FlatlineAskari
*feline scrutiny*
- Location
- Elsewhere
- Pronouns
- Any
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Glory of the Emerald Empire (Legend of the 5 Rings Quest)
- Thread starter Winged Knight
- Start date
- Fantasy
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
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Cannongerbil
I came here to nep at you
- Location
- Soviet Lunar Base
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Fu Leng: Begone with you, tempter! This is my Empire, and I will not tolerate your presence within it!
Sirrocco
Pedantic
That is, admittedly, creepy - and the degree of coordination almost suggests sockpuppetry.
...and, back to our regularly scheduled Rokugan...
Wow. That was kind of intense. Kind of curious how the Heimen feel about this whole thing.
I imagine word will get around.
Might help us out a bit. Might not. Can't hurt.
Matsu Benka likely isn't going to be getting particularly good service in the future, though.
[x] gman
...and, back to our regularly scheduled Rokugan...
Wow. That was kind of intense. Kind of curious how the Heimen feel about this whole thing.
I imagine word will get around.
Might help us out a bit. Might not. Can't hurt.
Matsu Benka likely isn't going to be getting particularly good service in the future, though.
[x] gman
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
*clears throat*
Well, Heinem and common villagers responds well to compassion, so probably we have gained some glory here from their part, which is good because they know now there's a Crab samurai out there who treats "half-people" and "no-people" kindly.
So yeah, this will have a positive impact whenever we go from now on.
On regarding Benka... he's hating our guts for now, mostly because of the alcohol effects. We basically saved some of his face there when speaking the truth, so even if he doesn't openly says "thank you", he probably will take that into consideration.
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Nope. However, you may or may not earn Advantages and Disadvantages through your actions in the Quest. That won't be especially common, though.
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
I'm pretty sure that Benka is goign to keep hating our guts. He's pretty clearly not the most rational of people. We are basically the only person here that he can meaningfully blame for the (obviously going to be negative) outcome other than himself - and he doesn't seme the sort to acknowledge that he himself might be to blame for his problems. It's *possible* that his boss will be able to hammer home to him that no, it really is all his own fault, and by this manage to actually change his approach to things, but I wouldn't bet too much on it.
That's okay though. If he hates us for no good reason, then all he can do is come after us while behaving dishonorably (as, indeed, his coming after us is dishonorable in and of itself). I guarantee that he doesn't have our skill with words, and we can defend ourselves honorably. Being attacked dishonorably while behaving honorably yourself and also winning the courtier side of the battle (and as we're crab, we also get more leeway here) is a pretty effective way to pick up glory/honor/reputation.
That having been said, we *might* want to start investing in our combat stats again.
That's okay though. If he hates us for no good reason, then all he can do is come after us while behaving dishonorably (as, indeed, his coming after us is dishonorable in and of itself). I guarantee that he doesn't have our skill with words, and we can defend ourselves honorably. Being attacked dishonorably while behaving honorably yourself and also winning the courtier side of the battle (and as we're crab, we also get more leeway here) is a pretty effective way to pick up glory/honor/reputation.
That having been said, we *might* want to start investing in our combat stats again.
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
Agreed.
Perhaps going for Iajutsu? Because if he wants to go hot-blooded and pick us for a fight, perhaps having some points on dueling...
Perhaps going for Iajutsu? Because if he wants to go hot-blooded and pick us for a fight, perhaps having some points on dueling...
Sirrocco
Pedantic
No. Iajutsu is hugely wasteful - it burns points on a particular style of dueling that we're never going to be very good at, and that we can generally get away without using. We have enough social skill that we can attack with words when necessary. If they challenge us, we can (and should) insist on full armor and weapon of choice - at which point we just start whaling on them with our testubo. It may give us a bit of a glory/honor hit for being horribly disrespectful, but we get a discount on that for "he's a Crab". If we're driven far enough by our rage that we must attack, and words are not enough, then we're whipping out the testubo and attacking with it anyway. It's one of the nice things about being a standard type. We're an enormous Hida Bushi with a club. That's what we are. It's what people expect of us. We also have some social skill on the side, which helps us navigate this stuff, but we don't *need* to move into being anything else that we're not in order to fit in and do reasonably well. Anyway, most of our important fights are likely to be with the filth of the shadowlands. That's really what we should be focusing our points on.
