New L5R edition beta open

I think I'm retarded. I don't understand the new dice system. Like at all.

Take a deep breath and actually make an effort to understand. Don't just start going "HUH? I DONT GET IT! THIS IS STUPID!" Like a games journalist who can't read the screen during a tutorial.

Good work, user. That'll learn him.

It's true though, half the community who're mad about the new dice aren't going to put any effort into understanding it because they don't want to understand and just want to bitch that they "don't get it."

It's circular. They're creating their own mental block, instead of actually making an effort.

Now if you're not that kind of person, then my bad. Try not to think of it in terms of your standard RPG dice at all. When I was learning Star Wars I thought of it as like generating tokens and it kind of clicked for me after that.

the bigest problem I have with these custom dice is the fact that FFG uses cheap ass injection molded solid colored plastic. I don't want to have by 20 goddamn sets of dice to salt test to find three that don't have any internal flaws, and i don't want to have to consult the chart to find out what the conversion from the dice I know are balanced to the symbols so I can check the chart to find out what all the god damn symbols mean.

But to fix THAT problem, FFG would have to take this open beta, toss the whole thing into the trash, and start over. Or make decent dice. But their custom fucking dice are ALREADY on markup because custom dice, so.... I'm not paying $30 for dice I can only use with ONE FUCKING GAME.

I would have been okay with Roll and Keep or Genysis. I actually really like the FFG dice in Star Wars, and I like that game in general.

This is some hardcore bullshit though. New custom dice that aren't compatible with your brand spanking new universal system, and which we can only use in this game? Not to mention the system itself is just kind of fucking bizarre. It's like a seven step process to interpret a roll.

>It's similar, but at the same time, the Kaiu bring something really unique to the table. A bushi marrying out means that their new lord has a very slightly diversified fighting force. An engineer marrying out means their new lord has the most advanced construction and deconstruction knowledge in the entire nation at his command.

>True. So its probably like shugenja somewhat - they are married outside of the clan, but extra care is taken when doing so.

Tell me more about how considerations for that would work.

It doesn't look that complicated, to be honest. It's a lot to take in but there's a lot that is familiar here to me, from classic L5R to stuff like Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard. I only wish we had gotten all the basic bushi schools to try the system out instead of just a few.

I was actually kind of looking forward to a Genesys version of L5R, the fact that it doesn't use their brand new universal system is both frustrating and worrying.

Worrying in the sense that I feel like they're going to give L5R fuck all for support while they put all their resources into their baby Genesys.

>no ronin pc options

dropped

At least the advice for spending Opportunity and Strife is leagues better than the shit advice they have for Advantage/Threat in Star Wars.

It's kind of weird that they're going with a totaly new system instead of retooling the Star Wars system or using Genysis. The fact that it's trying to incorporate both Roll & Keep & the thematic dice is a disconcerting.

By itself, the thematic dice isn't too bad, resulting is "Yes you succed, and also X" "You failed, however Y" "You succeed, but Z" moments. It just requires more footwork from players & GMs alike.

Its more a hybrid of the two to fix a bunch of the d10 R&K's flaws.

The old systems had a problem where improving your rings was far superior to improving your skills.

>playing a ronin
>not a Shosuro posing as a Ronin

its like you're not even trying user

It's the beta. They outright said they're not putting everything into the beta.

same

I don't know why OP didn't just link to the FFG website, or just the direct like to the fucking PDF.

images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/dc/2f/dc2f92bb-bfd2-4f12-99eb-1d084491de65/l5r00_beta_rulebook.pdf

>the book shills for a paid dice rolling app for when you can't get a hold of their proprietary physical dice

REEEEEEEEEEE

Yeah people are pretty pissed about this even on the FFG forums.

Happy Launch Day Unicorn Clan!!!!!!!!!!!

We've come so far...

Thirded

It's not worth it getting angry over. It is shit, so I will just keep my L5R 4th edition books, thank you very much.

So out of curiosity, what would have not been shit for you without being a cleaned-up copy of 4e?

Make the monkey less powerful and more useful fire spells. Also an insight emphasis for investigation based off awareness.

