In Thunder's Echo (Legend of the Five Rings Quest)
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There is a lot of really nice stuff in here. But in L5R you need to invest, however, to really get any return. So as I see things it comes down to picking between the big packages first: dueling, court, theology, standard bushi and the mix-bag package.
Dueling is always very nice. It's a very useful skill, nobody can deny - but strict iaijutsu duels aren't something we need to do necessarily. Courtly things are very tempting to me but I feel like that's not where we should be focusing the very core of our selves - and the Void raise is extremely hefty. Bushi training is 7 xp so we should probably grab that regardless. But what really sticks out to me is, the Sword-and-Scroll. I quite like it and I think it fits with where Naoto looks to be heading. So with that in mind, before anything else:
[X] Sword in one hand, Scroll in another - 18xp
[X] Bushi Training - 7xp
Which takes us to 25xp. I'd like to spend the full 40xp if at all possible, but beyond picking between the flavor packages--which both sound simply grand--I can't make up my mind on what else we'd need. Increasing Awareness is something that would serve us very well; perhaps we combine that with The People's Scorpion, and be a bit of a trader. Raising Awareness takes us to 32xp, leaving us 8 which would go for Skills.
Thoughts?
Dueling is always very nice. It's a very useful skill, nobody can deny - but strict iaijutsu duels aren't something we need to do necessarily. Courtly things are very tempting to me but I feel like that's not where we should be focusing the very core of our selves - and the Void raise is extremely hefty. Bushi training is 7 xp so we should probably grab that regardless. But what really sticks out to me is, the Sword-and-Scroll. I quite like it and I think it fits with where Naoto looks to be heading. So with that in mind, before anything else:
[X] Sword in one hand, Scroll in another - 18xp
[X] Bushi Training - 7xp
Which takes us to 25xp. I'd like to spend the full 40xp if at all possible, but beyond picking between the flavor packages--which both sound simply grand--I can't make up my mind on what else we'd need. Increasing Awareness is something that would serve us very well; perhaps we combine that with The People's Scorpion, and be a bit of a trader. Raising Awareness takes us to 32xp, leaving us 8 which would go for Skills.
Thoughts?
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Seems like this is a character who would benefit from a high level of both investigation and tactics/wargaming, to really leverage that "highly intelligent bushi in a court setting" thing.
I think it might also be worthwhile to look at each of the packages and see how much they're saving us. There are some otherwise inefficient picks here - like buying lore skills at 1 when we're planning on grabbing sage, or getting Crab Hands at all, so it's probably worthwhile to be able to compare what we're saving with what we're spending.
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mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Having some degree of training in Calligraphy and Go, along with raising Investigation seems like it would also be fairly important. Perhaps a package for that?
- Location
- London, England
Currently, there aren't any discounts in those packages. The bonuses you get for having them are primarily roleplay-based at the moment. For example, No Honour in Shadows will give you friendly ninja contacts/allies at appropriate points in the game.
I may apply cost discounts to some of them, primarily the ones restricted to mechanical benefits, but I need to seriously consider how much is appropriate for such things.
I may apply cost discounts to some of them, primarily the ones restricted to mechanical benefits, but I need to seriously consider how much is appropriate for such things.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
So, working it out...
- Court training. Costs 18 xp That pays for the awareness, courtier, and etiquette buys (all of which are totally worthwhile), leaving the two lore buys as the freebies. Worth it.
- Bushi Training: spend 7xp, get 9xp worth of stuff - but two of those are kyujutsu and knives. In general this seems not too hugely helpful to me - it's more of a flavor pick than anything else.
- Duelist training: save a total of 1 xp, but if we want to be competent in a duel, there's nothing wasted here. I'd say this is a strong pick.
- Theology training: does not actually save any xp at all, and includes a Lore skill. Not worth it.
- Sword and Scroll: Crab Hands is 3, Sage is 4. Agility is 12. Saves 1 xp. Agility is a bit of an off-stat for us, but it does get us a fire rank. Essentially saves us a point on Crab Hands - and Crab Hands for 2 isn't terrible. It's not all that likely to be useful, but it's not terrible.
