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Glory of the Emerald Empire (Legend of the 5 Rings Quest)

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The math is interesting and all, but I'd like to mention that there is no amount of dice rolled higher than 10. After 10, you add +2 for 1 unkept die past that point, and for every 2 unkept dice it becomes another kept die. This is specifically to avoid the issue of throwing around ridiculous amounts of dice.

Also, on the subject of Kata, it's bought purely at Ring Level. You must have the requisite Ring at the Mastery Level in order to purchase that Kata.

As for an opinion about offense vs. defense, I'll keep my own views to myself since I'm just the GM and not a player. I'm not the one who determines how Sosuke spends his exp, after all. However, I would like to say almost all enemies you face are going to be rolling attack rolls to hit. So even if they're throwing around a lot of dice, there's still a chance they'll just have a crap roll. That's always something to keep in mind.
 
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Winged Knight said:
The math is interesting and all, but I'd like to mention that there is no amount of dice rolled higher than 10. After 10, you add +2 for 1 unkept die past that point, and for every 2 unkept dice it becomes another kept die. This is specifically to avoid the issue of throwing around ridiculous amounts of dice.
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okay. New numbers, then (replacing 11k4, 11k5, and 12k5).
10k4+2: 76% vs 61%. 53% vs 38%.

10k5+2: 92% vs 85%. 78% vs 61%.
10k6: 95% vs 90%. 85% vs 72%

Winged Knight said:
Also, on the subject of Kata, it's bought purely at Ring Level. You must have the requisite Ring at the Mastery Level in order to purchase that Kata.
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Got it. The two choices on the table are likely among our best options, then. Are there any other Earth 3 kata you know of, or any Earth 4 kata that would strongly appeal to our build (ie, mostly things about being tanky and hitting stuff with a testubo, or possibly something about making knockdowns easier)?

gman391 said:
@Sirrocco

Your numbers seem to support my earlier assumption, unless you play dedicated defender and pour everything into it, you're going to hurt badly.
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Ehhh? Where are you getting *that* from? Assuming we stay mostly balanced, at about the time we're in the "upper" bracket for the above, we'll be swinging somewhere between 9k4 (agi 4, heavy weap 5) and 11k4 (agi 4, heavy weap 7). I included the numbers above that because I figure we'll be dealing with at least some foes who are pretty seriously dedicated attackers - who might do things like investing heavily in agility and weaponskill, while largely ignoring defenses. Still, even at the 12k5 level, our with-kata, ring 4 version gets missed one time in four.

...but that's also missing things a bit. After all, we're not just pushing defense, we're also pushing reduction. We have reduction 10 now, thanks to the Mom armor. By the time we're at the mid-tier version, we'll have reduction 14, thanks to our school rank 2. If the game goes on long enough to get to insight rank 5 (Hida Bushi 3, Defender of the Wall 2) then we'll have reduction 22 - so if our foe has managed to get up to 12k5 dice to hit by skimping on the damage, then even if he does hit us, it won't matter a whole lot. Meanwhile, the big, slow bruiser types that we're up against at mid-tier (and stats of 4 is mid-tier) probably won't be swinging more than 9k4 by default - which will only hit 26% of the time. With no kata, that goes up to 40%. Taking half-again as many hits starts sounding significant to me.

Also, if we are dealing with Oni, then it's not all about insight 5 - it's all about insight 4, because that's the point where Defender of the Wall turns off their exploding dice - which means that unless they're keeping at least 5 dice (or keeping 4 and getting a reasonable amount of static plusses), they cannot *possibly* hit us at 42.

...maybe I'm missing the thrust of your argument here. Perhaps you could explain it more thoroughly? Is there something I'm not getting?
 
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As I read your stats, we're still getting hit fairly regularly, given that, wound penalties are going to stack up reasonably quickly. With that in mind, I feel putting them down is more important than not getting hit.
 
Okay, no, we're not ever going to be able to stack enough defense to make it the god stat that renders fights meaningless. This is Rokugan. Fights are never going to be completely free of danger. That doesn't mean that investing in it is useless. Second, we're stacking multiple kinds of protection. We have defense. We have reduction. We have void points, which we pretty much always dedicate to damage reduction (making each point in essence another 10 HP before significant wound penalties).

The other thing is, this kata choice is not a choice of huge import. It's not goign to render us unhittable. It's not going to double our damage. Right now, we're swinging for 6k3. This kata adds one rolled die to that. Upping strength (whcih we can do up to 3 more times) also adds a rolled die to that. The following are intended to be average results for rolled/kept. I pulled them off the internet, so I can't personally vouch for the veracity, but I think it looks about right.