Pertinent combat stats, and what we have in them currently:
Reflexes: 2 (makes us harder to hit. Also gives us an Air ring, for what that's worth (initiative?). Good investment now)
Earth: 3 (stamina 3, willpower 3) (more HP, more armored skin once we get up a rank, and the willpower helps us keep control of brash. A good investment in the long-term, but more expensive than it's worth for right now)
Agility: 3 (extra kept dice on hit rolls are nice. Not worth it just yet, though.)
Strength: 2 (extra rolled dice on damage are nice. Also helps with the knockdown thing once we get that going. Medium-term)
Void: 2 (Another shot of "and I'll ignore *that* 10 damage, too" is always nice. Another raise slot could be useful. Not worth just yet purely from a combat standpoint, but could well be a good immediate pick overall, given its benefits in out-of-combat stuff)
Defense: 3 (only useful when fighting defensively, and we have plenty for that)
Heavy Weapons: 4 (another rolled die to hit is useful. Expensive for what it is aside from the mastery benefit. If we're getting this, we should also get the point of strength pretty soon.)
Battle: 2 (we might want to bump this up to 3 on our way back to Crab lands. We're not all that likely to run into a full-scale battle before then, but once we arrive, that could chance. Not a huge priority)
Some Kata Or Other: ??? (we'll want a kata at some point. Getting more than one is pretty much a waste for us, though, and they're gated by your rings, so waiting isn't a terrible idea.)
So, basically, the reasonable combat-pertinent things to invest in right now look like Reflexes, Void, maybe Strength, if Strength then maybe Heavy Weapons, and a kata if we find one that we like and don't have one that we want more than requires rings we don't have.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Out of curiosity, what are the Katas we might be interested in?
Sirrocco
Pedantic
There was a discussion about that waaay back - I think when we got the major dump of exp after gempukku. Could have been a bit later. Let me go check....
- kata cost exp equal to the mastery rank, and provide no insight
Do we have durations for any of these? Does anyone who has the books see any others we might want that would make it worth waiting? Possibly higher-ranked earth kata?
There was some confusion in the earlier discussion. Kata qualification was either ring rank or ring rank + school rank. Does anyone know which it is for this version? Given our tendencies, we'll probably want an Earth kata. If it's just ring rank, then we qualify for 3s, and might eventually get to 4. If it's ring + school, then we qualify for 4, will qualify for 5 in a while, and might eventually get to 6 or 7. Assuming that higher-mastery kata tend to be better, that's a notable difference in how likely it is that one fo these two would be the right choice.
Worth noting that Strike as the Avalanche has no effect on the knockdown roll - it's essentially just +1 unkept damage die.
- kata cost exp equal to the mastery rank, and provide no insight
a couple of decent options were presented.
Do we have durations for any of these? Does anyone who has the books see any others we might want that would make it worth waiting? Possibly higher-ranked earth kata?
There was some confusion in the earlier discussion. Kata qualification was either ring rank or ring rank + school rank. Does anyone know which it is for this version? Given our tendencies, we'll probably want an Earth kata. If it's just ring rank, then we qualify for 3s, and might eventually get to 4. If it's ring + school, then we qualify for 4, will qualify for 5 in a while, and might eventually get to 6 or 7. Assuming that higher-mastery kata tend to be better, that's a notable difference in how likely it is that one fo these two would be the right choice.
Worth noting that Strike as the Avalanche has no effect on the knockdown roll - it's essentially just +1 unkept damage die.
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Usually it's the school+ring rank.