- No Honor In Shadows: Honestly, I'm not even going to run the numbers on this one, because it's a Bad Plan. We're going to be tanking honor pretty hard as it is. We don't need to invest XP in skills that will cost us honor every time we use them.
- The People's Scorpion: Disbeliever is -3 points, Ebisu's Blessing is 4. This one is points-neutral. I like the feel of it, though.
Worth noting that skill 2 costs 3 xp in this system.
No, wait... I'm not counting the initial skill from school, am I. Bleh.
Anywya, I don't have enough time to write one up right now, but I should have a character concept or two if you can give me some time.
- Court training. Costs 18 xp That pays for the awareness, courtier, and etiquette buys (all of which are totally worthwhile), leaving the two lore buys as the freebies. Worth it.
- Bushi Training: spend 7xp, get 9xp worth of stuff - but two of those are kyujutsu and knives. In general this seems not too hugely helpful to me - it's more of a flavor pick than anything else.
- Duelist training: save a total of 1 xp, but if we want to be competent in a duel, there's nothing wasted here. I'd say this is a strong pick.
- Theology training: does not actually save any xp at all, and includes a Lore skill. Not worth it.
- Sword and Scroll: Crab Hands is 3, Sage is 4. Agility is 12. Saves 1 xp. Agility is a bit of an off-stat for us, but it does get us a fire rank. Essentially saves us a point on Crab Hands - and Crab Hands for 2 isn't terrible. It's not all that likely to be useful, but it's not terrible.
- No Honor In Shadows: Honestly, I'm not even going to run the numbers on this one, because it's a Bad Plan. We're going to be tanking honor pretty hard as it is. We don't need to invest XP in skills that will cost us honor every time we use them.
- The People's Scorpion: Disbeliever is -3 points, Ebisu's Blessing is 4. This one is points-neutral. I like the feel of it, though.
Sir, I believe you are incorrect - though the social implications part does change my value estimation on some of these.
Worth noting that skill 2 costs 3 xp in this system.
No, wait... I'm not counting the initial skill from school, am I. Bleh.
Anywya, I don't have enough time to write one up right now, but I should have a character concept or two if you can give me some time.
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mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If I were to trim anything out of the package it would be would probably be Crab Hands. We don't particularly need it. But on the other hand, the fluff's pretty cool and it makes a nice contrast for all of 3xp. At the end of the day it's not particularly as valuable as Sage because one of these makes us an encyclopedia about everything and the other... helps us in situations where we have to reach for something that isn't our primary weapon.
Which isn't much.
I'd say, oh... trim down the bushi training, toss Knives and Kyujutsu? That'd take us down to 5 - and if we keep Crab Hands we get the net effect anyway. No point in getting Rank 1 in any Weapons Skill with it.
So (5+18)xp leaves us with... uh. 17xp left.
I suppose if we knock down the Lore skills from the courtier training that'd afford us the Attribute, and the social raises, with 1 left? As it so happens it also leaves us shy just 1 of The People's Scorpion, but we get a lot out of it.
e-Unless I'm misreading the cost of The People's Scorpion?
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- Location
- London, England
If you pick a combination of backgrounds and other purchases which render certain things redundant then you will get the excess back, yes. That's a general principle which will also apply to anything you suggest as your own purchases.
In general, though, I would encourage people to think more about the roleplay elements of your skills and advantages. With only one PC to focus on, I can essentially guarantee that basically everything you put on your character sheet will be useful or have an impact on the course of the game at some point.
For example... you could pick Bayushi as an Ancestor and then take the Haunted disadvantage. Bayushi is pretty good as an Ancestor anyway - for twelve points, he gives you a +1k0 bonus to all of your school skills (which is the same as the Prodigy advantage, for the same cost), while also doubling the effects of spending a Void point on those skills and letting you share Void points with your Kharmic Tie. That's a nice set of mechanical bonuses. Haunted meanwhile will inflict a -1k1 on one dice roll in a session if you don't keep your ancestor happy.
The mechanics would still take second place to the sheer story-defining impact of 'Holy shit, Bayushi-no-Kami has decided to take a personal interest in me'. This is a deliberately extreme example - most combos won't have such an impact - but it is illustrative of the sort of thing I'm aiming for.