6k3: 26.49
7k3: 28.22
8k3: 29.72
9k3: 30.90
10k3: 32.04

And now, on the off-chance that we get an Awesome Testubo of +0k1 damage....

6k4: 31.28
7k4: 33.94
8k4: 35.69
9k4: 37.36
10k4: 38.96

so... the damage kata increases our total damage output by less than 10%, varying a bit depending on what our strength is, and the returns diminish with improvements to strength, both as a percentage and as a raw number. An average of about 1.5 damage, across the range. This is not an overwhelming advantage. Actually, the defense advantage is looking a *lot* more significant, overall. For immediate use, with the reflexes boost, going up against opponents who are Xk3, it cuts about a third off their chance to hit us. Doesn't do as well against the Xk4 types, but it's still pertinent, and if someone with agility 4 or equivalent is coming after us at this level, that's a pretty big deal. The Extra-Awesome Testubo version looks like it's doing a bit better as far as raw damage per hit goes, but not a huge boost percentagewise.

Caveats: heavy weapon 7 will give us "damage dice explode on a 9". This is almost certain to make the rolled die worth more as a raw number, and may even do so in percentage terms. I wish I could give you numbers on exploding 9s, but I really cant.

It's more interesting to look at some of the implications, though. Some of this stuff surprised me.

- Yes. The damage absorb we're stacking really is pretty significant. If we ever get to Defender of the Wall 2, it's going to be *really* significant.
- Defender of the Wall 1 is also a pretty big deal, given how high our defense is.
- Yes. Reflexes is totally worth it right now. Strength probably isn't worth it as an immediate buy unless we're deciding that the knockdown trick is important and picking up the point of heavy weapons to support it.
- As far as hitting reasonably high-def enemies goes, it looks like a single point of agility is worth a bit more than three points of heavy weapon skill. Our next point of agility costs 16. Our next three points of heavy weapon skill would cost 18 - but would come with both the knockdown thing and the exploding 9s. Assuming we're not buying up int past 3, and we're not worried about fighting with anything other than the testubo, Heavy Weapon is a *much* better investment.
- buying up to str 3, heavy weapons 5 (the knockdown trick) only costs 1 less than buying heavy weapons 7 (9s explode), and probably does a lot less damage overall.

So... given that, I'm thinking that our best bet on the next steps for "plan increase overall combat effectiveness" is reflexes, kata pick, testubo 7, and perhaps emphasis testubo. That's 30 total for the stat and skill, and another 5 for the non-insight picks, and will qualify us for rank 2. Currently we have 6 exp. Given the rate that we get exp, it's plausible that we could have enough for those buys by the time we get back to the wall.

Now, on the flip side, if we want to push the noncombat side of things, it would be void 3, courtier up to 3, and investigation 3 - a total cost of 26, and 3 more insight total than the previous plan. Given that we currently have 6 exp, it is highly unlikely that we'll get enough exp to fill this out by the time we get to the dragon lands. A modified version, then, swaps the void for reflexes, and aims to get that last - leaving us with 20 total, 8 of which we'd really like to have before setting foot in dragon lands. This is almost certainly doable, and would make us solidly effective at social attack for our tier, as well as making us not entirely terrible in case we have to search for clues at some point.
 
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Meh, I prefer not to build around kata anyways. Reflexes first, then Void, Agi, Heavy Weapons 7 and at least 3 in story telling.
 
The story telling... I feel like we're going to wind up rolling that once, maybe twice ever. It has no masteries, and a 3-to-1 exp to insight ratio. I wish it were a good idea, but I really can't justify it from an effectiveness standpoint, unless we're going to somehow be pulling out story after story. Maybe talk with Yasuki-sama about the matter once we're on the road. How much storytelling does he expect us to do while we're out there? Will the clan have use for our skills in this area once we are done here?

Heavy Weapons 7 is very close to strictly better than agility 4 as a pick.

