Legend of the Five Rings General: Totally Not Necromancers Edition

Well they're probably more defensively powerful than pure offensively and I figure can maybe negate go home effects when on the back foot or something.

Dragon: [Clothing Optional]

An Ikoma scout. It's card art.

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I wasn't sure I'd be real keen on lion but the spoiler makes them look super fun.

Waiting on Phoenix week before settle on my allegiance.

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How rare are void shugenja? Would having two void shugenja in one party be an odds-defying occurrence?

Incredibly. There generally only a few dozen alive at any given moment. Also watch out a few Void spells are very degenerate in play. I have a Rank 2 Void shugenja in my game and he can basically make any Lore skill roll at 10k10 + four or five raises after throwing about three or four spells. Shit is insane. He doesn't even have to burn a void to get skilled in the Lore as the fucker took Sage.

Extreme rarity, but possibly not odds-defying to have two in one party. They all should know each other, or at least be aware of each other. They're also pretty independent by samurai standards. So having two of them working together for some void-oriented goal isn't that implausible. If they don't have some goal related to their special nature, it'd probably be fate and destiny making them come together. Or it could be both, of course.

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For most of the setting, they're very rare and almost all trained by the Phoenix (Because nobody else has the knowhow and the Phoenix usually offer big returns in exchange for the voidy), although around when the Colonies come into play, Void shugenjas start becoming common enough that the Phoenix can't nab them all and the other schools start to develop curriculums for it.
There are no mechanics for this change in the status quo, and non-Isawa trained ishiken still need to hit rank 2 before they can actually learn any void spells.

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Bene Gesserit breeding program.

>Would having two void shugenja in one party be an odds-defying occurrence?
Less than some might think, particularly in the modern AEG era, after Phoenix stopped strongarming the other clans into giving up their void shugenja as much / couldn't police the number of void shugenja that were appearing / other clans reached a critical mass of knowledge to teach their own void shugenja from the few they had kept over a thousand years.

Plus, even though there's low chance for shugenja among the total population, they cluster. You'll find abso-fucking-lutely none in just about every dirt farming peasant village or bushi dojo, but when you find a clan shugenja in a clan shugenja library, there's going to be more than just one working alone.

>I have a Rank 2 Void shugenja in my game and he can basically make any Lore skill roll at 10k10 + four or five raises after throwing about three or four spells
... but to do that, he has to blow through 3-4 spell slots. OTOH, a Brotherhood monk can manage 7k6 on all Lore rolls all day erry day. with just 3 Int, Sage, one Fire kiho, and a 7xp ancestor.

So I'm currently writing up an adventure for my group. I'm the forever GM (but it's okay, I actually like it) but this is my first time doing samurai stuff.

So my idea is that through a convoluted series of manipulations, a cabal of Scorpion with little upward mobility manage to put a young inexperienced teen as the daimyo of the Bayushi. The idea is to have an easily manipulated puppet. Except he turns out to be anything but. Yeah, he's still incompetent as shit, but he's that special brand of incompetent where he doesn't know it and refuses to listen to reason. So instead of a puppet they can use to further their own plans, they've placed a stubborn fucking moron who soon proves to be completely fucking insane on the most powerful seat in the Clan. And what's worse, due to their manipulations, the dude actually has backers.

Due to their complex relationship with duty and loyalty to the Clan, even the Scorpions who realize the dude is a fucking assclown can't really do much unless they want to risk a civil war and the Scorpion imploding when the other Great Clans pounce on them. And assassinating the guy is too public and too risky, not to mention that it would most likely lead to the loyalists nailing people to the ghost trees for treason. So the Bayushi relations with the other families decline, the rest of the Empire gets even worse, and shit's looking like it's about to explode.

Basically, the plan by the original conspirators is to invite the party to court and hope this somehow leads to the crazy daimyo either getting killed (or at least put in a situation where they can do it themselves and pass it off that way) or going too far even for his own supporters.

More or less, court shenanigans where the head honcho is fucking nuts, and even the "good guys" want you dead. Probability of duels and straight fighting high as well.

Yay or nay?

There's a distinct problem here. The Bayushi daimyo is the clan champion. The clan champion has a very simple test to confirm their legitimacy. They pick up the celestial sword of the Scorpion from a room of dozens of exact copies, and they don't die by choosing incorrectly, because the legit champion can see which one is the real sword. When the champion dies, the sword returns to this room, where magic keeps them clean and swaps their positions regularly.

>Bayushi Joffery in control of the Scorpion

Id like to see that just for the schadenfreude

Cheating. Or there's an exception due to extenuating circumstances. Or something something magic.

Well it's the scorpions we are talking about, so cheating may as well count as legit winning... as long as nobody finds out.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of the Centauri emperor in Babylon 5.

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Scorpions trick and deceive everyone, but the truth of the Champion being a lie would bring up questions about what a good, loyal Scorpion would do if ever finding out.