So if you'd like to see the game tilt a certain way or for certain themes to take more prominence, have a think about a good set of XP purchases to achieve that goal and see if you can persuade everyone else to agree with you.
(You can totally do the Bayushi thing if you want. Just don't be surprised if the Kitsu freak the fuck out when they study you.)
In general, though, I would encourage people to think more about the roleplay elements of your skills and advantages. With only one PC to focus on, I can essentially guarantee that basically everything you put on your character sheet will be useful or have an impact on the course of the game at some point.
For example... you could pick Bayushi as an Ancestor and then take the Haunted disadvantage. Bayushi is pretty good as an Ancestor anyway - for twelve points, he gives you a +1k0 bonus to all of your school skills (which is the same as the Prodigy advantage, for the same cost), while also doubling the effects of spending a Void point on those skills and letting you share Void points with your Kharmic Tie. That's a nice set of mechanical bonuses. Haunted meanwhile will inflict a -1k1 on one dice roll in a session if you don't keep your ancestor happy.
The mechanics would still take second place to the sheer story-defining impact of 'Holy shit, Bayushi-no-Kami has decided to take a personal interest in me'. This is a deliberately extreme example - most combos won't have such an impact - but it is illustrative of the sort of thing I'm aiming for.
So if you'd like to see the game tilt a certain way or for certain themes to take more prominence, have a think about a good set of XP purchases to achieve that goal and see if you can persuade everyone else to agree with you.
(You can totally do the Bayushi thing if you want. Just don't be surprised if the Kitsu freak the fuck out when they study you.)
A Nation's Virtue
南國山河南帝居
...fuck it, I'll get to work on making this a thing.
A Nation's Virtue
南國山河南帝居
[X] Plan ANV
-[X] Bushi Training (7 xp)
-[X] Sword in one hand, Scroll in another (18 xp)
-[X] Ancestor (Bayushi) (12xp)
-[X] Haunted (-3xp)
-[X] Raise Defense to 3 (3 xp)
-[X] Raise Kenjutsu to 3
40 xp spent. If anybody has suggestions to this plan, please make them.
-[X] Bushi Training (7 xp)
-[X] Sword in one hand, Scroll in another (18 xp)
-[X] Ancestor (Bayushi) (12xp)
-[X] Haunted (-3xp)
-[X] Raise Defense to 3 (3 xp)
-[X] Raise Kenjutsu to 3
40 xp spent. If anybody has suggestions to this plan, please make them.
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mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well for starters, you're breaking the Advantage point limit. It also strikes me as rather bloated a character concept to just smush all those things together at once.
A Nation's Virtue
南國山河南帝居
What do you suggest should be taken out? I'm mainly thinking People's Scorpion.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think that before you can talk about anything you need to talk about what you set out to accomplish. In the case of your vote, I cannot discern any particular focus -
What you have is an Int 4 Bushi with above-average martial skills... then an Advantage that completely invalidates having those 1xp Skills. Haunted by Bayushi is an interesting idea but it's also something that demands its own focus - and when you toss being all ninja-y into the mix, with Temptation for no reason I can discern (and without the relevant Attribute to make it work) along with raised Defense which doesn't aid in what our character seems to need to do, we're left with a bunch of individually interesting components that make something holistically incoherent.
Your plan isn't actually a plan as far as I can tell, beyond picking out things that look nice on paper.
Although I don't particularly want to see it: if you want to go with Bayushi as an Ancestor then strip away everything else fluff-wise and work from there as your base.
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Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
The character needs to remain focused on two, maybe three things that they're really good at. Spreading ourselves out too much to try to grab all the shinies we can hold will just result in not being all that skilled at anything.
So let's see our strengths. We're smart, really damn smart. So Sage is pretty much a must because we'll be rolling 5k4 on all Lore rolls save the Forbidden ones. This averages out to about 28 for our typical, off-hand knowledge on any given topic. This makes us far and away likely to be the most knowledgeable person in the room at any given point, and for breadth of information there are few in the Empire that can equal us. This is invaluable in a court setting.
To that end, getting some court training is also a good idea. However, if we take Sage we could do a modified version of our court training because we would already know those lore. So with the modified court training it would look more like...