Most certainly not the "Your character feels this way if you rolled this result" shit.
>telling players how the character feels
>good idea
Pick one.

Another thing would be to change the setting to be better. The second day of thunder with the reincarnation of Shinsei, really?
Also, get rid of the Spider. It's shit.

Strife actually does not tell you how your character feels, it tells you that your character feels at all or rather how close they are to lose Face for an instant.

An Outburst can be a frustrated sigh, taking a moment to compose yourself, a jubilant cry, full on rage or whatever. That is still up to the player to decide. The only thing Strife does is encourage the player think about their character's emotional landscape at all.

So, being a cleaned up copy of 4e.

>tfw FFG brought edition wars to L5R

That's still something I should decide on my own, not have dictated to me by the dice. It's basically just a cheap way to make you breach etiquette and not be honorable because I got unlucky with my rolls.

>The only thing Strife does is encourage the player think about their character's emotional landscape at all.
It more than encourages it, it forces it.

I'm going to actually play the game before I start houseruling shit, because it looks like there's a good number of ways to avoid or negate Strife accumulation so it might not end up being such a huge deal in actual play, but if it becomes an issue I might just scrap that whole Composure system and treat Strife symbols like Threat in Star Wars.

True perhaps, but that is a general thing they are going for, emulating samurai fiction. The whole bit about your ninjo and giri is serving the same purpose.

Fact is, some players have trouble with making sub-optimal decisions in service of the themes of the story. What Strife, ninjo and giri do is put these things front-and-centre to ensure the game's theming. Without these mechanics there is nothing that would encourage a player to not be an emotionless samurai robot that keeps perfect Face all day, every day.

In an ideal world you would have players who willingly steer their characters from one pit of drama to the next, delighting in their suffering and the exciting stories that ensue, but not all players ever reach that level.

That's going to mess with a lot of stuff. As some schools are about modifying strife.

You can always choose to leave the scene rather than breach etiquette and it doesn't force you to act dishonourably.

>implying there's something wrong about playing a character who is much, much better at pokerfacing than other characters in 90% of the scenes
I mean, if you want the game to play my character for me, go right ahead, Stife is exactly what you need for it. But I'll have no part in it, I like playing My characters My way.

>implying you can leave the party behind if you try to hunt but get a success and the ShitStrife
It's not just for social situations, user.

Forthed

Pokerfacing is a learned skill, not just something you choose to do freely.
If you want to avoid strife, keep dice that lack it and get the mitigation options.

>It's not just for social situations, user.

And the book expressly says that strife is combat isn't really a bad thing (Like getting angry in a fight increases damage dealt and taken) and is culturally acceptable.

You also choose which dice to keep (It IS roll and keep). You don't have to keep strife unless you want to say, benefit from Fire as your stance or you've rolled nothing but 'Success + Strife'. In addition, void stance means you don't gain strife from strife results on the dice AND water stance reduces strife by 2 every turn.

Having a stressplosion seems to really only happen if you go out of your way to use Fire Stance (Since it treats stress results as also successes) like crazy or if someone is actively aggravating it (Like a Scorpion Courtier)

>implying there's something wrong about playing a character who is much, much better at pokerfacing than other characters in 90% of the scenes

Oh hey, there is a stat for that. It is called Composure. Much like how, for example, ranks in Theology tell you how knowledgeable your character is about religion and myths, this tells you how good their power face is. It is not even that hard to raise, being fed by both Earth and Fire.

>I mean, if you want the game to play my character for me, go right ahead.
It isn't though. Unless you count "failing a test" and such things that are commonplace in RPGs as "playing your character".
Strife only tells you that emotional load is starting to pile on your character. Just how a failed Courtesy roll tells you that you made a blunder at court or a failed Martial Arts roll tells you that you missed the swing. In either case you could bring up the argument that "making blunders at court" or "missing a vital swing" are not what your awesome character would do, but that is the kind of stuff that RPG gamers have dealt with since its inception.

>keep dice that lack it and get the mitigation options
I'll do something better. I won't get their snowflake dice and let those who enjoy it keep the shit contained in their groups.