And Scorpion are really good at finding out secrets in their special way.

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I used to enjoy L5R fictions, in the Iuchiban era most notably, but I think I stopped caring when they went to the Ivory Kingdoms and !NotKali invaded to get btfo by Daigotsu.
On the gaming side, last I recall is FFG announcing they'll redo it. So how is this "Living Card Game®" sounding to you ? I've never got one, I just heard they're somewhat cheaper than MTG style distribution as all cards are fixed, is that the case ?

Its a complete reset to before the scorpion coup a few minor to moderate changes so far. I figure we are in for Day of Thunder II: The Second Second Thundering but the path there amd where we go after might look very different. I hope they have better long term plans for the Dragon and if they bring the Nothing back it is more well executed than the hot mess of the Hidden Emperor era.

Also hoping for less choose your own tournament win results and more planned "if x faction wins y happens" that players can't fuck with. That shit was part of why the story went off the rails

You didn't like the Nezumi stuff? I mean, it was totally in line with the established setting and was totally not someone just trolling the community by making the dumbest choice he could.

Also, part of the problem was the fact that whoever won or lost, the design teams clearly had their own agenda. Because the Spider and Mantis sure as shit didn't win every event, but they somehow came out on top all the time anyway.

The hidden emperor era, worse than any era after, was a fucking mess. You can argue about story quality dipping down later but at least it didn't later on have to be retconned as the endless series of contradictory events happening due to lack of editorial control being a feature of time itself fraying

>Its a complete reset to before the scorpion coup
Wow, that takes us way back. And yes, as much as I loved some parts of the fluff, some were really badly executed.
Thanks for the info, I'll keep an eye on it.

Bampu

But what if every champion till now was a trickster, and the essence of the scorpions chapion it to be one, would't that mean that the truth of the champion would be a lie and vice versa ? What if the champion makes tha blade and the first time they use them they go like "what what the fuck, it wasn't supposed to do that" and jsut try to keep their act together,

>part of the problem was the fact that whoever won or lost, the design teams clearly had their own agenda

Wasn't just that. Like the race for the throne had weird as fuck "if x clan wins, clan which is in y spot on the liat gets dissolved" and the Scorpion players threw it to avoid fucking the Dragon over. And player directed win results. I can't stress that enough since it means you have to bend over backwards to some extent for the writers rather than having a preset if so and so wins, so and so character we have already decided gets a boost. The first tournament for FFG is confirmed to have a story reward, probably for the now vacant Emerald Champion position. Hopefully the actual character who gets it for any given clan is decided beforehand preventing say a Lion who wins demanding their rando Akodo Gunso or Kitsu shugenja they won with being the newly crowned EC.

So while we're on the subject of tournament winnings determining story, was the decision to go "well, fuck the Toturi immediately" a story team decision or a player decision? Because while I wasn't a huge fan of a Lion imperial family, the entire fucking dynasty collapsing almost immediately in order to bring about a fucking retarded storyline was even dumber.

>and the Scorpion players threw it to avoid fucking the Dragon over
The sad part of this is, getting hit by the RFTT "loss" would have been a good thing for the Dragon. Doubly so (triply so) considering the story team never really had a "thing" for the Dragon after 2DoT, and minding the Spider was fucking shite. Better than putting Iweko on the throne, too. So many people looked at it as a finality, when in truth it was being disbanded, but also a massive amount of story time on a platter, then a return to being a great clan. Doing that to the Spider was not the smartest move.

>was the decision to go "well, fuck the Toturi immediately" a story team decision or a player decision?
The story team clearly had something in the wings when the rest of the Toturi siblings died off in short order with no heirs. That was on them.

>considering the story team never really had a "thing" for the Dragon
Well, to be fair, they didn't really have a "thing" for most of the clans. Honestly, how many of them were actually portrayed as actually important to the plot?

You think FFG has realized this and made plans for it or will they be blindsided too?

Not even talking about "important to the plot" - the Dragon struggled to form a clan identity or clan duty that didn't revolve around Togashi's goal of using the entire empire to kick Fu Leng's ass a second time. That was all he did for a thousand years. Once it was done and he was dead, it was really tough to fill those shoes and that purpose with something else. No other clan had that problem, because their duty was more direct, and their Kami either was still sticking around but no biggie (Phoenix), or died long ago.

Take that from the metatextual and make it literal in universe and that in and of itself could have been a good plot to explore honestly. The Dragon quest for identity as a people

Would the Emperor ever hold Imperial Winter Court at one of the Lion strongholds?

Can and has. Every clan has hosted the Emperor at least once, even the Crab though when the Emperor picks them it is usually to soft punish someone be it his court or the Crab themselves

That said, I've been trying to figure out a place that hasn't hosted the Emperor's Imperial Winter Court yet for the next campaign arc.