Void... is expensive enough that we're not likely to be able to buy it before we hit the Dragon lands, and if we want it before we get back to the crab, it's going to cut heavily into our overall budget. Honestly, I keep going back and forth on Void. I know that it limits the raises you can call. I know that it increases your max void points held. Does it do anything to the effectiveness of said void points? Does it do anything else?
 
gman391 said:
It's not going to end with the Dragon well rounded samurai get promoted, murder hobo samurai do not.
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I'm not sure I agree about ending with the Dragon. What use is storytelling? It allows you to make a living as an artisan, and use that to establish a place in court, if you're good enough at it. We might be that good if we bumped up to 6k3, but we're a Crab, not a crane. We don't want that life. It's useful for charm offensives as part of an overarching diplomatic plot (what Yasuki-sama is using us for right now). That's great for the moment, but there's a question of how regularly we're going to be in that sort of a situation after we're done. If we finish here and immediately turn around and start doing another diplomatic mission... well, that kind of makes "Crab Clan Storyteller" into our Thing, doesn't it? I don't really want that to be our Thing. Investigation and Courtier are a lot more broadly applicable. - they are tools you can pull out in more situations.
 
Sirrocco said:
I'm not sure I agree about ending with the Dragon. What use is storytelling? It allows you to make a living as an artisan, and use that to establish a place in court, if you're good enough at it. We might be that good if we bumped up to 6k3, but we're a Crab, not a crane. We don't want that life. It's useful for charm offensives as part of an overarching diplomatic plot (what Yasuki-sama is using us for right now). That's great for the moment, but there's a question of how regularly we're going to be in that sort of a situation after we're done. If we finish here and immediately turn around and start doing another diplomatic mission... well, that kind of makes "Crab Clan Storyteller" into our Thing, doesn't it? I don't really want that to be our Thing. Investigation and Courtier are a lot more broadly applicable. - they are tools you can pull out in more situations.
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Bushi especially Crab Bushi have an especially short shelf life. If we get a major injury like losing a limb or something, I want us to be able to keep going instead of retiring to a monastery immediately, thus keeping a bit of court skills in play so we have something to work with.
 
gman391 said:
Bushi especially Crab Bushi have an especially short shelf life. If we get a major injury like losing a limb or something, I want us to be able to keep going instead of retiring to a monastery immediately, thus keeping a bit of court skills in play so we have something to work with.
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I'm new to L5r but don't some Crab become teachers in clan Dojos when they get old or injured?
 
gman391 said:
Bushi especially Crab Bushi have an especially short shelf life. If we get a major injury like losing a limb or something, I want us to be able to keep going instead of retiring to a monastery immediately, thus keeping a bit of court skills in play so we have something to work with.
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Sure - but I think that goal is served better by investments in Courtier and Investigation than in Storytelling. The extra rolled die in storytelling specifically just doesn't have the long-term payoff that, for example, Courtier/Investigation does.

...and if we do lose a hand or something then yes, our priorities shift, and we might well want to start pushing Storytelling. I'm not thinking, though, that "we might some day get into a fight that maims us but doesn't kill us" is a reason to prioritize exp spending right now.

I would be interested in some general feedback from people, though. Right now, we're a surprisingly smooth crab, and we have our social defenses well in order. Do we want to invest some in picking up a decent social attack before we go back to cranking our combat ability? If we do, now would be the time to do it.

[ ] Plan Smooth Operator: Grab investigation 3 and courtier 2 right now, leaving us with 1 exp remaining. Assuming we pick up at least 2 exp from the Ikoma lands, buy Courtier 3 at that point. Then switch to the combat buys. Delays our combat improvements, but increases our ability to navigate the courts, and, by extension, makes us that much better at supporting Yasuki-sama on this particular mission. These picks are efficient, effective, and will remain broadly useful even after we leave the lands of the dragon.
[ ] Plan Smashy Survivor: go directly to combat-applicable buys (reflexes, then heavy weapons to 7, with possible emphasis and kata along the way). We have everything we need to survive the courts without dishonor. We may not be able to have as much of an impact, but then, we're yojimbo, not courtiers. We're already performing above expectations in that regard. In the meantime, the shadowlands is not going to stop trying to kill us any time soon. The sooner we start pushing our combat-applicable stats, the less likely we are to die before we get home. We'd rather not die before we get home.
 
[X] Plan Smooth Operator

While we can't put off combat skills forever, we can probably afford to wait just a little bit longer than this. This rounds out our character a bit, and makes him rather capable in things that don't involve smashing things in the face. And - while it might be our thing - we can't always count on being able to smash things. Having a few social points sounds good - especially as they are the most immediately applicable. Plus, people would never expect a Hida Bushi to be able to pull significant social skills, so we could probably use that to surprise people.
 
Yeah, smooth operator looks to be really useful in dragon lands, as the previous incident shows luck can only carry us so far.

[X] Plan Smooth Operator
 
[X] Plan Smooth Operator

Ditto. Although raising reflexes (and/or possibly intelligence) soon should also be pretty high on the list.
 
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