>Strife only tells you that emotional load is starting to pile on your character
>implying someone else gets to decide how my character feels about something
We already went over this user.

If I am fighting someone and have the possibility to choose between success+strife and failure, then I have to take success+stife, if I want my character to succeed.

But if in a determined situation my character wouldn't care one bit about the fighting she's doing, the shitstrife would be something that takes over my character for me. I do not like that.

Okay, but tell me how that is different from failing a Skill test? If you have a very set view of your character, both of those things can cause dissonance with how you envision your character and what the dice say they actually do. Or what is so different about the dice saying that in this particular instance at least you were more emotional than you expected to be versus the dice saying that you were not as well-educated, strong or unreadable as you thought?

I rather like the new strife system. It does a lot to help give courtiers something they can mechanically interact with.

Something else I've noticed is that it seems like every single samurai will be able to fight to some degree, since the ring for fighting is something you can pick.

In the same vein as you don't make etiquette roll for every kenjutsu or attack roll you make, which is what shitstrife amounts to. "You feel this way so strongly that you lose your ON, even briefly. Minor breach etiquette"

Please tell me you're fucking kidding.

>implying they couldn't before
It's called Etiquette, read up on it sometime.

>But if in a determined situation my character wouldn't care one bit about the fighting she's doing, the shitstrife would be something that takes over my character for me. I do not like that.

If you are impassive to the situation, why are you not in Void stance? Since that's the stance for being emotionally detached from stuff (And doesn't gain strife from rolls)

I know how it worked before. I think Strife works better as a whole, as etiquette before was almost entirely just 'Make an opposed roll, if you fail then do something that breaches etiquette and it's unlikely you'll win against a courtier'.

Have you noticed just how many strife results you'd need to actually have any form of emotional outburst? Unless you utterly tanked both Earth and Fire, it's rather a lot (Especially when 2/5 stances are about reducing your current strife/not getting more of it. You need to be gaining 3 strife every single turn to have any net gain if you are in water stance. Directly interacting with your phobia is 3 strife.)

Etiquette was very all or nothing, which I don't really like.

You did not actually refute my point in any way. We were talking about the dice and how they impact what our characters do and how well they do it, which can create a dissonance between what you think your character is like and what the dice say they are like. This is something that has been a central part of non-freeform RPGs since their beginning. There has always been a degree of navigating necessary there and rolling with the punches.

Besides, emotions are arguably one of things that make the most sense to randomly adjudicate. A character who is an Olympic weightlifter failing a simple Strength test is silly, but possible if the dice truly abandon the player. Emotions are somewhat more inscrutable than your muscle mass.

>That's still something I should decide on my own, not have dictated to me by the dice.

How you handle things emotionally has been handled by the dice for editions at this point. I mean, did you see the rules in 4e for fear checks? Or how a lot of courtier schools can force you to do/reveal stuff?

>complain about dice telling your character how it feels
>in a game that has had an entire basic character archetype based around making people feel certain ways since the first edition

I’m not even saying the game is good, but goddamn some of you people are retarded.

More on point, at first glance there are good and bad things. Roll and keep was extremely busted in that there were black on white right ways to build a character. Some weapons were better than others. Some techniques of the same ranks were just objectively better (SAAs in particular). Rings were better than skills even with mastery abilities added. Range did nothing.

I’m kind of digging a lot of the combat changes and the Ring/Skill stuff is sort of interesting. Except... fuck proprietary dice, particularly when YOU ALREADY HAVE A UNIVERSAL SYSTEM USING DIFFERENT PROPRIETARY DICE YOU MISERABLE FUCKS! Also, the schools feel really barebones and a lot of the cool stuff has been stripped. Then again, this is just a beta. But yeah, it’s sort of what I expected. They weren’t going to use the classic system, and it was fairly obvious the game would end up getting more open and less restrictive in terms of characters.

While this means characters might feel more same-y, it also seems like creating a beast build in one area is less of a problem.

