correct is harder, and most people don't have the fortitude for either.

>If you're letting PCs control enough forces to warrant a mass Battle roll, then you're probably GMing wrong. PCs aren't supposed to be the ones telling other samurai to do things; that's what the published characters and the GM's own NPCs are for.

Unless you play this way, John Wick will come to your house dressed in pirate garb, and hit you with a cardboard scythe

Rokugan Your Way isn't exactly new (Although I think it was usually worded more along the lines of "your Rokugan" back before it became a catchphrase). It was always sort of implied. They just made it an official tagline so people would leave them alone.

The world will be an emptier place when he leaves it.
Physically I mean.
Because he's fat.

Yeah, I know most campaigns aren't affected by that sort of thing. Doesn't mean their couldn't be a campaign that sees the players taking command.

>If you're letting PCs control enough forces to warrant a mass Battle roll, then you're probably GMing wrong.

Changing typical game dynamics isn't GM'ing "wrong," it's just different. If you prefer a more guided approach to your games, then that's fine for you, what matters is that everyone has fun.

>PCs aren't supposed to be the ones telling other samurai to do things; that's what the published characters and the GM's own NPCs are for.

:| Okay, maybe in your campaign. Characters can still have higher ups and follow their directives while leading in engagements larger than can be feasibly managed by the skirmish rules. The fact that the current battle rules don't allow for meaningful choices and agency outside of the heroic opportunities isn't a positive feature, even if it doesn't matter for most groups. For those that want to get their Sengoku Jidai on in Rokugan, there might need to be some houserules to keep things fresh, which is all I'm saying.

>You suggest I buy a book

No lol

>rather than letting your PCs get away with that sort of thing.

That's a very adversarial view of the situation. I'd like to get a nice middle ground rule-set of the battle rules precisely because it sounds like an interesting sort of campaign to run.

My current train of thought is towards a war-gamey system of modelling units with base strengths and relative advantages. Battle rolls would serve to bolster units, negate advantages, and so on with various contested rolls. Heroic opportunities would still be semi-random, but based off where the characters were in the war-game, and their results would help either their unit or the whole army depending on what happened. I'll start making up a rules list and post it later when I have something worst posting.

But why did "L5R your way" suddenly extend to ambiguous and/or poorly-written rules upon 4e's release?

Grief, NEA's not a bad namefag, so far's they go. He's just not as toxicly weeb as some of you lot.