And I personally feel that The Strength of the Earth is not worth it in the slightest, we lose speed which hey is always so so for a minor increase in Armor. But attack scales exponentially in this game, unless we manage to get something like 40 Armor we're still going to get tagged regularly and putting them down quickly takes precedent.
And I personally feel that The Strength of the Earth is not worth it in the slightest, we lose speed which hey is always so so for a minor increase in Armor. But attack scales exponentially in this game, unless we manage to get something like 40 Armor we're still going to get tagged regularly and putting them down quickly takes precedent.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
errr. As I drew up my own PC for a thing, 25 armor TN is pretty good for a starting character, or so I've been told. (Hida Crab, uses an Ono rolls 6k4 for damage 
) And since Souske is still insight 1 (i think) he isn't going to be facing down legions of sharkfaces in the near future. We still haven't even made it to Dragon lands yet.
) And since Souske is still insight 1 (i think) he isn't going to be facing down legions of sharkfaces in the near future. We still haven't even made it to Dragon lands yet.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Scales exponentially? How do you mean? The scaling seems pretty close to linear to me. 6k6 is pretty much double 3k3, with some extra bell curve. 8k4 is admittedly somewhat better than twice 4k2, but not hugely so.
Also, it's worth noting that defense is one of those things that gets better the more you have of it. going from "always gets hit" to "gets hit 9 times in 10" isn't nearly as good as going from "gets hit 3 times in 10" to "gets hit 2 times in 10". Granted, the numbers aren't anything like that simple in the l5r system, but the principle remains - improving already high defense is more valuable than improving marginal defense - and our defense is quite high and soon to get higher. We should totally invest in reflexes as one of our first combat prowess buys. With that and the kata, we'd be upping our armor TN by 8 - making it 36. Long term, up earth ring by another point (which we'll want to do anyway, for lots of reasons) and take reflexes up to 4 (not unreasonable as a long-term pick), and we're at 42. 36 and 42 seem nicely in the "like 40" realm to me... and that's when we're not fighting defensively.
Yes, initiative is important, but we're playing Hida Bushi, and planning to go Defender of the Wall, long-term, which means that we're going to be big and tanky regardless, with solid numbers in both defense and absorb. We're going to be a lot better at taking that first hit than most, which means that initiative isn't as critical.
Now, I'm not saying that this is an overwhelming advantage. It's 3 (eventually 4) defense up, and 3 (eventually 4) initiative down. On the other hand, we're rolling 6k3 on our testubo damage as it is. Once we crank our str by one (which we'll probably want to do) that goes up to 7k3. Strike as the Avalanche will bump that by 1, to 7k3/8k3. If we ever get to Insight 4, we'll want Defender of the Wall, which means str 5 (it won't be soon). At that point, we're talking about the difference between 9k3 and 10k3, and that's not counting any weapon upgrades we may get. Admittedly, if we also get our heavy weapon skill up to 7 (18 points away), we start having damage dice explode on 9s and 10s, and that makes it matter a *bit* more, but the kata advantage is more of a relatively minor buff than a real game-changer no matter how you slice it.
Exponentially in comparison to Armor. Armor is a static TN and unless you invest a lot of points into it you're probably not looking at more than 40 if that. But by the time we hit high end, hitting 40 is fairly trivial for most dedicated combatants, especially with exploding dice rolls. Hence Attack will typically eclipse all but the most dedicated defenders most of the time by rank 3.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
So, running some numbers on anydice...
I will assume that the "dedicated combatant" that you are worried about is starting at agility 3, weaponskill 3, and moving up to agility 5, weaponskill 7. I will further assume that we're going to make our next exp buys as reflexes and kata, and then head out into the wide world in search of people trying to kill us. I will ignore the effects of fighting agressively or defensively (though I'll note that those are pertinent to the actual consideration - especially as fighting defensively becomes more effective with added skill). I'll round to the nearest percentage point.