- Raise Courtier to 2
- Raise Etiquette to 2
- Raise Awareness to 3
This costs 16 exp, which combined with Sword and Scroll means we've spent 34 exp. Then I say we do Bushi Training, but drop knives and kyujutsu because we have Crab Hands and that covers rank 1 with weapon skills anyway. So if we trim those, our Bushi training looks like...
- Raise Defense to 2
- Raise Kenjutsu to 2
- Gain Battle at 1
This spends 5 exp, which leaves us with 1 extra and covers most of what we need to be a very intelligent, courtly inclined warrior.
So let's see our strengths. We're smart, really damn smart. So Sage is pretty much a must because we'll be rolling 5k4 on all Lore rolls save the Forbidden ones. This averages out to about 28 for our typical, off-hand knowledge on any given topic. This makes us far and away likely to be the most knowledgeable person in the room at any given point, and for breadth of information there are few in the Empire that can equal us. This is invaluable in a court setting.
To that end, getting some court training is also a good idea. However, if we take Sage we could do a modified version of our court training because we would already know those lore. So with the modified court training it would look more like...
- Raise Courtier to 2
- Raise Etiquette to 2
- Raise Awareness to 3
This costs 16 exp, which combined with Sword and Scroll means we've spent 34 exp. Then I say we do Bushi Training, but drop knives and kyujutsu because we have Crab Hands and that covers rank 1 with weapon skills anyway. So if we trim those, our Bushi training looks like...
- Raise Defense to 2
- Raise Kenjutsu to 2
- Gain Battle at 1
This spends 5 exp, which leaves us with 1 extra and covers most of what we need to be a very intelligent, courtly inclined warrior.
- Location
- London, England
Yeah, I forgot to mention the 15xp limit on Advantages. So taking Bayushi as an ancestor pretty much locks out anything else like Sage or Ebisu's Blessing, as it becomes a defining principle of your character.
I should also warn people that taking the Bayushi and Haunted combo will deny your character some of their agency. This is always going to be a risk if you tie a powerful NPC into the story, but being haunted by an Ancestor means you can't really avoid it, and... well, it's Bayushi. If your founding Kami tells you to do something, you do it, end of. So not something I'd recommend for most games. You can vote for it, but I don't want people going into this unaware of what it would mean.
I should also warn people that taking the Bayushi and Haunted combo will deny your character some of their agency. This is always going to be a risk if you tie a powerful NPC into the story, but being haunted by an Ancestor means you can't really avoid it, and... well, it's Bayushi. If your founding Kami tells you to do something, you do it, end of. So not something I'd recommend for most games. You can vote for it, but I don't want people going into this unaware of what it would mean.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mind you, Bayushi Bushi also get any one Skill - we'd be well served making that Games: Go or the like, and I'm increasingly convinced we ought spend the last on Investigation. Because every samurai needs it.
EtchedSteel
*mumble mumble*
- Location
- Lima. Peru
Specially in a courtier enviroment. Even without that, it's really useful to have one or two point on Investigation than having any.
It could also be Shogi
It could also be Shogi
- Location
- London, England
Also, while I remember - bonus points to anyone who can provide a decent character portrait. Borrowing existing L5R art is permitted and even encouraged. Fortunes know I'll be doing that with NPCs.
- Location
- London, England
Largely because Iaijutsu is listed as being tied to Reflexes in the skill section, and indeed the actual strike roll is made with Iaijutsu/Reflexes. Reflexes likewise prevents you from getting hit if the opponent strikes first.
That said, Void does indeed help you actually make the first strike, so is probably more useful. Don't feel too constrained by the suggested packages - if you'd rather raise Void, it just costs an extra 4xp, for a total of 21.
Winged Knight's suggestion sounds good, although I'd rather we had some investigation and some skill at games we could use our high intelligence to win than an extra rank in defense.
[X]Winged Knight
[X]Go
Edit:
Oh, right, since we have a free school skill, I'm changing my vote to Winged Knight with Go.
[X]Winged Knight
[X]Go
Edit:
Oh, right, since we have a free school skill, I'm changing my vote to Winged Knight with Go.
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