Oddly enough, I rather like the schools being more bare bones. You get a single unique trick that fits you and another one if you cap it out but how you build your character is more up to you. Everyone can fight decently, so it's not 'Here is the guys who get to do stuff in combat, here are the guys who go hide'.

The death of Simple Action Attacks is wonderful. I mean, this edition lets me 'Walk' AND 'Attack' in the same turn by default.

Yeah. I think you're mostly right. I'm actually curious about how the rings/skills will now work - hopefully it will avoid the issue of having dump stats, or some stats always being more valuable. The school thing I am sort of disappointed in but we'll have to see.

The dice just seem like a half-assed compromise, but also with having to pay for new dice.

Also, katanas are no longer god weapons, and it’s cool that blunting edges is now a mechanic.

>Yeah. I think you're mostly right. I'm actually curious about how the rings/skills will now work - hopefully it will avoid the issue of having dump stats, or some stats always being more valuable.

I do rather like the 'Any stat can line up with any skill' part. Helps unshackle it from 'Social characters are always air heavy'.

I love that weapons have, you know, reach values. So you can have the guy with his naginata actually stab a guy from further away than the sword.

Kusarigamas look mean as hell as a 1-3 range weapon.

Let's make the game more down to earth they said. It will be great, they said.

Regarding the yet-another-set-of-proprietary-dice, I guarantee there will be free rollers online by the end of next week.

I don't think reach is actually that important, since everyone can move 2 range for free. I guess if you're a few steps from a cliff it would be important, but on an empty field, they can always step back or forwards to get in range.

Also, spears and kusarigamas are no longer shit!

Kind of wish the rings had more of an impact in combat, but whatever. At least it’s less monobuild now, and duellists aren’t forced to invest in like a million stats and still be mostly useless in “real” combat.

I rather like the simpler schools too. Schools are as far as I've gotten, so I could be wrong on this, but do the Togashi no longer have superpower tatttoos? If that's the case I'll be sad.

Hopefully in the full game there will be a lot more techniques and abilities that play with small reach differences more. I love the image of yari wielding samurai and always hated how shit they were in previous editions.

I always liked the idea of ronin with peasant weapons, so now that the weapons no longer suck I just have to hope that de-emphasising schools means ronin don’t suck as many dicks as before.

It's decently handy if it's not a flat field, you've got a friend who can hand out slowing/immobilise/prone effects or if you are a Phoenix (That level 6 for them is hilarious, turning you in a D&D 4e fighter and locking every guy down.)

It's not the be all and end all but it's pretty nice.

They do, though they work rather differently. They pick a tatoo (Each one has an associated skill) to channel at any given time and it gives them bonuses on rolls for that skill. The level 6 allows them to supercharge them until becoming godly with that skill.

A lot of the 'Breath fire' sorts of stuff was folded into Kiho (Which are a lot better now) so all monks can do it but Togashi become superhumanly good with the stuff their tatoos helps with.

The ronin 'school' ability that the robin in the back of the book has (School of the Wolf) is a gigantic bag of amazing dicks. If you would be hit by an attack, you can spend a void to instead have it hit someone (other than the attacker themself) in 0-1 of you. Either you are a asshole who's good at human shields or you can jackie chan your way through a fight.

If you look at the example adventure there's a named ronin character with a ronin technique. It lets you spend a void to redirect an attack made against you to any nearby character, which seems incredibly useful for when you're outnumbered.

>tfw the Lion’s Pride manages to decimate itself as a bumbling ronin who want no trouble makes them all cut each other down. While holding a baby and standing on a ladder

Kiho having most of the "monk-magic" makes sense to me. Have they gotten rid of stuff like the Centipede tat, which lets you run super-duper fast or the phoenix one that basically lets you respawn?

That I've seen, yeah. Though, this IS just the beta (And only one school uses Kiho right now) so I'm fully expecting them to turn back up again later as Kiho.

Cool, I would have assumed the same had they not been in the beta, but knowing that they're there is a relief. Would have been a big departure from one of my favourite Families.