Thus, the choice is between 33 and 36. I'm assuming that the defender wins ties - I don't recall. If that's not the case, then these numbers are slightly off. I also acknowledge that I am limited by human frailty, and may have missed a few round-ups, in which case those particular numbers would be 1% lower than they should be. Also, I used a hack for calculation efficiency that should have a marginal-at-most effect. The chances for nk3 against the upper level versions may be *slightly* lower. (the technique I used discards dice down to the keep number before exploding. The k4 rolls are automatically above 44 if this kicks in, but there's a marginal chance that, for example, you might roll 4 10s on 10 dice, and then roll less than 12 on 3d10 where your 4th 10 might have exploded better)
Given that we're going up to 12k5, I think I'll include the long-term pick as well - basically as below, except we bump our reflexes and earth ring to 4 each. At that point, the difference that the kata makes is between 38 and 42.
6k3: 18% vs 12%. 9% vs 5%.
7k3: 23% vs 15%. 12% vs 7%.
8k3: 28% vs 19%. 15% vs 9%.
9k3: 33% vs 22%. 18% vs 11%.
10k3: 38% vs 26%. 21% vs 13%.
7k4: 44% vs 33%. 27% vs 16%.
8k4: 52% vs 41%. 34% vs 21%.
9k4: 60% vs 47%. 40% vs 26%.
10k4: 66% vs 53%. 46% vs 31%.
11k4: 71% vs 59%. 51% vs 36%.
8k5: 74% vs 61%. 53% vs 38%.
9k5: 82% vs 70%. 62% vs 46%.
10k5: 88% vs 78%. 69% vs 53%.
11k5: 92% vs 83%. 76% vs 60%.
12k5: 94% vs 88%. 81% vs 65%.
I will assume that the "dedicated combatant" that you are worried about is starting at agility 3, weaponskill 3, and moving up to agility 5, weaponskill 7. I will further assume that we're going to make our next exp buys as reflexes and kata, and then head out into the wide world in search of people trying to kill us. I will ignore the effects of fighting agressively or defensively (though I'll note that those are pertinent to the actual consideration - especially as fighting defensively becomes more effective with added skill). I'll round to the nearest percentage point.
Thus, the choice is between 33 and 36. I'm assuming that the defender wins ties - I don't recall. If that's not the case, then these numbers are slightly off. I also acknowledge that I am limited by human frailty, and may have missed a few round-ups, in which case those particular numbers would be 1% lower than they should be. Also, I used a hack for calculation efficiency that should have a marginal-at-most effect. The chances for nk3 against the upper level versions may be *slightly* lower. (the technique I used discards dice down to the keep number before exploding. The k4 rolls are automatically above 44 if this kicks in, but there's a marginal chance that, for example, you might roll 4 10s on 10 dice, and then roll less than 12 on 3d10 where your 4th 10 might have exploded better)
Given that we're going up to 12k5, I think I'll include the long-term pick as well - basically as below, except we bump our reflexes and earth ring to 4 each. At that point, the difference that the kata makes is between 38 and 42.
6k3: 18% vs 12%. 9% vs 5%.
7k3: 23% vs 15%. 12% vs 7%.
8k3: 28% vs 19%. 15% vs 9%.
9k3: 33% vs 22%. 18% vs 11%.
10k3: 38% vs 26%. 21% vs 13%.
7k4: 44% vs 33%. 27% vs 16%.
8k4: 52% vs 41%. 34% vs 21%.
9k4: 60% vs 47%. 40% vs 26%.
10k4: 66% vs 53%. 46% vs 31%.
11k4: 71% vs 59%. 51% vs 36%.
8k5: 74% vs 61%. 53% vs 38%.
9k5: 82% vs 70%. 62% vs 46%.
10k5: 88% vs 78%. 69% vs 53%.
11k5: 92% vs 83%. 76% vs 60%.
12k5: 94% vs 88%. 81% vs 65%.
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