It's not at all irrelevant. I'm making the argument that we don't need to massively broaden our bushi capabilities. There are or have been, as far as I can tell, three major arguments in favor of focusing on our combat abilities.
- First, that we're a bushi, and there's something fundamentally wrong and shameful with being a bushi and not being competent with the blade. Given that we now have agility 3, reflexes 4, kenjutsu 3, and Iajutsu 3 (plus crab hands, our Rank 2 technique, and a usefully applicable kata), I think I can assert fairly that we are no longer a shame to our station as far as combat goes.
- Second, that the Grand Character Plan was that he was that of warrior-sage, and that we shouldn't neglect the warrior in favor of the sage. To that, I point to my earlier bit about where our development resources have actually gone, and assert that we shouldn't neglect the sage in favor of the warrior.
- Third, that this is Rokugan, and that we're likely to get into fights to the death, and that, as such, our combat ability is woefully insufficient to ensure our survival. This is being used as an argument that we should be investing broadly. To this I point out that we've gotten in very few such fights thus far. We've had one actual fight that might have resulted in our death, and all of our combat investment has been *since* then. We've had two fights where it was actually of benefit to us that we lost, and the important part was how we sold it... not a case where massively buffing our combat abilities would have been particularly useful. We've had one skill challenge where we were able to apply Reflexes and Kenjutsu to the task of saving Otomo-sama... but given that that was an assassin striking from the shadows and we were surrounded by Lion samurai, that wouldn't have resulted in a fight, and there wasn't really any chance of it resulting in our deaths. Thus, I assert that it remains as the QM has told us (repeatedly, upon being asked for reassurances) that it would - that true combat would be relatively uncommon, and would be something that, almost always, we could avoid by properly applying other skills.
I hold, then, that none of these three arguments is particularly compelling at this time. I have yet to see any other major arguments for investing heavily in combat ability. I'm not saying that these things are utterly useless, but they're not being presented on a platform of being non-useless. They're being presented on a platform of being highly important, to the point of needing to consume all or almost all of our exp budget for the forseeable future.