Does anyone find the XP reward guidelines a bit generous? 2 XP per hour seems like a lot to me. 1 night of gaming is anywhere from 3 to 6 hours of actual game, so likely anywhere from 6 to 12 points a night equals (likely, but I'm not sure) a ring or skill up every night. Perhaps I'm just stingy.

There is no duel anymore. They gutted iaijutsu, Duel to first strike is literally "Duel until one of you get knockout lul"

But that's wrong you retard.

>Requirements: At the end of each round, if a character succeeded on an Attack check targeting their enemy that dealt 1 or more damage, this objective is completed.

I think you mean till first blood. It's literally fine because health isn't meat points anymore.

True, They are calling To First blood, to first strike is a pratice duel.
>A standard Rokugani duel of honor between two aggrieved parties,
if such a thing exists, is to first blood. Again, simply drawing blood first
is not always enough to ensure a win in the eyes of the judges, though it is at
least an obvious sign that a strike occurred and an indication of its efficacy.
>Requirements: At the end of each round, if either character is Incapacitated,
this objective is completed.
Yeah, and if consider how many turns can happen in a duel, i would found strange if they are using iaijutsu, specially now that you have to buy a kata to be able to do it.

I for one am glad that

1) No school gets a direct bonus to dueling
2) Dueling is now an actual fight instead of some teleporting weebshit.

It's almost as if a duel to the blood only requires that you hit someone with your fucking sword.
Teh SHOCK! Teh HORROR! How dare your dice dictate that my character be cut, REEE FFG narratardist ROLLplay! #notmuhweeaboofightangamez

On the 4th ed, that is what a Rokugan duel is literally, first to strike wins, unless is to the death or the first strike miss(unlikely). You didnt even needed to do damage, so heavy armor wouldnt affect duels. You could spend raise to cut only clothes of the opponents or his hair, now to do that shit you need to do a critical strike and be able to reduce the severity to 0.

Buying a kata to do it is better than buying a skill, I think. You're either a trained duelist or you aren't, and the difference is really just that you can draw and slash in the same quick motion. Everything else is down to real combat skill.

yeah it was gay. it made proper duelists shitty warriors by nature of the iaijutsu skill costing XP and using awareness and void primarily, which are not bushi stats.

The way i see it is just less depth or one minigame less. They should have put Clashes and Duel together or get rid of the clash mention. A duel is any 1x1 anyway.

>It's literally fine because health isn't meat points anymore
>implying it was before
Summer's already passed

Did you not see the death spiral? Yeah, L5R 4e was very much a game where health was meat points, as any hit impairs your ability to keep functioning.

Then why do people call HP from D&D meat points, exactly?

That one, I'm not really sure. Since you work 100% fine until you actually fall down.

So an air based character buys Crescent Moon Style and use guard, if he get 1 opportunity dice he can counterstrike anyone and enemies will have at least 4TN to be able to strike him down. If its a duel he will use center and have 5TN, possibly more due to bonus sucess. Toughts?

The way I understood it, meat points was a derogative against that being 100% fine from D&D.

>I’m not even saying the game is good, but goddamn some of you people are retarded.
Reminder that 1E simply let the GM roll for NPC social skills against PCs and force them to act if they could not resist with another social skill or risking Honor. This was a corebook gameplay example.

The argument on whether D&D hit points are "meat" points or not is old (it's still refought in /osrg/ now and then, for instance) though it's more or less accepted that they aren't. Something closer would be hit points in BRP games, Call of Cthulhu and similar, that while not having L5R style death spirals have a much closer connection between HP and a character's physical wellbeing.

Oddly enough, my understanding is the opposite (That D&D hit points are not meat points because you are fine until you fall down) and the derogative nature is mostly about people who assume that it's just 'I'm that meaty' that lets a barbarian get stabbed in the face 20 times.

Wizards of the Coast did it first,

There weren't really edition wars for that version. L5R fans knew it was bad, many 3.0 fans knew it was bad, and then 3.5 came out and made it completely obsolete.
2e and the d20 conversion it had stapled to it were both bad, so few people argued about them.
I dunno where this edition will stand, but before it was pretty clearly 4>=1>3>2>d20

I would outright just say 1/3/4 are fine, ignore the rest.