They did that. It wasn't great.

In the 1000+ years that Rokugan has been around, there has been at least one emperor in each Kyuden. If it's not a kyuden, it's not fit to host an imperial winter court.

Every place that can host an imperial winter court is called a kyuden / palace. Not all kyuden are actually capable, (ie; Kyuden Kitsune) but everywhere that is officially sanctioned for hosting has already done so at some point, unless it was built recently.

I hope they keep the Kolat, The Merchant's Guide to Rokugan is one of my favourite RPG books.

Are only the Emperor's (or Empress's) direct family allowed to keep the family name? Aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. join the cadet or other imperial families?

The current emperor's kids keep the name. When an heir takes the throne, all the others are moved to the Otomo family.

Only the Emperor themselves and the heir designate. Other siblings join one of the others, usually Otomo rarely Seppun and never Miya at least so far.

Otomo Jama was the younger brother and he renounced his name to be an Otomo before his brother was crowned yet.

You would think it could have been decent. Bad writers or bad ideas being pushed by the kotei wins?

>Bad writers or bad ideas being pushed by the kotei wins?
Both, plus the fact that this isn't Legend Of The Dragon Clan to let them focus on it for a length of time that would make it coherent and well fleshed out. The memories of when they sent the monks into the empire, etc. and when watching the Spider (/sucking, because the Spider have plot armour on being naughty) became the official Dragon clan duty are a bit mixed, too.

Heaven's Net was the turning point where I stopped giving a shit what the Dragon did in-story, looking back.

I saw some talk about a high IR campaign in the previous thread and that got me thinking. Would a high IR campaign be too easy for the player characters?

>Would a high IR campaign be too easy for the player characters?
Depends on what you want to do, and whether the GM goes full Dynasty Warriors with hordes of mooks.

Being Dragon Clan is suffering I guess. Good thing I like Crane. At least we get purpose. What do you think FFG might do to keep the Dragon relevant after Togashi is inevitably gone.

So what's your favorite card previewed for any faction so far? I'm torn between Kakita 'Send Your Whole Army Home, Fampai' Kaezin or the Kitsu Spirit Caller who lets you do literal deck necromancy with putting characters into play for one conflict at no cost and then putting them back into your live draw deck rather than the discard pile again.

Dude forgot to die his beard

Do we know what the deck building rules are yet?

Not too well. 40-45 cards per deck, and we do know the rules about how to use another faction's conflict cards but if there's going to be some special other rules out there I haven't seen anything to that effect.

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>Being Dragon Clan is suffering I guess.
Mostly not that bad. L5R has a certain grognardia as the story is a big part of it, and story + time = change. Not always for the subjective better. This was pretty much explained to me outright when I started playing the CCG - and that was near the start of Diamond, when an even older, groggier group was losing members to change. I thought I'd be different.

The Scorpion did not throw the Race. AEG fucked over them by making the last leg a popularity contest worth quadruple the points of any other leg. Since the Spider stood to be "eliminated" by the Dragon winning the playerbase went anti-Spider. Had the last leg been worth "normal" points the Scorpion had it sewed up.

>First Story Prize is Emerald Championship

Going to be a bit hard with it being a 2 clans/1 deck thing.

>I figure we are in for Day of Thunder II: The Second Second Thundering but the path there and where we go after might look very different.
If we get another Hidden Emperor, I hope there's no Honourable Dragon Movement to pull Hitomi back from the edge, and we get a Dragon villain done well.

Has there ever been a villainous Phoenix who wasn't just ARGHBLARGH FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE CORRUPTION MAHOU?

Not a Phoenix Player but my understanding is yes.
Normal insane by powerful Magic are possible.
Both Isawa Sezaru and to a lesser extend Shiba Mirabu had it with the last wish.
Also just normal angry revenge can happen, for example the Crane Shugenja family founder just went around exploding village because he was pissed.
in the 4ed core book, the Shiba guy is also trying to start a war.

On a scale of 1-10, how badly do you thing FFG will fuck up the new RPG?

Nah, since one clan is your primary even if you're running like Lion/unicorn and won it'd be a Lion win

Depends how close they let Fischer get. He's the special dice guy but he's also busy running their entire Star Wars line.

Doesn't FFG own RnK now? It seems like a waste if they just shelve the mechanical system that was, correct me if I'm wrong here, invented for L5R and made L5R.

Honestly, not too bad. L5R has always mostly been a setting and fluff game, with the mechanics hovering around "broken but passable". It'd be hard to introduce something more broken than what already existed, or to fuck up the system much worse than a game in which a majority of weapons, combat skills, school techniques and whatnot are useless.

Depends if they stay on RnK or decide to use special dices.
But I wonder what they'll add to it to justify the new edition, if I remember 4th was mostly about covering any era you wish, and didn't change much from 3rd.

Storytime!

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